Amazon Apocalypse 7: Chapter 82 (Patreon)

"I'm me, ladies. The dragon form has a story behind it. An entire book's worth, in fact."

Jade and Seraphyne glanced at one another.

"You should be careful revealing that form too often, Carter," Seraphyne cautioned me.

"There was an Apocalypse Dragon spotted recently destroying worlds belonging to the Pale Moonlight Sect…" Jade narrowed her eyes a moment. "You should watch out for mating season. I shudder to think of what such destructive creatures do when mating."

For a moment, I thought Jade was on to me.

"Don't worry, I'm not into lizards," I assured both ladies, much to their relief.

We had to put aside any further questions because the ground beneath us crumbled away, revealing the raw Kindling Dimension energy beyond it.

"I think this realm is going to fall apart. We need to get out of here." I gestured to the holes in space nearby.

Jade and Seraphyne agreed. The portal we'd taken here was also collapsing, but all three of us had ways to get back to real space and it was no issue.

Once we were on the other side, I found myself floating in the air. We were lucky to get out when we did, because the pit created by our battle with the undead puppet gods was rapidly filling with lava.

I took to the air to get away from the lava elementals and get a good look around.

"A battle well fought, Carter. You should be proud. Taking down a prospective Transcendent monster before it can become a true threat is no easy feat," Jade said as she traced my path into the sky.

Seraphyne followed close behind her, and soon I had one of them on either side of me.

"Yes, defeating something on the verge of S-Grade should win you a medal. I will have to talk to the other Architect Houses to arrange a ceremony for noteworthy contributions. Maybe we can even get you a unique title for it from the System," Seraphyne said.

The two women glared at one another, clearly back to their old ways already. Whatever unspoken treaty the women had during the recent battle had ended.

But I had other things on my mind. As I looked over the lava-filled and ruined landscape beneath a blackened sky, my mood got grimmer and grimmer.

"My planet is completely trashed. Ruined." I shook my head at the sight of it.

"I've seen worse, truly. I'm sure other parts of the planet are still green and full of life." Seraphyne gave me a tight-lipped smile that seemed more than a little forced.

"The planet will fix itself in a few centuries. Just keep your people in that portable mystic realm of yours until then," Jade suggested.

But I was already shaking my head. "The place looks like it could fall apart at any moment!"

"It's not going to fall apart." Jade placed a soothing hand on my shoulder.

"It takes a lot of damage to destroy a planet. It's hard to do by accident, even with multiple A-Grades," Seraphyne said, placing a soothing hand on my other shoulder.

Before I could respond to either woman, my phone buzzed with a dozen missed updates. Several of them were from Sakura and forwarded straight from Reluna.

I opened the latest one and discovered the results of Reluna's divinations.

"The planet is going to experience a series of catastrophic natural disasters for the next month, then it will explode." I turned to look at the two A-Grade women, who both averted their eyes.

"That many A-Grade dead god corpses must have released more energy than I thought…" Seraphyne muttered.

"It seems your planet is fated to fail in its breakthrough." Jade shrugged.

"The good news is that it can be stopped and the planet saved. But not by me alone. I know I just called you both for help, but I need one more favor. Are either of you—"

"I'll do it," both women said at the same time.

Truthfully, I might just barely be able to save the planet on my own. But I had hoped something like this might happen. With all three of us, we would be able to get this planet into much better shape than with me alone.

"All right, Jade. You mentioned higher-level planets and breakthroughs. What does a higher-level planet look like?" I asked.

"Well, high-level planets have a core. They also have dragon veins spreading throughout the world, pumping mana up. In many ways, they're almost like a living body. Truly powerful planets may even have a conscious world spirit, which is a force to be reckoned with even for gods and peak A-Grades." Jade fidgeted for a moment before withdrawing a crystalline stone made out of jade, covered in hieroglyphs. I examined it and activated the cultivator enchantments contained within, which displayed several diagrams and an explanation of what I was asking about, albeit written in the usual flowery and mystical language of cultivators.

"Anything to add, Seraphyne?" I asked.

Seraphyne frowned. "There are no world spirits in System space because the System took over their role. They are dangerous and capricious entities, and if this planet is precious to you, you should be wary about handing it over to one. This contains instructions for connecting your world directly to the System so it can manage your planet."

She handed over a glowing silver tablet, which displayed diagrams and text in blocky Architect script that said much of what Jade's documents said. Between the two, I had a mostly complete understanding of what I needed to do.

I folded my hands and closed my eyes for a minute in thought. A plan rapidly assembled itself in my mind.

"All right, I think I know what to do. Seraphyne, you should reverse the worst natural disasters occurring across the planet. Buy us more time until planetary destruction, and save some cities if you can. Jade, you said you need channels of power throughout the world? Please start carving them with your sword. Don't worry about connecting them. I'll take care of that. I'll be building the planet's core into something that matches these diagrams."

The two of them nodded and sped off in different directions, leaving me to my task.

I took a few deep breaths. The air wasn't exactly fresh, but it was the closest I'd get to fresh air for the next week or two at least. Then, I dove beneath the lava and used Shadowrealm Stride to push for the planet's core.

Multiple powerful lava elementals tried to stop me, but none were A-Grade and I pushed them all aside, along with all the underground monsters in hidden geothermal ecosystems I passed.

I went deeper and deeper into the planet, though as I did so the problems became clearer. A planet could handle an occasional dead A-Grade, and would even massively benefit from the experience. The Demon Moon and Pale Moonlight Scholar who visited for Adrian had been welcome boons that gave us a brand new moon and a much more fertile planet.

But as Jade suspected, the recent battle between A-Grades had been far too much far too fast. Terranova was barely a few years old in the first place. My planet was like a baby stuffed with a lifetime's worth of food all at once and expected to grow up right away.

I reached the planet's core, rolled up my sleeves, and got to work.

I needed more enchantments and more infrastructure. I started working through the plans Seraphyne had given me, along with what Jade had given me. Each woman had presented me with a solution, but I wasn't going to choose between them. I'd thanked them both for the knowledge, and now I would carve my own path.

At the planet's core, I created a small pocket realm. The server room would be in here, maybe even Governess' main server room, since the only one I had set up was what I'd evacuated from her tower next to my farmhouse.

I installed her in the new server room, which was bare save for a small modified Architect replicator for Governess to make her usual golems to deal with mundane repairs.

When it was all done, I powered the server back up.

"Settling in okay?" I asked Governess.

"While my server was offline, I dreamed I was alive. How strange," Governess said.

"Strange indeed." Governess shouldn't have had any thoughts at all during the brief time her primary server was offline.

I looked for an error log, but found nothing. It must have been her imagination.

"Brace yourself. As soon as I flip this switch, you'll be in charge of directing an enormous amount of planetary energies." I gave Governess a moment to adjust, then flipped the switch.

The switch practically hummed when I threw it. The pocket realm we were in thrummed with energy as an enormous amount of power flowed around the enchantments I'd created to support it.

Once Governess was settled into her new role as artificial world spirit, I left to check in on the surface, as well as the two ladies I'd left in charge of repairing it.

When I reached the surface, the sky was no longer cloudy and patches of light shone through. Many of the great fissures in the ground had been repaired and leveled, though I couldn't tell if it had been by Jade or Seraphyne. Someone had even planted trees over the ruins.

The world was in much better shape than I expected. Not only had the world not exploded, but we'd saved it. With another week for the dust to settle and the radiation to die down, even F-Grades might start coming out of their pocket realms. At that point, I'd have to see how much was left of the world council. I had a hunch pushing through votes was going to get a whole lot easier. Hopefully there wouldn't be as many people competing for the title of Emperor either, now that I had not just saved the world but would need to keep saving it until things finally stabilized.

All in all, I was satisfied.

Jade and Seraphyne were waiting for me just where I'd told them we'd reunite.

"Good job, both of you. I can't thank you enough. My planet will survive thanks to both of you." I bowed my head to both of them.

"It was just a small task. Nothing worth mentioning." Jade twirled her hair.

"I'm sure you'd do the same for me." Seraphyne smiled.

Then, both women spoke at once. "Now about that favor..."

"I need Carter for something very important." Seraphyne growled.

"Not as important as what I need him for!" Jade scowled.

They glared at one another, and my stomach dropped as each of them grabbed one of my arms and started pulling.

Here we go again...

<Note>

End of book 7!

Mostly. I want to do an epilogue with PoV from some of the girls, but may need to wait for book 8 to be outlined. Jade and Seraphyne both need one. But I need to hammer down some details about how much time Carter is going to spend with each of them. And maybe another character too, since I've been doing three PoV scenes in epilogues for the last few books.

Sorry for the delay in posting. I didn't schedule it because I wanted to read it over again, but ended up getting stuck in traffic at the usual posting time.