Amazon Apocalypse 2: Chapter 71 (Patreon)

"Nom nom?" Chuck asked, head tilted askance. "That's an odd one. You sure?"

I nodded. "Don't worry, you wont' miss it."

While I waited for everyone to get into position, I pulled out my car shade wire hoop and made a circle. Then, I entered the first level of Mania.

Your Mania has increased to level 1: Dissonance.

The world grows distant, and your mind fills with the allure of forbidden knowledge. The effectiveness of all Scholar of Forbidden Knowledge spells and abilities is increased by 20%

"You're up, Sharky," I whispered.

Shadows swirled within the circle as the enormous ghostly form of Sharky, complete with mouth tentacles, took shape. When he came roaring out of the circle, I jumped on his back, my spells circling overhead as my summons flew me into battle.

"NOM NOM!" Sharky bellowed.

His voice shook the nearby building, drawing heads out of hiding to see what had made such a tremendous noise. The people of Crownhill weren't soldiers. That was true for both my militia and for the people of Crownhill County Prison. Poking your head out of cover to look around was generally a bad idea anywhere bullets might be flying. Or in this case, spells.

I scored six head shots with that opening barrage of Mana Bolts—most of which were kills.

You have killed 4 x Bandit Snipers (Level 21)

Your One Versus Many proficiency has increased to Level 20!

Your Spell Sniper proficiency has increased to Level 5!

Your race, Homo Acceleratus, has gained a level!

Your class, Scholar of Forbidden Knowledge, has gained a level!

I swiped aside the kill, skill, and level notifications.

"They're here! Shoot him!" shouted one of the bandits from where he hid. They turned, heads sticking out of doors as they reorganized themselves from lying in wait to getting ready for a fight.

Jumping off Sharky's back, I took cover as soon as I felt Deflect activate. While I could survive getting shot just fine, I enjoyed getting poked full of holes about as much as the next guy—which was to say, not at all.

Sharky, on the other hand, didn't mind the incoming bullets in the slightest. As a tentacle-mouthed ghost shark that devoured the souls of the living, he was perfectly happy to soak up some lead if it meant getting a snack.

"NOM NOM!"

Sharky flew right over the balcony our enemies were using as cover, phasing straight through the wall as he did so. Screams followed, though that only served to tell Sharky exactly where they were hiding. Tentacles lashed out, grabbing wrists and ankles and dragging them toward the ghost shark's waiting maw.

"Oh god! Monster attack!"

"Kill it! Kill it! Kill it now!"

"Aaaaaaaarghhh!" someone screamed as phantom teeth gnawed them to shreds.

Back here on Earth, my level was quite a bit higher than most people's, so Sharky was correspondingly stronger, as well. He'd been a menace back on Themyscira, but now he was a ghostly juggernaut of destruction and terror. With him soaking up all the bullets and my Deflect spell active, I jumped out from hiding to join the fray—just as the other teams attacked from all sides.

I fired off a few more spells, though I held myself back to support our flanks. I wanted to be ready to step in and reinforce my allies so that I wouldn't risk losing any militia. Our last fight had been surpassingly casualty-free thus far, and I wanted things to stay that way.

The other teams were making steady progress off to either side. I spotted Rick exchanging wary blows with a tall brute wielding a tire rim on a chain. Chuck had three new bullet holes in his chest, but he stood over a dead, scar-faced sniper all the same. I spotted six more bandits all sporting arrows sticking out of their chests. Most of the arrows looked like the ones Kerrie kept in her quiver.

Frank and Terrance fought back-to-back on the other side, each providing cover for the other as they smashed open a window and made a second entrance. Marcus and Kyle dove through it, rolling to their feet inside the building before they attacked the suddenly besieged bandits.

Sharky was a whirlwind of death and destruction—or at least I assumed he was, because I got another level up notification.

Your class, Scholar of Forbidden Knowledge, has gained a level!

I debated following them inside when I heard a roar even louder than Sharky's battle cry. Someone managed to shove my summoned specter back and was on the verge of dispelling him entirely. Anyone who could do that couldn't be an ordinary person. I suspected it was time for me to meet one of the other Three Kings.

I turned as a figure jumped down from the second story window, cracking the pavement as he did. He was a big man, head and shoulders taller than the other bandits I was fighting. His expression was as cold as ice, and he held a long steel rod in one hand. It was a little longer than he was tall and looked to have been torn from a prison cell wall, then sharpened by dragging it along concrete walls and floors until it came to a point. It was a crude way to make a spear, and the result had to be incredibly heavy.

Apparently it worked well enough for the wielder.

The man himself had copper skin, with a short-trimmed beard that might once have been neat. Tattoos crawled along his muscled arms and over his clean-shaven head. I examined him.

Bandit Flame Spear Master (Level 42)

His level settled it. This had to be one of the Three Kings. The only one higher level than them on this shard was me.

"Are you Knuckles or Caesar?" I called out.

The man turned to me robotically, hand still wrapped around his makeshift spear. He didn’t reply, remaining silent.

"Not going to answer?" I asked as I glanced behind him. "Your people are dying. Mine are wiping them out. Surrender and we can end this."

He still refused to speak. Fortunately, some of his subordinates were shouting to one another.

"Caesar's got him! Let's get out of here while he buys us time to escape!" one of the bandits said.

I smiled. "You're Caesar, right? I’ve got to say, there are lots of rumors floating around about you—I've heard several of them myself. You're supposedly the most mysterious of the Three Kings.” I paused. “You know, I couldn't even get a proper description of you."

I looked him up and down. "You don't seem so mysterious to me."

The man called Caesar remained silent.

I found that odd. Was he mute… or just dense? If either were true he'd have had a hard time amassing much of a following no matter his level. Something about his eyes seemed off to me, too. They were cold and distant, like he was staring straight through me.

Between dense and mute, I was now guessing dense. That didn't stop him from lunging at me, though, and he was fast—very fast. His spear flicked forward in a flash of crimson energy. He might have gotten me, if I hadn't been prepared to warp step away.

Activating Arcane Blade, I extended the reach of my Sword and kept it between me and my opponent, raising it like a shield to keep him at bay.

Caesar was clearly a melee class and, while I wasn't too shabby with a sword, I'd learned during my recent training that I didn't want to bet my life on beating a melee specialist in a melee fight unless I absolutely had to. With Eldritch Augmentation, I might be able to manage it, but the sword for me was more of a way to survive an engagement long enough to get clear again.

I had ten levels on Caesar. I should win this fairly straightforward fight. I was surprised Caesar had chosen to take it, at all. I had thought I'd have to fight both him and Knuckles at once. Something was going on here that I wasn't seeing. But at the same time, this was too good an opportunity to pass up. If I eliminated Caesar, taking care of Knuckles would be a simple matter, and this shard would be as good as won.

I dodged his next charge as his heels churned the pavement beneath him. The man sparked small fires in his wake as he zipped forward as fast as a lightning bolt. I jumped aside once more, and our end of the battlefield went up in flames. We engaged twice more, him sweeping his spear wide and me staying out of range while peppering him with a number of spells.

I spared some attention for the battlefield, where my allies were cutting down the rest of the bandits. Some of them fought and screamed, but a curious few stood their ground despite the forces arrayed against them. Their faces were as expressionless as Caesar's, and—like him—they fought silently and just as fearlessly. I watched one get his arm sliced clean off by Kyle, only to keep hacking away at Chuck with the other arm.

I activated Soulchain Nexus. The extra Corrupting Marks and resulting Lifesteal would make handling Caesar far safer, while also keeping my companions out of danger. I ducked and wove between buildings while Caesar attempted to chase me down. Soulchain Nexus took some time to activate, but by jumping from one building to another I confused Caesar long enough to channel it.

He was surprisingly bad at predicting where I was going to turn up next—sort of like an NPC driven by a primitive decision matrix and an inability to find his target without direct line of sight.

Sharky took out the first person I'd marked with Soulchain Nexus, assisted by a few of my Mana Bolts. Three similar kills later, the rush of temporary stat points was exhilarating. Blood rushed through my veins and power filled my limbs. I was stronger than ever—strong enough to take on the world.

Or, at the very least, one taciturn spear man.

I jumped from the top of one building to another, all the while firing off spells and truly taking Caesar's measure. He was fast and good with his spear, but that was it. His class seemed pretty straightforward—I could guess just about everything it gave him from the name.

He had fire, a spear, and he was dangerous with both.

When he swung that metal bar around, I had to ensure I stayed well clear of it. Fire would sprout from its tip and spray down everything in all directions. The area of effect class skill gave him an effective combination of melee and ranged attacks.

I'd already seen his movement ability, made apparent by a flash of crimson and then a huge lunge. He had several defensive abilities, as well, primarily centered around spinning his spear in front of him so fast it formed an impenetrable steel shield. But he couldn't block from two directions at once, which was how I kept layering on Corrupting Marks.

My fancy new staff trailed behind me in the air as I suspended it with telekinesis. That new ability was a job skill, so it wasn't useful in direct combat—but it worked just fine for keeping my hands clear. The ebony, eye-covered tree was awkward to hold, so I found it much easier just to leave it dangling in the air behind me like an ominous portent of doom.

Unless Caesar was holding something back or keeping an ace up his sleeves that I hadn't seen yet, I had him on the ropes. I had plenty of mana left, but he was starting to move slower. The man was moving slow enough that soon I’d be able to cripple him and end the fight.

When I activated Exploit Weakness, it highlighted Caesar's shoulder joints. They were exposed the moment he lunged forward, and already wounded from previous spells. A few more Mana Blasts in the same location and I could cripple his arm. Being down a limb would make wielding that heavy steel spear considerably harder, and the fight would probably be over for him. I could even finish him off with my Arcane Blade, if I wanted to.

I summoned five Mana Bolts and they struck all at once. The five Mana Bolts each burned thin holes into Caesar's arm, but it was the Eldritch Blast I followed them up with that shattered his humerus. His right arm dangled at his side, broken and useless.

"You're finished!" I shouted at Caesar. "If you've got any last words, say them now! I won't—" I didn't have time to finish before Caesar was on top of me.

He kept ahold of his spear with his left hand, only guiding its point with his nearly useless right. The man threw himself forward with reckless abandon.

I was shocked. The pain he had to be feeling from his right arm had to be excruciating. Broken shards of bone would be scraping together within his flesh with every movement. How was he even still on his feet?

Then I remembered what I'd learned from Cromwell. The reason Knuckles and Caesar weren't under Cromwell's thumb, was because they could both resist Cromwell's favorite pain spell. With a pain tolerance like the one on display, it was no wonder Caesar had shrugged off Cromwell's power. The silent spearman looked like he couldn't even feel his right arm.

I was surprised enough by Caesar's apparent immunity to pain that I had to jump clear of his next spear thrust. I'd been ready with Arcane Blade to finish him off, so while leaping backwards, I activated Eldritch Augmentation to deflect his spear.

"Okay, you're tougher than I thought..."

"Carter, should we—?" Frank began, but I waved him off.

"Stay back! This guy is level 42! Let me take care of him."

My allies were nearly finished, having killed off or in the process of arresting the survivors from our counter-ambush. If I needed the help, they could no doubt swarm Caesar and bring him down with raw numbers. But doing that would guarantee casualties, as fighting with numbers often did.

No, Caesar was my opponent. And a tough fight or not, I would finish him off. After all, so far he hadn't done more than singe my clothing. I danced around him a little longer, this time disabling a leg.

He stumbled to one knee, temporarily disabled.

Sensing my chance when I saw this, I activated Eldritch Augmentation once again. This time, I dove within his reach while he was crippled and swung my magically enhanced and lengthened blade before using Warp Step to blink back to safety.

Caesar lurched forward, the foot of his good leg now just a bloody stump.

But even that didn't stop him. He turned to face me, standing on his ragged and bloody stump. His broken arm, crippled leg, maimed stump, and dozens of spell wounds didn't seem to matter to him in the slightest.

"Alright, now that's just creepy..." I muttered before raising my voice and calling out to him. "What are you? Some sort of living zombie?"

Like before, Caesar did not respond. Standing there bloody and maimed, he seemed that much creepier. Earlier, I'd admired his pain tolerance, but now I wasn't really sure what to make of him.

It hardly even felt like I was fighting a man at all at this point. This felt more like battling a robot. Or a puppet on invisible strings.

Everyone else had finished their part of the fight, and the ambushes had been countered. I needed to deal with Caesar—and quick—before my subordinates decided to lend me a hand, despite my orders.

"Okay, now is really your last chance for some final words..."

As expected, Caesar didn't respond.

I clenched my fist and detonated my Corrupting Marks. Enormous amounts of damage wracked Caesar's body, and he was on the verge of coming apart at the seams. Even then, he continued to move.

But I had just the spell for that.

I cast Disassemble. What little innate mana Caesar had left wasn’t enough to resist the spell, and I pulled him apart. Bones flew into one pile, flesh, muscle, and organs into another. Soon his remains had been torn asunder, sorted, and neatly organized just like any monster's. It was an ignoble end for what had been one of the fiercest human fighters on the shard.

Your class, Scholar of Forbidden Knowledge, has gained a level!

"Whoa! Carter, you took him down!" Kyle clapped and cheered. "And hardly even got a scratch, too!"

It seems I'd gathered a bit of a crowd towards the end of the fight.

"Three Kings?" Marcus scoffed. "There's only one King in Crownhill, and he sure as hell isn't that Knuckles guy."

I chuckled and wiped my hands clean on a cloth from my bag of holding. Taking off Caesar's leg had splashed my arms with a bit of blood. "Alright, alright… this isn't a show." I waved the gawkers off.

To them, the fight had probably happened in the blink of an eye. Caesar had been a higher level than anyone here except me. Most of these people had never seen a fight at our level before, and were understandably impressed.

During my stay on Themyscira, I'd forgotten what watching a high-leveled fight had felt like. Kyrina had seemed amazing to me not that long ago. I doubted I had her effortless grace and blinding speed, but it was nice to see how impressed the others were with me. Still, one can only be stared at for so long.

After cleaning myself up, I made my way over to where the militia had lined up our new prisoners. "Terrance, I see you have some new prisoners… I've got a few questions to ask them."