Apocalypse Redux

Chapter 149: A Frustrating Rest of the Week

“Aaaaand that’s it, I’m done, humanity can go die in a fire.” Isaac muttered as he slammed his laptop shut with more force than was strictly necessary.

“Everything alright?” Wirt asked, poking his head into Isaac’s office through the open door.

“Yeah, just finishing off some paperwork before I’ll join you guys outside.” Isaac called back.

He was currently at Grafenwöhr, a few days too early for the Event but that wasn’t why he’d come here, not really. Sure, some preparations were easier to make with a member of the team here, but that hadn’t been necessary before, and it wasn’t now.

However, there wasn’t really anything else to do, the team’s building was still being repaired and with half the people who worked for them not even there, him staying wouldn’t have gotten him anywhere. And as far as his investigation went, well, it hadn’t. All the current leads were exhausted, and all he could have continued to do was spin in circles, which wouldn’t exactly have been very productive either.

No, Isaac was here to play trainer to the soon-to-be members of GSG-13. After all, this place had the space to conduct some large-scale exercise and a notable lack of people who might end up underfoot and get injured. That way, they could cut loose without risking others.

However, Bailey was still mostly on leave, so Isaac was still left doing most of the paperwork. Today, that had included looking through the grant proposals and offers of funding in exchange for specific studies being that had accumulated. Most of the later had been about stuff the team was already going to do, while Isaac sent on almost all of the former ones to the relevant government agency. Neither him nor Bailey should have had to handle those, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft should have been the ones to handle it … except they didn’t have the right expertise to decide what proposals had merit, so they were being sent to the “experts” for review first, save those that said experts or their collogues had themselves submitted.

In the process, Isaac had discovered a folder in the cloud that was simply titled “Nope”, besides the “Accepted Studies”, “Rejected Studies”, and “Accepted, but later Studies”.

Aaaaaand he’d made the major mistake of clicking on it. As it turned out, Bailey had only kept the files within in case of a court case because he seriously felt that someone else might take money for that study and cross some boundaries.

Or maybe they’d just been saved because as a scientist, Bailey was loathe to delete any data, even if it solidly fell into the categories of disturbing, disgusting and a horrific view into the darkest and most depraved parts of humanity. Still, ew. Just … ew. The one that had asked them to figure out how to create “Catgirl” had been the least problematic of the bunch, but it had been damn clear in the subtext that the person who’d made that suggestion had watched way too much hentai.

The rest of the stuff … he’d only read a handful, but they’d been enough to make Isaac seriously regret how good his memory now was.

But that crap was over and done with, and now Isaac had a chance to whip some people into proper shape, the exact kind of people who’d end up massively reducing his work going forward, ensuring that he wouldn’t have to run all over the country to stomp out monster infestations.

With a broad grin stretching across his face, Isaac shifted his clothing over to his newest piece of gear, the bastard lovechild of police tactical armor and chainmail, slightly modelled after the equipment GSG-13 would soon get but clearly distinct from it. The end result aligned him with them and made it clear how he saw their relation, without impersonating anyone. Also, it made it easy to pick him, the trainer, apart at a distance.

“You know, that must have been something pretty bad to make you swear like that.” Wirt observed as he fell into step alongside Isaac.

“The darkness of humanity revealed, a million study proposals with hentai search terms attached. How anyone would imagine any institution of higher education would pick that up is beyond me, never mind someone as busy as us.” Isaac shook his head in annoyance as he recounted some of the “proposals”.

“Those people sound like they should end up on a list.” Wirt observed.

“Oh, we already have one: banned from campus for life for making incredibly indecent proposals after it became know how [Bloodlines] work.” Isaac responded, earlier good mood fled “There may or may not have been a lot of indecent pictures attached to emails before IT reworked the spam filters.”

“People sometimes really suck.” Wirt observed with a knowing grimace “Most people are good ones, or even just decent, but it’s the worst of them that are the loudest, the ones you end up interacting with because you have to, and that can give you a seriously warped view of humanity as a whole. Don’t let it.”

“I’m not planning to.” Isaac reassured him “But right now, I kinda hate people.”

“Yep.” Wirt nodded, and fell silent as he led Isaac through the building.

It wasn’t that Isaac didn’t know the way though, but rather, no one wanted him loose in a military installation, even if there wasn’t any sensitive material on hand as far as he knew. But still, an escort had been necessary. Of course, the whole thing had an air of weirdness about it because said escort was a member of the police force, not the military.

Where people genuinely scared he might do something stupid if the escort wasn’t someone he knew? Or was this simply an offer of goodwill?

Either way, it was certainly something to keep in mind.

Yet even with all the somewhat annoying stuff here, parts of the whole affair were actually great.

Firstly, he was training the people who’d take over hunting monsters that got loose, letting him focus more on research.

And secondly, what better place to find new leads than a horde of police officers who might let something slip or open an email with relevant information in a place he could see?

Overall, it wasn’t the worst way to spend his time. It might feel like there were better things he could be doing, but he knew that was incorrect.

Soon enough, they’d left the building and were heading out into the boonies, walking through woods that had been mostly untouched since the creation of this training ground. Sure, there was the occasional crater where a live artillery shell had been used during an exercise, and a bunch of old campsites created during wilderness survival training, but that was pretty much it. More creatures lived in these woods than any others Isaac had been in, including the ones around his house. An absurd number of squirrels, deer, and boar.

“Look, dinner.” Isaac observed, gesturing at a large hog that was giving them the stink-eye from the tree line.

“Is that really the first thing you think of when you see a wild animal?” Wirt asked, giving him the side-eye

“It is when the deputy base commander tells me to feel free to ‘stock up my larder with those damn hogs’. Apparently, there’s enough of them to be a problem, and there have been problems getting the right authorization to sic the soldiers on them, or even just let them go hunting on their own outside of relevant training exercises.”

Wirt chuckled a little, paused in thought for a moment, then burst out laughing “Bureaucracy at its finest. How much forest gets wrecked every time the artillery is used in an exercise? Not to mention how much forest is getting flattened as we speak so we can use the space in the upcoming Event? And hunting boar to practice surviving in the wild is perfectly fine. But shooting a few hogs as a population control measure is somehow a huge problem.”

Then he cocked his head to the side and threw Isaac a puzzled glance “Wait, why are you allowed to ‘stock up your larder’?”

“Technicalities. I got a variant on a standard hunting license so I can pretend to be a professional when it comes to killing monsters. And since I’m currently allowed on here and getting rid of boars when there are too many is part of what a hunter should be doing. Since I’m currently allowed on the premises, I’m in a position to get a few for us to roast later.”

“Oh, that sounds good.” Wirt replied, practically salivating.

“Well, I have to apologize for putting you guys through the wringer,somehow.” Isaac replied in a completely nonchalant tone that nonetheless made the veteran police officer flinch.

He’d taken it comparatively easy in Camelot, given that the people there had functionally been civilians. The same clearly didn’t apply to his current pool of trainees.

By the time they reached the area that was being prepared for the Event, said trainees were already in the middle of getting warmed up. Wirt joined the others, while Isaac waited for them to be done.

Finally, they all stood ready and the Feldwebel with a protective training [Skill] Isaac had asked for arrived, already looking incredibly nervous.

“Dr. Thoma, I’ve got the [Skill] you requested, but I’m afraid it wouldn’t work on any of you, you’re so powerful that you’d tear right through it.”

Ah, that was why Isaac liked working with professionals, they’d come out and say it when there was a problem like this. No beating about the bush, no trying to shift the blame, just the hard truth.

“It’ll suffice, please cast it.” He ordered, activating both [Knightly Leader] and [Legacy of a True Warrior] “Everyone please accept the party invite.”

The first [Skill] simply let him interact with the others better, while the second sent all of them into the field, properly interacting with the field and supplementing it with their mana to prevent their attacks from hurting anyone or tearing up the place.

“What’s the radius on your training field?” Isaac asked the Feldwebel.

“Fifty, no sixty, seventy meters.” The man explained, earning himself several confused glances, sheepishly adding “It just levelled up.”

“Good.” Isaac said “Tell me whenever it gets stronger again, so we can use that.”

Then, he closer to his trainees and announced “We’re going to start this off with a sparring match. To make sure we still have the mana for the field, no one is allowed to use a [Skill] that would put them under fifty percent of their mana pool. The training field can pull you under it, that is no problem, but the [Skill’s] cost mustn’t. In addition, no cooldown [Skills] and nothing that costs over a thousand points of mana. Otherwise, feel free to cut loose. Anyone who is saved by the field is out and leaves the field. Questions?”

None came forward.

“So now, I’m going to use one of my [Skills] to transform into a larger form for five minutes. How you fare against it will give me a good idea as to where to go from here. The training ends when I shift back.”

And with that, Isaac lunged, transforming into the [Form of Horror] mid-stride. Large, serpentine, spikes all over the place, twin floating swords ready to tear apart anyone who got in his way. But those blades ended up planted in the ground and left there because in this situation, Isaac was giving himself a bit of a handicap.

His trainees reacted immediately, riot shields manifesting out of seemingly nowhere, with the people with tank builds moving to the front, trying to intercept him. A good move, protect the squishier people, the ones who were meant to be dealing the majority of the damage. It was also eminently predictable, and Isaac had already been angling to kick off the closest shield, launching himself skywards and over the shield wall.

Normally, this would have left him stuck in midair, an easy target. But Isaac simply activated [Wave Charge], coming down like a meteor into the second line of fighters. As blue light flared and coalesced into shields, that turned into an undignified tumble, the functionally immovable shield fueled by his own mana preventing him from causing injuries.

“Out.” Isaac growled, voice coming out low and menacing without him having to even try.

Five people scrambled out of the combat zone, the rest pressed in.

Claws flashed, skittering off suddenly appearing shields and more people left, but Isaac’s mobility was vastly reduced.

For a moment, it seemed like this would all be over in thirty seconds … until Isaac swept out his arms, stacking every [Strike-Skill] into a single attack, then projecting it from all of the spikes on his body. That knocked out a good third of the people there, but the rest were continuing to press in.

Yet now, there were enough holes in the formation for him to flee, so Isaac grasped onto that option with both hands, opening the distance.

They continued to clash, Isaac sticking to just big, sweeping, stacked [Strikes], [Wave Charge] and occasionally blasting [Death’s Embrace] through his [Aura]. Right now, he was playing the part of a [Raid Boss], which had powerful single-target attacks, AOEs and debuff powers, sticking to just that and nothing else. Using all his [Skills] would have turned this into a pointless exercise, given how this was set up. None of his opponents could use their cooldown [Skills], while he’d used his transformation cooldown [Skill] and that aside, most of his power was concentrated in non-cooldown [Skills]. Meanwhile, his trainees had a lot of strong [Skills] that they weren’t allowed to use.

[Lockdown], [You are Under Arrest], [Hold it Right There], [Caught Red-Handed] …

A dozen different [Skills] meant to stop a criminal, freezing them in their tracks or preventing their escape, slammed into him, slowing his movement to a crawl. Some required a little lead time, others only worked if the user had seen someone commit a crime, etc., but with enough planning, they could still be used simultaneously. And with the party’s chat function, they’d been able to set it up without Isaac overhearing.

He could still move, but not quickly enough to avoid getting dogpiled. Isaac tapped out, stood up once he no longer had a dozen people sitting on him, and shifted back to his regular form.

“Now, what did we learn?” he asked.

“Not having cooldown [Skills] sucks ass.”

“Yeah, but they’re cooldown [Skills]. Out of all your [Skills], they’re going to be [Skills] you’re going to lose access to the most. They’re great to have, but not something you can rely on having to bail you out. We’re going to train with those later, but not before then.”

“Having a [Skill] that lets you ignore your lizard brain is important. We’ve had to train hard to ignore the part of our brain that makes us run from danger so we can do our jobs, but that’s not really applicable when you’ve got a three meter snake monster up in your face.” Another person called out, clearly referring to one of [Knightly Leader’s] secondary benefits.

“Isn’t that going to cause problems, though? Fear is a survival mechanism, after all.” The third speaker pointed out right on the heels of the second.

“It might be, but it only affects irrational fear. It prevents morale breaking in inexperienced units, and given how destructive a full rout is, it’s value cannot be overstated. Being able to choose what to do with a clear mind is incredibly useful, however, I do see a potential issue in people who always fight in parties with this effect active becoming dependent on it.” Isaac added “What else?”

“Communication is key. If one of the people who ‘lost’ had been the party leader, we wouldn’t have been able to coordinate enough to win.”

“Precisely.” Isaac nodded approvingly “That’s the power of a proper Party, something you can only get from an appropriate [Class], which loses a little bit of its direct striking power in exchange. However, I can grant a lesser version of that to others. It’ll have a shorter communication range and the irrational fear immunity will be weaker, but it’ll give you a backup Party leader. Let’s see how the next training match will go, especially after I switch up what [Skills] I use.”

At that last proclamation, several people blanched.

“Until my [Skill] is off cooldown, though, there are other things we can do.”

This time, everyone grew nervous.

***

Two days later, Isaac was out of training slots, and he was beyond happy at the progress everyone had made.

Three people had been taught the epic version of [Knightly Leader], [Knightly Discipline]. It was weaker in all measurable respects, but still damn good.

He’d also taught the epic versions of the various [Skills] to those that could use them the best, often those who’d also received [Knightly Discipline], then used the remaining slots to dole out as many rare versions in mass-training as he could.

[Legendary Blow] had been reduced to [Epic Blow], which could only stack up to three attacks, then further weakened to [Double Blow], which could “merely” double the force of an attack.

Meanwhile, the taught epic version of [Fully Geared] only allowed for the storage of a single set of armor, and the rare one put a fifteen second delay on any equipment swaps, and both lacked the option to reinforce armor with mana.

Overall, the past couple of days had incredibly exhausting, but also rewarding. They’d practiced re-establishing the Party at the drop of a hat, using the coordination feature to its greatest effect, and practiced anti-[Raid Boss] tactics. Also, Isaac had shown a lot of his nastier tricks, and how to counter them.

Someone’s leaping through the ground via phasing? Use a reinforcement [Skill] on the top layer of whatever floor they were standing one.

Weird things flickering in the corners of their eyes as someone is sneaking around? It had taken quite a while to figure out a near-universally applicable anti-assassin defensive formation, but they’d managed it.

And so on, massively increasing the level of the training protection [Skill], to the point where it evolved so that not only could any too powerful person join it without needing Isaac to facilitate it, but people could also donate mana to empower a single person within to let them play the part of a Kaiju in training. They didn’t actually grow stronger, but the training field would change how they interacted with others and how much force they could exert. Clearly, having Isaac bounce around someone’s training field could grant some pretty nice upgrades.

But it wasn’t just the training that had made this worth it. As a secondary benefit, the police officers’ impression of his power had massively shifted. They now “knew” he was someone they could arrest, worst case scenario.

In a real world combat scenario, on the other hand, he’d win handily with a few nasty aces up his sleeve he’d told no one about. For one, he could transform into the form of any monster whose Aspect he held, though the transformation time could be massively reduced if the monster was too strong. In fact, while he could shift into a Demon Lord, he could only remain in that form for two seconds, one if he used any of its hellfire abilities. A waste of a good ability under most situations, but triggering a [Raid Boss’] “give me personal space AOE” in the middle of a crow, that was basically the win right there.

Or he could use the extraordinarily lethal combination of [Wave Charge] and [I am The Sword] to plow straight through the defenders and take out the squishier damage dealers or crowd control specialists. Given that he was invulnerable while the latter [Skill] was active, even hostile cooldown [Skills] wouldn’t be able to keep him out.

And lastly, he could always abduct a cornerstone of his opponents’ defense using [Grave of Swords], then pop back out unexpectedly. Sure, people knew roughly where he’d return, but the when wasn’t something anyone could determine from the outside.

All in all, he’d managed to make himself look less like some kind of untouchable threat, well beyond their power to affect while also ensuring that they saw him as an ally.

Also, the boar roast as “an apology for putting them through the wringer” ended up being both necessary and massively appreciated.

“You know, we’re going to end up having to chase a million more poachers now that people are so much more capable than animals.” Wirt commented as he reached for another rack of pork ribs “And I do mean us, specifically, because I can gua-ran-tee that someone will assume that ‘can kill wild animals like they were nothing’ means they have a bunch of powerful combat [Skills].”

“Are you sure?” Isaac asked “I mean, I’ve seen a bunch of very stupid pencil pushers, but won’t you guys have your hands full with stuff like what happened in the university? Won’t ‘they’d literally have to stop chasing an armed robber or mass murderer’ be a pretty strong argument against that?”

“In theory, yes. In practice … those blockheads wouldn’t recognize common sense if it took a dump on their desk.” Wirt shook his head “Also, there is the small issue of us currently not having direct leads we could be following up on, and the idea that units like GSG-13 need to be on standby tends to not penetrate the thick skulls of some of those people.”

“Wait, no leads?” Isaac frowned “Is it really that bad?”

“Yes and no.” Wirt made a so-so motion with his hand “The perpetrators themselves are already in custody thanks to the professor, we caught a bunch of their backers and some reasonably big names who employed them in the past, but nothing more.

“What’s got everyone in a tizzy that there are groups we know are connected to this, but who we can’t track down. The source of those tasers, someone who paid them to be ‘on retainer’ but weren’t planning on using them for a literal decade, just demanding training and Level standards. Crazy, just … nuts. They’re also protected by [Skills] on top of more traditional means of disguising financial ties, and the analysts are tearing their hair out.”

“Well, crap.” Isaac muttered. Sure, it was great that he was freely getting information, but that information was bloody useless. And there was the part about someone making a very strange investment … either those guys were nuts, or knew something he didn’t. Neither option was good.

“It’s not all bad, though.” Wirt suddenly let out a low chuckle “We’re not the only ones chasing after those guys.”

“Oh, how so?” Isaac asked.

“See, someone managed to get their hands on a diagram of one of those tasers and has been asking around about them. No one knew about where to get them, but a lot of people are very interested in getting their hands on one. Whoever spread around the diagram censored it in such a way that showed it was a workable design without making it possible to replicate the device based on it.”

“Hm, was it just a publicity stunt, then? Load up some disposable pawns with tools, then ask around for them and drum up awareness?” Isaac asked. Of course, it had been him who’d leaked the taser diagram, not its mysterious manufacturer, but it was entirely possible he’d done so faster than they had.

Yet the entire reason people had known about the taser because the robbery had gone so badly, and that had only been caused by Bailey being far stronger than anyone could have expected. All in all, that sounded less plausible the more he thought about it. It could have just been a theft gone wrong and he was overthinking it to an absurd degree. The perpetrators had been caught, as had most of their backers, with only a few unknowns remaining.

But until he knew everything, it would continue to eat at him. Because the unknown could be hiding multitudes, things far more dangerous than they appeared at first glance.

“Maybe.” Wirt shrugged “It isn’t the craziest suggestion I’ve heard, but it’s out there. Some of those people are seriously nuts, who’s to say we aren’t driving ourselves crazy trying to understand a reason that only makes sense to a person that doesn’t have any? Also, if those people wanted to sell those tasers, we’d already be seeing them used all over the place. Based on what I heard, they’re hiding under a rock and not coming out.”

Isaac just sighed and started eating a rack of ribs of his own in lieu of answering. Wirt really had been very helpful, but sadly, he hadn’t been very useful. Still, Isaac had just learned that he’d accidentally mightily inconvenienced the people whose tools had nearly killed Andre, so that was worth something.

Now all he had to do was make it through the next few days, which would include more training, the Event and they’d also be officially summoning the first Tier 7 monster, which would be chaotic as hell. The minimum Level for a beast of that Tier was 46, well below not only his own but also weaker than the lowest level police officer here. Normally, this would have been done long ago, but the Demon Lord in Seoul had put everyone off summoning new things for a good while.

***

“Thank you for coming everyone.” Bailey announced, looking at everyone who’d showed up a day before the Event just for this. He’d known that a Tier 7 monster was well within the team’s capability to beat, but the world at large didn’t. So, him taking extra precautions signaled that he was taking this seriously. Today was a particularly good time to do this, as the current and future GSG-13 members had not yet scattered to the four winds as they did during Events and several of the groups who usually helped with Events had agreed to come a little earlier than normal.

Of course, “normal” and “usual” were weird words to use when there’d been precisely one Event they’d planned for in the past, but then again, all traditions had to start somewhere.

“To all those of you who haven’t been here for one of these, in essence, your role will be to intervene if the monster gets away from us, at least initially. My team and I will be taking down the first monster as quickly as we can to ensure that the monster can be taken down by a small group. Then the next one will be analyzed for its Stats, magical abilities and potential weakpoints. We’ll repeat this process a few times with different monsters so we can get a decent grasp on the power of this Tier. Once we’ve managed that, we’ll know how many people to put into a group to continue the research. For now, however, you’ll be serving as our emergency backup.”

There were quite a few disappointed murmurs at that proclamation, but Isaac had expected that. Not the police officers and soldiers, they were professionals, but the people from Camelot, the Dungeon Guild and the few other independent summoners. No one entered this profession without being at least a little bit of a thrill seeker.

As everyone else cleared the field, Isaac carved the summoning circle into the soft dirt with quick and precise motions, then tossed in a series of materials he’d gotten art supply and gardening stores. There was a reason they always used solid Earth Elemental summons to break into a new Tier. They were slow, lacking powerful magic and had clear weak spots in their cores. They were also incredibly tough, but the team had an absurd amount of firepower even if Isaac didn’t resort to [I am The Sword]. And when he did, well, slow creatures made from a substance prone to cracking once damaged were especially vulnerable to such an attack.

“Summoning now.” Isaac announced once everything was ready, giving a verbal warning as the protocol for instances like this instructed. He gave it a few seconds for people to object, then activated the summoning circle, causing the monster to erupt out of it.

A five-meter-tall creature forged from dark grey rock with clear, white crystals stood in the middle of the rings of strange sigils. It looked far more humanoid than most Earth type summons, with near-human proportions, twin glowing crystals where the eyes would be on a person, and a slit for the mouth. All in all, while it was less than half the size of the Lesser Rock Titan they’d summoned to break into Tier 6, it looked vastly more dangerous.

It spent a mere split-second to take in the situation, then exploded into motion, leaping straight at the group of humans that had dared to bring it into existence, all the while hammering its [Aura] into them, one that felt like a sea of jagged rocks and shards of broken glass.

The auric assault achieved diddly squat, breaking on Raul’s [Aura] like a wave splitting around a rock in the surf. And the only reason it was Raul who’d blocked it was because his was the further forward [Aura] that wasn’t a sensory one. Literally any member of the team could have blocked that attack.

And as for the physical attack, well, that ran straight into a threefold layer of conjured shields, blocked with casual ease.

“Multiple cores.” Isaac warned, highlighting the secondaries in the party menu as he counterattacked, leaping up and above the shield.

[Piercing-Power Strike], power quintupled by [Legendary Blow], hammered into the monster’s chest just as his [Wave Charge] ended. The Titan was forced to take a single step backwards, its sheer mass ensuring an eighty kilo fighter couldn’t really push it back all that far. However, it couldn’t shrug off an impact like that anymore than Isaac had been able to knock it back more than one step.

Rock and crystal fragments exploded outwards, leaving a massive crater in its chest, Balmung embedded in the main core up to the hilt, wedged in too hard to easily retrieve it. Isaac just left it there, kicked himself skywards and teleported the blade back into his hand the monster below seemed to stutter for a moment. With its secondary cores, it was still alive and could move somewhat, but even collectively, none of the lesser magical crystals could compensate for the loss of the primary one.

Two seconds later, a series of magical bolts had torn through the remaining cores, finishing it off.

Lesser Crystal Titan (Lv. 51) has been slain. 444 XP gained (1,500 XP base distributed across 6 people as per their contributions)

Aaaaand done.

“Fortitude somewhere around three hundred, Strength thereabouts, Agility high one hundreds, Perception, Magic Regeneration and Magic Power around one hundred.” Isaac rattled off “One primary core provides most of the motile and processing power, four secondary cores can continue to move the body at a lesser efficiency.”

“Each of the secondary cores are located very close to a limb. We should destroy them in sequence, see if the associated limb is more severely affected than the rest of the body.” Patrick added.

“Also, I’d like to check what happens if the secondary cores go first.” Karl said “I’d say that that thing’s power level is so that each of us can take care of one on our own.”

“Agreed.” Bailey said simply “But we’ll fight the next one together and analyze its abilities. Isaac, please reset the summoning circle.”

And two minutes later, the next circle spat out another monster, erupting into motion, only to be brought up short by another magical barrier. Fists blurred, and the mystical wall began to waver, but Isaac just smacked it in the leg and escaped back behind the barrier. That thing almost certainly had some magical abilities, now it better use one.

The beast’s seemingly useless mouth then fell open and a moment later, a shotgun blast of crystalline fragments exploded out of it, bringing down the first barrier and nearly doing the same to the second one.

The slit slid closed with the sound of grinding stone, but using his [Aura], Isaac could see that additional crystals were being generated within the cavity, ready for another blast like that. However, the mana was being drawn out of the core.

“It’s fueling that attack from the same pool it’s using to move.” Isaac nonchalantly commented “We’ll see what happens when we force the next one to only use that attack. Will it slow down, or just power down for a while until its power recharges?”

“The next one.” Bailey agreed.

In the end, it turned out that the Titan didn’t have anything truly special other than the crystal breath, but it was vastly more agile than its brethren from the Earth group of summons and generally better at moving and fighting.

They also were the first to summon the Wandering Mountain, that was more like a walking boulder than anything else. At thirty meters tall, it was big, but the main problem lay in clearing the field after the fight, not in killing it.

The next monster to be summoned was a Swamp Elemental, which they only fought once because reclaiming their battlefield from the bloody bog it had gotten turned into after a single fight was in no way worth it.

Then they summoned a Tempestborne Griffin, which provided even more information on what they could expect from Tier 7 monsters in terms of physical capabilities and magical tricks.

From then on, people were free to pick Tier 7 monsters which were on the lower end of mana costs for that Tier, summon them, and turn them over for dissection and anatomical analysis, though they’d get them back afterwards. This was about analysis, not material gain, after all.

There were a few injuries, but no deaths or anything remotely serious. With so many people around and all the preparations that had been made in case the monsters had turned out to be stronger than expected, help had been literally seconds away whenever something went wrong.

As the sun fell behind the horizon though, Bailey practically had to chase everyone off the field with a broomstick, as the engineering corps needed the space to fix up everything. Sure, everyone had the stamina to keep going, but far too many people had ended up forgetting that they’d be even busier tomorrow.

So now, Isaac retreated to the edge of the field, lit a campfire and just sat there with a book in his lap, watching the rack of pork ribs he’d set up over it slowly brown.

“That looks good.” A familiar voice called out from behind him.

“It is good. Local boar, marinated in a sauce prepared by the best cook on the base. Would you like some, Elena?” he offered.

“Sure.” She sat down on a rock next to him “How come you’re sleeping not at the barracks like almost everyone else?”

“My senses and [Aura] make me a bit of a security risk, and I’d rather be out in the wilderness and free than sleep on a military cot with a babysitter.” Isaac remarked.

Elena chuckled “That’s a new one. Camelot’s delegation is also out camping, but there was a small issue with the supplies where someone didn’t get the memo about having to bring food and now they’re arguing that they should get some food from everyone else because they’re unwilling to swallow their pride and ask at the barrack’s cafeteria for some food, and I figured I’d get away from the chaos.”

Isaac sighed “I do have a bunch more meat in my storage space, we cut down the local boar population to a more manageable size and I got a large chunk of the proceeds. I can share.”

“Don’t, Jason needs to learn to read the memos. But if I could get a piece …”

“Sure, go ahead.” Isaac offered, pulling the now-done set of ribs out of the fire with his bare hands, then split it in half.

They both started to eat, until he ended up chuckling as he spotted a large smear of sauce on her cheek.

“You know, you’ve got a little something on your face.” He carefully pointed out.

A moment later, a splash of water moved across her face, removing the mess in its entirety.

“Best part of water magic, instant cleaning. One of them, at least.” She replied with a wicked grin, then Isaac noticed the freezing water trickling down the back of his neck and let out a small yelp. He’d noticed what she was doing ahead of time, of course, but he played along anyway.

“You know what, I’ll retrieve my tent and move here before someone trips over it.” She suggested “You don’t mind, do you?”

“Of course not. I’ll also toss some foil wrapped potatoes in the fire, so they’ll be done when you get back.” Isaac offered.

“Sounds good.”

As Elena left, Isaac smiled. Tomorrow would be messy, but tonight, camping in the wilderness, relaxing in a way he rarely did, would be nice. Especially with the right kind of company.