Apocalypse Redux

Chapter 169: Scouting

Evil could look so normal. So disgustingly mundane. Just another blank corporate façade with people wearing suits and having leather briefcases slung over their shoulders, looking like any other number cruncher.

But now, Evil had a face. Probably.

Zambon had managed to backtrace the supply chain of the robbers who’d attacked the team to a large office building in Hamburg, discovering the same obfuscation present in every known member of the hunted group under a layer of false info that would prevent detection from casual scrutiny. Or even intense scrutiny.

Zambon had likened finding it to trying to identify a single sardine in one of the kilometerlong shoals without knowing what it was supposed to look like. While only being allowed to look at the fish swarm through a crappy drone’s camera. With a cracked lens. After dropping acid.

But he’d done it, his legendary [Class] carrying him to the finish line … of the German part of the operation. After all, this was where all of Isaac’s best leads where located. There was evidence that this group was active internationally, but nothing beyond their presence was known.

And that was the most annoying part of all this. Isaac knew there was a problem, but not how big, how tough, or even what form it took. They could just be a criminal syndicate that had had the supreme misfortune to end up in his sights, or they could be an apocalyptic cult trying to bring about the end of the world. Hell, they could even be a modern day group of Robin Hood and his merry men, comprised entirely of soccer moms. Sure, that was unlikely, but could he be certain that wasn’t the case?

Either way, dealing with them was supremely unlikely to be a bad thng.

To top it all off, the possible German headquarters was all he’d gotten. As difficult as finding that had been, Zambon had told him that everything else would have required finding the aforementioned sardine without even knowing which shoal to look in.

However, the one lead he’d already gained was a good one.

Isaac was walking along a street parallel to the building he was looking at, his [Aura] sweeping through the object of his frustrations, scanning it and every person within. But even with this much distance between them, he was taking precautions, [Hundred Faces] transforming him into a wholly different form.

Where Mr. Holt had a sharp face that could be made to look incredibly intimidating and Mr. Lenue was aggressively nondescript, his lates façade was disgustingly normal. Average, brunette hair, brown eyes in the most normal and common shade possible, another twenty pounds added, a stubbly beard and a t-shirt for some random band he didn’t even know.

Unfortunately, even with all that, there was a small issue involving how anyone who inspected him would notice something was up. They wouldn’t be able to tell he was, well, him, but they’d know something was up. Hopefully, he was far enough away to not trip any alarms, or at the very least, the rest of him looked normal enough to not cause any trouble.

Still, the month of waiting for results hadn’t gone to waste. Isaac had gotten all the way to Level 97, his Agility had passed four hundred and he’d bought [Burden of Power], a [Skill] he was absolutely in love with.

Burden of Power (legendary)

Heavy is the head that wears the crown, or so the saying goes. And it’s true, only fools see the crown as something that turns one’s life into a great and wonderful paradise. If one fulfills even a fraction of the responsibilities that leading a country requires, then one’s life will be filled with hard work. This is the Burden of Power.

When this Skill is activated, that burden shows in your Aura, a tangible thing for all to see, experience and be impacted by. It can either be used to focus attention on yourself and demonstrate your status as a leader, or you can now temporarily offload a small amount of that burden upon your foes and watch them crumble.

Cost:

Auric Infusion, Aura of the Crimson Dawn: 20 mana per minute

Auric Infusion, Aura of the Desperate Seeker: 50 mana per minute

Warning: Using two Auric Infusion Skills simultaneously will increase the overall cost by fifty percent

In other words, the [Aura of the Desperate Seeker] could now actually hit someone. If the Level difference was big enough, or there was a particular vulnerability in play, it hit like a truck. Throw [Death’s Embrace] on top of that and being on the receiving end of it was like being knocked upside the head with a tombstone, apparently. An expensive method of attack to be sure, and not one that could easily lead to victory on its own, but it was a very good addition to his arsenal.

Isaac continued to walk along the sidewalk, absentmindedly munching on his chicken wrap, looking completely checked out of reality.

However, he was giving the building the most in-depth inspection possible. There wasn’t very much there in terms of actionable physical evidence, but there was some odd stuff. Chemicals that had no business being anywhere out of a war criminal’s lab or a hazmat waste disposal site. An odd number of weapons. Structural reinforcements that didn’t make sense for a normal office building.

And then there were the people. [Classes] with an unusual level of subterfuge involved. More security guards than should have been necessary, and ones far more focused on dealing damage and ending lives than any sane company would have been comfortable with.

But the worst part … the people who were fully specced into Magic Power. That was not a normal build.

Fully focusing into some Stats didn’t work.

Strength let you be, well, strong, and the [System] would prevent your own body’s power from tearing you apart, but that same protection didn’t apply when you actually hit something.

Agility, same problem. You could move, but you wouldn’t see where you were going and when you ran into something … splat.

Perception was just useless.

Fortitude wouldn’t let you do anything other than surviving. And even that was in question as it would be far too easy for someone to pick you up and toss you into a volcano or something.

Magic Regeneration was somewhat useable, letting you spam cheap spells ad infinitum, but the maximum amount of mana you could put into one would be severely limited.

Under normal circumstances, pure Magic Power was relatively useless. You could cast a lot of spells, use a lot of [Skills], but by the time your mana regenerated, you’d be dead from old age. Normally.

But there was a very good reason to have that kind of Stat focus. Suicide-summon.

There hadn’t been a big problem with that in the other timeline, certainly not connected to a group such as this. But with the mess the world had become in the end, would anyone really have noticed?

Either way, that cinched it. These guys were going down. Probably. If he could convince the cops to raid this place. If he could find something connecting this group to some criminal activity that would hold up in public. Maybe some information passed along to Brant on the sly, then not showing his face to the investigator for a week would do the trick?

Eventually though, there would be hell to pay.