Apocalypse Redux

Chapter 174: Hindsight and all that

“Gott verdammt,” Isaac swore as his head began to pound, rubbing at his temples in annoyance.

“I thought headaches were psychosomatic at our Level?” Amy asked cheekily.

“Normally.” Isaac grumbled “But normally, I didn’t just get another lifetime of experience shoved into my head while I’m realizing that I made a huge miscalculation.”

“Wait, what’s going on?” Amy asked, now clearly confused.

In lieu of answering, Isaac showed her the description of his latest [Skill], the final one needed to fill out his set of training abilities.

Expert’s Insight (legendary)

What separates a soldier who just got out of training from a veteran? A student who just got his degree from a lead engineer? A wizard’s apprentice from an Archmage?

The answer to all those questions is, of course, experience. Some things are taught, yes, but others need to be learned from experience.

Sometimes, said experience takes the form of repeating an action over and over and eventually figuring out a way to make said action more efficient.

In other times, realization comes as a painful realization after a mistake reaps terrible consequences.

Either way, this Skill offers up both a massive pool of experience to the user and vastly improves their experience and Skill Level gain by granting preternatural hindsight. If the user has any knowledge on a subject, they find themselves making connections far more readily and related subjects will be far easier to research. Furthermore, Expert’s Insight acts as a general memory booster.

As with many other Skills in the Hildebrand’s Heir Class, a lesser version of this Skill can be granted to the user’s students using Legacy of a True Warrior.

However, unlike those other Skills, Expert’s Insight does not turn into a lesser version of itself, but rather transforms into a fundamentally different Skill called Veteran’s Knowledge, which allows the user of Expert’s Insight to directly impart their knowledge (note that this is a limited effect, this Skill will not directly put the taught individual on the same level as the user).

“You just got a lot of information, sure, but I’m not seeing where you went wrong?” Amy asked.

“I saw [Expert’s Insight] as something that would be very useful for training, but secondary to all the other [Skills] because they would help me personally as well as the people I trained,” Isaac said.

“But now you realized it also serves perfectly fine as a headache inducer?” Amy commented dryly.

“That … and I also remembered a ton of stuff from the other timeline. As far as superpowers go, super-hindsight sound super-lame, I know, but it’s really useful. I remember enchantment schemas I used but didn’t take the time to memorize, the runes that made them up. I can see some of the strongest spells cast by multiple mages working together in my mind, and I can tell how they went together because I know all the common spells and most of the less common ones. And now, I can pass all that experience along to anyone I taught [Veteran’s Knowledge] to, even if it doesn’t completely get passed along.” Isaac said.

“Do you know how much other information comes along with the combat experience? Because you might end up accidentally revealing that you’re from another timeline.” Amy cautioned.

“We can check, here and now,” Isaac said.

“Is that the only reason you’re in the conference room, you were waiting for Guinea pig?” Amy asked.

“Actually, I was going stir-crazy in my office and needed a change of scenery.” Isaac sighed, once gain rubbing at his temples “Being able to intercept people who are after the drink fridge is a nice bonus, though.”

“Oh, I see how it is.” Amy chuckled “So, you wanted to see what happens when you pass along knowledge.”

“I hereby grant you the gift of [Veteran’s Knowledge]. And with it, I transfer my experience on the battlefield.” Isaac said, passing along an epic-Level [Skill] with a simple sentence. That was the power of a legendaryteaching [Skill]. No spending hours, days, or even years in a classroom, no real possibility of misunderstandings, just a clear and concise transmission of knowledge.

And then, there were two people sitting in the conference room who were nursing killer headaches.

“Sorry for making fun of you earlier.” Amy said after a while “But it was worth it.”

Magic wreathed above her palm a moment later, spells twisting together and combining into an orb of power that would have blown the room to smithereens just by existing if she hadn’t kept ironclad control over it. If it had actually been used, most of the floor would have been destroyed despite the ungodly level of reinforcing magic present.

Combining spells was something Amy had been doing for a while, and her current [Class], [Spellweaver Savant] was focused on that, but this latest spell was on another level. Not on Isaac’s new level of understanding and certainly not to on the one that he had seen others reach in the other timeline, but leagues ahead of where she’d been. The fact that the amount of information and knowledge gained grew less with every “generation” wasn’t great, but a [Skill] that could turn everyone into a true-blue veteran would have been utterly broken.

Amy let the ball of danger that should, by all rights, never have been summoned indoors vanish.

“And you got that kind of boost, too?” she asked as she looked at Isaac, eyes slowly growing huge as she imagined just how strong Isaac might be now.

“Unfortunately, no. I’m well past the point of diminishing returns when it comes to training. I’ve been fighting with the [System] boosting my learning for over a decade now, and while an entire lifetime’s worth of experience helped a lot, most of it was stuff I already knew or could already do better.”

“Too bad.” Amy said, then sighed “I actually wanted to talk to you about something important before I got sidetracked.”

“What’s wrong?” Isaac asked, alarmed.

“I heard a couple of the cops over at the station talking about the plans you guys made after Hamburg and it sounded … off. No, stupid. Forbidding people from summoning? I thought we agreed that was a stupid idea. And empowering a politician to save us all, to rule this nation with an iron fist, when has that ever gone right?”

“We did, and it hasn’t.” Isaac said “Because that’s not what we’re actually going to do. There is a reason cops and soldiers aren’t the ones who run nations, they tend to have a bias for action. The people I talked to aren’t going to be putting those plans into action, they’re merely going to recommend them, and the plans are going to be changed along the way.

“In that situation, some kinds of plans needed to be made before everyone started to do their own thing and everything devolved into chaos. The ideas we had are good, deep down, something to base our plans on, but I know how to turn them into something workable.

“For example, summoning regulations? My suggestion is going to be to make registration voluntary, and that that registration would basically amount to ‘I won’t summon anything unless I can handle it, based on the monster having been properly analyzed by a trusted source like a university, government agency or equivalent entity and being judged suitable’. That document would then be looked over by someone who can see lies.

“And I’d be leading by shining example, someone who made it this far without accidents or rule breaking, at least as far as anyone knows.”

“But isn’t summoning dangerous crap all you do when you’re not here?” Amy asked “If people find out you never actually stopped summoning … I’m guessing you won’t include language like ‘researching entities have to be in this timeline’? You sneaky bastard!”

Isaac just grinned at her for a moment before answering “Exactly. Now, I know not everyone who does things by the book will automatically not cause any trouble, nor will anyone automatically be enemy number one just because they don’t register, but the option of registration should make spotting bad actors easier.”

“There’s more to the politicians as well, right? Something you know about how high-Level politicians work but can’t explain where you know it from?” Amy continued and Isaac nodded.

“Basically, there are two kinds of [Classes] that [Politician] can evolve into. Ones built to get the user’s ass into the big chair, and ones that help them do a good job once they’re in it. The latter tend to not do so well outside of democratic nations, but when people are able to vote for their leader, the guy who is able to show his whole character sheet during the election without fear of someone spotting an unsavory [Skill] tends to look pretty good.

“And then, you’ve got the [Skills] that improve the whole country just by having their user in charge. Roads that won’t crack open every spring even if the people who built them don’t have a single [Skill] to reinforce the things they build. The ability to predict labor shortages in certain industries, allowing policies to be adjusted when there’s still time. They can even adjust the weather in some ways, preventing the worst of droughts, constant rain and snowfall, and so on. If we can find a few trustworthy people, power level them and have them chose the Evolutions that will let them boost the nation, that could fix a lot of problems.”

“If they don’t pick the Evolutions?” Amy asked, then facepalmed “Then you shout the fact that they chose to pick a selfish [Class] over one that would have benefitted the voters.”

Then, she grinned wolfishly “But if someone else only has [Skills] to manipulate the vote but nothing to actually run the damn nation, then I suppose we’ll just have to be in the audience during debates, loudly announcing every time they use a [Skill] to manipulate opinions.”

Her grin grew even wider “it’s not like those tend to backfire when people know they’re in play or something.”

Isaac shook his head “I don’t want to run around fixing elections. If there’s an Alt-Right candidate who’s getting popular while using a ton of [Skills], I’ll knock ‘em down a peg or two. If there’s a candidate who looks like they’re going to win but has only gotten as far as they have via [Skills] digging up dirt on everyone who goes up against them, I’ll be sure to point that out in as public a situation as I can swing.

“But I’m not a political animal, if I were, I’d have picked [Machiavelli’s Heir] as my [Class] when it was offered and I’d be dealing with the situation from a chair somewhere.”

Amy nodded “And what are you going to do now?”

“I’m going to head over to the engineer’s bunker, pass all the runes I remembered along to Karl, evacuate the building, and finally, I’ll run like hell,” Isaac told her.

Amy got up, waved at the fridge, and telekinetically pulled a pair of beer bottles out of it “Wait for me, I want to watch the fireworks.”