Chapter 66
Amy
Standing between hundreds of screaming humans and thousands of green-skinned monsters, I steadied myself for another fight. From the moment I got here, I have been bouncing from fight to fight, doing everything in my power to protect those who do not have the strength to protect themselves.
For the better part of the day, I stood back to back with the demon-looking woman who had taken Ryker away from me. I had never thought of him in a romantic kind of way, but it was hard not to be jealous of the otherworldly beauty I fought beside. I was the shield to her sword. Every time I had enough mana, I would activate my ability, and my skin would harden, taking on a gray stone-like appearance. With the ability active, I felt invincible. I waded into a throng of 7-foot-tall green-skinned monsters. They ineffectively smashed their primitive weapons against my outer shell, but none of their attacks could cause much damage. I raised my shield gauntlets and caused as much damage as I could.
After I had gotten the tusked bastards' attention firmly on me, Tetra gracefully danced through their lines. Every enemy she passed died almost instantaneously. She started the conflict by isolating three of the orcs, as she called them, and systematically tested their defenses, finding their vitals. From that point on, she never wasted an attack and brutally and efficiently dispatched countless of their number.
After acting as a punching bag for hours on end, the orcs stopped advancing, and eventually, they retreated. All around me, the ground was slick with the blood of man and beast. I could barely walk without stepping atop one of my fallen humans. So much death and destruction. I had thought I had gotten over my revulsion, but the second I found a moment of peace, I turned and vomited violently. After emptying my stomach of all its contents, I stood, looked at Tetra, and asked, “What's the plan?”
Turning in my direction, she continued cleaning her two-foot-long curved blade with a scrap of cloth she had taken off a corpse. Looking into my eyes, she said, “Now that the fight is over, we need to move the survivors and get them as far away from this battlefield as possible. This much death will attract countless scavengers and other dangerous beasts.”
“Right now? Most of these people are regular humans. They have been fighting, running, and barely surviving for hours. They need rest!”
“I'm afraid that's impossible. If we leave now, we will still lose people to the beasts that come looking for the dead. The longer we stay, the more we will lose.”
As if Tetra’s words were those of a fortune-teller, a blood-curdling scream could be heard nearby, followed by a bestial roar like nothing I had ever heard before. I reluctantly nodded my head and said, “Fine, but I won't just leave these people to their fate without lending a helping hand.”
“I wouldn't dream of it. You go left, I’ll go right.” Tetra pointed to a line of trees a few miles in the direction of the sun like orb, then said, “We can herd these people to that forest. We can use the cover from the trees and recover while we figure out what to do next.”
I gave her a thumbs up and took off jogging to the perimeter of the survivors. It took me longer than I thought it would due to the unbelievable number of people we left. I ran for miles in one direction, spreading the word as I went, pointing towards the light and trees. Slowly, the people began to shuffle in that direction.
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More awakened had taken to running the perimeter with me. After a few hours of running back and forth, corralling the mass of humanity, we now had hundreds of awakened overlapping one another back and forth, creating a roving defense against any predators that wanted to cross my pack of defenders and attack our herd.
Minutes turned into hours, then the hours turned to days as we pushed them. Stopping every 12 hours, just long enough for the unawakened majority to sleep. After four days of this grueling pace, we had gotten everyone left inside the trees. Losing an additional 100,000 people to lingering wounds, opportunistic hunters, and exhaustion.
Finding Tetra, I plopped down onto the ground next to her and leaned against the trunk of a massive tree. Taking a deep breath, I said, “I don't know how much longer I can keep this up before I collapse.”
Tetra gave me a withering look, then said, “Selfish girl, not only are you awakened but you also evolved. If you think you have it hard, imagine how most of these people are faring. They haven't even had the opportunity to awaken yet.”
“I know that! I’m just saying this is not a pace that we can sustain! Something has to be done so we can rest.”
Scowling, Tetra broke eye contact with me and looked off to her right, then said aloud, “Red, access her nanobots and make yourself visible, I need her in on our conversation.” Tetra closed the distance and placed her bare hand on my shoulder. I felt an itching feeling under my scalp, then I heard a familiar squeaky voice behind me. I turned around quickly and saw the tiny smiling form of Red standing there.
“Red! How are you here right now?”
The little A.I. bounced from foot to foot happily, then said, “I decided to move into Tetra’s body like mom did for Ryker.”
Looking from Tetra to Red, I blinked twice, then said, “Like mom? Like Ryker? WHAT!”
For the next hour, Red recounted all the events that led up to now. Starting from her creation, all the way till Ryker decided to bring everyone inside the Pyramid. I sat there dumbly listening in disbelief to the chain of events that placed that meathead Ryker in a position to decide the fate of humanity. For a long time I wasn't sure if I was angry or proud at what he had done but ultimately decided he was right to effectively take us off the board. Since anything inside the Pyramid was off-limits to the empire. After sitting in silence for five minutes, I looked at Red and Tetra and asked, “Ok, I think I have the gist of it. What do we need to do in order to secure this many people?”
Red stepped forward and gestured in a circle around her, then said, “While traveling to this location, I was able to approximate how many humans we had in our charge. Turns out we have roughly 115 million adults left in our group, give or take 80,000.”
My eyes bulged at the number and said, “How is that possible? How can we possibly take care of that many people?”
Red lowered her head slightly, then said, “I have calculated that in order for us to house this many people, we will need to secure 20 square miles at the minimum. Upon arrival at this location, Tetra was able to climb high enough in the canopy to survey the area, and we found a suitable location. 10 miles deeper into the forest, there is a valley between two peaks that has plenty of space for these humans to settle. With that location, we would only need to build one 3-mile-long wall to keep it secure.”
The casual way she mentioned building a wall 3 miles long was jarring, but the plan was sound. I scratched some dry blood off my chin then asked, “What about food? There is no way we can gather enough resources for all of these people to survive long enough for us to be able to HOPEFULLY find edible plants that we can farm at a scale to feed 115 million people.”
Placing her hands on her hips, Red gave me a questioning look and said, “Did you not speak with the Pyramid before you got teleported here? Every person here should have gotten some points for surviving that battle, not to mention those that fought off those orcs. You should be flush with them. I checked my shop earlier, and the food is cheap.”
I froze in place and looked Red up and down then asked, “Wait a second. You have a shop?”