Amazon Apocalypse 2: Chapter 61 (Patreon)

By the time we made it all the way to the army, more than a few of us had arrows sticking out of our backs—with some folks looking like pincushions. Cyra resembled a porcupine instead of a pincushion, though she seemed to pay them no mind. Most of the arrowheads were merely lodged in her armor, but a few had gone all the way through and poked out of her bare shoulder. She was leaking a lot of blood.

I asked her about it when we finally came to a stop. "Uh... Cyra? Don’t you think we should pull those out and put some pressure on the wounds?" I asked.

Cyra shook her head. "It's fine. Just leave them in. The healers can pull them out. It's a little painful because of how they shift slightly every time I move, but I've lived through worse."

I looked at her skeptically. That was a lot of blood running down her front and her back.

"Don't look so surprised.” She gave her hard belly a pat. "I know I look all slim and lean, but my actual mass is something on the order of twelve tons. The rest of my biomass is stored in another dimension, thanks to my Amazonian racial trait. I'd have to lose a sizeable pond's worth of blood before you needed to worry."

This was the first time I'd seen the Amazonians’ racial trait on full display. Unlike my boost to proficiencies and jobs, the Amazonian racial trait only made its benefits known on the battlefield. But seeing it in action, it seemed pretty damn powerful. It was no wonder these Amazonians could pound back that hellish liquid they called ale. If Cyra's real weight was twelve tons, she could drink an entire bar dry on Earth before getting tipsy.

When we approached the Samhain army, we waved from afar to show that we were allies. A few scouts rode out to get a closer look at us, but soon gave us the all clear to approach. After they did, Kyrina Samhain rode out to meet us.

She was mounted on an a truly enormous horse. Cyra might have been able to sit astride it, but since her mother was of a more normal size, she sat cross-legged atop her massive steed. I was impressed she could keep her balance so easily like that as she galloped toward us.

She hopped off when she got closer and looked like she was going to embrace her eldest daughter until she saw the arrows. Arms still held out, she turned and pulled Myrina forward into an embrace. Myrina had only one arrow sticking out of her, and it was only stuck in her armor so she'd torn it free and tossed it aside before her mother got to her.

"Well done! I'm proud of all of you, but especially Cyra and Myrina. The two of you have proven you are true daughters of the Samhain Clan. Your ancestors would be proud if they were here to see it."

"Grandma was probably spying on us the whole time." Cyra rolled her eyes. "Ever since grandpa gifted her that scrying mirror, I always get the feeling someone is watching me."

Kyrina laughed. "Maybe so. But that doesn't mean you didn't do a great job! And everyone else, I'm thankful for your hard work. I'll have all of you on the rear lines during the siege to rest and recover. You've already earned enough contribution points to sit out the rest of the war if you'd like, though your share of the loot will be even greater if you join us when we take the walls."

"Sounds like fun," Lark cracked her knuckles.

"What about Carter?" Myrina asked. "Our escape would have been a whole lot harder without his help. And with him being on a time limit, he might not be here when we finally take the city. We should get a proper reward for him squared away before he has to leave."

"A good point, daughter.” Kyrina waved me over. “Come, Carter. Let's chat while the others set up camp."

***

Kyrina had always unnerved me a bit, though she'd been nothing but cordial. I'd always chalked it up to her being a whole higher rank than I was. Myrina told me that most people innately sensed when they were in the presence of someone much more powerful than them. It was an instinctual self-defense mechanism of the spirit, as it sought to protect itself.

But another part of that might have been the fact that she didn't look like she was Myrina's mother. Kyrina could easily pass for another older sister, so the motherly smile and hand placed on my shoulder sent confusingly mixed messages to my Earth-raised brain.

She had me take her through the entire mission from start to finish. I wasn't sure if she trusted my account of events more than that of her own daughters, but I gave her my most honest recollection of events from start to finish. She'd remained close beside me the whole time, staring at me with an intensity that had me wriggling in my chair like a kid under the eye of their school’s principal.

I was almost grateful when someone else finally entered the tent. That is, until I saw who it was. Elder Thalassa had arrived.

"What's he doing here?" Elder Thalassa jerked her chin at me, though she stared at Kyrina the whole time.

Kyrina climbed to her feet. "He was reporting to me about how the special mission went. The reports I've gotten so far tell me it was an incredible success, in large part due to the man you see before you."

Elder Thalassa shook her head. "Well, then, I'm sure you've finished with him by now.” She scowled at me. “He can clear out. We'll be having our command meeting in a few minutes to figure out how we are going to crack the defenses of this city."

"Hold, Thalassa." Kyrian lifted a hand. "We haven't finished deciding his reward.”

The Samhain Clan’s matriarch turned back to face me. “Carter, what do you want? I already promised you some warriors to help you secure your growing territory the moment we're able to send people over. Do you want even more warriors? I’m sure that can be arranged. Or would you prefer some of the gold from the Shadefall treasury, assuming anything's left to loot given how long we've been fighting."

I frowned in thought for a moment.

After thinking it through, I realized what I wanted. "You said everybody's getting a share of Shadefall when you take the city. How about this? I want the people—specifically the skilled crafters and laborers who worked in the workshops throughout the city—like those Myrina and I just looted."

Kyrina coiled a strand of her hair around her finger thoughtfully. "I see... no wonder you stepped in to save them. You think your growing settlement needs crafters?"

I nodded.

She shrugged after a moment. "Fine. Consider it done. Most of them would probably have been executed for betraying the Samhain Clan, anyway. Giving them to you is no great loss. Just make sure to keep a tighter leash on them than we did, else they might turn on you, too."

"What? No way!" Elder Thalassa stopped pretending she wasn’t interested in our conversation. "Those workers are crucial to reestablishing the balance of power in this region. I would not have allowed you to execute them, Kyrina. And I certainly won't allow him,” she jabbed her finger at me, “to take them away."

Kyrina looked shocked. "They're just workers, Thalassa. Shadefall always produces more low-level assemblers and technicians. It's a common low-level job. Now, if they were enchanters or the like I would agree that we might want to hang on to them, but if we lose this batch we’ll just have to wait for more to show up looking for work."

"You're too young to know this, Kyrina, but good workers are harder to come by than you think—especially after a war. And the time they put in at the lower levels makes it more likely they'll be able to evolve their Jobs in the future through continued hard work. They are more valuable than you think."

"What did you plan on doing with them?" I asked, arms crossed.

Elder Thalassa scoffed. "I planned to bind them with indentured servitude contracts, of course. Something much firmer than whatever hold the Shadefall Clan had on them. Then I would sell their contracts off to some of the crafting guilds back home. They can always use a bit of extra labor. I have one enchanter in particular in mind. He's quite good, but to truly get the most out of him I'll need extra hands."

"Hmm... tough decision, then..." Kyrina ran her finger across her chin. "Should the crafters go to Carter, or to you, Thalassa?"

Thalassa grinned, thinking she would get her way.

Kyrina shrugged. "It seems to me that looting privileges should set the precedent here. There will be other workers, but the ones from the destroyed workshops will go to Carter. He was the one who took those workshops out, after all."

When Thalassa opened her mouth to argue, Kyrina added. “He took all three workshops out.”

I could hear Elder Thalassa grinding her teeth together. "Fine. If that is your decision as matriarch, then I will abide it."

I slipped out of the tent before I could cause more tension between Kyrina and her Clan’s Elder. I didn't want to spend any more time in the vicinity of Thalassa than necessary. The sharp glare she sent my way as I departed, however, had me worried I'd need to watch my back.

***

After the tense meeting with Myrina's mother, things went far more smoothly. Myrina and Cyra were both having their wounds tended to, but I'd somehow made it through the whole run from the city walls unscathed. That wasn't so much due to skill or the fault of luck, but was thanks to my deflect spell. Plenty of archers had aimed for me, they'd just never hit me. As much as I admired Cyra's ability to shrug off arrows, I greatly preferred my ability which ensured I did not get hit by them in the first place.

The other Samhain warriors had erected a tent for Myrina's entire group, including me, so I headed inside and found it surprisingly well furnished. We had traveled fast, and no medieval army would have been able to outfit their forward base so luxuriously. But bags of holdings made many things possible that weren't possible without them.

The mound of cushions I plopped down onto were stiffer than I liked, but were more than comfortable enough to curl up with a book or ten. Which was exactly what I planned to do. After all, I had quite a haul to work my way through.

I stacked up Mana Manipulation for Dummies, the Enchanter's Cookbook, Thaumaturgical Thermodynamics, and Intermediate Warding. Looking them over, I was half certain this had to be some sort of trick. But no, each of the books were straight up upgrades to my job. I could learn them with no penalties, and my skill as an Artificer would forever be improved after doing so.

With a grin, I checked my loot from the second workshop. That haul was comparatively disappointing. Whoever had stashed the books in that office’s safe had been more concerned about improving the efficiency of their workers than upgrading their own skills. There was only an odd gemstone and a bundle of identical books.

I checked out the odd gemstone first.

Lesser Gift of Resource Enhancement: This is a unique reward granted by the System for completing an important crafting quest. Use it on any resource to increase its rarity one rank. The original item will be consumed, and a one-rank-up substitute will be provided directly from the System. This item is single use and will not work outside of stabilized and fully established worlds of the Arcadia Multiverse. Do not take this item to frontier sectors. This gift will only upgrade Epic rarity items or lower.

The more I stared at the Gift of Resource Enhancement, the more I realized it wasn't actually a gemstone at all. It was like a point of light trapped within a physical structure. Others might have seen it as merely a gemstone, but there was something extra-dimensional about it—something that took my mind back to that run down arcade I'd envisioned myself in when I’d died.

It was an interesting trinket, and one I would need to use before returning home. It was fortunate that I'd obtained so many exotic materials in my recent adventure. Perhaps I would try enhancing one of them.

The other item from the second safe was a bundle of identical copies of the same book.

Enchanter's Assistant Guide: Improves the efficiency of any technician assisting in the assembly and maintenance of arcane tools, equipment, and products.

Perhaps Gobgob could find a use for these. She was an Artificer's Assistant rather than an Enchanter's assistant, though, so she might not get the full benefits of the skill book. The book promised a twenty percent increase to working speed and a commensurate reduction in errors. Even half that would be fine by me, especially if some of the other goblins could use the skill books to get the bonus, too.

There was a journal tucked in the bundle of Enchanter's Assistant Guides. I noted it was different from the others and opened it to find a few pages hastily written in a cramped hand. Like before, it took me a moment for my Forerunner of the System title to kick in and translate the text for me, but eventually I could read it. It was a general guide on how to run a business in Shadefall as an enchanter, though it appeared to be written in three different hands.

The first hand passed on a few basic tips on enchanting, as well as the best products for grinding class levels early on. It seemed to be written from the perspective of a father trying to pass on some last-minute career advice to their son and heir from beyond the grave—from one enchanter to another. At least that’s how I interpreted the first part.

Though I wasn't an enchanter, I carefully noted a few crafting strategies and was genuinely interested in how a successful enchanter in Shadefall had run their business. He actually recommended pushing an item to mastery if it was at least somewhat profitable and perfecting it to finance those early class levels. That wasn't too dissimilar to what I'd been doing with my Mana Bombs.

Interestingly, he operated under the assumption that most of the early levels would be a real resource sink. Apparently there were so many people trying to become skilled enchanters in the first writer's day, that finished enchantments were cheaper than the raw materials needed to make them. Students had been happy to work at a loss, if it meant gaining a few more levels and thus getting a leg up on their competition.

It was an interesting observation, and one that I suspected would eventually come to pass on Earth if I didn't secure a supply of raw materials for all of our crafters. Thankfully, the ruins of our old city had enough scrap metal to keep our crafters busy for a generation at our current rate—though who knew what the future held. Someday, we'd need to get the old mines and refineries operational again.

The subject of the Gift of Resource Enhancement came up as well. Apparently the first writer had earned it many years ago, back when the System itself had commissioned a powerful item from him as a reward to be delivered to a far-off frontier sector.

He had planned on using it to upgrade raw materials for the greatest masterwork he could produce, but had never located a project worthy of the materials. In the end, he'd decided to save the quest reward for his son to use, and there it had sat in the safe.

By the time the second writer put quill to parchment, that all had changed. From the sound of things, he'd never quite lived up to his father's expectations. He hadn’t even been able to craft some of the wondrous magical items his father had been fond of making, and both he and his business were poorer for it. Enchanters had become scarce as times grew tough for them, with much slimmer margins under the Samhain Clan's rule. Apparently, the Samhain's didn't give much status to even the best crafters, nor did they work to secure the materials those crafters required to advance in their jobs.

Between wildly fluctuating materials prices, the limited lifespans of those who did not achieve a racial evolution, and the Samhain Clan's preference for those under their banner to train and become warriors, the shop owner was one of a dwindling number in his generation of enchanters.

Apparently it wasn't uncommon for an enchanter to be summoned to distant cities and expected to make their way through the wilderness between settlements as though they were a high-leveled warrior. Many died on such journeys, much to the continued bafflement of the Samhain Clan's various stewards. Most of the warriors appointed to govern by the Samhain Clan didn't understand that enchanting was a Job that took a lifetime to master.

It was equally clear that they could not comprehend how a skilled enchanter might not ever pass level ten if he or she focused all their efforts on their job and none on their class. To the warriors who ruled this realm, anyone worth noting should be strong enough to handle a few farmers-turned-brigands on the road.

Unfortunately for these traveling enchanters, they were both incredibly weak and incredibly tempting targets due to the wealth they carried in the form of their tools and crafts. For many craftsmen, being summoned to work in another city spelled their probable doom. This second enchanter had saved his father's quest reward, hoping that maybe his own son would be able to use it.

This enchanter had a plan for his son and would do things differently than his father had. He would have his son trained as a warrior, and only when he'd reached level 25 would he have the young man switch over to enchanting. That would make surviving under the Samhain Clan's rule much easier.

Naturally, the process would take decades, and without his father's quest reward he wouldn't have dared do it. But his hope was that with the Gift of Resource Enhancement, the young warrior-turned-enchanter would be able to craft a masterwork, receiving both job levels and money to fuel his craft.

Unfortunately, the father died and passed on his shop before that possibility could come to pass. And the son, having been raised as a warrior, saw little use for the Gift of Resource Enhancement. While the first writer had been a skilled enchanter, and the second enchanter less skilled than his father, the third person who’d added their words to this parchment seemed hardly to have been an enchanter at all. It was clear he knew next to nothing of enchanting. He was just a businessman who knew a few common items technicians could easily make on their own that still sold for a pretty penny. He'd been working hard on tight profit margins to keep it all together.

Most of his wealth came from a willingness to venture into the wilderness and obtain the resources the workshop needed—particularly the cores of monsters between levels ten and twenty-five. The Shadefall family had been buying a lot of those for use in their rebellion against the Samhains, so those had been a particularly good seller.

The whole journal was a bit sad, in a way. It detailed the steady decline of Shadefall from what had once been a thriving metropolis as the trade that made them famous was slowly relegated to the shadows. It also showed the broken dreams of a family slowly losing their passion for enchanting, one generation at a time.

To me, though, it highlighted how other magic craftsmen worked. At first, I’d assumed that all the crafting workshops operated the same way the goblins and I did things, building items in an assembly-line style. But that wasn't the case. Few were willing to part with the detailed knowledge I'd shared freely with Gobgob and the other goblins.

They hadn't bothered with the assembly line process I’d borrowed from Earth’s industrial past. They just planted a few crafters with the right mundane job at a desk or a worktable, and had them hammer out the rough materials needed to make an enchanted item. Then, the master craftsman or chief enchanter would take those materials and finish the enchantment themselves in secret.

Apparently, this strategy was considered advanced enough by the locals to be worthy of praise. I suppose it was, if the enchanters IN other lands had to work completely by hand with no help at all. It sounded like they never got out of the mindset of a single craftsman supported by a host of relatively unskilled laborers they were afraid to raise up for fear they’d just become more competition.

I set the journal aside after reading through it once more. There were tips worth noting from these enchanters’ experiences, but there was one more safe's worth of loot I was looking forward to digging into. I tucked the journal back into the bundle of  Enchanter's Assistant Guides with a grin.

At first, I feared I was in store for another disappointment. Most of the books I’d looted from the third shop were clearly for assistants, as well—though of a higher grade than either of the other two shops. No wonder whoever had owned this last place had put up such sturdy magical security. In terms of volume, their safe was the fullest of the three. They'd likely been more profitable than the other two combined.

There was a book on applying magic to leatherworking, which I figured would be a boon to Sakura, though it was useless to me. I hoped for something that might help Bridget as well, but had no luck there. I was starting to think that I'd simply gotten lucky with the first safe and that I shouldn't expect much from the final batch of loot when I stumbled across my greatest find yet.

Artificing: Book of Mastery

The book’s spine was lined with gold, and the cover was made of a leather that I was certain came from a C-rank monster. Like the Gift of Resource Enhancement, it was likely the most precious artifact the family of wealthy enchanters who had owned the third shop had possessed.

I tried to open the cover, but it wouldn't budge. Try as I might, the pages would not separate, though there was no lock to keep them shut. I didn't realize what was wrong until I checked my System messages.

You have obtained a job upgrade book!

These rare crafting guides allow you to enhance the capabilities of your craft. This book is intended for Enchanters seeking to enhance their potential and become Artificers. As you are already an Artificer, this book will not work for you.

"A pity..." I muttered.

But then I had an idea. I fingered the small gemstone looking Gift of Resource Enhancement. It had said the System would accept it as payment to upgrade any resource. I wondered if this would count as a resource.