Amazon Apocalypse: Chapter 27 (Patreon)

Sakura and I threw ourselves into battle. The creature interrupting our personal time was a giant rat, and I killed it quickly enough. But that wasn’t enough to push Sakura to level 10. We needed more. But thanks to my Death Curse, it was surprisingly easy to stumble across small groups of monsters roaming the streets, many of them quite powerful for anyone other than me.

“Heads up, I see some Fire Squirrels,” I warned Sakura. She hefted her club, though I wanted her to stay in reserve for the moment. I eyed a misshapen building that looked like it had been part of a courtyard. A truly massive tree was sitting in the middle of a ring of toppled bricks. It looked to be some sort of redwood, and it certainly had size at that level. Though the thick branches almost made it look like an oak.

Regardless, I supposed I shouldn’t have been too surprised to find a group of giant squirrels camped out in what was probably the only tree in the city big enough to support their weight.

The Fire Squirrels detected me, and I made no move to elude them. Before my Death Curse, these little monsters would have scurried out of my way when they sensed my power, but whatever the System had done to encourage them to attack me had eroded their self-preservation instincts.

“Are you sure you don’t need my help?” Sakura asked.

“I want to confirm you’re getting experience from this. Tell me when you reach level 10.”

And also, I wanted to push Disassemble to its limits. I waved my hands, expelling an enormous quantity of mana that washed over the room. The spell crawled over each Fire Squirrel as they shot fireballs at me. I shot a few Mana Bolts in return, but really, I was watching them expend their mana.

The more mana they used, the more my mana wrapped around them. Thanks to picking up my Artificer job, figuring out exactly how the spell worked was much easier.

I watched my spell take hold one by one. To Sakura, it probably looked like I was just standing among all the attacking monsters and letting their spells wash over me.

Then, one by one, the Fire Squirrels began to pop.

One of the most aggressive squirrels exploded first. Disassemble separated its bones, fur, and meat, and laid it all out neatly on the ground where it had been standing. The others attacked even more ferociously, expending their precious mana while thinking they needed to kill me as quickly as possible. But that man was the only thing protecting them from my Disassemble spell.

Pop. Pop. Pop.

One by one, the rest of the Fire Squirrels exploded without me needing to do much at all. The fireballs had singed my skin a little, but killing the squirrels had let Lifesteal replenish any health points I lost by a bit. I turned to Sakura, who flashed me a big thumbs-up.

“I reached level 10 again about halfway through that fight! By the way, you looked very mysterious and badass there, just weathering those fireballs like they didn’t bother you and destroying every one of those things without moving. If I didn’t know how the spell worked, I’d be very intimidated!”

“Good to know,” I replied. “The efficiency for converting my kills into your experience points is pretty good. Let’s find some more and see if I can’t power-level you.”

The two of us ran around Crownhill. Thanks to Power Jump and my strength skill, it wasn’t too hard to jump from the ground to the roof of small buildings, meaning we didn’t have to walk around blocks or take the long way about.

The System’s attempt to stretch Crownhill had produced a lot of city-like rubble, and downtown Crownhill looked a lot more like a ruined city than the much more modest town it had been.

My knowledge of the area was only vaguely helpful, but my Death Curse brought the monsters to us. There were rats, cockroaches, a massive skunk, and something that looked like it had once been a raccoon.

Out of all the monsters we faced, that last one had been the most dangerous.

Waste Crawler - Level 15

It came at us with teeth and claws. Sakura jumped in front of me, eager to put her new class to work now that she had it back again. She was out-leveled here, but I was supporting her from behind.

I fired Mana Bolts one after another to wear the beast down. She made herself an obstacle that the giant raccoon had to get around if it wanted to attack the person pestering it with spells.

It snarled in frustration when it realized it couldn’t get past Sakura. Eventually, it threw its all into taking her out. It latched down on Sakura’s arm with tremendous strength, but Sakura had a second strength skill now. Her entire body shone with crimson light for a moment as she lifted the dining table-sized raccoon and tossed it aside. I got a few more good hits in with Mana Bolt.

The creature thought it had a lot of fight left in it, but I had other ideas. During the battle, I’d wormed Disassemble under its skin and set the spell to work. The raccoon monster didn’t even know what killed it as its body was torn apart at the seams and neatly arrayed before me.

“Woohoo! Level 13!” Sakura held her hands up in victory.

“Congratulations. We’ll try to push you to fifteen soon.”

“You know, this would probably make living off the land a lot easier,” Sakura said as she kicked a pile of neatly separated chunks of meat. They almost looked like what you could buy out of a grocery store. “We could hunt monsters and eat them. No butchery required. The only troublesome part would be hauling all this stuff back.”

“I’ve been thinking a bit about that too,” I replied. I picked Sakura up, jumped on top of one of the shorter buildings nearby, and then used that to jump to a taller one. One more jump, and we had a good vantage point to look for more monsters.

We sat down for a little while, and Sakura leaned her head against my shoulder. She’d been doing that a lot lately.

“You know, with all the hides, I’ve been thinking it might be a good idea for one of us to pick up the leather worker job. Or at least find somebody in the shelter who’s picked it up... Sakura?” I cut off my own train of thought as I felt Sakura’s arm worming up my shirt.

“What?” Sakura asked innocently. “Did you say you wanted to test all aspects of that special legendary title of yours? This is a very important part...”

I rolled my eyes, but deep down, I was a little worried when I saw the heat in Sakura’s eyes.

“Sakura, I think my Fabulous Phallus skill might be affecting you,” I warned.

“I know,” Sakura said. “I have a status effect telling me as much.”

She reached down and unzipped my pants. Meanwhile, she shared her status screen with me.

You have received a new title!

Nymphomaniac (Common)

Your body recovers from exhaustion and injuries during sex. Health, stamina, and mana all regenerate faster following sex.

You have received an affliction!

• You are addicted to [Carter Smith’s Cock!]
• Your highest stat is increased by 10% effectiveness.
• Carter Smith’s charisma stat will be 30% more effective on you!
• This affliction will wear off in 3 hours and can be cured by any common-grade rejuvenation potion.

“You can test your level-stealing thing. And I’m going to test how much stronger I can get,” Sakura purred, burying her face in my crotch.

Sakura and I went at it again on that rooftop. She wanted to try oral, and she made up for what she lacked in experience with enthusiasm. She discovered she could enhance her affliction status even further with increased exposure, which gave higher but diminishing returns. We were able to very briefly get the boost up to a whopping additional 40%, which in addition to her other titles, would make Sakura an unstoppable juggernaut of strength... for about five minutes.

The boost wore off quickly at that point, and it started receding to lower levels within minutes. Still, it meant that if we were interrupted during sex, Sakura could pulverize whatever had disturbed us quickly enough to avoid killing the mood.

You have reached level 19!

+1 all stats. +4 stats assigned to intelligence.

Sakura lost two levels to give me one new one, which killed one of the plans I’d been formulating in my head. Getting someone from level one to level two would be easy for me, so if all levels were equal, I’d be able to push myself to be thousands of levels stronger without needing to fight anything particularly strong.

“Sorry for taking your two levels, Sakura,” I apologized. “We’ll get them back soon.”

Sakura planted a kiss on my chin. “You need them. I know you need a way to bypass your Death Curse. Besides, you did most of the monster killing to gain them. So really, they were your levels in the first place.”

“I have a question for you, Sakura.” I fought to keep the tightness out of my voice. “I’m not sure what you’re looking for, but I think if I’m going to survive this apocalypse, I will need you at my side. I don’t know if you were just looking for something short-term, but--“

Sakura thumped a fist against my chest. “Dummy. Don’t think you’re ever getting rid of me. The apocalypse came when we were together, and we’ll finish it together too.”

I chuckled and looked at the sky. “You hear that, System? Your Death Curse means nothing to us! But, hell, throw a few extra monsters our way will just fuel our growth.”

You have received the temporary title: Heretic!

Heretic (Unique - Temporary [Expires in one hour])

• Area-appropriate monsters will be cloned and sent to attack you for as long as this title persists.
• Stacks with other System-distributed curses and negative titles.

“Ah, crap.”

When we thought we’d cleared out our entire region of the city of monsters, dozens more came pouring at us. It wasn’t a never-ending tide, though, more like an occasional monster patch here and there, much like what we had been fighting so far.

The monsters sent our way weren’t anything special. It was more like a few Fire Squirrels, giant rats, and a huge array of cockroaches at a higher level than I’d seen.

Fire Squirrels - Level 6

Giant Rats - Level 8

Cockroach Ravager - Level 5

While the monsters were too low-level for me to gain any experience, they were perfect for power-leveling Sakura. We eyed the small hoard that had suddenly appeared with as much hunger as they eyed us.

Sakura lunged forward, her crimson club swinging as she bashed roaches and rats. I laid down suppressing fire over those squirrels. By now, my Mana Bolt hit with the force of a gunshot. The damage was spread out across an area the size of my head, but against creatures with high vitality that usually did more damage than a regular bullet wound might.

Two of those were all it took to take down a giant squirrel, and as soon as I wiped them out, I helped Sakura take out the others. She’d lost all squeamishness she might have had before, and now she smashed giant cockroaches with her baseball bat with a grin.

The giant rats tried to corner her, but Sakura stayed light on her feet, bouncing around the battlefield like an acrobat as she dodged and weaved between them.

Those rats breathed their last when I arrived. While I wasn’t a melee fighter, my stats were high enough to act like one against monsters at this level. A rat charged at me with a red glow in its eyes and snarling teeth. The monster looked almost mindless in its fury, like nothing was up there except for the command to destroy me.

I waited for it to come. Its teeth latched onto my hand, but it couldn’t break the skin before I shot a Mana Bolt right up through the bottom of its jaw and blew its brains to bits.

We killed more monsters, and Sakura went back to her previous heights and a little further.

Before long, she was at level 15 and well on her way to catching up with me. Unfortunately, that was when her leveling started tapering off since the monsters we were fighting just weren’t strong enough to push her higher.

But eventually, my heretic title wore off, and no more monsters came for us.

“Want to do it again?” Sakura asked.

“What, insult the System and hope to be named a heretic again?”

“Yeah!”

We tried our best to hurl a few insults at the System, but there was no reaction from it. I had a sneaking suspicion that Lyra might have had something to do with us getting attacked right when we had trouble finding enemies to fight. Still, I had no way of proving my suspicions.

“Well, if there’s nothing to fight, we should check in on Bridget and the others.”

I looked at the horizon. While Sakura and I were fighting monsters, Caleb, Marcus, and the rest of the people in the shelter were setting up camp. Originally, I had wanted to help them, but with my Death Curse, I was better off staying away from them. But now, the night was mostly through. Blessing of the System had triggered twice more, and it was now the morning of the second day.

I’d spent the entire night fighting and gaining levels, yet I didn’t feel as tired as I should have. Perhaps it was the exhilaration of so much fighting, but I was pretty sure it was my vitality stat making my body sturdier than before.

We returned to the shelter to find a bleary-eyed Marcus standing guard. He waved to me as soon as he saw me.

“Carter! You’re back! It was a surprisingly quiet night. Haven’t seen a single monster,” Marcus said.

I grinned. “Glad to hear it. We were a bit busier all night, but we scoured the area for everything worth fighting. There might still be a few rats and cockroaches, but nothing an average person from the shelter couldn’t manage. How is everyone doing? Is Bridget still poisoned?”

Marcus shook his head. “We have her stabilized, but the affliction isn’t gone.”

I frowned. “I see. Well, keep applying the antibiotic ointment. Give it a few hours until the sun is all the way up. Sakura and I are going to catch a few hours of sleep and wait for the monsters to die down. After, there’s a clinic down the street that’s still operational. Hopefully, they have something more potent than what we can find in a first aid kit.”

***

I caught a few hours of sleep away from the others. I found a stairwell on a roof with two doors on either side, which would be enough to keep the monsters at bay. The last thing I wanted was to wake up to a giant cockroach nibbling on my nose.

Sakura joined me, and she tucked herself neatly in my arms as I drifted off. The feeling was something I could learn to get used to.

I woke up an hour later. I could have slept longer, but I felt refreshed enough to get up. Sakura was still breathing softly in my arms.

There was some faint scratching on the door outside where we were sleeping. It was another giant rat trying to get a bite out of me while I slept. I killed it quickly and closed the door behind me, returning with breakfast from a local donut shop a few minutes later. The coffee was cold, and the donuts a little stale, but they were better than most could hope for in an apocalypse.

“Hey, Sakura,” I asked, waving breakfast under her nose.

She woke up to the scent of her favorite peppermint coffee and wolfed down both donuts I brought in an instant. I hadn’t realized how much her transformation had increased her appetite.

“Where’d you say you got these?” Sakura asked, cheeks covered in donut frosting.

A few minutes later, we were kicking down the door to the donut shop and eating everything in sight. Unfortunately, the cockroaches who’d been inhabiting the place until now had laid their claim on everything touching the floor, but there was enough food up on racks that they couldn’t get to.

Once we’d finished cleaning ourselves of crumbs, we returned to the shelter. Marcus was waiting for us when we walked inside.

“Carter! Sakura! We were just figuring out how to get everyone organized. The teams Ben set up yesterday won’t work since we lost the shelter and everything we were fortifying. We’re trying to decide if we should permanently set up camp or look for someplace more secure. We’ve got to find a way to get people into jobs.”

“Grab Caleb,” I said. “He should be here for this, too. Gather everybody up, and I’ll demonstrate how the market works. We’ll let free trade do the rest.”

And so soon, I had most of the settlement gathered around the obelisk, where I explained what I’d figured out and how to use it.

“The System stole that idea from eBay!” a man shouted.

“No, no... it’s more like Craigslist,” another replied.

The people took to trading with the market like fish to water. At first, we had to lay hands on the obelisk to use it, but I figured out how to tweak the settings so anyone who could see the obelisk could access the market. That would make things a lot easier.

There were a few rumblings about fortifying the area around the obelisk and making it inaccessible to any outside the shelter, but I killed the idea.

“Other groups might have interesting things to trade as well. If they want to sell what they have to us, they are welcome to do so. They’ll earn our currency for doing so, which only means they’ll buy the things we’re selling,” I replied. “As for figuring out what jobs everyone needs? This isn’t some collective. You’re all free to do whatever you want. If you think the settlement needs something, find it and put it on the market. If you need something, buy it from the market. It’s as simple as that.”

That solved the issue of getting everyone jobs, but the shelter still needed some sort of governing body to prevent someone else from strolling along and seizing control over the obelisk. So I filled those council seats it provided me with Caleb, Marcus, and Bridget. Yeah, there might be people better suited to the jobs than the three of them, but I knew those three and trusted them. That was more important than experience to me. The three of them would just have to learn on the job.

“What about you and Sakura?” Marcus asked. “I was certain you two would be the pair running the shelter with Ben gone.”

I grimaced. “I won’t stick around because I didn’t stay nearby last night. I have a Death Curse, and monsters like to hunt me. If I stay near you guys, you’ll be attacked constantly. But don’t worry. I still have access to the settlement interface. I’ll come rushing to help you if I notice any trouble.”

After assembling the council and showing them how to access their healthy stipend, I had them hire a few higher-level people from the settlement for full-time employment. Marcus, Caleb, and Bridget all had high levels themselves, so between being the strongest and employing the second strongest, I had no doubt they could keep order.

Or, at least, they would once Bridget was on her feet again. She was awake when I went to see her after the meeting, and Toxic Bite had received.

“How are you feeling?” I asked.

Bridget coughed. “I’ve been better. My health points aren’t going down, though.”

I nodded. “I figured. If you’re fit to move, I want to bring you to the clinic down the street. As of yesterday, the doctor was still in business. I’m hoping he’ll have something that works better than that first aid kit for curing Toxic Bite.”

Bridget nodded, and soon we were underway. I carried Bridget in my arms while Sakura kept guard. We couldn’t travel as fast as Sakura and I had grown used to, but we kept a decent pace and soon made our way back to Doctor Roswell’s clinic.

“Hey, Doctor! I’ve got a patient who needs some help.”

“Oh! Another zombie for dissection! Perfect!” The doctor said from within the office. Bridget’s eye’s widened.

“No, not a zombie,” I said hastily. “This one is a regular patient. She was bitten by--“

“She’s been bitten by a zombie and will turn into one! Perfect! I’d love to get another look at the transformation!” The doctor rubbed his hands together, eyes hidden behind a pair of large goggles.

“No, she was bitten by a rat and has a type of infection.”

The doctor visibly sagged. “Oh. An animal bite. How boring. I dealt with enough of those before the zombie apocalypse. Thank you very much.”

“If it’s any consolation, the rat was the size of a car and could breathe poison.”

The doctor brightened a little. “Alright, I’ll help! Set her down on the table over here.”

I hit the doctor with Examine, curious at how his adventures had gone. Apparently, he’d taken my earlier words about gaining new levels to heart. He was the first level 10 I’d found outside of the shelter.

Fleshsculpter - Doctor Roswell - Level 10

What kind of class was Fleshsculpter? I was a little nervous about finding out. It sounded sinister to me.

Doctor Roswell hadn’t even asked about payment, but we brought a few bags of the surplus first aid stuff I’d recovered from that dead sniper. If anyone in the community knew how to use it right, it’d be the doctor. Sakura handed the supplies off to the doctor’s staff, and I sat Bridget on the examination table. She sat upright along the side, cradling her injured arm.

“This isn’t a dissection table, is it?” Bridget asked.

I chuckled. “Doctor Roswell is a bit eccentric, but I’m sure I can get him just as interested in other monsters as he is in zombies.”

Bridget nodded, wincing as she brushed her arm and slowly unwound the bandages.

“That looks like a rough one,” Doctor Roswell commented as he looked at the black and blistered skin around the bite mark. In his hand, he held a large bone saw. He looked at the saw and sighed. “Not quite rough enough for this baby, though.”

“Yeah, I would rather keep the arm,” Bridget said.

Doctor Roswell shook his head. “We used these once in medical school. I was the fastest in my class with a bone saw. Went through a cow femur in thirty seconds flat! It was quite the workout, let me tell you. And I’ve only gotten better at it since then! If you don’t believe me, we’ve got a pile of armless, legless, toothless zombies locked in the storage closet.”

“I believe you. Now, if you could do something about this infection?” Bridget asked.

“Right... right. The pain is probably excruciating. We’ll deal with that first.” Doctor Roswell pulled out a wicked-looking needle, which he stabbed into Bridget’s arm. She winced at first, but moments later, she sagged in place, and her shoulders went slack.

“Oh, that feels much better...” Bridget smiled.

“Your arm will be numb. Normally I’d knock a patient out before doing this, but the machines don’t work right now. And I have this neat new ability...” Doctor Roswell picked up a knife and drew it along Bridget’s arm. Before she even had time to yelp, the entire chunk of flesh fell off, cut with such perfect precision the tissue didn’t even have time to bleed.

Bridget’s eyes went wide, but before she could jerk her arm, Doctor Roswell held his finger over the missing patch of flesh. His finger glowed with white healing light, and the muscle regrew with incredible speed.

At first, I thought he had healed Bridget completely, but when the flesh regrew, the bite mark was still there. It was just a bit smaller.

“Hmm... this is a stubborn one. It looks like it’ll take more than one treatment...” Doctor Roswell muttered. “Strange. Well, make sure you eat plenty of protein. My Flesh Sculpting redistributes body mass from the rest of you. It doesn’t make it from scratch, so you’ll need to regain that mass as quickly as possible. I never thought I’d prescribe boxes of jelly donuts to my patients, but preliminary tests show it’s one of the fastest ways to add body mass.”

“Thank you, doctor,” Bridget smiled, wincing far less than before as she moved her arm. “And thank you both as well, Sakura, Carter.”

I was going to give Bridget a handshake, but considering the state of her arm, I opted for a pat on the head instead. My fingers straightened out some of her gentle blonde curls, and she beamed a smile back at me.

“We’re happy to help. It’s the least I can do since I’m saddling you with that whole council thing.”

We left Bridget with the clinic. She was healthy enough to take care of herself now, though not healthy enough to go without the doctor’s care. I also told Doctor Roswell and his assistants about the shelter and the obelisk. Theirs was the closest group of survivors we were connected to, and I was certain medical services would be in high demand for people dealing with constant monster attacks. So I wanted the doctor to have a good relationship with the shelter. Hopefully, Bridget could for a bridge between the two groups.

I returned to the shelter to find everything well in hand. People were working, Caleb and Marcus had established order, and teams of people were looting the rest of the city, bringing everything from crowbars to donuts and listing them on the obelisk’s market. Trade was blossoming as more people started using the obelisk to buy everything from tools for their job to their lunch.

Things were well in hand and as safe as they could be, given the changes to Earth. Before long, things might even come close to resembling normal.

I turned to Sakura. “I think this is our cue to go. This is your last chance to ditch me.”

Sakura nudged me in the side. “Not on your life.”

By that afternoon, we found a working car with the keys still in it, siphoned some gasoline out of the nearby tanks, and then filled the back with the heaping piles of survival supplies taken off that dead sniper. And just like that, we were on our way to our next adventure.


<Note>

This arc ended up wrapping up surprisingly cleanly. If I wasn't known for long novels, I would be tempted to call this the book (we're roughly at 100k words right now. Though I usually don't like to end before the plot line posed at the beginning is fully answered (Meaning, I don't want to end until Carter has reunited with Myrina.)

But that will be in the second arc of this book. We've got one last chapter for this novel from another point of view that may or may not make it into the second novel. After that, we'll either do Paladin 4 or the short story I wrote last week for a short story anthology (depends on how long it takes me to get these first few Paladin 4 chapters done.)