Apocalypse Redux

Chapter 172: Stupidity is Hurting Others Without Gain to Yourself

Stupid. Stupid! Stupid!

Isaac should have cracked open the box the instant he’d noticed it, removed all the internals, stored in in his inventory and only brought it back out in a stasis field, risk of digging into a nuke or bioweapon dispersal system be damned. The brief glimpse he’d gotten at the stuff inside wasn’t nearly enough to go on.

But what had happened, happened, and couldn’t be changed. What he could do, though, that was kick this guy’s ass, keep him away from the rest of the building and protect the rest of people who were searching the building for evidence. Hell, he was even wearing just the right armor.

[Hunter’s Gaze] flared to life, scanning the bastard. What he saw made Isaac blanch. This fucker was absolutely loaded down with Aspects, a total of nine slots with either two or three in each slot, covering a wide array of powers.

As for the [Class] itself … it felt utterly disgusting, and what was more, it felt wrong on a truly fundamental level. Like an open sewage pipe that was currently giving birth to Cthulhu.

A Level that was at the very least equal to Isaac’s, probably even greater.

And finally, the [Skills] on display, something he could now also analyze, made the situation a million times bleaker. The sludge wrapping around his foe was an amalgam of a dozen kinds of dangerous diseases, more generic microorganisms like the ones that had devoured all the evidence, three kinds of toxic and right now, it was in the least dangerous configuration that bastard had access to. But that danger was slowly but constantly ramping up as mana and intent flowed into the power. Clearly, the full-power version wasn’t save to even have around under normal circumstances.

The mass promised a painful and potentially slow death writhed and burst out in all directions, many blasting downwards and heading towards the archives. But those were rather lacking compared to the main attack blasting straight at Isaac.

Five floating Kabars manifested and flew straight out of the window chasing the beams downwards, attempting to intercept and burn them. He failed.

“Attack incoming, some kind of disease ray. I’ll burn it away, steer clear of the highlighted area.” Isaac warned.

His blades reached the basement archives a moment later, hammering into the spots of vile material, then igniting, bursting into black flames. They then turned and began to fly skywards, passing through the holes left behind and burning away the sickness, but putting the torch to the building at the same time. If left alone, that would become a huge problem, but Isaac had no intention of letting it come to that.

While paying the barest level of attention to the flying blades, Isaac charged.

[True Cut: Excise Sickness] slapped onto Balmung allowed him to slash the main attack out of the air, multiple flying blades expanded into the giant sword configuration, blocking all of the remainder. Their size caused them to pierce both the floor and ceiling, but when the attack hit home, the blades were pushed backwards with immense force, concrete and rebar splintering.

Isaac leaped over another attack and flicked a [Far Strike] at his enemy’s head. A wave of sludge rose to meet his attack, and the faintly glowing blade shattered like glass. That [Skill] was far too fragile to still be viable at his current level of power.

The next salvo of beams split of far more, a shotgun blast of incredibly weak but numerous little splashes that his armor would hopefully be able to tank, especially when he reinforced it with mana. A [Sweeping Strike] nonetheless carved straight through the center of the attack, opening Isaac’s path.

Then, the attack hit home … and tore through his armor like tissue paper. Fuck!

All the hellflame in the room was pulled straight onto Isaac, turning his armor into a torch, and feeding on the material rather than his mana, burning away the remains of the attack, even burrowing into his skin through the holes left by the attack while Isaac’s [Aura] was flipped over in the [Aura of the Crimson Dawn], focusing on regenerating his body. And lastly, the evolved form of [Undying Focus] allowed Isaac to push out damaging effects through focus, sheer force of will, and his [Aura].

The end result was almost two hundred points of mana blown in exchange for blocking the worst of the consequences of the attack, but now, Isaac was in range for a good hit.

Balmung tore towards his foe but before it could make contact, the man’s form turned black. The hit tore the form apart, blasting the mess across the room while the [Grave of Sword’s] Isaac had cast through the blade fizzled and died. His foe was gone, shifted into the mass and then moved to another part of this mess. And Isaac didn’t have enough knowledge to find him withi- … there!

Isaac spotted a flicker of mana, spun, and thrust his blade through the sludge, but the form flickered and appeared well clear of his reach. Annoying, but now, he’d figured out what [Skill] was in play. [Everywhere and Nowhere] fused the user into a larger mass, a probability shift that meant that at any given point in time, they could have been anywhere within so when they were attacked, they just so happened to have been elsewhere.

Near impossible to overcome directly, but it was a mana hog and required mass to work with.

Isaac had long since stopped feeding mana into his flames so they were now no longer under his direct control, but there were other ways to deal with this. He moved at maximum speed, the burning cloak that had already burned away several attacks bursting at the seam’s and setting most of the room ablaze. Thankfully, Wirt and Richter had already retreated and were safe.

[Fully Geared] slammed his original outfit back into place, then his hand snaped out, snatching a piece of burning fabric and stuffed it into his pocket, once again setting his clothing ablaze to create another burning shield.

Now, it was time to go to work. Flying blades plunged into the mass as parts of it were shaped into spears, separating into different toxins that could inflict damage through the flames, airborne pathogens that managed to get a couple of coughs out of him before a combination of his [Aura] and regenerative power exterminated the vile hellspawn.

The whole room was now on fire, parts of the ceiling already caving in, but the pool of animate sickness was ever shrinking, being pushed back. Burning out infection was a pretty bad idea on a person, but in a building, it seemed to work.

[Crippling Blows] hammered into other parts of the “body”, which was too divorced from the enemy to be a viable target for [Grave of Swords], but it was still a mobile magic construct that could be weakened by the [Skill], vastly weakened and rendered harder to manipulate, harder to dodge into.

All the while, death incarnate clawed at Isaac’s defenses, wearing them down as they dueled at the heart of the inferno. It would have been nice if he could wait for this guy to burn to death, but it wasn’t going to be that easy. Escape [Skills], magic shields, [Skills] unavailable in that “merged with the sickness” state, there had to be something more to this guy than merely a living bioweapon that could be casually burned from existence.

And then, he finally caught the bastard in a vastly shrunken patch of sludge, and [Grave of Swords] finally took. He was locking himself in a room with a living bioweapon, sure. But he could also finally unleashed his full power. As the connection to the normal world grew more and more tenuous, Isaac finally spent the two hundred mana needed to wipe out every bit of hellfire in the building, ensuring they wouldn’t return to a burnt out husk later, then switched over to yet another set of armor and set that too ablaze.

The mass of his foe went sprawling inside the separate space, rolling in on himself and coalescing back into a human form, ending up on his feet but staggering a few more steps backwards. The mask was slightly cracked, and the cloak was badly scorched, but the person underneath was physically unharmed.

“[We Can Talk About This].” The man announced in a conversational tone and mana blasted outwards, wrapping around both of them and rapidly hardening into a gentle yet firm resistance that would make a follow up attack damn difficult.

Isaac could have blocked it but decided to let it go. The [Skill] and its effects were familiar to him, a forced negotiation power that equally applied to both parties involved. When either of them moved to attack before it ended on its own, the [Skill’s] entire power would focus on the attacker while leaving the other one alone while providing them with a huge opening.

His enemy was trying to buy time to analyze, prepare, and cultivate his weapon into a more dangerous state, possibly even recover mana.

Isaac was perfectly fine with that, though. His own mana was well under half after using that much hellfire, and he could tell that both his [Inspect] and [Privacy] upgrades were superior. He’d be walking away from this information duel the winner.

Also, a popup informed him of the fact that this [Skill] would only be active for five minutes at a maximum, while, at Level 17, [Grave of Swords] clocked in at a whopping seventeen minutes. He had time. And while there was another foe out there that needed dealing with, he did have faith in the people he’d trained. Even if they didn’t win, they should be able to hold their own.

But the biggest draw was the conversation. The other guy wanted to buy some time? He’d have to talk, hold a conversation. Sure, he wouldn’t be doing the usual “bad guy reveals the whole plan in a monolog”, but even reading between the lines, spotting what this guy was willing to talk about and what he avoided, would still earn him plenty of information. The same went for lies, Isaac might know what the truth was, but it would be rather telling where those occurred.

Lastly, there were ways around that [Skill] that Isaac could exploit. Even with all he’d revealed, there were so many things, so many useful tricks that hadn’t been shared yet, the breadth and scope of his knowledge so vast that it would have taken six month straight of him doing nothing but teaching to explain them all.

And now, this bastard would get schooled on precisely why information was the greatest weapon of all.

“So, now that we’re all alone and able to talk freely, I gotta ask: why do you fight for them?”

… wow, Isaac had vastly misread that. It made sense, sure, his ability to pull dangerous foes into a separate space was well known, and this could have been predicted, but then again, this was weird. But then again …

“That isn’t your [Skill], is it? It doesn’t fit your [Class], and is somewhat divorced from you. Someone figured out how I would fight when confronted with a living bioweapon, and when the alarm went off, sent you here with an extra little ability so we could safely have a conversation. But do you really think you can turn me to your side with a single conversation, when everything I’ve done so far is fight you?” Isaac thought out loud, letting himself fall onto the ground and sitting down with crossed legs.

“See, here’s the thing: you’re already halfway there. You are aware of all the right things, have made all the right predictions, you just need a little more information.” The robed man sat down in a pose identical to Isaac “So, why do you fight for everyone out there? The world is doomed, and you know it. Hell, you’ve even said so in public. ‘The [System] has put immense power in the hands of every individual on the planet.’ I mean, it’s more like ‘every idiot, nitwit, and lunatic now has nukes at their fingertips’ but I guess you had to phrase it more diplomatically than that.”

Isaac just raised an eyebrow and kept his mouth shut, his [Aura] already flipped over to the [Aura of the Desperate Seeker] and intensely scanning every inch of his foe.

“If you’re buying time here for your friends over in the real world to get ready to fight me, you do realize half the building is already drenched in a rotting affliction that’s currently devouring all the evidence and you torched the other half. With hellfire, I might add.”

And his enemy really did believe that, having failed to realize that removing all the hellflame was baked right into the Aspect Isaac wielded. It also let Isaac know something else, that this guy’s ability to sense the sludge was highly limited if he hadn’t realized that his attack had been burned away. Unfortunately, it also meant that there was likely very little control in play, so if there was any sludge around later on, they might end up with an unstoppable bioweapon on their hands.

Isaac decided right then and there that this guy was dying within the [Grave of Swords] and that Isaac himself would be washed clean with hellfire before the [Skill] vanished. The combination of his [Class] and seeming disregard for human life made this guy just too bloody dangerous.

“Are you sure about that?” Isaac asked. He was revealing his cards here, but really, a dead man wouldn’t be able to do much with the information.

The guy just shrugged, then pushed himself back onto his feet, then began pacing.

“Do you really think the world will just keep going with the [System]? You’re a smart man, you know how this goes. When the time comes, me and my friends, we won’t even have to lift a finger, humanity will already be well on the way to extinction. If we didn’t have to ‘make an honest effort’ and ‘be prepared’ we’d all be living it up until the apocalypse, then go into the next life with all the gifts our loyalty earned.

“But noooo, a few someones are rallying everyone in an ultimately futile effort and we have to make plans for each and every one of you fuckers. And if we were allowed to outright kill you, you’d already be dead, but that would be too easy, wouldn’t it?”

The man reached up and removed the mask, tossing it and revealing a rather plain and ordinary face, not the kind that would normally have been expected on someone who was bioterrorism incarnate.

“So, how about you start being honest with yourself, see humanity for the hopeless mess it truly is, and enjoy your remaining days. You might even be able to join us. True paradise in the afterlife is a greater reward than anything else you’d be able to earn in this lifetime.”

Ooh, that had been a big slip-up. Isaac had already suspected that there were limitations in place as to what this cult, and he’d grown pretty sure he was dealing with another cult could do, otherwise, the world would already have ended. Simply summoning a million Specters on day one would have likely done the trick. As would summoning several [Raid Bosses] last month have done. Either they destroyed the world, or the nukes used to fight them did. But that hadn’t happened.

The combination of the rest of the world having time to prepare and the cult having time to self-destruct meant that their ultimate success was less than guaranteed, and therefore lowered the cost for the dark gods.

And the same went for not being allowed to strike down any champions of the world while they were still developing. Only preparations were allowed to be made, and apparently, self-defense was also acceptable, anything else would have been too great a handicap.

This just left the question of how long the grace period was. Isaac hadn’t seen the cult take action in the other timeline, most likely because the stuff this guy was spouting about how it was hopeless had proven true. Humanity probably had wrecked itself all on its own, without these guys having to take action. So even if Isaac succeeded in saving the it from itself, he’d still have to save it from these guys afterwards. Civilization had collapsed around nine to ten years after the Initialization, so whatever the grace period was, it was longer.

Also, this guy was clearly powerful, and likely a part of the direct strike force while the people with the weird Stat distributions would almost certainly be acting as suicide bombers when the time came.

Beyond that, who knew? He certainly couldn’t rely on this guy running his mouth anymore. But had this guy really run his mouth? He might have made the same decision that Isaac had, that only one person would be leaving here alive, and what damage could a dead man do?

Isaac couldn’t even fault him for his confidence, as that sludge was ever evolving into a more dangerous form, one that would have ended countless lives without even being slung around, had this conversation taken place out there. He’d still take the win and this guy’s head though, no matter what tricks he pulled out of his ass.

“Look, like I said, you’re more than capable of figuring all this out on your own, it’s just that the end result is something you don’t want to be true, I …”

“I was thinking.” Isaac cut him off. He’d try to get a little more information, then end this before things got to the point where even he was likely going to die.

“See, I thought you were nihilists at first, doing whatever crap you wanted. But then, you opened your big fat mouth and I realized you’re just pessimists. Lazy pessimists. Of course the world will go to crap if everyone just sits on their fat ass and gripes about the state of things. Plus …”

“And you’re just an optimistic idiot! Someone who lives in fantasy land because he can’t bear to face the real world!”

Ooh, temper, temper. But that was to be expected, sane and normal people didn’t usually decide to actively wreck the planet for their own gain. Pretend they weren’t doing anything wrong or acting like the world-damaging secondary effects didn’t exist? Sure. But people for whom the end of the world was their primary goal were thankfully few and far between.

“LIKE I was about to say, the only idiot here is you for believing you’ll be rewarded by the dark gods,” Isaac commented.

“You’re still fighting because you think that’s where salvation lies, I have the word of a god that what I’m doing will earn me a spot in paradise.”

“That’s assuming you even get to an afterlife. You said it yourself, I’m a smart guy, I might even be able to figure out a way to prevent that, to tear your soul asunder!” Isaac said in a creepily jovial tone. He couldn’t, honestly, wouldn’t mess with anyone’s soul, that was a step too far under all circumstances, but it made for a damn intimidating threat.

“And maybe, you’re not as smart as you think you are. I think you’re like us, the one who plays for the other side under divine mandate.”

“Sure, you got me.” Isaac leaned back with seeming nonchalance, planting his hands on the floor to avoid overbalancing and falling onto his back. That sludge was approaching the danger limit he’d decided on, now all he had to do was get the advantage of surprise.

He grinned broadly “You know, it’s nice to my enemy face to-“

And then, he exploded into hellflame mid-sentence, the gentle fire on his armor turning into a roaring flame. The [Skill] that had allowed this relatively genteel conversation to take place fought him, preventing him from roasting his foe while allowing said foe to freely strike at him, but any attack had to get through the strongest hellfire he could create.

When the blast of enough deadly toxins and diseases to wipe out the entirety of the city outside slammed into this defense, oh so much of it was burned away for the low, low cost of almost four hundred mana, the attack several minutes in the making blunted to the point where, rather than wiping him from existence, merely tore straight through Isaac’s torso.

A potentially fatal hit even if hadn’t been loaded up with some of the deadliest substances in existence. Then, [Moment of Immortality] activated, instantly blocking all those substances from causing further damage and ensuring that even with part of his spinal cord severed and missing about half the vital organs in his torso, he remained standing.

[Grand Hellflame] washed through the injury a moment later, his immunity ensuring he didn’t get burned while the black fire washed away the mess within. This final use of the fire reduced his mana pool to under three hundred, far too low for an extended battle, but that was fine. He had his next and final armor for that. [Fully Geared: Raid Suit].

The latest suit wasn’t the full berserk suit that people with instant equip [Skills] had used in the other timeline, the tech level wasn’t quite that high, but the next best thing.

A full suit that you had to literally be helped into and were sealed inside of, yet could move perfectly with, countless internal potion dispensers locally applying the needed potions, ranging from the right kind of healing straight onto injuries to enhancing substances injected straight into the proper muscle groups. All in all, the most precise and efficient way to use these substances.

Isaac charged even as his internals were still stitching themselves together, this time not choosing to resort to [Form of Horror] as he was saving that for anyone he might have to fight after this.

His opponent dodged the attack by teleporting, explosive buds rising out of the droplets of sludge spread around the battlefield. More and more bolts of devastating power, each vastly different from the things that bastard had used to date flashed through the air, cleanly demonstrating that Isaac hadn’t been alone in holding stuff back. Or maybe they hadn’t been useable while in sludge form, just like Isaac couldn’t transform Old Reliable while himself transformed into [Form of Horror].

However, one of them was continuously regenerating mana from potions and still had two cooldown [Skills] in his back pocket. The other’s mana was in free fall, his biggest [Skills] had already been blown and their effects were currently being erased by Isaac’s potions and regenerative capabilities.

A cloud of flying blades flicked through the air, forcing the cultist to keep dodging and weaving … until Isaac slapped [Razor Trails] onto them, keeping them in existence for only a single second each to ensure that they didn’t cost too much mana. End result?

Covered in countless cuts and scrapes, the plague mage continued to attack, until he stumbled into a blade that looked a little … different. Blue, crystalline, glowing with an inner light.

Isaac rarely used the [Skill]-damaging weapons when intending to kill his foe, preferring to go straight for the death blow, but it was too hard to land one of those at the moment and [True Cut] was well outside of what he could afford right now.

So instead the murderous cultist was learning exactly why the phrase “death by a thousand cuts” had started out as the name of a particularly torturous ancient Chinese execution method.

The other guy realized the eventual outcome almost too late and launched himself at Isaac, many [Skills] impaired or even unusable, a kamikaze [Skill] activated and building up to full power, ready to blow Isaac to pieces at the moment of contact.

Yeah, that wasn’t going to happen.

Isaac thrust Balmung forward, then caused his sword to explode forwards by transforming it into the giant blade, skewering the man like a roast pig. [Sundering Strike] vaporized every part of the body that didn’t count as “armor”. Finally, the blade shifted into his Zweihänder and shot forward to fling the body to the far side of the space, where it exploded, the power vastly reduced with the body’s volume.

What little remained was drawn into a single point up against the side of the space and coalesced into a sickly green sword that appeared thrust into the ground.

Human (Lv. 100 Aspirant for the Mantle of Conquest) has been slain 8,000 XP gained

Lv. 100 Aspirant for the Mantle of Conquest has been added to the Grave of Swords as a potential training target/power source

Horseman of Conquest, huh. Astride the white horse, the same color as the mask thought to represent pestilence and being referred to as “Pestilence” in most modern stories about the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Someone certainly had a high opinion of themselves.

But now, that fight was over. Two people had gone into this space, both looking to buy time, find out information about the other, and both assuming they could kill the other if things went pear-shaped. One had been wrong, and the other was leaving this place alive.

Another hundred-odd points of mana went to fueling hellfire that scoured him clean of the last potential bits of infection even as the [Grave of Swords] faded around him.

Isaac was deposited in the middle of a scorched place that looked like it could fall apart at any time. Even though he’d been trying to ensure that the building wasn’t damaged too badly, it was still hellfire that he’d been slinging around, and it had inflicted structural damage. There were also several badly damaged channels through the building where he’d burned away some more infectious gunk, but thankfully, it looked like a large part of the basement archives had survived. However, it would remain to be seen how useful those would be, whether they’d just gotten a manifest of all the “secret bases” they’d have to clear or a precise breakdown of how much toilet paper this organization used in a day.

But what truly was striking was the noise from the outside. The sirens, the sound of heavy military machinery that had no business in the middle of a city being used around, and the screaming. Oh gods, the screaming. Human misery distilled into a song emanating from countless throats, grating on the ears, the heart, the soul.

Yet there were shouts of triumph as well, of victory. Toss on the utter lack of sounds of combat, and it was clear who’d won the day.

Isaac slumped and sat down hard, only to feel the ground crumple beneath him. No time to relax, not even for a second.

He dove into the Party menu, scanning all the messages he could find, announcing that he was still, in fact, alive, and trying to figure out what to do next.

The battle was hopefully over, now, all that was left to deal with was the butcher’s bill.