Apocalypse Redux

Chapter 177: Interlude Reaction

Habicht sighed, tapped the pen against his chin, and put it back onto the table. This was the fifth time he’d done so in the last hour, and there were several crumpled-up pieces of paper next to him, ready to be burned. He wasn’t even sure what he wanted to write, from detailing everything he knew now to entirely new protocols for the things he knew were coming, but he needed to be doing something.

Isaac Thoma was a time traveler. That explained … everything, really. The confidence, the knowledge, how a regular twenty-year-old could move and fight like a seasoned veteran. The [Heir Class] he’d busted out when he’d stepped fully onto the public stage had been a good bit of misdirection, making everyone think he’d had one before and attributed all that oddness to that fact.

It was both reassuring and terrifying that that hadn’t been planned, just a fortuitous convergence of circumstances. Knowing that manipulating Events on such a grand scale in a way that didn’t come apart at the seams the instant it hit a stumbling block was impossible was reassuring. That the whole world couldn’t be played like a fiddle so easily.

But things would have been so much easier if they had been. Time traveler shows up, drops a few cryptic hints in all the right ears, and the Rube-Goldberg scheme fixes all that is wrong with the world.

Part of Habicht didn’t even want to know any of the things he’d learned, and it might have even chosen to never know if he’d had a choice, but it was a small part. He had a duty, both as a police officer and as a reasonable human being to help prevent his species’ extinction.

And to do that, he needed all the information he could get his hands on. Thing was, he’d gotten the information and now, he was feeling as if he’d looked a Great Old One straight in the face for days on end.

His latest attempt at “writing” had turned into a suggestion for an emergency ordinance with regard to world bosses and ended up utterly useless. It joined the rest of the pile, which was promptly incinerated by his Aspect of the Solar Heart, a seventh Tier fire elemental Aspect.

Annihilated, gone, burnt to nothingness, and not even a scorch mark on the table. Evidence that had been utterly atomized couldn’t be restored by anyone, even the people he worked with. And there were some people here who really shouldn’t have any of this information.

Habicht sighed and put the pen down. This wasn’t getting anywhere. Something was bothering him here, and it just wasn’t leaving him alone.

Just what was the true cost of Isaac Thoma saving the world?

They’d had a conversation about the limits of the law half a year ago, strolling through the woods at the Bodensee. Back then, he’d suspected Isaac had attacked the cult, but it hadn’t really made sense, given how fast that would have required him to have moved. He’d just felt it was necessary given the power dynamics at play and figured that was as good a time as many.

As far as the public knew, Isaac had killed one person, the living bioweapon who was one half of the duo that had nearly wrecked Hamburg.

But Habicht knew there more bodies buried elsewhere. As far as vigilantes went, Isaac was the most restrained one he’d ever met, using lethal force as only a measure of last resort. He had knowledge that no other vigilante had, and the sheer amount of information acquisition abilities he had only added to that.

One kill was official. But the real number … Habicht feared that it might be high enough to make a serial killer blanch.

He’d been willing to forgive and ignore the incident at the Bodensee because their victims had been left alive and they’d just attacked his colleagues using means that one hundred percent qualified as terrorism.

Someone running around killing people to save something … if the thing Isaac was trying to save hadn’t been the world, he’d taken real issue with it.

He wondered how high the real number was, but he really didn’t want to know.

What had seriously helped with the irritation was how Isaac had dropped all of those godawful infosec [Skills]. He’d been able to tell that every word out of the time traveler’s mouth had been the unvarnished truth, to see the great burden and how carefully Isaac acted.

If Habicht hadn’t been able to see those things, if he’d been faced with the same blank wall he’d always been talking to when dealing with Isaac … he honestly wasn’t sure if he could have accepted matters.

He had accepted things, though, and agreed to put everything behind Isaac’s and Bailey’s efforts.

Habicht leaned back in his chair, sighed heavily, shook himself, and grabbed his laptop. The plan was to find acceptable politicians with a good spread across all parties currently in the parliament, bring them up to Level 25, and then have them choose the most “country boosting”-sounding [Class] they had available.

The problem was that some turd had leaked that to the exact wrong kind of politicians, ones that were in the pockets of lobbyists, ones whose closets were overflowing with skeletons, and even a few members of the neo-Nazi party, the NPD.

He sent suggestions to his superiors that highlighted that the people who were involved needed to be trustworthy, and no police officer would work together with literal idiots or people who had a track record of being too self-serving.

No one wanted to end up dead because the politician did something stupid, or deal with the fallout when one of the politicians ended up dead because of a stupid mistake.

He kept going, having to deal with this mess over and over again as more and more requests hailed in. Whoever was responsible for that … Isaac might have been on the right track with the flaming bags of dog shit.

***

Another of the monster’s countless limbs froze and shattered like glass as Yoo-jin’s sword swept through it, but the destruction had merely been incidental as it continued onwards to chop off one of the monster’s countless heads.

The best itself was the final boss of a Level 90 Dungeon, a slavering mass of crab-like limbs and heads reminiscent of a moray eel’s jutting from an indescribably disgusting gelatinous mass that served as its main body, tendrils akin to the toxic tentacles of a jellyfish littering the ground, ready to poison and ensnare anyone who took even a single wrong step.

Normally, the Ocean’s Bastard would have to be fought by a party of five, at least half of which had to have a combat rating of A at the minimum, overridable only be the order of the Guildmaster or two S-Rankers who personally guaranteed for the outcome of the situation.

But he had overridden that rule so he could fight this thing on his own because he needed to get stronger.

Seon Yoo-jin had been an S-Ranker ever since the classification system had first been ratified, as it was needed for someone in charge of an organization like the Dungeon Guild. He had a [Class] mostly focused on combat with the bureaucratical [Skills] being either held by his subordinates or having been taught to him, but that was better than losing a Guildmaster because some high-Level Hunter lost their temper.

Ruling through force, even in part, wasn’t the ideal way to lead, but it was what the situation had called for. He’d had the [Skills] and Stats to be considered one of the strongest people in the country, but now that he knew what was coming down the line, that was nowhere near enough. So now, he was taking full advantage of what his position allowed him to do.

His [Aura of Winter’s Child] swirled around him, parts of the air going so cold that it turned solid, which his [Telekinetic Domain] snatched out of the air and hurled at frozen and therefore fragile monstrous body parts. The Aspect power was the perfect combination with his ability to conjure up projectiles at the drop of a hat.

[Frozen Blade] flowed over the sword in his hand, its size increasing vastly in size. It fell like a titanic guillotine as he swung it in an overhead chop. The instant it cut into his gelatinous foe, it shattered like glass, countless shards shredding the beast’s insides.

The five remaining heads roared and wailed while the still intact limbs shifted upon the body, odd-looking claws moving closer.

Yoo-jin leaped back a split-second before they slammed shut, creating an immense shockwave that would have hurt if he’d been closer.

Another [Frozen Blade] hit further suffused the monster’s body with frost shards, nearby flesh turning solid.

If he’d used some of his heavier attacks like [Winter’s Frigid Grasp], he might even have been able to finish this already, but that wasn’t the point of this exercise. He wanted to boost his [Skill]-Levels, so he’d limited himself to using only a handful of them.

[Frozen Blade] for direct attacks, all the usual passive [Skills] he used, and his latest core [Skill].

[Winter Soul] was one of the few [Skills] that had both active and passive effects. It would always passively increase the strength of all cold-based abilities, which was what he was training using his [Aura]. But once every hour, he could use it to make all the ice and snow he’d created … even colder.

Yoo-jin’s ears popped as parts of the atmosphere that had been too close to his ice liquefied and splashed onto the monster like the world’s coldest shower while the monster froze, both literally and figuratively. Large parts of it had literally turned to ice and what little was still flesh had stopped moving due to its death.

Ocean’s Bastard (Lv. 85) has been slain. 3,000 XP gained

But by the time the kill notification flashed past his vision, Yoo-jin was already leaving, looking over the [Skill] gains from the fight. Beating a monster that strong while leaning on such a basic [Skill] as [Frozen Blade] had boosted it by several Levels despite having already been Level 18 when he’d entered the building.

Now, it had evolved and granted him the ability to coat his blade in a sort of icy “poison” that flew everywhere when he swung it, freezing upon contact with his foes or even within their bloodstream if he cut them. It was a terrifying new ability, but still nowhere near enough.

As he walked out of the dungeon’s entrance, the guard there looked incredibly apprehensive, but Yoo-jin just raised a single questioning eyebrow and the guard did as he’d been asked to every time the Guildmaster had left a Dungeon, no matter how much he disliked it.

The [Geyser] erupted from underneath him, boiling water blasting over him and stripping away all of the muck and grime that had accumulated during the Dungeon run.

“Are you sure you want to keep going, Guildmaster?” the guard asked “This is the third Dungeon you’ve run today.”

“Two more should do it.” Yoo-jin said, “The Infernal Depths are next.”

After all, fighting the fire-based environment with his should push his [Winter Soul] up at least a couple more Levels.

***

“… in the event of a [World Boss] appearance, all personnel must …” Elena sighed and stopped typing. What the hell were they supposed to do when one of those things showed up? Play dead? Run? Die?

She’d had a lot of conversations with a lot of different people, brainstorming scenarios where the [System] could lead. Isaac had always seemed so pessimistic, so lacking in faith in the human race … and then she’d found out he was speaking from experience. Yeah, that happened.

In fact, it was a small wonder he wasn’t perpetually curled up in a corner somewhere, overwhelmed with grief. A testament to his inner strength, perhaps, or maybe he’d already grieved in the other timeline and was now slowly clawing his way back to his old self, she didn’t know. And it wasn’t exactly her place to go looking for answers to that either.

No, what she needed to do was make full use of everything she now knew, all the tricks Isaac had shared and all the gear they now possessed.

There were also about a million different things she needed to plan for regarding upcoming training exercises. When Isaac had put the six of them in a room yesterday, it hadn’t just been his closest allies he’d brought together. No, they’d been a police officer, the leader of one of the strongest leveling organizations on the planet, the greatest researchers in the world, and two people in charge of an elite force that wasn’t directly tethered by any given government. When those people were given a direct line of communication and a reason for cooperation that superseded everything else, a whole multiverse of opportunities opened up.

And now, she was taking full advantage. Small-unit training against police turned monster hunters and their spec ops cousins, delving through the greatest expanse of Dungeons on the planet with South Korean S-Rankers, piles of peak-quality gear for the elites, forged by the world’s greatest blacksmith, many of them being copies of literally legendary pieces of equipment drawn straight from the pages of a storybook by Isaac Thoma’s [Skill].

The helmet Hildegrim, one which made the head functionally immune to damage until the helmet’s damage threshold was surpassed.

The blade Eckesachs, the original had once been hardened in dragon’s blood, though it was posing a bit of an issue because it was a seax, a weapon style no one was trained with. Isaac had promised to drop by to teach those who wanted to use it.

Then there was the insanely sharp sword Mimung, a devastating sword perfect for everyone who preferred using lighter swords and it was capable of cutting metal as if it were tissue paper. Sadly, it was too light to be useable by people who used weight-based [Skills], but there were few enough of those, so it wasn’t that big of an issue.

All of these pieces of gear were some of the strongest in the world despite the [System] consistently slapping them with the “inferior copy” label. And they’d just been gifted those.

They’d have a group of absolute elites who weren’t going to be kept out of any given nation-state on the basis of being foreign military, which was why Germany’s GSG-13 would be limited in how effective it could be outside of Germany.

But none of that would be enough to ensure they’d be able to beat a bloody [World Boss].

Thing was, if a creature of that strength got loose and wasn’t defeated, it would continue to kill people until either it died, or humanity did. Waiting for someone else to kill it wasn’t a viable option.

“In the event of a [World Boss] summoning, three-quarters of all defensively-specked members will engage and slow it down alongside the appropriate number of crowd-control specialists, healers, and other supporters.

“All individuals not involved in delaying the monster will proceed to Level at maximum sustainable speed using all available methods, evolving as soon as possible without regard to optimizing power gain.”

It was a plan that would cause one hell of an issue if it ever had to be implemented, but at that point, the issue would be the least of their problems.

So now she had the beginnings of a plan for how to deal with [World Bosses]. One issue “accounted for” a million more to go.

Issue two: how to stop people from dropping dead from the new training regimen Arthur had just implemented?

***

“Again.” Arthur barked, much to the displeasure of the people in front of him. Too bad, they were preparing for the apocalypse here, and Armageddon wouldn’t care if they were tired.

“Are you sure they can handle that?” Elena whispered into his ear using a spell “I mean, it’s not like they can help with anything if they’re dead on their feet. Or just plain dead.”

Arthur sighed. She had a point, one hand. On the other, there was an entirely different issue of how everyone still needed to be able to deal with issues even when utterly exhausted.

He’d had his hands clasped behind his back and used this to show her two fingers without letting the people being trained spot it. Two more attempts beating the kaiju being simulated by a [Trainer] while utterly exhausted, and if they were successful, that meant they were ready. At least as long as the monster didn’t outpower them by a huge margin.

That was the problem, wasn’t it? Level too quickly and recklessly and become a part of the problem, level too slowly and be unable to do anything about it.

Either way, Arthur he’d be ready, willing to take on all comers, no matter how strong they were or how weak he was compared to them. He was going to be fighting monsters, the idiots who’d summoned them, or the nihilistic bastards who’d wrecked Hamburg.

He’d keep fighting until he no longer could, no matter what it cost, no matter what situation he ended with in the end.

And while he didn’t expect the people around him to go quite that far, there was also no way he was going to let them be unprepared for what would happen.

Come hell or high water, Camelot would be here, ready and waiting for an enemy to beat.

The drill ended with the trainees’ loss, and he set it up once again. One person tripped over their own feet, a second dropped their weapon only to collapse when they tried to pick it up and a third simply glared at him instead of moving.

“[Royal Boon: Invigoration]! Come on, one last time guys!” Arthur roared, the [Skill] visibly impacting all of the exhausted individuals milling around and giving them the energy for one final round. If they kept going after that … let’s just say that Camelot’s [Healer] was someone whom even Arthur feared and leave it at that.

The final round ended up with a human victory, and the trainees staggered off the field.

Arthur stayed long enough to see them all go, then turned and headed back to his quarters, only to be met with a stormy-faced Elena.

“Have you gone insane?” she said in that terrifyingly emotionless way that he so dreaded. That always meant a probably deserved but still very uncomfortable lecture was coming.

Arthur just sighed and hung his head “Probably.”

“Are you going to do this all over again tomorrow?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“What was that supposed to achieve?” she pressed further.

He shrugged and then it was her turn to sigh.

“No more torturous training sessions, ok? Actually, no more training sessions until you’ve calmed down, period.”

Arthur just nodded mutely and when she stepped to the side to allow him to pass, he headed right in and collapsed into his chair.

She was his best friend and she understood him in ways no one did. But even she couldn’t help here. No one could help, or even really understand what was weighing on him here, except maybe Isaac.

Before, he’d felt like there was another Arthur, the one from history, standing behind him and judging his every move. But then, Isaac had told him off the other timeline, and now, he had two specters looking over his shoulder. How could anything hold the candle to both history, and the man who’d kept the British isles safe almost to the bitter end?

Yet the insurmountable odds before him, the foes both out in the open and those sharpening their knives in the dark, that part didn’t faze him in the slightest because win or lose, he’d go down swinging.

He’d do everything he could to save everyone, whether they supported him or not, whether he knew them or not, and he’d never stop trying.

He’d …

His train of thought was suddenly interrupted by a little ‘ding’ from the [System], announcing that he’d received another [Class] choice for his 4th Evolution. He’d been stuck at Level 100 for weeks now, unable to pick something, but now, that list had changed.

New Class choice available: Arthur Pendragon’s Heir