Apocalypse Redux

Chapter 129: The Truth behind the Myth

Isaac was sorely tempted to shatter the core outright, but maybe, maybe there was a reason not to? The desperation in the voice had certainly not seemed fake.

He glared down the corridor, sending his [Aura] billowing outwards and towards the man, pouring an incredible amount of mana into the [Death’s Embrace] that enhanced it.

At the same time, his sword went flying towards the core, now glowing green as he switched the applied [Skill] over to [Sundering Strike]. As it impacted, he hammered a spike of [Aura] into the point of impact, the combination of deathly and corrosive energies badly damaging it in a way that would destroy it in time. That way, he could defer the choice of whether or not to truly destroy the Core until later without leaving it in any shape to get up to shenanigans in the meantime.

The first thing he could tell about him was that he was at most Level twenty. Strong compared to the vast majority of humans, but pathetically weak compared to Isaac. Yet despite that, he was breathing incredibly heavily, something that no person at that Level should be doing without extreme exertion. If nothing else, this mean that the man had been in a serious hurry to get here and pushed himself to his utter limit.

As for his [Class], it felt like a classic [Mage], but with a feeling of … disgusting wrongness plastered over the top. Not a part of the [Class], but still deeply entangled with it. Whoever this guy was, something odd was going on here. Also, there wasn’t a single Aspect that Isaac could detect.

… actually, as the interloper got closer, Isaac was forced to seriously revise his estimation of his age. Downwards.

The teen still had that awkward gangly look of someone who’d just gone through a massive growth spurt and could not be older than seventeen. At least that was how he looked.

Of course, Isaac knew that it was entirely possible that the interloper had simply shapeshifted into a form that he was less likely to obliterate on sight and didn’t lower his guard.

“You have five seconds to explain why I shouldn’t.” Isaac stated icily as his blade slapped back into his hand.

“I …” the teen bent over, hands on his knees, wheezing for breath.

Isaac shot him a truly withering look and poked him with his [Aura], causing the teen to jolt in fright, but he was still too busy wheezing to properly respond.

“That thing had the potential to destroy the country.” Isaac snapped “If you’re trying to save the core, could that actually be your goal?”

“I … no, I … wheeze …”

“My name is Mr. Lenue. I fix issues like this before they actually become issues. The core is an issue and I will remove it and anything else even remotely linked to it unless you manage to come up with some veryconvincing arguments in the next thirty seconds. I don’t care how tired you are, I don’t care how important that core is to you, I care about fixing issues.” He said sternly, once again smashing his [Aura] into the kid and holding it there.

His chosen alias was, well, it was actually just a pronounceable version of the abbreviation L-N-U, meaning last name unknown, which the American legal system assigned to people without a known surname. It was about as on the nose as an alias got, but that was deliberate. Nondescript, revealing nothing about himself except for the fact that he didn’t want to reveal anything about himself, it was perfect. Well, it also implied that he had a passable knowledge of the American legal system and most people would have to google it, but that was perfectly fine misdirection.

In fact, the face he was currently wearing served much the same purpose. It was nondescript, average, forgettable, but in an obvious way sort of way if you actually looked at it and tried to analyze it. A deliberate effort had been put into making him functionally invisible.

Lastly, he’d activated the Level 10 effect of [Unknown Fear] for the first time in a while. It made it so that any attempts to [Inspect] him got somewhat threatening feedback. Normally, looking intimidating to random people he met with wasn’t a good thing. Here though … looking every bit the scary black operator was a good thing.

Isaac wasn’t quite sure how much of that subtext actually got through to the kid, but judging from how he turned white, something had.

Sucking in another huge gulp of air, the teenager straightened and stuttered out a rough approximation of an explanation, a mess of frantic exclamations interspersed with brief periods of self-imposed calmness, hyperventilation, or just a moment for the kid to collect his thoughts. One thing became abundantly clear, though, and that was both why the Dungeon was here and why this teenager was so desperate to save it. The idiot had bonded to it.

Bonding to a Dungeon Core involved summoning a free one, then drawing a certain series of runes buried deep, deep in the [System’s] user manual, and finally evolving one’s [Class]. This would create a [Class] closely linked to the enruned Dungeon, gaining a few [Skills] based on the Dungeon’s type. The person could still gain XP from delving through ‘their’ Dungeon, but also lacked any kind of protection that a normal Dungeon Master would gain.

The Dungeon would grow as its bonded person fed it materials, said person grew by slaying the monsters within, until the person evolved once again, and gaining dominion over the Dungeon. It’s fabrication abilities were crippled in the process, but the bonded human gained the ability to summon some of the Dungeon’s monsters under their control, along with some decently powerful [Skills] and an overall boosted [Class] rarity … all of which would be lost if the Core was destroyed. Overall, it was a shortcut to power, with appropriate drawbacks.

Still, overall, choosing an Eldritch Dungeon wasn’t a bad plan. Their primary strength were their mind- and reality-warping tricks, something the linked person gained immunity to. And yet …

“Why on earth would you do something so stupid?” Isaac glared at the kid “Binding a Dungeon that would become a threat to everyone around it?”

Of course, Isaac Thoma wouldn’t know the particulars of what a bound Dungeon was, and there was no official record of him having ever researched the topic, but he wasn’t Isaac Thoma here. He was Mr. Lenue, the terrifying enigma.

“The … the voices told me to.”

“Miles Anthony Wright, you will tell me the whole story and you will tell me now.” Isaac took a threating step forwards, pushing his [Aura] up against Wright while slowly but surely increasing the pressure. That, combined with the use of the kid’s full name which he shouldn’t have known though he’d just read it from his ID, which was located in his pocket, prompted another terrified jump. Isaac wrinkled his nose as the acrid stench of urine reached his nose. If this kid really was a terrified as he appeared to be, well, he might even feel slightly bad after all this. But this was someone who’d dumped a mind-wrecking horror amidst a bunch of innocent people. His sympathy would never get very significant.

“I … I had a dream. I know how it sounds, but a few days after the [System] arrived, I started having these dreams. Voices promising power, money, anything I’d ever wanted. It sounded nuts, but then it happened again. And again. Over and over … and then I finally looked it up in the manual. Everything was true.”

“There’s nothing there other than the fact that there’s an option for bonding to a Dungeon.” Isaac stated “Are you telling me there’s more there for you?”

“Yes, I …”

“Gods- … fuck.” Isaac muttered. It was pretty clear what had happened here. Dark god offered power, dark god unlocked extra sections in the manual to make power seem more enticing, idiot teen did idiot teen crap.

“So you’re telling me that some strange, dare I say, eldritch, being contacted you, and because it looked like it was saying the truth, you did exactly what the creepy, maybe even tentacle-faced, fuck said and now here we are.”

Isaac slammed his [Aura] forward at full power while reducing [Death’s Embrace] to the absolute minimum, the amount needed to ensure his [Aura’s] specific signature was still hidden. To the teen at the receiving end, it had to feel like he was an ant being examined by a giant with a magnifying glass, examining every bit of him, laying all bare, all the while a single twitch away from moving the glass so it acted as a burning lens rather than a magnifying glass and setting him on fire.

“That is my [Aura], slightly enhanced with a basic [Skill] gained from the most recent Event. It’s not even designated as a mental attack, I’m just focusing it on you a little more than I normally would. It is also a mere fraction of the impact your little creepy crawlies have onto anyone who sees them, a mere fraction of the anguish they’ve inflicted, that you’ve inflicted.” Isaac took another step forwards, prompting Wright to stumble backwards, hitting the wall in his attempt to get away from the terrifying presence in front of him.

“I’ll be destroying that core now, and the backlash will absolutely suck for you. While you’re recovering, I’ll be contacting the local cops, and then you’ll tell them about everything you’ve done here when they show up, and then you’ll never pull something like this again, you understand that young man?”

The only response Wright could manage at that point was a terrified nod, but Isaac wasn’t done yet. He leaned forwards until he mouth was right next to Wright’s ear and whispered his final statement.

“I’m not above killing people who insist on doing things that threaten to kill others. I don’t care who they are, what their age is, all I care about is that they’re too sane for me to have them tossed in the insane asylum until they die from old age and that they’re going to hurt people if I don’t stop them. Permanently.”

Isaac then drew his head back and locked eyes with Wright, he threw his hand out, flinging the sword towards the core, then using [Blade Control] to curve it around the corner that was in the way. In the moment the rock shattered, Isaac’s face was still right in front of Wright’s, and [Hundred Faces] was in the process of turning his sclera red.

The moment the core shattered, Wright’s eyes flashed open in shock and horror, then he fainted.

Isaac left the cave, still fuming at the entire situation. That little turd had summoned the Dungeon, and likely eventually gotten himself killed at some point, freeing the Dungeon, or maybe he’d just snapped and unleashed his pet horrors onto his countrymen.

Either way, hopefully, Wright had been scared straight. And even if he hadn’t been, the Core was broken. Recreating the original circumstances would require the summoning and binding of another core, followed by an Evolution. Hitting the second Evolution was perfectly doable. Hitting the third … far harder. Given that binding a Dungeon was the very embodiment of taking the easy route, Isaac sincerely doubted Wright would be trying that again. And if he did, well, Isaac had meant what he’d told Wright. If a person insisted on making themselves a threat to innocents and couldn’t be removed safely, he’d end them.

Still, as it turned out, there wasn’t much trouble. He called the cops, pretending to be a terrified little old lady, then stayed nearby under [Stealth] while observing the whole interaction. Yeah, Wright was not going to be doing much of anything in the near future as he’d just gotten arrested and it didn’t seem like he’d be getting out anytime soon.

But now that that was done, Isaac had other places to be.