Amazon Apocalypse 3: Chapter 80 (Patreon)

My entire body raged with pain. It felt like every single drop of blood in my body had lit on fire—all at once. If not for Iron Will, I might have died right then and there. In retrospect, I should have expected a violent reaction. Bridget hadn’t had an easy time picking up her wolf ears. Sakura’s oni bloodline had lain dormant until the apocalypse, but when it awoke things had been really tough.

A notification flashed before my eyes.

Racial and Bloodline synergy detected!

Your racial trait has increased your metaphysical weight, making you a beacon of fate. Your Fate Weaver bloodline has been enhanced accordingly.

Your Fate Weaver (Epic) bloodline has been enhanced to Fate Harbinger (Mythic).

Shortly after the notification of my bloodline enhancement, even Iron Will couldn’t help me. The pain was too much. I passed out face-first on the table. When I awoke, it felt like hours had passed, though it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes.

I shot to my feet with a sense of urgency. My leg twitched, urging me to jump into action.

My companions all looked at me funny.

“Don’t worry, Carter,” Bridget assured me. “You were only out for a few minutes.”

I frowned. “You sure that was all? I suddenly feel like I don’t have any time to waste.”

“Trust me, that was all. Do you feel alright?” The pretty blonde lay the back of her hand on my neck and then my forehead. “I was worried, but Cyra and Myrina said the System’s rewards never cause problems.”

“I’m okay,” I assured her. “I think I even got an upgrade to a Mythic form of the bloodline due to synergy with my recent racial upgrade.”

“That’s wonderful! Our family always has to pick the Amazonian Matriarch racial upgrade at both D and C-Grade to ensure we make the most of our bloodlines,” Cyra said, looking quite happy for me.

After sharing my exciting new bloodline notification with them and assuring them I was okay, conversation quickly returned to more mundane topics. I struggled to stay focused on the conversation. The pain from gaining my mythic bloodline was gone, but something still bothered me. Whatever it was, it gnawed at my guts, demanding my attention.

“Hey, Cyra, mind if we stay the night?” Myrina asked, wrapping an arm around my shoulder. “Carter and I have something important to talk about. In bed.”

“Your room is as you left it, Myrina. But things might get crowded if Bridget and Sakura stay there, too.”

“I have an idea…” Bridget grinned slyly. “What if we all stay in your room, Cyra? The acting matriarch has to have a big bed, right?”

Cyra shrugged in embarrassment. “Actually, I haven’t moved out of my childhood bedroom, either. Just in case mother comes back, you know?”

I wanted to say something encouraging to Cyra, but try as I might, I couldn't focus on anything. I stood, looking around and hoping to spot whatever was causing this uncomfortable feeling. At first, I thought it was indigestion, but upon examining this feeling, it felt like more than that.

“Hold on,” I said, starting to pace back and forth. “I need to check on something,”

I paced nearby, tracking down the feeling in my gut. It was like when I’d found people to help Bridget in the kitchen, though this feeling was far stronger. It wasn’t just a gentle nudge in the right direction, it was a demanding pull.

Even the thought of turning back and sitting down with my companions had my stomach churning. Was this new bloodline of mine that demanding? I thought about warning my companions at the table, but that only made the feeling worse.

No. For some reason, my newfound instincts wanted me to get up and look into it on my own. I left my companions to their conversation. Eventually, I found myself at the Teleportation Array.

Thulga stood over it, squinting at a piece of bark. There were several warriors around her, all squinting at it, too.

“Anything from Crownhill?” I asked, stepping forward.

“Carter? Your timing is impeccable.” Thulga waved me over. “This thing just appeared with the batch of weapons you were expecting. We can’t tell what it’s supposed to say… it’s not written in any language I’ve ever seen.” She scratched her cheek. “Even your people can’t make sense of it with their Forerunner titles and that ability it gives you to understand all humanoid languages.”

I held out my hand, and Thulga handed me the piece of bark.

There were a handful of scribbles on it. At the top, there was a stick figure with a dead tree hovering behind him, with three dots circling his head. Beneath that image, there was an image of a bunch of other stick figures with skulls on top of their heads instead of circles and people with snake tails instead of legs on their torso. The drawing showed them shaking hands and walking together toward a shared objective.

I chuckled. “You can’t understand it because it’s not a language. It’s a drawing. It seems I need to get back to Crownhill.”

I had a good idea what this gut feeling was all about. Gobgob thought something was wrong. This drawing had to be her handiwork. I needed to get back, and quickly.

“Tell my companions where I went.” I turned to the orc teleportation specialist. “Thulga, if you please?”

She nodded and I teleported back home.

***

As I emerged from the teleportation array, I saw a flash of motion in the corner of my eye. A bony arm swung for my neck and a deadly spell activated. If I’d been traveling with any of my companions, the blade would have killed one of them right then and there.

But not me.

I felt a sudden spike of danger before the teleportation ended. The moment I rematerialized, I slipped into the shadow realm. My reaction to this danger was so swift and sudden that it was less a reaction and more a precognitive instinct that something bad was going to happen.

The bony figures faded, leaving only dark shadows as their echo from the real world. I ran my hands through them. In that brief flash, before I was ambushed, I’d sensed both undead and Naga. They must be working together.

That confirmed a theory that I had hoped wouldn’t come true. Alas, fortune was not on our side. Worse, they’d somehow known I was gone and what a teleportation array was. They’d even known to ambush me when most people would be disoriented from the teleportation process.

All this was bad news for me. I counted at least a dozen naga shadows. They’d likely worked together to cast a spell that could kill a peak D-Grade in a single shot. The necromancers no doubt had some powerful people here as well.

I would have been in a very tough spot as recently as a few days ago. But now that I’d broken through to C-Grade and gotten a host of upgrades, these guys were entirely unprepared for what I could do.

I thought back to what I’d seen in the brief glimpse I’d caught of my home. They’d clearly torn the place apart looking for anything of value. This would not do—not at all.

I emerged from the shadow realm behind the strongest of the surviving Naga.

Naga Warpriest (Level 94)

I swept Arcane Blade through his back twice. He was holding one of those bronze-planted enchanted shields, and I sensed a spell coming my way, so I picked up the top half of his torso and twisted around, using it as a shield. By the time the Naga realized he was dead, and the mana faded from his shield, it had deflected three magical projectiles similar to my Mana Bolts.

“Pin him down! Jump him!” a necromancer shouted from the back of my living room. He didn’t say much of anything a second later when one of my Mana Bolts caught him in the eye.

The huge number of points I’d dumped into Intelligence made even a basic Mana Bolt from me deadly to D-Grades. A single spell was all it took to one-shot them.

I sensed something coming at me from behind and spun to see two skeletons with makeshift weapons. Conjuring Arcane Blade, I bisected a metal pipe and a signpost with that first swing. I swept my foot through the knee of one of the undead, popping the joint and sending it tumbling to the ground. The other got my Arcane Blade through the skull.

“The net!” one of the necromancers shouted.

Another group of skeletons threw a weighted fishing net at me. No doubt they thought restricting my movement would make me easier to finish off.

I swung my Arcane Blade through the net as it fell, splitting it apart in one swift motion. The brief moment the falling net obscured my enemies’ line of sight, I leaped. I’d timed my jump perfectly, and the ray of destruction that shot forth from the bronze shields of two of the Naga slammed into the wooden flooring where I’d been standing. I landed behind the Naga spellcasters. There were four of them, all neatly gathered together and waiting for me to cut them down to size.

“Those were the original floorboards,” I growled as I cut two of their heads off. The remaining two spun to rush at me, but I dove low, rolling to avoid them.

The whole time I fought, I had the distinct impression my enemies moved slower than I was used to. No, slower wasn’t right… they were predictable. It was like I knew what they were going to do before they did it.

What should have been a fight was actually more like a dance—a dance where I knew all the moves.

When I finally had room to breathe, I reached into my bag of holding and retrieved the Divine Sigil Galbatorix had given me. I held it aloft and golden light streamed from it. The nearby undead turned to dust, leaving me with just the necromancers and the Naga to deal with.

The fight turned decisively in my favor.

I could have ended the rest of the Naga in the blink of an eye, but the explosive reaction of my Void Cannon against their shields would likely have destroyed much of my home. The same was true for Voidling Embrace. Instead, I drew out the fight and focused on using Mana Bolts and this combined racial and bloodline ability I now had.

Thanks to Cyra’s training, I was a halfway decent swordsman, but this Fate Harbinger bloodline took things to a whole new level. Even if I forgot everything she’d taught me and fought like a beast, my Arcane Blade would still have weaved through every weakness and opening.

“Screw this! This guy’s way stronger than we were told! Run!” one necromancer shouted.

After I cut the last of the Naga down, the remaining necromancers turned to flee. I bent down, grabbed the two net halves they’d thrown at me, and swung them low along the ground.

One worked like a bola, wrapping around the legs of two necromancers, tripping them up and sending them both sprawling to the ground. The other wrapped around the torso of a third, pinning his arms to his sides and causing him to trip. A fourth looked like he was going to get away, so I sent a Mana Bolt through the back of his head.

Dammit, I’d hoped to keep from making too much of a mess. Bridget was going to yell at me for splattering one wall of the teleportation building with brains, bone, and blood.

I grabbed the one stuck in the net with one hand and the two with their legs bound up together. With a heave, I dragged them back to my house. They screamed the whole while.

“You three made a mess in my place,” I snapped. “If you hope to live, you’re going to clean this up.”

I had the cowed necromancers setting furniture upright, scrubbing the blood off the floor, and disposing of the heaping piles of dust that had once been their undead. I had to keep my eye on them, foiling more than a few escape attempts, but none of them were much over level 60. They had no chance of escaping me. I figured I’d throw them in the dungeon with that other necromancer I’d captured when they were done cleaning up the mess they’d made.

I didn’t really need prisoners, but my companions had spent all day fighting, cooking, and governing. It simply wouldn’t do for them to return to a messy home. Alas, the Naga and necromancers had done a number on the place.

The fridge door had been torn off its hinges, the large bed was shattered, and someone had tried to light the place on fire, so my sprinkler system had gone off. Everything was soaked. In short, the house was a mess.

It would take a lot more than three clumsy necromancers to clean this mess up. None of them seemed particularly good with their hands. They were all pretty high-level, though, so they didn’t have the excuse of being out of shape.

“What are you doing? Did your parents never teach you how to patch up a piece of drywall? Give me that,” I grumbled as the youngest of the necromancers struggled to patch a body-sized hole in the wall. Thankfully, I had a few extra sheets of sheetrock and drywall in the barn from when I’d first renovated the place.

The hole was big enough that the patch job ended up being me replacing an entire sheet. I must have been gone longer than I thought, because eventually the teleportation array fired up. Bridget, Sakura, and Myrina returned, all looking worried—doubly so when they saw the strangers in our home.

“Carter? What’s going on?” Bridget asked.

“Nothing much. I had a hunch that somebody was trashing our stuff. The naga and necromancers worked together to set up an ambush for us when we came back, but I dealt with it already. These idiots are just cleaning up the mess they left.” I jerked a thumb at the nearest necromancer who was on his hands and knees, scrubbing bloodstains out of the floorboards.

I nudged him with a boot. “There’s more blood than clear floorboard at this point. Drop the sponge and get the sander.”

“These... were assassins?” Myrina asked, brows scrunched together as the necromancer scrambled on hands and knees to get the sander.

“They were moderately better assassins than they are handymen, but that’s not saying much...” I scowled. “Maybe I ought to give up on them… I bet Gobgob and her goblins would do a better job.

After I’d kicked the would-be-assassins’ asses, Gobgob and her goblins returned. She’d fled into the woods with her tribe when she sensed the necromancers and Naga coming up the mountain.

One thing was certain, I needed to build better defenses for my farmhouse. Our enemies were getting smarter. If they knew how many of our weapons were made here, they’d no doubt target my place again. As soon as those walls over the dragon shard and the golem shard were complete, I was going to get some defenses built around my farm.

“Hope you all didn’t leave Cyra hanging?” I asked the others.

“Don’t worry, we can come and go much easier since this shard has grown bigger and stabilized. We’ll head back there soon enough. I’m sure Cyra’s counting on you to help put her realm back in order,” Myrina explained.

“Yes, she needs plenty of advice from you… intimate advice… delivered personally… one on one… all by yourselves,” Bridget threw me an exaggerated wink.

“Hey... not so fast!” Sakura protested. “We have a proper order set up: first me, then Cyra, Myrina, and finally Bridget.” She glared at Bridget. “No jumping, skipping, barging, or butting the line this time!”

“What? Not fair! I hit C-Grade first, which means I get what I want!” Myrina jerked a thumb at her chest.

I wrapped my arms around both their shoulders. “Ladies, ladies... There’s plenty of me to go around. Let’s haul these guys back to Crownhill first, and then what do you say we have ourselves a little date night?”

Like that, their rivalry vanished. Both Sakura and Myrina leaned into my embrace.

I sighed in contentment, eyes closed. Somehow, deep in my gut, I sensed that one of them had just thrown the other a wink.