Apocalypse Redux

Chapter 102: The Anthill has been kicked

After Bailey had given him the head-up, Isaac had hurried to meet them all at a speed barely low enough for people to still recognize him and not take him to be an intruder.

He scared the hell out of everyone he met regardless, given that some kind of emergency had clearly occurred. Most Hunters didn’t carry their cellphones on their person due to the danger of them getting wrecked. The rapid movements and direction changes modern combat required could easily shake loose vital components that had not been designed to stay in place in the face of such forces, electrical magic could fry it, many liquids could short circuit them, and so on, and so forth. In other words, the [System’s] battlefields were not safe places for people to be carrying mobile devices, which was why Isaac kept his in his extradimensional storage space most of the time.

It also meant that the people gearing up to go Dungeon diving or training had no idea what was going on at the moment. After all, the info packet had dropped a mere two minutes ago and that kind of information took time to be discovered by most people.

Professor Bailey, on the other hand, had dozens of direct subordinates and hundreds of people who supported his work in some way. There was always someone on the internet, researching something, so the message had been picked up almost immediately, then instantly passed on to Bailey, who’d then called in everyone here.

Back home, though, things were probably getting truly insane. Professor Chandler was probably chasing grad students all over the campus to get him the ingredients, and Isaac suspected he’d even be working on some improvements as early as the second batch. After all, the recipes he’d given out had been the most basic ones available, something any reasonably skilled [Alchemist] should be able to improve with ease. But at the end of the day, that was the entire point. He didn’t want to give out completed answers, he wanted to show people the correct starting points to reduce the amount of time wasted up front.

“So, someone released a bunch of potion recipes online?” he asked, his tone one of curious reservation, as though he wasn’t entirely sure what to believe.

“Yep.” Patrick commented a computer screen sitting on a table in the corner. He was currently sitting in front of an open portal that led to a Hunting Ground, making sure nothing got out while someone else was inside.

The whole assembly was in a new ‘building’ that Bailey had commissioned just before leaving to Korea. It wasn’t anything complicated, just a heavily reinforced concrete tunnel with multiple blast doors that would help prevent anything from getting out.

The fact that it had been so simple meant that it could be built quickly, further aided by the fact that Karl had helped. Sure, the building inspectors had a little something-something to say about magic being used to construct buildings, but there was nothing they could say about how the hole the building was put in was dug.

“Hi there, is this thing on?” a wild-haired Professor Chandler appeared on the videocall besides Patrick, his expression somewhere between a toddler on the world’s greatest sugar rush and an addict who’d just gotten their hands on something even better than their normal stuff, all in all not something that inspired confidence in his ability to make god use of this information. Still, his [Skills] could compensate for a lot of that, and he was an excellent [Alchemist].

But the part of the professor’s video that stood out the most was how shaky it was, and how the buildings and trees kept blurring past in the background. Clearly, he was running to the university at full tilt, desperate to get started as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, on Patrick’s screen, the portal suddenly collapsed, leaving behind only Raul and a few monsters that were torn apart in a wave of magic a split second later.

“So, Patrick told me a bit about what’s going on, do I have this correct: someone posted a bunch of potion recipes that are years ahead of what anyone should have been able to develop since the emergence of the [System]?” he asked.

“Yeah, I think so.” Isaac answered.

“Hm, sort of.” Amy corrected “There’s also a bunch of wild accusations about various people becoming what can only be described as ‘supervillains’.”

She’d managed to keep a straight face as she said that for the most part, but her amusement at the idea of a Real-Life supervillain was apparent. Sure, the idea of comic book level ‘incidents’ becoming commonplace was utterly terrifying, but come on, real supervillains? It just sounded plain daft, no matter how serious it actually was.

“But that isn’t what we’re going to talk about.” Bailey stated flatly “I know we’ve helped with stuff like that in the past, but we should leave that to the professionals for now while we focus on our job, which is figuring out how all those potions work.”

“Actually, I have an idea about that. More specifically, where they came from.” Patrick said “I think it might be some kind of Illuminati-style organization.”

Isaac just gaped at him … and so did everyone else. Patrick was the most straight-laced, down to Earth person on the team, and now he was suggesting something like this?

“Look, I know how this sounds, but think about it for a second, please. Who has the kinds of resources to pull something like this off? And then tell me, which one of those people would release that information like this?

“A government wouldn’t say a peep about a discovery like this until they were ready to make a massive profit off it, and then actually get something for it, at least if they didn’t conquer the world first.

“A corporation, assuming they even had the resources to create something like this in a few short months, they wouldn’t give it away, they’d sell it.

“And a scientist would be crowing it from the rooftops if they created something like this.”

“No, they’d make sure they got credit for it, then send it too all the important scientific magazines, and thencrow it from the rooftops while waiting for their Nobel Prize nomination.” Chandler corrected.

“Maybe.” Patrick said “What I’m trying to say is, there isn’t anyone who’d publish this via infodump. Even charitable organizations would make sure people knew where it was coming from, for future funding, if nothing else. But someone had to have paid for all this research, meaning some kind of organization has to have been involved, except they don’t want to show themselves, or anyone to so much as put a name to them. Obviously, the chances of this being the historical Illuminati is near zero, but some kind of hidden organization had to have been behind this.”

“It could always have been a whistleblower in a regular company, a company that is now scrambling and wasn’t able to claim credit yet.” Amy suggested, which Isaac found even weirder than Patrick blaming the Illuminati for something.

“A whistleblower? One who not only had access to the recipes, but also knew enough to post a ‘plots that might fuck up the world’ list?” Patrick said “I’m reading through this list right now, and if even half this stuff is real, then we’ve got a serious problem on our hands, and by us, I mean the whole human race.”

Isaac sighed internally, getting caught up in a discussion about the Illuminati of all things was pretty much the exact opposite of what he was trying to do here.

“All of that is assuming that the recipes are even real. What if someone just tossed together a bunch of random ingredients, gave the whole thing an interesting name is now laughing themselves silly at all our reactions?”

“Oh, it’s very real, have you even looked at that?” Chandler grumped, outraged “I can tell at a glance how useful these are going to be!”

… and there it was.

“Thing is, medicines like that need to be tested, and that takes time. To have them this soon … someone’s gotta have cut corners at some point.” Amy said, suddenly onboard the Illuminati train of thought “What if it was an organization out of the public eye, doing crazy shit for the benefit of humanity, even if they blackened their very souls so badly no one would ever appreciate their efforts?”

“Ok, if we’re going with crazy theories, here’s mine.” Raul said “Hear me out: Reverse-Isekai. What if someone from another world, one that always worked like this, fell through a portal or something, ended up on Earth, and has been trying to get their feet under them all this time? They sent out those warnings a day after initialization because they realized what was about to happen, what could go wrong, and now, they’ve finally managed to adapt their potion recipes to this world and figure what dangers this world holds so they could tell us about it.”

“That’s … disturbingly possible.” Isaac replied lamely. It was nowhere near the truth, but it matched it in the absurdity department.

“Well, these potions certainly require some very weird ingredients.” Bailey said, once again bringing the situation back down to Earth, running his finger down a printed copy of the list “Illegal, frowned upon, veryillegal, I have no idea what this is, I do know what that is but no one sells it, common enough, common enough, common enough but not so common that any will remain once people read this, … what the heck, none of this makes any sense.”

“Hey, so where are we with the recipes?” a new voice echoed from the computer. It was Professor Bishop, though his video was off and the sound of footsteps in the background indicated he was running somewhere while the phone was in his pocket.

“Working on them.” Bailey said “What are you doing?”

“Chasing TAs and grad students all over the city to collect ingredients. David, do you need anything?” he asked, addressing Professor Chandler by his first name.

“There are some coca leaves in the Pedology department, building A, ground floor, take a right at the entrance, furthest door on the right, in the -70 °C freezer, pine box in the back left corner. If someone could retrieve it for me, that would be great.” Chandler rattled off.

“Wow, you sure knew where the drugs were.” Bishop commented dryly after passing that along, prompting Chandler to shoot a truly caustic look at the camera which Bishop didn’t even see, given that his phone was still in his pocket.

“[Know Thy Inventory], nitwit.” Chandler said, his voice a low growl.

“The real question is whether a few random plant samples that are, from the sounds of it, ancient will be enough.” Bailey asked.

“We should be able to get some from the university’s hospital, right? They do still use that stuff for some medical procedures?” Amy suggested.

“Maybe. I’ve already sent in a request, but when you’re not right there, breathing down their neck, they tend to drag their feet.” Chandler grumbled.

“Ok, but it’s still weird that a mana potion would require stuff like this. Now, I’m no chemist, but even I know none of that makes sense. Sugar, white tea, whatever that is, and, oh yeah, cocaine, a bunch of other wild plants and random chemicals? That ain’t chemistry.” Bishop wondered.

“That is because this is Alchemy!” Chandler snapped, Bishops earlier needling combined with the stress of the situation clearly having seriously annoyed him “This isn’t chemistry, where everything can be discovered based on the strong force, weak force and electromagnetic force, all combined into mess that’s thankfully mostly understood.

“No, this is Alchemy, which is basically old school witchcraft where the idea and purpose behind something is more important than even its chemical properties. Trying to use Chemistry to explain this stuff … Victor, what you’re doing is the equivalent of using a pocket calculator to do psychology. It just doesn’t work.

… Dolt.”

“And you’ve somehow figured out how that worked in five minutes?” Bishop asked, voice extremely skeptical.

“Anyway, do we tell people about how we’re working on this?” Isaac asked loudly, interrupting the bickering.

“We already said we’re working on it.” Bailey said “Just a quick post, but it seems to have gotten some positive tracktion.”

It said a lot about their reputation that an official statement that basically amounted to ‘fellas, we know fuck all, but we’re working on changing that’ was actually taken at face value and believed, rather than being thought of as the meaningless statements of an organization desperately trying to appear in control.

“About that, mind if I send some more information along to some of the people I know in the government and law enforcement? I know we haven’t really talked about it, but some of the other information here is super disturbing and if it’s real, they need to deal with it.” Isaac asked “If we can confirm part of it is true, it should add a little sense of urgency.”

“Sure.” Bailey nodded, prompting Isaac to immediately pull out his phone and snap off a few short messages. The other messages, the ones he couldn’t get caught sending, had been sent off automatically, though, having been uploaded alongside the main information packet.

They continued on like that for a good long while, as Professor Chandler reached his laboratory and they all watched him bang around it.

Yoo-jin poked his head in at some point, asking if they knew what was going on, but he had to leave to calm down some of the louder Guildmembers. Apparently, they were slightly panicking at this shift in their world. The last one had brought monsters, what fresh hell would this one create?

Professor Kim also sent Bailey a text, asking if he needed to borrow some of her facilities, but he’d just thanked her and declined. Having Chandler take care of things was just far easier and simpler.

And then, finally, the potion was done. To Isaac’s eyes, this had taken far too long, but then again, this was the Professor’s first tame making this stuff.

“So, how do we test that?” Bailey asked.

“Like this.” Chandler shrugged and chugged the gently glowing blue liquid as if it had been a shot.

Weird, strangled sounds came from both Bailey and Amy, as they saw the old man break just about every laboratory safety standard in existence.

“What?” he shrugged with mock innocence “I’m fine, that’s what [Skills] are for. So, this potion gives the drinker 50 points of mana over ten seconds but for thirty-five minutes afterwards, your Mana Regeneration Stat acts as if it’s 5 points lover.”

“So basically, you lose a little more mana than you gain over time, but it gives you an immediate burst of power?” Isaac asked “That sounds incredibly useful in a pinch.”

“Maybe, maybe not.” Raul said thoughtfully “I’d guess there’s a cooldown on drinking one, or maybe the side effects worsen if you drink multiple ones in quick succession.”

“Perhaps the effects grow weaker with repeated consumption?” Isaac suggested, then proceeded to rattle off a bunch of examples from literature, though he was fully aware of the fact that Raul’s guesses about compounding side effects and reduced efficacy had been right on the money.

That then turned into watching a man who was nearly seventy down dubious concoction after dubious concoction, making everyone act incredibly concerned after each one. He was going to be fine, Isaac knew, but everyone else acting like it wasn’t was starting to wear on him. Still, soon enough, there should be the usual ‘well, this isn’t how things are normally done, but due to extraordinary circumstances, we’ll allow you to drink those potions’ announcement, and then they could get back to other stuff while the mad scientist nearly blew up the lab every other day.

“So, we’re going to be here for the remainder of the planned stay, but once we get home, we’ll all work together on figuring out how all of those potions work. But David, wait until I’m there to fix you if things go wrong.” Bailey insisted, getting a grumbled, mocking ‘Sir, yes, Sir’ in response. With that, the call came to an end, and the three of them went out for something to eat and to make up some more fantastical theories on where that message could have come from.