Amazon Apocalypse: Chapter 55 (Patreon)

I awoke covered in blood and with a sharp pain in my chest. Something was trying to eat me.

I swatted at it before opening my eyes and felt it leave. Only then did I open them to see what it was. A crow the size of a dog had been picking at my face. It was only level six, so a quick swat was all it took to scare it off.

The bird let out a loud squawk, flapped its wings, and took to the air before I even opened my eyes.

“That’s right, this time I’m not a corpse!” I waved my fist at the bird as it flew away. I felt something else squirming under my shirt and dug around for it. Searching for it, I reached into my shirt and pulled out a centipede-looking monster the length of my arm.

Gross.

I felt a little sore from a missing chunk of flesh. The damn thing had been eating me. I probably would still be asleep if not for it.

I crushed it with a quick squeeze. That still didn’t stop the squirming under my clothes though. There was a rat crawling up my pant leg as well, and it was getting far too close to something I really didn’t want it nibbling on. I tore my pants free and shook the rat free.

It didn’t have the chance to escape before I blasted it with a Mana Bolt. It was low enough level that one shot was all it took.

All these low-level creatures were attracted to my Death Curse and tried to take a piece out of what they thought was a corpse. Before the Integration, I might have jumped up in fear and panic at all these scavengers nibbling on me. But now I’d survived getting thrown into a dumpster full of corpses. My stomach was a lot stronger than it used to be.

Not to mention my body was a lot more resistant to disease. Nowadays, the grime, muck, and creepy crawlies don’t bother me so much. Their presence was merely tedious, not terrifying. With my Death Curse, this was just something I’d have to learn to deal with until I could finally get it removed.

Fortunately, these things were compelled as much by hunger as they were by the curse, and there was a perfectly suitable pile of flesh right next to me for most of them to eat their fill. There were a lot more of those centipede monsters crawling through the Alpha Wolfman’s remains.

And they really were just remains.

The Alpha Wolfman was dead, that much I was certain of.

There’d be no coming back for him with a corpse like that. I hadn’t seen the spell that killed him, but his rib cage was split down the center, with each bone pointed upward to reveal the organs within, most of which had been scattered all the clearing we’d made in our fighting.

Was this what happened when I detonated enough Corrupting Marks on a target in combination with my party ultimate?

The gruesome sight would have sickened me just a week prior, but I’d gotten a tougher stomach as of late. All I felt was satisfaction.

I’d won!

I was safe. Humanity was safe. Well... they would be as soon as I dealt with the remaining Lycans. Those would be tough for anyone else to deal with. But not me.

I bent my ear to the sound of a nearby stream, and upon finding it, I washed myself and my clothes up. They’d get dirty again soon, but I needed time to regenerate my health, and eventually my mana as well.

A bit less strategic and more personal, I also wanted to look myself over for any more of those centipedes or giant rats. The last thing I wanted was to realize one had stowed away on me.

So I washed myself and my clothes in the icy river water. It was just a few degrees above freezing, but my body could take the cold without issue at D-Grade. Even soaking wet when I stepped out of the water, I didn’t feel uncomfortable. Clothes were more of a fashion accessory or a way to hold tools now than a necessity. My skin was far tougher than it looked, and even an arctic chill wouldn’t scare me off anymore.

Soon my clothes were dry. Mind over Flesh allowed me to restore a good portion of my health pool. I wasn’t completely healed by any stretch, but past a certain point I wanted mana more than extra hit points. I needed to finish what I started before nightfall since, by that point, the Lycans would be a lot harder to hunt.

Getting dressed, I returned to the Wolfman camp with slaughter in mind. It was time to end these creatures’ threat to humanity once and for all.

***

I darted through the dense wilderness, following the wreckage left behind during my battle with the Alpha Wolfman. I soon returned to the area we’d come from. The Lycan bodies I’d killed earlier were still lying where they’d fallen, and the others ignored them as they patrolled their lair.

On the way there, I stumbled across a clearing near their camp. Piled in the middle were the bones and discarded ligaments of the Chaosborn Lycan’s prey and sacrifices. Most common among the pile were human skulls of various sizes.

Rats and insects picked over the bones for whatever meat was left on them, crawling out of eye sockets or through hollowed-out rib cages.

My anger simmered, and my determination galvanized once again. These creatures had to be put down. Two Lycans came to the pile to throw away more refuse, and I ambushed them the moment they arrived.

Chaosborn Lycan Elite (Level 21)

Chaosborn Lycan Elite (Level 19)

Compared to their alpha, these two were no match for me. Between my class and my race, I overwhelmed them both with a fast and sudden barrage of spells. Eldritch Blasts and Mana Bolts struck them one after another.

They growled at me, thinking they could fight me. But I’d already slain the strongest of them. Compared to their alpha, these elites were nothing.

I dodged a swiped claw, then sharp teeth. A wall of shadowy tendrils swept through where I stood, but I was already gone. Behind them, I resumed firing my spells. First, a Mana Bolt, then an Eldritch Blast. Each spell struck home, and the Lycan yelped in fright. The one I hit the worst turned to flee, but I cut off his escape with Warp Step and held my sword at the ready.

My weapon was bent and battered from my fight with the Alpha Wolfman, but there was still enough life left in it for some bloody work.

The Lycans wouldn’t go down so easily. The one I’d cornered realized it would have to fight again, and fight it did.

Steel met claw, and steel won. With the Lycan’s claws cut down to stubs, my next swing cleaved his head from his shoulders, where it rolled to join the pile belonging to all the humans he’d taken part in eating. The other died to a Mana Bolt to the back.

Slaughtering the rest of the Elite Chaosborn Lycans took some time, but it wasn’t hard. It was more tedious than difficult.

After taking care of the first two, I’d regained a bit of my lost health thanks to Lifesteal. They really hadn’t been that difficult to kill, and I was pretty sure I could take on more than two at a time.

So that was exactly what I did.

“Over here, you mangy mutts!” I yelled at the terrifying car-sized beasts of shadow and darkness.

A dozen of the Lycans came for me at once, a few of them elite, though most were of a lower level.

I slaughtered them all.

They were quick and had most of the tricks their Alpha had. They waved tendrils of shadow in all directions, sapping the very life from the nearby plants or sweeping devastating claws through the air where I’d been moments before.

But I hadn’t gotten my Dodge proficiency over level 20 for nothing. I easily slipped past each of their blows. They moved so slowly compared to their alpha that it hardly seemed like a fight at all. If not for the howls of rage and fury they made, I might have thought they were toying with me.

That was when they started to realize I was toying with them. I spent the first few seconds feeling them out and making sure I really could take on this many at once. The effort gave me another Dodge proficiency, as well as a bit more in One Against Many fighting.

Your Dodge Proficiency has increased to level 23!

Your One Against Many Proficiency has increased to level 6!

I couldn’t grind levels forever though. Even foes as far beneath me as these could get lucky if I gave them enough chances, so after a few new proficiencies I decided to end things.

I used Exploit Weakness to pick off the strongest of him, landing behind him and attacking with two spells at once. I ran him through once with my sword for good measure, then took cover again.

Your Sword Proficiency has increased to level 26!

I picked off the rest of the Lycans one by one until twelve became eight. Then six.

At that point, they tried to scatter in all directions once they realized they couldn’t beat me. Two of the weakest Lycans got away, but I killed most of them.

I repeated the feat twice more with the three remaining groups patrolling the old Wolfman lair. After that, the number of elites took a sharp nosedive. The skill and level of the Wolfmen grew so low that I wasn’t even able to get another level, though this experience wasn’t for me anyway.

Now that Bridget and Sakura had regressed to the early levels, only a few people could fight an elite, so I wanted to make sure there were as few of those as possible. And if Bridget and Sakura could regain a little experience points in the process of me making that happen, all the better.

The prompt I’d been waiting for appeared when I’d made it to the caves they’d been protecting.

You have defeated the Chaosborn Lycan race!

Enslave?

Execute?

There was no option to ransom this time, perhaps because there were no leaders among the Chaosborn Lycan race left. I would not have picked such an option if it had been available.

I selected to execute.

A quest to exterminate all Chaosborn Lycans found has been issued to all members of humanity on your shard!

The Chaosborn Lycan race shall be hunted to extinction unless this order is rescinded.

I wiped the blood from my hands. It seemed my bloody work was done. The others could take it from here. Myrina had mentioned slaughtering the weak was bad luck in the Arcadia Multiverse, so it would be better to let humans of a lower level deal with the weaker members of their race that remained.

There were only a few things left to pick up. First was the Unholy Athame, the stone dagger enhanced by the blessing of the Chaos Wolf. It was the only legendary weapon I’d ever seen.

Picking it up, I could see the appeal. There was something about it that just felt right in the hand. It was tempting to keep the dagger. I could see myself fighting with it.

But fear ran through me at the thought. Was it me who wanted to keep the dagger or the Chaos Wolf?

He’d used my body as a conduit to reach into this world, like a puppeteer stuffing his fist up the rear of a doll before putting on a show. I didn’t like the thought or the memory, nor anything associated with either.

This dagger was tightly bound to an evil god that had tried to possess me once already. Keeping this thing around would just give him an excuse to try it a second time. I would put the dagger away somewhere safe with the plan to never touch it again. That was the best thing for it.

I tucked the dagger into my pocket and proceeded to the cave. This might be the most difficult part of all.

As I had suspected, the caves were where the Lycans kept their pups. Young as these things were, they looked similar to cute little dogs. They had fluffy gray fur, short stubby faces, and floppy little ears. I couldn't believe that such adorable little things would one day become ruthless murder machines.

I was about to put them down when I thought better of it. It’d be best to let Bridget and Doctor Roswell handle this. Perhaps killing these wolf pups wrong would hurt their soul connections in a way that wouldn’t be good for the humans bound to them.

At the very least, having a pup like this suddenly grafted onto your soul seemed like the sort of thing a person was supposed to prepare for. So I opted to bring them back alive.

For that, I had to recruit some help from Crownhill.

I returned to the Obelisk and asked for people with a working car. A few members of the settlement had made a whole new career out of driving goods around the area or looting the destroyed parts of the city for resources to bring to the Obelisk, so that wasn’t hard.

“Sure, we can take a trip out of the city for you, sir. But isn’t that the direction of the Wolfmen?” A man asked.

“Chaosborn Lycans,” I corrected. “And yes. We’re headed to their old base. But don’t worry, there aren’t much left of them now. I’ve made sure of that.”

After giving everyone a few more reassurances and increasing the Contribution Points on offer for the job, I finally convinced them to haul the pups back. After that, I spent some time scouting the city for a good lab. There was a dog grooming store somewhere in the city, and after a bit of searching, I found it and dropped the pups off there.

They had a money safe in the back office, and I pried open the door just wide enough to stick the Unholy Athame in there before bending the metal shut again. Superhuman strength sure was handy.

I tracked down Doctor Roswell in the settlement and told him the pet store would have to be his new lab. He was initially disappointed, but his expression brightened significantly when he saw the place.

“They must have had a veterinarian working here! I can work with this.” He patted an operation table. “Cutting open humans isn’t too different from cutting open animals. Ah, how exciting! You wouldn’t happen to have brought any of those Lycans back? I could do a few more dissections... practice, you know. Definitely not for my Legendary one-strike decapitation technique, mind you. This batch would be purely for science.”

“Would this help you and Bridget figure out what happened with the pups?” I asked skeptically.

“Er... yes?” Doctor Rosswell smiled hopefully.

I sighed. “Alright, I’ll have someone bring them over.”

There were plenty of dead Lycans to choose from, after all.

***

I left Doctor Rosswell alone to have fun decapitating his corpses. I returned to the same apartment complex I’d left Bridget and Sakura behind in. I’d hoped the two of them would sleep right through my little adventure, but when I entered the room, I smelled fresh food cooking in the oven and the two of them baking in the kitchen.

I didn’t know how they’d got the oven working, but they’d managed it somehow. I was pretty sure it had something to do with the solar panels on the roof. But more importantly, whatever they were making smelled delicious.

“Carter!” They both ran up and embraced me. The two seemed as close as sisters and were wearing nothing more than a pair of cute pink aprons as they embraced me from either side.

“We were worried for you,” Sakura said from one side.

“We watched every party notification...” Bridget explained.

“I’m sorry I worried the two of you.” I wrapped my arms around them both and pulled them into a tight hug. My stomach grumbled then, breaking our reunion.

“So... what are the two of you cooking?” I asked.