Amazon Apocalypse: Chapter 17 (Patreon)

Craig’s forces were herding the defenders from outside through the door and into the office, where all the other bodies lay on the ground.

Craig activated a skill. His back straightened as some of his wounds eased, and he seemed to recover Vitality at a tremendous pace, just like Mind over Flesh. He strode back into the office, forcing himself to walk properly despite the bullet wounds and the no doubt heavy pounding in his skull.

“Fuck, I had a big speech planned, but I can’t remember the damn thing,” Craig chuckled darkly, no doubt due to his many concussions. “Anyway, your plan to kill me failed, cocksuckers. I’m in charge, and anyone who doesn’t like it gets to join Carter, Ben, and all their backstabbing friends. Understood?”

"Y-you... you killed them! You killed them all!" A nervous looking man said. "I refuse to follow a murderer! We're not savages. We need to have a trial, and you'll be the first person--"

Bang!

Craig shot him in the head. "Next! Who else has a complaint?"

Everyone went quiet after that.

The people coming in from the back entrance were the worst for wear. Sakura, Caleb, Bridget, and Marcus looked like they’d put up a tough fight, even as surprised from behind as they had been. But Craig had men to spare. They must have gotten reinforcements at some point because there were twice as many of Craig’s goons behind them than there were behind either of the other flanks.

Bridget’s gaze traced a line across the floor, first to Margaret, bloody and sobbing on the ground with a rough-looking man pinning her to the floor with a foot on her back. Then her eyes darted to Ben. He was sprawled backward in death on a pile of the corpses of the people he’d hoped to secure this shelter for.

Then her eyes went to me, laying in an unmoving heap.

“Carter...” Bridget gasped.

Caleb’s eyes fixed on me as well before he shook his head and sighed.

Sakura was the one I was most worried about. Given her disposition, there was a good chance she’d spring at Craig then and there. But I was higher level than she was, and I hadn’t been able to beat him one-against-one. Those extra stats from being over level ten and having a class were just too much to overcome, no matter how much anger or force of will you had to throw at them. I was proof of that.

If Sakura tried something, she’d only get herself killed.

I winced as she opened her mouth, afraid she was about to do something that would get her killed. I could see the panic, fear, and range in her eyes, unlike anything I’d ever seen from her before. Her pupils went wide like a cat, and I sensed her heartbeat race so fast it sounded more like an engine than an organ. Her nails dug into her palm so hard they drew blood.

I saw a promise in her eyes then. She would find a way to kill Craig where I’d failed and avenge me after my death.

I was pleasantly surprised Sakura wouldn't get herself killed in my name, though I feared she'd probably do something stupid sooner or later.

Still, women seemed to be a bit of a blind spot for Craig. He might not see a surprise attack from Sakura coming. Then again, it wasn't like Sakura would be positioned to gain levels as the survival group's sewage specialist.

I just hoped that Sakura would be able to find her own path. It felt painful to say it, but it was something I'd have to get use to now that I was dead.

“I’m touched, first Margaret, and now you, Sakura.” Craig chuckled as he saw the dark look on Sakura's face. “To be honest, neither of you are my type, but a loyal woman is worth admiring. Maybe I’ll only have you shovel shit a few times a week instead of for the rest of your life. Hell, maybe I’ll even let you be Bridget’s maid when she finally warms up and realizes her proper place.”

“That’s never going to happen, Craig. Not before, and definitely not now,” Bridget spat.

Time seemed to slow as I tried to follow the conversation, and the words were getting blurrier. I realized I wasn’t even looking through my eyes anymore. Those were sightless and distant as they lay on the ground. I tried to walk toward my body, but my point of view wouldn’t move.

That was when I realized I was just looking at another System screen. I was being shown a video of what was happening after my death. My part in things had come to a close.

I didn’t like that thought. In fact, it made me mad. The words flashed across my System menu once more as though they were mocking me.

You have died.

Would you like to view your achievements?

The anger I felt was a dull, hollow thing. Without the glandular reactions of life, I couldn’t be furious in the way that I used to be, and that just made me even angrier. I’d been killed by Craig, of all people. I was overwhelmed by the superior levels of an inferior opponent.

I thought of all the things I hadn’t been able to do. I still had Myrina’s token. I’d never used it to see her again.

I still had that little secret supply stash in the woods I’d made just in case something like this happened. It would probably be food for some wild animal now.

I hadn’t gotten to spend more time with Sakura. What would she do now? And Bridget too. She’d been counting on me as well.

What about Caleb, Marcus, and all the other civilians who’d been looking up to me? What was going to happen to them?

I didn’t want to know the answer, and before I could think of anything, a voice from behind me spoke.

“Oooh, you have some rather nice scores, considering how early we are in the integration. Look at that, top one million! For a planet as big as yours, that’s really incredible," the voice said.

Her words were bubbly and excitable, exactly the opposite of how I felt. I tried to turn my head, but there was no neck to turn. Fortunately, the voice came to the rescue.

“Oh, you can’t see. I get it. Since you’re a newly integrated soul, the System doesn’t have any previous incarnation memories to return to you. I guess I’ve got to walk you through forming a soul body. Try focusing on my voice. Remember how you used to hear things when you were alive...”

The voice walked me through several more steps of visualizing myself, and before long, I could move. I realized my face was stuck to something like it was glued there, and I pulled at it. It took a tremendous burst of strength to yank myself free, but when I finally was out, I felt like I was holding something a lot like a really advanced VR headset.

I blinked and realized I was sitting in a pod. That was weird. For a moment, I had some hope that all that I’d just experienced had been some horrible twisted video game. Maybe aliens had arrived and shoved all of humanity into VR pods to create the system apocalypse, and only now was I breaking free.

But those hopes died as soon as I saw my hands. They weren’t the hands I remembered. They were hazy blue outlines of hands, barely there. I was practically transparent. In other words, I was a ghost.

“Look! You might miss it! Other humans are still climbing in rank, so your high score is dropping. Look now while it’s still super high!” the cheery voice who’d just walked me through transforming into a ghost said.

I turned to her and saw a young woman. Her hair was jet black, contrasting sharply with her skin as pale as paper. She wore a long flowing dress made of darkness so deep it might as well be a bundle of shadows. In her hand, she gestured with something that looked suspiciously like a scythe.

I followed where she was, pointing at the screen just above the VR headset my face had been glued to. Or, more accurately, the thing my face had manifested on. I was sitting in a puddle of stagnant water about an inch deep. Both it and me were contained within a large bathtub.

Achievements!

247 Monsters slain!

Highest Level: 9 (999 experience points)

“Oh dear, a single experience point away from level 10,” the young woman shook her head sadly. “If you’d stayed and killed just one more cockroach, you would have hit level 10 and gotten a class. You might not have died if you’d managed that. I always thought it was such a shame that the System didn’t show experience bars. But I understand why. Having them gets people min-maxing, and if they’re not getting enough experience points, they just stop fighting and look for prey elsewhere. That’s not what the System is supposed to be about.”

“Damn. I really got screwed,” I said.

“Sure did. Now let’s look at your romance scores!”

Romance Achievements

2 Women seduced.

0 Sexual partners.

“Zero? But you’re pretty handsome! Oh, right, you’re from a newly integrated world. It wouldn’t have counted anything before today. In that case, two women seduced is pretty good!” The young woman continued. She started flipping through the rest of my achievements, one after another.

“What’s happening?” I asked. “Where am I, and who are you?”

“Right, new soul. Sorry, I got carried away looking at your achievements. This is the afterlife! Well, what the System decided the afterlife should be. Supposedly there used to be another one, but then the System came, and we all end up here now,” the young woman replied. “As for me? I’m your reaper!”

“My reaper?”

“For your whole shard, which is the fraction of your planet that you’re on. I’m a new reaper, but I’m working my way up the ranks! I’m racking up System Points! By the time I reincarnate, I’m going to have enough to get my soul in the body of a supreme powerhouse’s beloved daughter! I’ll be able to spend the rest of eternity living the easy life...”

The reaper sighed in wistful imagination.

“Do you have a name?”

“Sure did! I had lots of different names over all my lifetimes. Once, I was a big plump fish, and someone called me Dinner! Though I didn’t last much longer after that. Another time I was a tree, and people called me Scrapwood! Most recently, I lived my longest life yet, where I was named Elf Slave number M6777!”

“None of those sound like names...” I replied. And it sounded like her last life had been particularly tragic.

The young woman — no, the elf — shrugged. Now that I was looking, I could see she had slightly pointed ears, just like storybook elves. And she had a fair face to match.

“I think when I was a child, my mother wanted me to be Lyra. Before the whole slave thing, obviously. Not much use for names like those in the mines.” Her face turned grim for a moment before she forced the expression away and returned to a demeanor of good cheer. “But I’m super jealous of your high score! My achievements were basically zero across the board in every one of my lifetimes! Especially the romance one! I wish I could be part of a newly integrated world. There’s so much more opportunity there compared to the rest of the multiverse. It’s that first step that’s really tough. If you can’t muster the levels to hunt down your first enemies, you hardly ever progress...” Lyra shrugged her shoulders sadly. “At least, I haven’t figured out how to do it..."

“It sounds like you’ve had a rough time,” I said. “How about this? If I tell you what I did to get those achievements, how about you tell me a little bit about what you know?”

“Okay!” Lyra replied.

When I thought of someone extremely knowledgeable, I tended to think of ancient sages with white beards so long they reached the floor beneath them. Not about cute elf reapers with a painted-on smiles. But Lyra was as knowledgeable as they came, and she answered everything I asked of her.

I wasn’t in the same spatial dimension I was before. If the world was a flat plane, I’d traveled one step above it. This realm stretched every bit as wide as the real world did, but things were different here. This dimension was the realm of the System.

“You’re newly integrated, and that’s because the System only just grew to reach the space your world once occupied. All this around you is the System!” Lyra explained.

I looked around us. I looked like we were in a run-down old arcade, complete with the smell of smoke and grease-stained seats beneath me. The bathtub I’d been sitting in looked like it was in front of one of those old race car games, and the screen above me was still displaying my romantic exploits broken down in achievement form.

“This is the System?” I asked skeptically.

“The System is efficient,” Lyra explained. “It takes whatever it finds in the ordinary world and repurposes it to build itself anew. Everything eventually gets standardized, but not until your world starts leveling enough to make it worthwhile. At that point, there won’t be much for me to do, but for now, there are all sorts of weird bugs you get during new integrations! For example, I’ve already had three people come back to life on me!”

My non-corporeal ears perked up at that. “Come back to life?”

“Yup! Normally, nearly dying before level 10 unlocks a potential racial switch to undead, if your local shard has that race unlocked. Your planet doesn't have any real undead races, but this early in the integration, there’s always someone right at zero hit points and moments away from dying! Turns out, with your local version of the System that fits the requirements of the undead! As a result, some of the dead people have been able to select a bunch of undead races like lich, revenants, skeletons, and the like. Since undead don’t have hit points the same way living people do, switching races pretty much restores dead people to full health, so all of a sudden, you get dead people popping back up after they’re supposed to be gone! It’s a real problem, and I hope it’s fixed soon.”

I felt anticipation burning in my soul. “So... would it be possible for me to become an undead?”

To be honest, I wasn’t enjoying being dead all that much, but if it meant a second chance...

“No, sorry. The trick only works for those choosing their class at level 10. That’s when a race swap becomes available. Though some people have affinities for different races that might make themselves known a little earlier. Sadly, you’re not one of them. So no cheating death by becoming a lich for you!” Lyra replied.

“There has to be a way. I was only one experience point away from level ten, remember?”

Lyra shook her head. “Nope! No asking me for cheats! That’s... well... cheating!”

My heart sank. There went my ticket back to the real world.

“What about this thing in my hands? How does it work?” I asked as I held up the VR controller my soul had been attached to.

“The System needs symbolism more than anything. It works in a realm of concepts and abstraction that extends even beyond this place, though trust me, things get way more confusing if you go any higher into its mechanisms than this. Basically, the controller symbolizes the System’s ability to overlay information over how you experience the world. The pod you were laying in is how it grafts little bits of power onto your soul, like titles and new stat points. Honestly, I’m still making sense of it, but I’m told it’ll be perfectly logical to you earthlings!”

Lyra gestured to the tank around me, pointing at each of the features.

“The stuff you were sitting in? That’s not water. That’s stat points provided by the system! It's a lot easier than trying to grow your soul the old fashioned way. Think of it like the perfect blend of soul-food, provided by the System to make souls grow bigger and stronger! You some when you die, but not all of it. Really, your soul is the only thing you keep with you between lives, so every bit of improvement is worthwhile! If you’d lived a little longer, it all would have been absorbed into your soul for real and become a part of you. But since you didn’t have the time to fully acclimatize to the power, it’s just gathered around you like this. I recommend staying right where you are until you’re done. Those stat points are going to be hard to get in your next life!”

I looked at the nozzle. A tiny trickle of fluid was still dripping out of the nozzle. It looked like it was just a knob. What if I turned it on all the way? Would enough stat points to fill my bathtub appear?

I reached for the knob. Lyra’s eyes widened when she saw what I was doing.

“Nooo!” she yelled, trying to grab my hand. But I was faster. I turned the knob, and...

A tiny rust-tinted trickle dripped out. Maybe a cup full of stat points, but no more.

“Whew. I really thought you’d found a cheat there!” Lyra wiped her brow. “Looks like the system is controlling the disbursement of stat points from higher up the food chain than us.”

“What would have happened if I had gotten more stat points?” I asked.

“Well, not much if you just got another point in Strength. But if you got another point in Vitality? The System would have to figure out if you were really dead or not. And judging by the state of your body, yeah, probably still dead. But if that knob had worked, and you’d gotten like a hundred points in Vitality? Your body would instantly heal, and you’d be alive again. This pod here would vanish since you wouldn’t be on this plane of existence anymore. You’d be back in the real world. I wouldn’t be able to stop you. Heck, not even the System could destroy you directly. It would have to afflict you with some curse and send monsters to kill you and fix the problem.”

“You sure you can’t just give me a hint about a bug you’ve found?” I teased.

“No way! I’m an honest, upstanding reaper.”

“What if I offered to take you with me?”

Lyra froze a moment. “T-that... uh... well, there’s no point in considering that since it’s way out of your reach. There’s no body there for me, and the ability to make a body from scratch takes either tremendous magical knowledge and a high leveled class, or a man and a woman who love each other with nine months of time. It depends on what method you’re going for.”

“Damn. Well, what about a voucher? Redeemable for one body when I get around to making one?” It felt weird to be literally offering my firstborn to this stranger I’d met only minutes ago, but something about the reaper just made me want to help her. I would have tried to lend her a hand even if I wasn’t desperately pleading for her help to get my life back.

Lyra put her hands on her hips. “What do you even want to come back to life again for, anyway? There's tons of stuff here to do in Purgatory!”

My eyes turned back to the screen. “I’ve got promises to keep and people I want to see again.”

Lyra’s expression softened. “That sounds... romantic. I wish I could help. I really do. But I can’t, even for a bribe.”

“I understand...” I sighed and lay down in my bathwater, watching my achievements flicker by again. I looked at my VR headset and wondered if I’d still be able to peer in on what was happening around my body. I was wondering if that was something I even wanted to see.

I wondered if Ben had been watching my fight with Craig and rooting me on. Heck, there had been hundreds of bodies there. Surely, at least a few of them stayed to watch. I was pretty sure I’d looked pretty badass in the end. Somehow, the fact that I’d had an audience made me feel a bit better about my loss.

That was when I came to a sudden realization.

This is where Ben and all the others should have ended up when they died. Meaning I could see them again if only I knew where to look.

“Hey, Lyra,” I asked.

She turned her attention up from her scythe. Looking at it now, I realized the blade was actually a projection device, and it created a screen along the entire length of the scythe, like a tablet made of a hologram. “This isn’t another attempt at a bribe, is it?”

“I was wondering where some of my friends are. A lot of people I know died recently, and I wanted to know if I could see them again,” I asked.

Lyra shrugged. “Yeah, they should be around here. But you should wait until you’ve absorbed all your stat points into your soul. Otherwise, anyone could just come along and take them!”

I stood up. “Nah. I’ll come back to them later. I just had a little thought.”


<Note>

You know, in my notes Lyra seemed like she was going to be a powerful and mysterious character. It seems like all the elves I write turn into goofballs.