Apocalypse Redux

Chapter 209: The Most Dangerous Catch

The world did not make sense.

Isaac did not make sense.

He was in a position he was strangely unqualified for, on paper, yet he could do all the things he needed to, yet he had no idea just where he’d learned it.

However strange the situation might be, this time around, he’d ignore it. He’d tried and failed to resist the urge to return his “lost” knowledge for ten days and thousands of attempts, and while he didn’t know exactly what had happened each time, the frustration of his thousandfold failure was the foremost thing in his mind at the moment.

Therefore, no matter how much every part of his body might be screaming at him to end this unnatural state right this instant, he managed to avoid compromising his current state and began to think.

People were, well, people. There were a lot of good ones, like the people he surrounded himself with on a daily basis, and a lot of less-than-good ones, ranging from assholes to criminals to people whose stupidity was so great that they might as well have been malicious.

But did the bad outweigh the good? Would the bad destroy the world?

The clearest of Isaac’s memories were the ones from the [System], and one specific example jumped out at him. His old boss “Mr. Scott”. A small little man who’d let the tiny amount of power afforded to him as a middle manager go to his head and was the prime example of how incompetent idiots could rise to positions of power and stayed there until they fucked up so majorly that even the most absent and lazy superior noticed that this incarnation of incompetence shouldn’t even have been in charge of a toilet stall, let alone anything else.

Then, there were the greedy people who gave up long-term happiness for themselves and others in exchange for a tiny amount of short-term gains.

Greed, incompetence … and superpowers. What a wonderfully dangerous combination.

Isaac wasn’t sure what had made him as pessimistic as he was being right now, and that was disturbing, but even the innocent nineteen-year-old who’d thought that Mr. Scott was an anomaly was convinced that the world was screwed.

Monster hordes that even the greatest [Archmages] couldn’t face as they’d run out of mana well before they ever even made a dent.

[Raid Bosses] that constantly summoned minions through portals.

[World Bosses] who they only knew had been summoned because of the [System] messages and that could only be tracked by the devastation they left behind.

Alright, that was enough, now he had to know how he knew!

… he’d lasted a full two minutes, all in all. A pathetically short amount of time by most people’s standards, but nevertheless a personal best. And something he could build on. He might have already figured out some things, but he still wanted to get more out of it. That was a situation for later, though, the next time he used the [Blessing of Innovation].

Right now, it was time to go fishing for the most dangerous catch … of Tier 6. The Tiers after that were incredibly dangerous, even when the monster was basically just a jumped-up fish dinner.

But despite the rather silly name and comparatively low Tier, the Salmon of Wisdom was plenty nasty.

It had taken a long time for them to get ready to confront an aquatic [Raid Boss]. Fighting one in a way that didn’t end with the monster’s death being counted as environmental damage required it to have enough space to move freely. In other words, a major body of water.

Except most natural bodies of water that were big enough were already in some form of use, had nearby homes, or were connected to other bodies of water and therefore risked the damn thing getting away from them. Which meant that an artificial lake needed to be constructed.

Now, digging a big hole in the ground and adding water was easy enough, taking maybe a week if done by people with the appropriate [Skill]set, but creating an arena that wouldn’t turn into a mud pit two seconds into the battle was a great deal harder when you were facing a hydrokinetic monster. Sure, they might not know if the Salmon had hydrokinesis, but it was a fair guess that a fish would be able to do at least something with water.

Isaac left his perch on a hill that overlooked the artificial lake and slowly walked down to the preparation area.

High Level [Soldiers] were checking their gear one final time, [Mages] were pre-casting every spell they could, the Party system was being set up, a dozen separate and overlapping Parties ensuring that a single death or severe injury wouldn’t leave them all up shit creek, and [Artillery Officers] were checking the firing arcs of their weapons.

All in all, this shouldn’t be that big of a deal. A Tier 6 [Raid Boss] had a maximum Level of 45, which meant that the highest-Level people here were almost triple its Level. Hell, there wasn’t a single person within twenty kilometers who wasn’t at least at the Third Evolution. Sure, with a [Raid Boss], that wasn’t saying as much as it would with a normal monster or another human, but it was still a significant power difference.

If it had been up to Isaac, he’d have gone after this thing with just the team, but if he’d tried that, there’d have been hell to pay. Even with their reputation, [Raid Bosses] were nothing to fuck around with.

“Final check, sound off by unit.” Brigadegeneral Horn ordered. He’d been in charge of the military side of the Hamburg incident and managed to use the “success” in that endeavor to put himself in charge of the [Raid Boss] summoning project.

“Artillery, ready.”

“Bulwark units, ready.”

“Magic support, ready.”

And so on. A dozen different units, each reporting their readiness to engage in combat.

One of the oddest summoning circles ever built activated, a massive assembly of pool noodles floating in the center of the lake bursting apart in a shower of water droplets and plastic fragments as a truly titanic salmon manifested, twenty-five meters long.

The water eruption looked rather normal at first like any lake would after an object larger than a blue whale had been dropped into it. Just displaced liquid flying through the air … it was only when the water’s arc stretched unnaturally long that it became clear something was very wrong.

When the splashes of water shaped into spears, everyone realized that something was very wrong.

And then, they compressed something that was literally impossible. Water, hell, all true liquids were functionally incompressible, it certainly should not have been able to, from one second to the next, only take up a tenth of its original space.

Beneath the crown of water spears, beneath the surface of the lake, mana was gathering, shaping into hundreds of mana darts, making the salmon look like a titanic, elongated, pufferfish.

But the first salvo was already in the air while the fish’s attacks were still being shaped.

Depth charges detonated by the hundreds, having been emplaced before the monster had been summoned. The countless shockwaves hammered into the monster, the water transmitting them wonderfully. The “pop” of the swim bladder being destroyed could be heard even over the sound of the artillery firing.

Countless shells hit the water beside the fish or exploded as they hit the surface of the lake, but the vast majority hammered home, tearing the fish’s skin and dyeing the water red.

Of course, the Salmon wasn’t about to let itself be blown apart without fighting back. The spears were launched like bullets, blasting through the air at speeds that most people couldn’t follow and hammered into the surrounding land.

Shields flicked up, many blocking projectiles, but more shattered like glass against the [Raid Boss’] opening salvo.

A split second the hyper-compressed water impacted, the force keeping it in its unnatural state ended, causing the projectiles to explode.

In places where the original spears had missed, the result was merely an explosion of mud that drenched all those nearby.

But when the spears were stuck in artillery pieces or, gods forbid, people, the result was far … messier. The shards from wrecked machines weren’t moving quickly enough to inflict any real damage, thankfully, but the three unfortunate souls with water suddenly erupting from their wounds were in real trouble. Liquid forced into punctured blood vessels, the abdominal cavity, the lungs … the only reason they lived for more than a few seconds was one of the [Brigadegeneral’s] [Skills].

Magic swept away the injured to the healers, shields were dropped to open up the lines of fire again, and the formation was shifted around to account for a repeat performance of the original strike.

Mana-forged needles burst from the lake in a vast dome, hammering into shields and tearing into anyone and anything that wasn’t properly protected. The second attack had been comprised of projectiles that were far smaller, but infinitely more numerous.

The damage to the ground alone had been devastating, hard-packed dirt turning into a loose, churned-up mess that would trip up anyone.

As for the side of the lake itself, the heavy concrete reinforcements ensured that nothing broke away. Having an entire hillside slide into the lake would have been … bad, to say the least.

With its opening attacks launched, the Salmon began to move, dodging attacks and sweeping its tail up and out of the water, aquatic projectiles manifesting out of the resulting spray and inflicting even more damage to the people on the outside. As it zig-zagged through the water, it continuously launched mana attacks, salvos of mana darts with the occasional larger spear thrown in, forcing people to either erect shields or hastily dodge.

The real issue was that the water represented one hell of a barrier, slowing down projectiles, cooling down fireballs and the light refraction was wreaking holy havoc upon their targeting. Sure, the artillerymen knew to account for that, but it was still not easy to deal with a situation so entirely different from what one had trained with.

“Should melee engage yet?” the question came for the third time, but Isaac’s answer was a resounding no. This particular [Raid Boss] was best dealt with at range, its entire moveset built for keeping enemies at a distance. And with how well shockwaves were transmitted through the water, having people engaging in melee combat would preclude them from using any artillery.

But they were well on their way to getting to a point where they could engage for the coup de grace. Without an intact swim bladder, the Salmon had to use its hydrokinesis to compensate for the loss of buoyancy control and it was quite a bit slower than it could have been.

A ray of energy too bright to look at speared the beast’s tail when it breached the surface for another splash attack, burning off the monster’s primary means of locomotion, when Karl finally got a good shot.

That was the end of its proper movement. Hydrokinesis could substitute for its original movement mode in a pinch, but that was slower and burning through its mana at an alarming rate. Coupled with the fact that various earth manipulators were shrinking the size of the lake, it was rapidly being hemmed in, unable to dodge, and being torn apart.

At least that was how things were supposed to work. Isaac hadn’t really been able to veto the plan without revealing more than he wanted to. Sure, if he said “I don’t think it would be a good idea”, Habicht, Bailey, and the rest of the team would get the hint and drop the idea. Sadly, that plan had already passed so many desks that squashing it without revealing that he already knew the [Raid Boss’] moveset was impossible. The best he’d been able to do was make plans to compensate for what was sure to follow.

As it turned out, the Salmon of Wisdom was a bit claustrophobic. The fish wanted its space and when people tried to take that away … it reacted. Violently.

A good fifth of the water in the lake sloshed out of it in a titanic tidal way that washed across the land, straight at the nearest body of water that wasn’t the lake they’d summoned it in. Artillery pieces, the crews manning the equipment, all of it was in severe danger of being washed away.

Except Isaac had started moving the instant he could have conceivably realized what was going on, rocketing towards the monster on a pillar of fire, switching the flames out for a mixture of burning magnesium and hellfire, a nasty little combination that had no problem with burning underwater, at the last second.

When he was a hairs-breadth from pancaking against the water cocoon at hypersonic speeds, he activated [I Am The Sword], a flaming lance piercing the cocoon, the fish, and the hill the water was crawling up, leaving behind a trail of unholy fire that ate away at the monster’s vital organs.

Being a [Raid Boss], the Salmon of Wisdom was not going to die from something as insignificant as having its brain lit on fire, but it still had to compensate for the damage. Isaac took this time to shoot into the air on the other side of the hill he’d flown through, then come back down like a meteor.

[Wave Charge] let him move through any non-solid medium so he used that to pierce the water shell a second time, then slowed himself to a dead stop by detonating all the fire on his body right in the fish’s face.

And finally, his every sword manifested in its [Skill] and magic-damaging Astral Piercer form, then drove the whole lot into every opening he could find.

The one-two punch of rocketing straight through the monster and then punching it in the face with an explosion might have done the trick all on its own, but the disruptive blades turned the “probably” into a “definitely”.

The water bubble popped as the fish was too distracted to keep a hold of it and this left the three-hundred-ton fish very much stranded, two hundred meters from the nearest artillery battery.

Out of the water and with vastly restricted movement, it was an easy target. Throw in the fact that with the fish no longer being submerged, the shockwaves from artillery were no longer such an issue and, well, that was the fight.

A new shell of water was beginning to crawl out of the lake and mana projectiles continued to hammer into anything within line of sight, but the fish was done. Shells hammered into the Salmon’s wounds, its eyes, its mouth, they even slipped inside its gills and tore apart the incredibly fragile flesh there. Mages bombarded anything and everything that looked even remotely like it might hurt. Melee fighters zipped in, unleashed their strongest attacks in the gaps between artillery salvos, all coordinated by the general.

Before the water could reach even halfway towards the fish, it was already dead.

“That was easy.” Patrick commented, catching an elbow from Amy a second later “Really? You’re afraid of jinxes? We’re scientists, and superstition is decidedly not scientific. My point is, wasn’t this a bit too easy for a [Raid Boss]?”

“We still don’t know how [Raid Bosses] scale across the Tiers.” Bailey pointed out “At Tier 6, they’re just very tough monsters with area attacks. They’re probably going to get a lot more nasty soon.”

Well, they did know exactly how they scaled, but it wasn’t like he could say that in the here and now.

“Also, outlevelling them like this isn’t going to be possible for long.” Isaac pointed out “The Level 100 wall means that we’ll have to wait years to have a similar advantage against Tier 7s, and if there is a Level cap, we’ll be fighting Tier 10s at level parity.”

Around the talking scientists, Isaac could see soldiers blanch. Presumably, they were already picturing having to go up against those high-Tier monsters. He couldn’t blame them for being unhappy with the possibility, though. When shit hit the fan, they’d be the ones who had to clean up the mess. Sure, there would always be volunteers to help, and high-Level ones at that, but those were volunteers, there by choice. The soldiers had to be there, no matter what, unable to choose whether or not to follow orders, even if they ended up going on what amounted to a suicide mission.

“What the hell just happened?” Horn asked using the party chat “Aren’t monsters supposed to stick around until their summoners are dead?”

“Seems like this one is squirrely.” Someone commented.

“Do we have the capacity to summon a few more so we can test what triggers that flight attempt?” Bailey asked.

Isaac could practically hear the General grimace as he responded “Yes, a couple more, though we might have to see if we can get replacement artillery from somewhere.”

Yeah, that tracked. People were easy to fix, just add healing energy and that was the end of it. Machines were … finicky.

“First though, lunch,” Isaac said.

And as if that word had been the magic word summoning a genie cook, Caroline Ulrich ran past him like a bat out of hell. She normally ran a food truck on the university’s campus and experimented with monster meat that they gave her in exchange for free food, but when they expected to eat a monster they fought away from the university, she came along.

Watching a high-Level [Cook] work was … interesting. A single sweep of a kitchen knife removed dirt from the carcass everywhere but the bottom of the monster. A second flayed the scales. The third hacked apart the monster, countless fillets flying through the air until floated in midair, awaiting use.

Five minutes later, Isaac, the team, and several others were munching on Salmon sushi until eventually, the awaited message popped up.

Well of Wisdom’s Blessing (unranked)

Nine Hazelnuts once fell into a well, the Well of Wisdom. A Salmon ate these hazelnuts, gaining all the knowledge in the world.

And then, humans hunted down this Salmon for its power, devouring it like the monsters they are.

The holders of this Skill gain 5% faster Mana Regeneration.

Upgrading this Skill requires the user to kill and eat stronger versions of the Salmon of Wisdom.

The description was incredibly bare-bones and more than a little insulting, but it got the point across.

There existed a Salmon of Wisdom [Raid Boss] in every Tier from 6 onwards and each would improve mana regeneration by five percent more than the previous, stacking for a grand total of 75% faster mana regeneration. An incredible boon … if could survive long enough to gain it.

Right now though, he had to deal with the usual trouble that followed a successful [Raid Boss] kill.

Having to kill one in his [Grave of Swords], then enduring all the various requests to show up at a military base for some of the soldiers there to train on the “safe” monster.

Then getting enough resources to spread them around to various people.

And finally, filling out enough paperwork that by the end of it, he’d be convinced that no torturer could ever come up with something as twisted as the Byzantine maze that was the German bureaucracy.