Amazon Apocalypse: Chapter 21 (Patreon)

I received several new abilities with my new class, and they popped up before me, one after another.

You are now a Scholar of Forbidden Knowledge. This title is equipped, and it will appear when you are examined.

Your 4 remaining Class points have been assigned automatically. +1 Intelligence. +1 Willpower. +1 Charisma. +1 Luck.

It seemed edgy to me. Now everyone who looked at me would think of me as the Carter, the Scholar of Forbidden Knowledge. Or maybe just the Scholar. You’d think I’d need to get a few more degrees to earn a title like that, but apparently, dying and muddling my way through the secrets of the System to resurrect myself was enough.

My new stats covered all the stats my race missed, which delving through a few menus about my class soon informed me was a feature, not an issue. My class was designed to allocate points wherever I wasn’t putting points, essentially forcing my weakest stats into balance. It was a drawback of my new class since it required high stats in nearly every attribute across the board.

Your new class has granted you several unique abilities.

Study (Rare)

Observe an item, object, or corpse to understand the thing or creature’s uses and functions. This skill functions as an upgraded form of the Perception skill Analyze and provides all features of the Analyze skill without using a skill slot.

Disassemble (Rare)

Smother an item, object, or corpse with your mana and break it into pieces, neatly piling its component parts for other tasks.

Enlightenment (Rare)

Ponder your own observations of Forbidden Knowledge. Sufficient understanding can be translated to attribute points using this skill.

I looked at the three new skills my class had given me. Study was appreciated since I had already been lamenting the fact that I couldn’t pick up Analyze and Examine both. The two seemed useful, even if Examine was more applicable in scanning for threats and surviving. But now I had something just as good as Analyze to replace it.

There was a problem, however. None of the three skills I’d gotten were combat skills!

I wasn’t sure what Craig had gotten for his Gunslinger Bandit Class, but I was pretty sure his abilities had been oriented for battle. If mine weren’t, then I would still have trouble going up against him.

I suppose I’ll just have to make up for having fewer combat skills by having better combat skills. And better advice. I turned to Myrina for that.

Myrina spent the next few minutes spitting out one word of advice after the next. She’d written everything I needed to know out on a piece of paper, but had forgotten about it for the early half of our meeting, so she had to read it off to me with just a few minutes left. I found a notepad and a pen in one of the survival kits near me and scribbled down as much as I could.

“...Raise your stats to 20 in every attribute quickly to get new abilities quickly. Once you hit level 20, you’ll have gotten all the free abilities you’re going to get, and any new abilities will come when you reach a new threshold with your class. Concentrate your efforts on the stat that powers your main combat class or ability. Pick up some sort of retreat skill for when you get in over your head. Be prepared for the end of the third day, when the blessing expires. That will mark the start of battles between newly integrated worlds. The first fights will be easy, but don’t get complacent. And don’t forget to pack good socks. Many warriors could defeat every foe but fell in battle because of poor foot care. Get your hands on a settlement obelisk for the jobs it offers eventually. Enchanters always make good money, but make sure you level your job fast because once resource scarcity hits, raw ingredients often become more expensive than final products because so many people are trying to grind levels...”

She went on for minutes on end, and I was realizing how Doctor Roswell’s assistant felt with his sore, ink-stained hands when we rescued the clinic from zombies. I wondered if he’d survived Craig’s purge.

Fortunately, my Intelligence stat meant I had the spare brainpower to let my mind wander while also taking notes and listening to what Myrina was saying. I would have killed for that ability back in college. It took me a few moments to realize when she finally stopped speaking.

“Is that everything?” I turned to look at Myrina, scanning through her list one last time.

Myrina frowned. “Not even close. I’ll have to summarize the second page. Oh well, that should last you until you’re able to activate the token for real and come to me for a full tutorial. Oh! And one final thing! I need you to confirm. Are you interested in accepting patronage from the Amazonian Empire?”

“Sure.”

You have accepted an offer of Patronage!

The Amazonian Empire will support you if you prove worthy.

Quest issued!

Your potential patron has demanded you prove your worth. To earn an audience with the Amazonian Empire, you must complete the following three objectives within three months.

1. Raise a heathen woman in the Amazonian way, bringing her strength stat up to a minimum of 30 with a melee combat class.
2. Slay a magic user over level 25.
3. Prove your virility!

“The first task usually refers to the quest taker themselves. Normally the tokens are given to women. You’re a bit of an exception, though. I tried to drop the requirement entirely, but the System wouldn’t allow it,” Myrina explained. “Slaying a magic user over level 25 is something you should get to, eventually. Magical monsters will count. I made sure of that. As for proving your virility, you’ll have to figure that one out on your own...”

Myrina gave me a wink, wrapped her arms around my chest, and then vanished in a cloud of light as quickly as she’d come.

The empty turned dark, with only the small camp stove to comfort me as I sat in silence. My enhanced perception meant that was plenty of light to see, but I suddenly felt both empty and alone. I didn’t like the feeling.

So I filled the silence with action. There was a lot to do and little time to waste. Hopefully, Craig was already asleep, blissfully drifting off, thinking he was safe. And giving me all the time I needed to close the gap between us.

The first thing I needed to do was test out my new skills. They didn’t seem immediately useful for combat, but it was impossible to know for certain until I tried.

Study, unfortunately, seemed just as useless in battle as I feared, not that the ability wasn’t interesting. If this were in other circumstances, I’d be ecstatic to have such a skill.

I touched the gun on the ground before me, the one that had belonged to the sniper on the roof I’d taken out. When I touched it and activated the skill, I became the gun. I felt the trigger like it was a part of me. I remembered every time I had been pulled. I couldn’t see faces, but I felt the bullets leave my barrel one after the other. My skill stretched further back to the factory in which the gun was made, showing me the barrel being drilled out and fitted onto the body. The stock being carved from wood. Even the tree the stock had been taken from.

For a moment, I had every scrap of knowledge needed to make the gun. Not the names, skills, or tools, but the raw academic knowledge about what went into the process. That knowledge alone would be enough for me to start a gun factory if I had a bunch of tools, the raw materials, and the time to spare.

Unfortunately, the knowledge started slipping from me as soon as I learned it. Study provided so much information it was hard to keep it all in my head, not like Examine skill’s ability to simply list a system message. Fortunately, Study actually replaced the Analyze skill for people with that ability, so it had that capability as well.

Scoped Rifle (Common)

This weapon is an original creation of the human race, and it propels small lead projectiles at high speed using the energy of contained explosives. It causes small puncture wounds with accuracy at great distances. The scope assists in aiming the rifle at far distances without the need for high perception.

That was more like it. It was a shame the skill didn’t list the model of the rifle, but the System seemed like it was built so that someone without any knowledge of our world at all could figure out what things were and get by. I wondered if Myrina had done this kind of thing when she first arrived on Earth.

Looking back, I remembered feeling a tingle run up my spine when I was near her quite often, but I’d always just assumed that was due to having a pretty girl tucked under my arm.

I tried Enlightenment next, setting another pot of coffee on the camp stove to serve as a timer. I would allow myself the time it took for that pot to boil, then I had to get moving. Nothing happened at first other than me getting a little sleepy, despite the coffee. What even was forbidden knowledge? Was I supposed to be poring over tomes of dead gods and ancient, otherworldly evils from beyond the veil? Or was I supposed to ponder the meaning of life? I supposed I was in a better position to answer that question than most people who pondered it since I had actually died and come back to life.

I felt a twitch of acceptance from the skill as my mind went back to the Purgatory dimension. It seemed that counted as forbidden knowledge. I pushed harder, trying to make sense of what I remembered.

Congratulations! You have achieved a greater understanding of life, death, and the nature of mortality!

+2 Intelligence. +2 Vitality. +2 Willpower.

No wonder this class was so demanding in terms of stat requirements. While I couldn’t focus my points on one attribute like other classes could, I had a skill that let me generate stat points, essentially guaranteeing I would have more stats to spend so long as I kept meeting the requirements to use the Enlightenment skill. It was clear why this skill had been part of the scholar kit. Because I didn’t have a single attribute to focus on, I had to have more attributes across the board than an equivalent person with a more standard class. But as long as I kept up with this skill, I could do just that.

But as grand a discovery as the Enlightenment skill was, it seemed like I overestimated the depth of my windfall by at least half. After level 10, you got attribute points from both a race and a class instead of just the usual four. So I was only three levels stronger than a normal person at my level, not six and a half. I wasn’t sure how strong Craig was, but by now, I was pretty sure our fight would have gone differently if we’d fought now.

But my new stats were no guarantee that I’d win. I’d been dead a while, and I knew Craig had executed at least a few of his people. Those executions had given him levels that made him even stronger. By some cruel twist of the System, killing fellow humans was special compared to killing monsters. Despite often being easier to kill, humans granted far more experience points.

And worst of all, thanks to my Death Curse the only way for me to level would be to kill just like Craig did. If I wanted to grow strong enough to beat him, I’d need to do as he did.

I felt something cold wrap around my heart then. I don’t think I could have done it before my death. As much as I liked to pretend that I had adapted to the Integration, and as much as I had been telling myself that this apocalypse was something I was waiting for, I’d been fooling myself. I hadn’t been ready for it. I hadn’t adapted. The old me was too soft for this new world.

I had wanted to save everyone, and look where that got me?

Dead and defeated.

But now I was reborn, and the new me was a simple man. I wanted to kill Craig and save my friends. And everyone in my way was just experience points ripe for the taking.

Congratulations! You have achieved a greater understanding of your own motivations!

+4 Intelligence. +2 Perception.

And just like that, I had another slew of attribute points. Perhaps this class was worth it after all, even though I had to gain a Death Curse from the System to get it.

It was then that I noticed my coffee was boiling over and spilling out onto the floor. How long had I been using that skill for? Probably too long. It was a good thing that I’d set up a timer, otherwise I might have tried for more stats and ended up wasting the entire night away. As fast as I was gaining levels with my Enlightenment skill, I wasn’t sure if it quite kept pace with people gaining skills through levels.

There was one thing that was a guarantee, though. With all my bonus stats, I should be significantly more powerful than someone at my level should be. I wondered if Myrina would be impressed when we finally got to spar together.

Before I left, I had to test one last skill. I tried Disassemble on one bag of survival gear first. I felt a whoosh of mana leave my body, and a moment later it surrounded the bag. Without any input from me, my ability pulled item after item out of the bag and spread them out along the ground. It wasn’t a pile so much as an array of components on display for me to see, with the original bag that used to contain everything left behind in the middle.

That would be useful for unpacking equipment, but it didn’t work the other way. Being able to pack my things away would have made it a handy utility skill. But sadly, I could only take things apart with the ability.

But unlike the other two skills I’d gained as part of my class, this one might actually have a combat application.

I found my experimental victim licking at the blood stain that had been around the corpse near the front door.

“Disassemble,” I said as I pointed at the Scavenger Cockroach. At only level two, my mana overwhelmed the creature, crushing it in its entirety.

The cockroach died, and my mana pulled it apart just as it had pulled apart the back. The cockroach was disassembled before my eyes until it lay in pieces on the ground, a carapace there, a mass of blood there, a pile of guts in the middle, two eyes neatly piled in one corner, and a shiny bright gemstone right in the middle.

I picked it up and used the Analyze feature of Study to figure out what it was.

Scavenger Cockroach Core (Rare)

This item contains the essence of a Scavenger Cockroach. Numerous alchemical and enchantment uses.

I pocketed the tiny crystal, no bigger than my smallest fingernail. The skill would certainly make skinning monsters a whole lot easier. I remembered our attempt to skin that first Fire Squirrel we’d run across. This time, all I’d need to do was point at the corpse.

I tested Disassemble several more times on other creatures. I was able to kill both kinds of cockroaches and one weaker rat with it. Unfortunately, the requirement that my mana be able to overwhelm my target was a tough one. The skill used more mana the stronger my target was, to where even something at level five could exhaust my reserves. Gone were the days when I could cast spells with impunity and the assumption that I had unlimited mana.

But that didn’t mean the ability was useless in a real fight. Far from it, as soon as I wounded something enough that it couldn’t fight back against my mana, I could cast the spell as a finisher and end the fight. After all, no monster could fight back against me if it was literally lying in pieces.

With my new skills tested, I decided there was no more time to waste. It was time to return to the office.

***

Things were much the same as they were when I crawled out of the dumpster. I targeted the back exit, planning on remaining unseen for as long as possible. The more of Craig’s bandits I could take out, the weaker he and his goons would be.

They were still fighting against the quest monsters, but it looked like their numbers were thinning out. It looked like they were nearing the end of the quest.

Quest Time Remaining: 30 minutes.

The quest wasn’t finished yet. Strange. I would have expected the fighting to get more intense as the quest neared its end. Perhaps they were just in a lull before the next wave of monsters arrived, even stronger than those before it.

I had hoped for more monsters to cover my attack, but I would have to make do with what I had. The first thing I did was make a little noise. It was a counterintuitive plan at first, but I wanted to draw some of them away from their posts so I could take them out quietly. Drumming my fingers against the dumpster did nicely.

“Hey, did you hear that?” One of Craig’s bandits asked.

Bandit Barbarian - Level 10

“It’s probably another zombie. Just fire a few shots,” another replied.

Bandit Buccaneer - Level 11

I was sensing a theme to Craig’s followers. All of them had some sort of variation of the bandit class.

Fortunately, I already had Deflect equipped. I was pretty sure I had a few bullets still lodged somewhere in my back that hadn’t worked their way out quite yet, and I had no plans to add to them soon.

I made myself scarce as the pair of bandits fired a bunch of bullets at the dumpster, peppering the thing with holes. From the crumpled bits of lead on the ground and the gouges already taken out of the dumpster, this was the first time they’d used that strategy to kill zombies before they could crawl out of the dumpster.

Unfortunately for them, the person making the noise worrying them so much was no zombie. I drummed my hand against the lid of a trash can nearby.

“Ah crap, it’s still alive. You go over there and kill it,” the Buccaneer said to the first.

“I did it last time!” the Barbarian whined.

“Seniority privilege,” the Buccaneer replied. “I’m higher level than you.”

“Only because you got to execute a bunch of those office chumps, and I had to stand bandit outside...” the Barbarian grumbled. “Damn lucky. Next time the boss is putting together a firing squad, I have to get in on it...”

I could hear them perfectly, even from my hiding place across the street from the dumpster I was setting up as my target. Part of that was my enhanced perception, but part was the fact that the city streets were so quiet. At this time of night, there were usually still people shopping. Crownhill had a younger crowd, being a small tech-focused town. Because of that, there were more bars and concerts than a town our size might usually possess. But all of them were empty now. The only noises were the skittering of giant cockroaches or the clawing of rats breaking into homes and raiding pantries.

I waited until the Barbarian was just about at the dumpster. He opened the lid, peering inside with a flashlight taped to the end of his gun. There was some movement in the dumpster, which meant some of the bodies were still functional undead. Perfect.

I hit him in the back with Mana Bolt. He stumbled forward, head leaning inward. Some of the undead arms grabbed him by the shirt collar and tugged. He could have torn himself free, but I hit him with Mana Bolt again. He topped forward, falling into the dumpster face first. The zombies within it started dragging him in. I could see them climbing up his body now. Most of them had been so shot full of holes they were just an upper torso and one arm, with the rest nothing more than dangling flesh.

It wasn’t enough to put the Barbarian down, but the next Mana Bolt shoved him far enough into the dumpster that the living zombies were able to pull him in with teeth and what little remained of their intact arms and jaws. He screamed, and the bandit, still standing by his post, shouted.

“Jackson! Damn it! You dumbass...” The Buccaneer glanced back at his post. He probably wasn’t supposed to leave it without getting a replacement. But with a dying comrade right in front of him, he must have thought he could run off, save his fellow bandit, and be back at his post before anyone noticed.

He couldn’t have been more wrong.

The moment both of them were nearest the dumpster, I struck. The first bandit was still struggling with the undead biting and dragging him into the dumpster. His levels weren’t anything special, but they were enough that he was stronger than any of the undead, especially in their crippled state. It was only the sheer number of arms that were giving him trouble. He’d pulled a knife out of his trousers and hacked at wrists and necks to put some of the zombies down, but he was making slow progress.

The appearance of the Buccaneer, however, would change things in short order. He still had his gun, and he fired into the mass of heads in the dumpster, putting down one zombie after another. They went still as their heads exploded like ripe fruit.

That would have been the end of things, except for my sudden attack. I still carried the sniper rifle that I’d taken off the man I’d killed earlier, and I pointed it now at the Buccaneer. I got two shots off before something jammed, and I tossed the gun aside to follow it up with my Mana Bolt.

My first bullet missed, drawing the attention of the bandit as he jumped in his boots. The second shot would have missed as well if he hadn’t walked right into it. One bullet dug a deep gouge in his back. If his vitality had been lower, it probably would have blown a chunk out of him. That rifle was shooting big bullets meant to take a man down in a single shot before the integration. The integration had made that a lot harder to do, but the bullets were still quite deadly.

I stopped bothering to hide and stood, firing my Mana Bolts one after another. The bandit barbarian was bruised and battered from all the zombie bites, so I targeted him first with my follow up spell.

“Disassemble.”

As I spoke the words, mana flowed out of me. The barbarian struggled against my spell for a moment, but he’d exhausted much of his energy fighting the zombies already. His own mana came to his defense, but it was pitifully weak. He must not have put any points into Intelligence since the beginning of the integration.

His body exploded in a fountain of energy. His flesh shriveled up, unraveled, and drifted gently to the ground. His bones tore free of muscles, eyes, and organs. Everything from his teeth to his finger bones were torn apart and arrayed in neat, orderly lines across the ground. The man was dead before he even knew what had happened.

The buccaneer whirled on me, firing his pistol wildly. The muzzle flash from my rifle shot must have revealed my position, and now I was exposed. But Deflect caught the first of the bullets, and I ducked low enough to miss the others. I turned, following up with Mana Bolt.

The invisible bursts of energy struck the buccaneer one after another, and without a muzzle flash in the dark he didn't even know where he was being attacked from. He ducked behind the cover of the dumpster, but I used Power Jump to close the distance between us and was on top of him in a flash.

A Mana Bolt to his head put him down for good.

I felt a rush of power as Lifesteal stole some of their health and gave it to me. It was more than I expected, and I started feeling like myself again for the first time since my death. The new level probably helped as well.

Congratulations! You have advanced to level 11!

Your racial attribute point assignments are passive and have been added automatically.

Your class attribute points assignments are passive and have been added automatically.

+1 Strength. +1 Agility, +1 Perception. +1 Vitality. +1 Intelligence. +1 Willpower. +1 Charisma. +1 Luck.

You have four assignable stat points to distribute.

Choose a luck skill!

Lucky Coin (Common)

• Manifest a lucky coin that always lands the way you want it to.

Treasure Hunter (Common)

• Slightly increase your odds of finding valuable loot from System rewards.

Share Curse (Uncommon)

• Transfer half of your negative luck curses to a target.

The third choice must have come to me thanks to my Death Curse. The ability to get rid of half of the tremendously negative effect of the curse seemed almost too good to be true, and I selected it in a heartbeat.

Would this mitigate my penalty towards gaining experience from monsters? Maybe not, considering it looked like it only transferred the luck over. But I certainly didn’t like the idea of being massively unlucky during a fight, so this ability would even the odds.

And deep down, I hoped to get a few offers to upgrade it in the future. Maybe a more powerful version of the skill could directly combat the negative effects of my Death Curse.

Despite my oblong investments into Intelligence, mine was truly a balanced race and class. I was essentially getting a point in everything across the board with each level up. Hopefully, that would be enough to cover my weaknesses. It was clear that any fine-tuning with my class was meant to be done with the Enlightenment skill, providing stat points beyond what levels gave.

But what I needed now was power and survivability. Unlike other classes that had a clear, single attribute to focus on, my class seemed to use a little of all of them. That meant I was on my own when determining which stat to focus on.

Disassemble, and Mana Bolt both focused on Mana, and they were my primary damage-dealing abilities, so for now, I would put most of my points into Intelligence just as I was before, except for throwing a few into vitality here and there. Dying sucked, and I was pretty sure Lyra would have something to say about me using the same method to come back from the dead a second time. I had to treat this life as though it were my last, because it probably was.

So I put my free points into vitality. Despite stealing a bit of health from the people I’d slain so far, I still wasn’t operating with a full health bar, considering how badly I’d been wounded. Bulking up my stats where it counted would make surviving long enough to heal the rest of the way a safer bet. What I was about to do wasn’t something some glass cannon mage could pull off.

You have added +4 Vitality.

Satisfied, I turned back to the office, which glowed under my vision with the shelter name overhead. I turned my ear toward it and listened to the sound of alarms and shouting. Everything was as quiet as before. Nobody had noticed me taking out two of Craig’s men.

Excellent. Now it was time to do it again.

Strength   14<Note>Yay, I was finally able to salvage some text from the first version of the story. That quest has 68 words I didn't have to write from scratch! Granted, it's only 68 old words out of 85,600 new words written for this version, but small victories matter.Right now, I'm thinking humans get 1 in strength, agility, perception, and vitality, but that might change depending on the later needs of the story. Seems like a decent default for humanity though.Carter's Stat's (Pulled from my current excel doc)

Agility   12

Perception   19

Vitality   27

Intelligence   41

Willpower   18

Charisma   17

Luck   10