Amazon Apocalypse: Chapter 30 (Patreon)

Note: Yes, we skipped right from chapter 28 to chapter 30. I inserted a few chapters. Either read the PDF I provided or catch them in the official release!

Originally, I wanted to find my car and get it operational. It was fifteen years old, but it still had plenty of life left in it. With a wide flatbed, it was great for hauling supplies.

But Sakura had other ideas. She had a brand new Rolls-Royce SUV parked just outside the office, and it was a beauty. It had all the cargo space of my truck and tires that weren’t begging for a replacement. So I begrudgingly abandoned my ride and agreed to take hers.

“And no heated seats,” Sakura said, sliding into the passenger seat of her own car and reclining all the way back.

Though we’d be in her vehicle, I’d be doing the driving, so I hopped in the driver’s seat and struggled with the automatic buttons to lower it a little.

Her red-tipped horn was still odd, and she shifted awkwardly when she caught me looking at it, so I tried not to stare. That wasn’t hard, considering how much of her was to stare at these days. Long legs, smooth stomach, and perky inviting breasts meant I had a lot of things to catch my eyes.

“Heated seats are a gimmick,” I protested, but Sakura pressed a button, and warmth spread beneath me.

“Spoken like someone who’s never had a heated seat,” Sakura replied.

I adjusted the mirrors and scanned our supplies. We didn’t know how long we would be away from Crownhill, and we needed to stock up.

The back of the car was full of plastic jerry cans, and all the gasoline stunk up the rest of the vehicle enough that I had to roll down the window. We were lucky the electric window cranks on Sakura’s car still worked after the apocalypse.

“We can stop by my farmhouse for supplies,” I suggested. “I spent a bit of time preparing for something like this.”

“You know, I pinned you as some sort of prepper." Sakura eyed me with a coy smile as she strapped herself into her seat. “Okay, we’ll stop by this farmhouse of yours. I still can’t believe you’ve been living in a farmhouse all this time. But after that, we're looking for my father. He'll know how to make it through this. I bet he already has a small army assembled from the company security teams.q”

Sakura seemed certain her dad was alive and well, but I had doubts. So many people had died on integration with the System, and everything that happened after. The odds that Sakura’s father was alive were slim. And that was assuming we could even get to him. I’d heard a few things from Lyra that suggested it wouldn’t be possible to stray too far from Crownhill. I just hoped my farmhouse was close enough to be on the same Shard, as Lyra called the area we were in.

“What can I say? I guess I’m a country boy at heart,” I shrugged. Truthfully, I was more of a suburban boy than anything else, but I liked the privacy of the old farm, as well as the storage space for all the tools I’d been accumulating over the years.

“Well, I guess you’re right in the end, so I can’t complain.” Sakura yawned and stretched.

“So, we’ll follow the road and see how far it can take us. Then, assuming it is still there, we’ll turn back for my farmhouse to stock up on food and make the trip that way,” I said, rehashing the plan we’d thrown together.

We’d hit the road and head straight as best we could to my farmhouse, where we’d pick up some supplies, rest, and hope to continue on in search of Sakura’s father.

I had doubts about that last part. The way the system had stitched new land into the world would make finding my farmhouse hard enough. But making our way across half the continent to get to Sakura’s father? No chance.

I kept those grim thoughts to myself. If I still had family, I know I’d want to look for them too, no matter the odds.

Sakura and I chatted briefly as I drove cautiously for half an hour. Unfortunately, thanks to the system’s changes, the signs were all in the wrong places. Sakura and I had to go off the road more than once or weave our way around some trees that had been placed where the pavement had been.

“Aren’t you glad we took my car?” Sakura asked as we went off road for the dozenth time, going over a big hump as we did so. “I’ve seen your ride. With how rusty the suspension was, I’m surprised the whole thing didn’t fall right into the mud!”

I rolled my eyes and chuckled as she teased me. “Yes, Sakura, your car is much better than mine. Is this your way of admitting you should have given me a raise?”

Sakura crossed her arms and tilted her nose up, bumping the tip of her horn against the roof of her car and wincing as she did so.

I was about to tease her a little in return when the road before us trembled. I hit the brakes and slowed until I could figure out what was happening.

“Hold on. Is that a crack in the road up ahead?” I pointed just ahead of us to a little crevasse. I could tell it was the edge of one of the areas the system cut and pasted since the road ended abruptly and met with another chunk of the road pointing in a completely different direction.

Normally, any two such sections were neatly joined, but this was the first time I’d seen a crack between them. It was like there was a crevasse running between them.

“That wasn’t there before,” Sakura said. She unbuckled herself, and I stopped the car before it.

I put it in park, and we both hopped out to peer into the shadowy hole. It was just large enough that I was worried about driving over it, and I said as much to Sakura.

“The hole looks about as big as the wheels. We should lay down some boards or something to get over it safely. You got anything in the trunk that could do that?”

Sakura tilted her nose up again with pride. “Well, if my car would have trouble making it over, yours would never have made it. What do you have, fifteen-inch tires?”

I glanced at the nearby treeline. “Let me pop the trunk and grab that hatchet. A few tree branches should get us across. But if this sort of thing is going to be common, I think getting anywhere will take much longer than we thought.”

I was rummaging through the bag in the back of the car when Sakura called out to me.

“Uh... Carter! I think you should see this!”

“What is it?” I called back.

“The crack is getting bigger! And redder!”

I found the hatchet and jumped out the back to see what Sakura was looking at. She was slowly backing away, one hand already on the passenger’s side.

I walked up to the crack and immediately felt a wave of heat against my face, along with the stench of sulfur.

“Yuck!” I coughed and spluttered. But the heat and smell weren’t the worst part. I could see liquid magma bubbling just out of sight.

I stood staring just a bit too long because the ground beneath us rumbled a moment later. Then something emerged from the fiery depths of the crack. It moved upward as though climbing, and I jumped back just as a geyser of hot liquid stone shot past where my head had been a moment later.

Before my enhancements to my body and reaction time, the old Carter would have died then and there.

The magma, now lava spilling out onto the open ground, didn’t behave as I thought it should. Instead, it burbled and bubbled before growing taller and taking a humanoid shape. My heart leaped in my chest as I realized this was no natural occurrence but our first run-in with a monster outside Crownhill.

Lava Elemental - Level 47

“Crap! Run!” I yelled as the Lava Elemental took a humanoid shape. It stood ten times as tall as I was, looking like a blob with a hazy outline of a head and arms. It stretched out a hand, and I felt a searing pain run along my ankle.

“Carter!” Sakura yelled. She kicked, and her boot burned away in an instant. But between that and Power Jump, I broke free and was clear of the Lava Elemental a moment later.

“Get in the car!” I yelled, stumbling as I did so. I wouldn’t be walking properly until my ankle healed. I avoided looking at the wound. I didn’t want to know how bad it was until we were safe.

But as we retreated, the crack in the ground widened further. The car the two of us we were running toward slid forward, and its nose dipped into the crack in the earth, where more molten magma bubbled away beneath the powerful Lava Elemental.

“To the trees!” I yelled, waving Sakura forward. She sprinted, one foot bare as the burnt sole flaked away. I skipped more than I ran, favoring my injured ankle.

The Lava Elemental threw one last lazy hand at us, and the two of us barely dove out of the way of its extended molten limb.

“Keep running!” I yelled. Behind us, I heard the distant echoes of Sakura’s car falling over the edge of the crevasse, no doubt to be swallowed by the Lava Elemental and all our stuff.

Behind us, a tremendous explosion filled the air, stripping the leaves right off their branches overhead. I stumbled, and Sakura put an arm under my shoulder to help me.

We made it a little further before the two of us flopped down in exhaustion.

“Let’s catch our breath here,” I panted. “We don’t know if there’s more of those things out there. If we run into another level forty seven monster when exhausted, we’ll be in trouble.”

“W-what was that thing, Carter?” Sakura asked, voice shaking.

I shrugged. “The System says it’s a Lava Elemental. And high enough level that we don’t want to fight it.”

“It... it ate my car. I just paid that thing off!” Sakura’s eyes were red, and her lips curled into a pout. I placed a comforting hand on her shoulder.

“There’s still time to go back for my truck.”

Sakura stared at me. The two of us shared a long look, and despite the grimness of the situation, we couldn’t help but share a little laugh.

Eventually, we stood.

“Your farmhouse can’t be too far away. After that, we’ll just have to make the rest of the trip on foot,” Sakura said.

I nodded. “We’re closer to it than to Crownhill.”

Still, I was a bit worried about the level of that Lava Elemental. How common would things of that level be outside of town?

The shadows loomed over the forest floor, making it difficult to discern a clear path. The air was thick with the musky scent of damp leaves, decay, and the occasional whiff of a sweet floral aroma, creating a sense of unease that settled heavily on my chest.

The soft, spongy earth beneath us muffled our footsteps. The only sounds that pierced the silence were the occasional rustling of leaves or snapping of twigs as small animals scurried away from our presence. Nevertheless, I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were being watched, our every move being tracked by unseen eyes. The fear of encountering more high-level monsters like the lava elemental weighed heavily on my mind, making me jumpy and tense.

Sakura tried her best to maintain her composure. Her red-tipped horn glinted in the filtered sunlight as the sun slowly set, starkly contrasting the fear that flickered in her eyes. However, the uncertainty of our situation was wearing her down. She moved cautiously, her ears perked, listening intently for any sound that might indicate danger.

The sun sank lower in the sky. It felt like we’d only just left Crownhill, but we would have to worry about nightfall soon.

“Are you sure we’re going in the right way?” Sakura asked, voice lowered to a hushed whisper.

“I’m sure.” I’d driven back home on this route a dozen times. The distance between Crownhill and my farmhouse might have grown as the System expanded the area, but the direction was ultimately the same. “It should be near the top of that hill.”

Sakura stared up and squinted. “You mean that mountain?”

Now that she mentioned it, the hill I lived atop was considerably taller and steeper than I imagined. So the System probably added some height to it and expanded the overall size.

“Yeah, my place should be near the top.”

When we finally found the remains of the road, I realized we wouldn’t have been able to take Sakura’s car up to the top anyway. The road up had been destroyed, and the paths left behind were too steep, even if we could somehow make it around all the trees and rocks in the way.

As we ventured deeper into the unknown, the underbrush grew thicker and more tangled. The once-soft earth gave way to a carpet of gnarled roots and sharp stones, which added to the challenge of navigating the terrain. My burnt ankle throbbed with each step, a constant reminder of our previous encounter and the potential threats that lurked within the forest.

“We should set up camp before the sun sets,” I said as I peered over our wild surroundings.

Sakura voiced her agreement. This would have been much easier if we still had her car and the supplies within it. But as it was, we would have to do this the hard way.

“What do we do?” Sakura asked.

“We need shelter and a fire. You want to gather wood?” I waved to the scraggly pine trees around us. That at least hadn't changed with the integration.

Sakura nodded.

I surveyed the area and found a quiet alcove around an overhanging slab of rock. It was made of solid granite and was about three times as tall as I was. The spot where it reached the ground was caved in on three sides, forming a shallow protected area big enough for Sakura and me to sleep if we were willing to stick close together.

I dug a small pit for the fire just as Sakura returned, dragging what looked to be an entire tree behind her.

“I brought wood,” Sakura said, lifting the whole thing over her head.

“That’s... a lot of wood.”

Sakura stood up proudly. “Dry wood too. I looked for a dead tree. See, I can do this survival stuff too.”

“That won’t exactly fit in the fire pit as it is. Let’s break off some kindling first, then some logs for the fire. After that, we can use whatever’s left to build a little hutch to sleep in for the night.” As I spoke, I snapped off a few of the smaller branches on the ends of the tree.

Sakura had other ideas and went right for snapping off full-sized branches. I stared at her muscles rippling beneath her skin as she effortlessly broke the larger limbs into more manageable pieces. Despite the exertion, only a few drops of sweat beaded up on her forehead.

While she focused on collecting firewood, I took the twigs and a few dried leaves and prepared to start an actual fire.

As I knelt down and pulled a pair of sticks from my pocket, Sakura raised an eyebrow in surprise. “You’re going to start a fire with those?” She grunted and heaved, ripping a branch straight off a trunk.

“I don’t have a match, lighter, flint, or steel. They were all with the survival pack,” I replied. “unless you have a better idea, I’m going with my trusty stick here.”

Sakura didn’t have a better idea. But she stopped to watch as I positioned the thinner of the two sticks between my palms and spun them back and forth. Before long, little bits of wood piled up, cradling a tiny ember. I nursed that ember to life, and a minute later, we had a fire.

As the flames crackled and spread, casting flickering shadows across the clearing, Sakura looked at me with newfound admiration. “I’m impressed, Carter. I tried that once when camping with my father and never had much luck.”

I couldn’t help but feel a little smug. “It took a lot of practice.”

Together, we sat down near the fire, basking in its warmth and its comforting glow on our surroundings. It would have been better with something to drink and eat, but we had to make do with what we had. When we finally reached my farmhouse at the top of the mountain, we’d eat and drink our fill.

We both sat by the fire, and Sakura let out a small, nervous chuckle. “We should probably, you know, cozy up together for warmth. It’s the most practical thing to do.”

“I guess we have to, since we don’t have a blanket.” I grinned and soon found Sakura in my arms.

The two of us moved closer together, sitting side by side with our backs against the stone behind us. Sakura was bigger than before, so I couldn’t wrap around her. However, the awkwardness faded quickly, and sharing body heat made us feel much larger.

I could feel the tightly coiled muscles of her back pressing against my own. The two of us had undergone quite a transformation over the last few days, and neither could we recognize ourselves.

“You sleep first. I’ll monitor the fire and our surroundings. I’ll wake you midway through the night, and we’ll switch.”

Sakura nodded in agreement, nuzzled her head beneath my chin, and slowly drifted off. I started fiddling with my System menus while I kept watch over the dwindling fire. My stat system had gotten pretty complicated now that my class had given me a second set of stats. It looked like they transferred over from my regular stats easily enough, but I needed to play with the interface more. I figured I'd have a long, quiet night to do just that.


<Note>

Carter's back! I know a lot of you guys have been waiting for this one to return. Sorry for the wait!