Apocalypse Redux

Chapter 176: The Bar

From the outside, the bar looked like any old hole in the wall, a lit entryway with a propped-open door and a sign above the entrance, but that was about it. There wasn’t even a menu outside.

The only thing that set it apart from a service entrance was the freshly painted “STARHAIL” above the doorway. It wasn’t lit up or made to stand out in any other way, but this was the kind of establishment you heard about through the grapevine if you were in the right line of work, they didn’t want or need walk-ins.

Or rather, they wouldn’t, because the bar was brand spanking new, not having existed long enough to gain any kind of reputation.

There was one customer, however, seated in one of the private booths, the [Bartender’s] [Skills] ensuring that no one could look or listen in, not even the [Bartender] herself, while leaving the person within fully aware of anyone who even so much as tried to approach. A perfect setup for private meetings.

As to just how Rosalie Wagner had gotten to over 80 when most of the world was still faffing around in the upper tens, Isaac wasn’t sure, but between his other timeline knowledge and the background check his company’s in-house investigator had done, he was pretty damn sure there wasn’t going to be a problem.

When this place eventually gained a reputation for quality service, privacy, and discretion though, then it would be overrun.

Isaac sighed and leaned back in the sinfully comfortable seat, stuffed his phone back into his pants, and rubbed at his temples.

“Something wrong?” a man who’d just entered the booth asked. Short, very muscular, and a bearing that practically screamed he was either military or law enforcement. Polizeirat Franz Habicht, head of one of the strongest law enforcement teams in the world and a close ally of Isaac’s.

“You know how we decided to see if politicians got country-wide boosting [Skills] by bringing them to their next Evolution and having them pick a suitable [Class]?” Isaac asked rhetorically “Someone went to all the kinds of power-hungry people we don’t want to powerlevel and told them that it was an exclusive program that they just had to ask me to get in. And now, they won’t take no for an answer.”

“Sounds annoying,” Habicht said dryly.

“That’s putting it mildly. When I find out who is responsible, we’ll see how funny the old ‘flaming bag of dog shit on the front porch’ really is.” Isaac growled.

“Please don’t make threats where I can hear them.” Habicht sighed.

“Of course, I won’t do that, I wouldn’t be that uncreative,” Isaac told him.

Habicht just shook his head in mock disappointment “So, what’s this about? Apparently, the bar has a [Skill] on it that lets high-level people get drunk if they allow it, so be honest with me, are you trying to create the most dangerous duo of drunkards the world has ever seen? I mean, you called me to a bar across the street from your company, you have got to know what this looks like.”

Isaac laughed, but the mirth didn’t reach his eyes “We’ve got a few more people coming, I’ll explain once everyone is here.”

Then, his phone dinged with another incoming email.

“I swear, the next time someone contacts me over this crap, I’ll be reading their stat sheet out loud, in public, and make sure there’s a reporter present,” Isaac growled.

“I actually did that once, it was hilarious.” Another, new voice cut in. It was a blonde man who looked like an action hero come to life, dressed in what looked like a fusion of a modern suit and medieval high fashion. Arthur Wells, soon to be able to change his surname to “Pendragon”, if Isaac’s knowledge from the other timeline held true.

“And who had to smooth things over afterward?” Arthur’s companion rebuked him. Elena had changed since Isaac had last seen her, her Asrai race’s features becoming more pronounced as her Level increased. Her formerly black hair had turned a blueish silver, and while her eyes had always been blue, they’d now turned a sapphire-like color that was decidedly not something people had normally.

“Bah, he was already on the outs with his backers.” Arthur shot back “Him going after me with all these crazy methods he thought he’d get away with was never going to go well even before I told everyone his build was basically all manipulation [Skills].”

“That isn’t an excuse or a justification, Mr. It’s the only reason the fallout wasn’t an even bigger problem.” Elena rebuked him.

Seeing this, one might say they argued like an old married couple, though Isaac knew it was more akin to a mentor-mentee dynamic, even though the actual power structure ran the other way. It was a weird system, but it worked, strangely enough.

“Anyway, may I introduce to you Polizeirat Franz Habicht, head of GSG-13 and a good friend of mine?” Isaac said and turned to Habicht “These two are Arthur Wells and Elena Hightower of Camelot.”

“We met briefly during the Spring Event,” Elena said. “But I don’t believe we’ve been officially introduced until now.”

“Is this everyone?” Habicht asked, “I’m getting really curious as to what all this is about.”

“We’re still waiting on two more.” Isaac said, “Feel free to order something, I’m paying and this place has some very exclusive beverages.”

“Exclusive?” Arthur asked.

“[Skill] enhanced, high-Level crafter kind of exclusive.” Isaac grinned “But please, no one use the [Skill] that allows you to get drunk until we’re done here.”

“Why, I’d never!” Arthur said, mock-offended as he stepped out of the booth and headed over to the bar.

“This is getting interesting.” Habicht said, “Though when you’re around, things usually are.”

Isaac just shrugged.

“Actually interesting, or ‘interesting’?” Elena asked.

“Chaotic clusterfuck kind of interesting.” Habicht said, “I just hope today doesn’t turn into another occasion like that.”

“It probably will, won’t it?” Elena said, then looked at Isaac “Are you looking for investors? I mean, that is your company across the road, isn’t it?”

“No, this place is just a private meeting spot I trust.” Isaac said, “It was either this place or the middle of the woods.”

“You don’t trust your company’s information defenses?” Elena frowned.

“Not for this. Not as much as I trust a [Bartender] close to Level 90, with a specialization in providing private meeting spots, with a [System]-based guarantee that she isn’t listening in either.” Isaac said.

“And now I’m worried.” Arthur grimaced “You’re seriously not going to tell us anything for now?”

“For now. We’re waiting on more person.” Isaac said.

“Told you we shouldn’t have come early,” Arthur told Elena.

“And I told you if we’re not early, we’re late.” She shot back.

Isaac tried to hide his laugh behind the club soda Arthur had given him, but the clear liquid didn’t particularly help things.

“You know, that’s an interesting name for a bar,” Habicht said, trying to fill the

“Add ‘full’, and translate it into German,” Isaac advised and Habicht just burst out laughing.

“What’s so funny?” Elena asked.

“’Sternhagelvoll’ is a very colorful way of saying ‘very, very drunk’.” Isaac explained “It’s a good name for a bar.

Then, finally, the last two people walked through the door.

One was tall, blond, and sported considerably more hair than he’d during his first meeting with Isaac. Professor Bailey had eventually given in and used his biomancy to restore his full head of hair.

The other was a Korean man of average height who looked like he could have bench-pressed cars pre-[System], with slightly glowing, ice-blue eyes carefully taking in every facet of his surroundings.

Seon Yoo-jin, the man in charge of the organization that ran South Korea’s Dungeons, was not someone who often left the capital of Seoul, much less traveled to another country entirely for a meeting in a bar. But Isaac had earned enough credibility with him that his request for a meeting had been accepted as a matter of course.

Isaac introduced everyone Yoo-jin to everyone, then added his own set of privacy [Skills] to the ones already in place. Either would have likely sufficed on their own but combined, they likely surpassed even the protection of the Oval Office.

He stood up and walked to the head of the table, reached out with his hand, and held it out over the table, palm down. Beneath it, a [Lesser Illusion] wavered into existence. It had taken him hours of practice to get to the point where he could keep these images in place without requiring his constant attention.

He was showing them the last few things he’d seen in the other timeline, images of pain and bloodshed.

The endless armies of demons and demonic beasts filling the plains at the foot of the final fortress of humanity, an immense castle built in an oddly modern style.

The sheer destruction Mark and Cade had wrought on that horde, a single punch leveling a square kilometer, lighting bolts hammering out of the clear sky, and annihilating foes by the thousands.

The gigantic Demon Lord that had been the last monster of this world to die.

The magic slideshow had taken maybe five seconds but everyone was already looking at him with countless unspoken questions on the lips of everyone save Bailey.

Isaac decided to explain before anyone interrupted for clarification, dropped every single information defense, and spoke.

“There are a million ways I came up with to say this, but none seemed sufficient, so I’m just going to come out and say it: I’m from another timeline, and the images I just showed you tell the story of how humanity as a whole died.”

Isaac paused to allow for a reaction, but everyone just waited patiently for him to continue. Well, except Bailey, who was making a “get on with it” motion.

“Eleven years from now, in 2034, monsters who killed their summoners and got loose spawned so many more of their kind that the planet itself was overrun. Normal monster of all Tiers, but also [Field], Tier 10 [Raid Bosses], and even a couple of [World Bosses].

“I’d be dead too, but there was a final emergency provision included in the [System] that allowed the last human to return through time if a few conditions were met. Which I did.

“One moment, I was standing on a battlefield. The next, I was back in my bed on the day the [System] initialized. And ever since then, I’ve been working to try and prevent that future from coming around.

“I sped up research into the [System], intervened where I could, headed off tragedies I was able to predict, and shared all the information I thought was helpful. But now, I’m at the end of what I could do on my own. I’ve also changed things a lot, and my knowledge of specific Events is useless now.

“Short of trying to beat humanity into behaving and not ending the world through reckless summoning, I can’t do much else except wait for something to go wrong and hope I’m close enough to intervene. So now, I’m asking for your help. All of yours’s.

“I realize this is surprising, and that it sounds impossible. If you want me to do anything to prove myself, I will. I’ll tell you the secrets behind the [System], later. If you need specific information, I’ll provide it. I trust you all, and your helping me won’t go unrewarded.”

After that speech, Isaac paused and looked around, already mentally readying himself for a verbal shitstorm. Yes, he did trust these people, due to either their reputation in the other timeline, or his getting to know them in this one. But the problem was that he trusted them in their current relationship, a relationship which would massively change if any of them felt like he’d betrayed them. While that might not have been entirely rational, it was understandable. He only hoped that if someone decided to take this badly, they would at least not blab his secrets to the whole world. He doubted that would happen, but he still worried.

“What secrets do you have?” Elena was the first to speak, sounding breathless “Do you know where the [System] comes from?”

“I do.” Isaac nodded.

“Screw it.” Habicht said, “If you don’t have anything to tell us that can’t wait until after you’re done telling us the secrets behind the [System], then tell us.”

“Does everyone agree?” Isaac asked, earning himself irritated or even outright dirty looks.

“You just offered to solve the biggest mystery in the world. Did you really think we wouldn’t want to know?” Yoo-jin was the only one who spoke up.

For Isaac, the answer had been oh so clear, never in question, and he’d had years to come to terms with it. He’d still regarded it as damn important, but that had still fallen short of how badly they wanted, no, needed to know this.

So he explained. The cosmic balancing act that had seemingly existed since the beginning of time. How the [System] had initially been meant to be helpful, and what had changed it. How he’d been the one publishing all those secret messages that had caused some people to seriously assume the Illuminati were real. The new modification of the Events that had happened because Isaac was taking much of the bite out of other [System] features. Even his talk with Loki was mentioned, and he showed them the description of the [Aura of Divinity Endured], which he’d unlocked thanks to that meeting.

“When I asked, you told me that you’d never met a god face to face.” Arthur said once he was done, tone half confused, half accusatory.

“Your question surprised me, I didn’t have the time to think through what to say.” Isaac said simply “I screwed up.”

“I get it.” Habicht said “What I don’t get is why you haven’t even tried to get divine help. There is a certain amount of give and take, any help would be matched by a bane, but you haven’t even asked about the cost.”

“I haven’t tried to get divine help because divine intervention is chaos incarnate. All the changes that have already happened didn’t fix things. We’re having real trouble keeping on top of the Events, and in exchange, autonomous summoning was nerfed into the ground, but that isn’t going to help us if someone summons a [World Boss] out of FOMO.” Isaac said, “We can focus on the information I’m providing and which we’re discovering every day instead of having the rules change on us with no warning.”

“How strong is a [World Boss]?” Yoo-jin asked “If the weakest one were summoned right this instant, would humanity be able to win? Would we be forced to resort to nuclear strikes?”

Isaac sighed “I don’t know, I’ve never seen one. A few people deluded themselves into thinking they could beat one and when they did, they’d have the power to fix everything. All we know is that the entire area went dark soon after, both times. A few people caught distant glances, but no one got a better look and lived to tell about it.

“All [World Bosses] are also Tier 10 and monsters at that Tier are functionally immune to nuclear attacks and other powerful strikes that do not require Levels to use.

“The only good news is that no one is going to be able to summon something that strong anytime soon. [World Bosses] require an incredible amount of mana to summon, summoning one early would require hundreds of people to reach Level 100 while putting nearly all their points into Magic Power.”

“Well, ain’t that a fun bit of news.” Arthur sighed “The way I see it, we have two major problems, the cult, and humans being greedy bastards who are one bad decision away from literally summoning the apocalypse. Does that about sum it up?”

“’fraid so.” Isaac said, taking another drink from his club soda while the illusion split apart, one side showing a horde of cloaked figures and the other a monstrous army “The good news is that ‘summoning the apocalypse’ will require a lot of mistakes, and that I’ve managed to make things a lot better than they were at this point in the other timeline. The bad news is that we’ve all seen what people can do while blinded by greed.

“There are two ways it’s already being dealt with. The first is creating ways to deal with messes like this when they crop up.”

“Like GSG-13.” Habicht commented “Now it makes more sense how much support you’ve given us.”

“Exactly.” Isaac nodded “The other approach is the PR angle, which we’re already working on. We want people to believe that they don’t have to color outside the lines to grow strong and for ‘reckless’ summoning to be seen as unnecessarily dangerous and reckless.”

“You’re seriously going to tell me that you’ve never summoned recklessly, at least as far as the law is concerned?” Arthur asked.

“The new law that’s being written asks people to agree to only summon monsters that they know they can beat and have been properly categorized by a trusted source. When someone signs those forms, it’ll get checked over by someone with a truth-telling [Skill]. Because there aren’t any provisions about how those categorizations have to have taken place in this timeline, the [Skills] won’t detect a falsehood when ‘the famous Dr. Thoma’ decides to prove once and for all that he’s always been careful and never been reckless while becoming one of the strongest people in the world.” Habicht chuckled “Sneaky. I like it.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be upholding the law?” Yoo-jin frowned “I realize that this is a special case, but should you really be so gleeful about someone undermining it so thoroughly?”

Habicht shrugged “The law isn’t perfect, it takes forever to catch up to the state of the world and Isaac found a good workaround.”

Yoo-jin nodded, then fixed Isaac with a hard stare “How much did you know about the Demon Lord before it attacked?”

Isaac was surprised it had taken this long for him to ask.

“I knew it had been summoned in the other timeline on that day and that there was symbolic significance to the date, but literally everything had changed up to that point. I couldn’t just run around telling everyone about an attack that would probably not even happen with how North Korea was already being undermined at the time.” He explained, hoping that explanation was accepted.

“I understand.” Yoo-jin sighed “But most of my countrymen won’t. This will be our little secret.”

“Thank you,” Isaac said.

“That just leaves one problem, the bloody cult.” Habicht practically spat “I don’t know why they haven’t done more after that mess in Hamburg, but we know they’re out there.”

Then, he paused and looked quizzically at Isaac “There’s a reason they haven’t and you’re about to tell us, aren’t you?”

Isaac nodded “Yup. The guy I fought slipped up a couple of times when we talked. Honestly, it wasn’t really a slip-up per se, it’s just that I could read a lot more into it thanks to being from another timeline.

“Remember how I told you how divine intervention is limited? Basically, the dark gods imposed a time limit they couldn’t do anything before, other than self-defense because that way, they were less likely to succeed, and that made the intervention cheaper. We opened the door when we attacked them, but they can’t attack us back. Once we find another target to hit, we can just prepare for as long as we want.”

“Do we know how long that time limit is?” Habicht asked.

“Sort of.” Isaac grimaced “I know enough to make an educated guess, but I don’t know anything for certain. On May 2nd, 2032, exactly one decade after the [System] initialized, a [Skill] similar to [Axis Mundi] destroyed the defenses at Dubai and the city fell to the monsters hours later. On the same day, two more strongholds went dark and there were other attacks elsewhere that did quite a bit of damage.

“It would make sense for the time limit to be ten years on the dot because we know the [System] likes nice, round numbers, but you have to understand, we were already losing at that point. Extinction was all but guaranteed, it happening a little sooner because what I now suspect to be the last survivors of this cult wasn’t as big of a deal as it should have been.”

“Extinction isn’t a big deal?” Bailey exclaimed, speaking up for the first time. He was only here because Isaac had wanted another person here who could verify his story and as such, he’d kept mostly to the background.

“Not when it was only made to happen a little sooner.” Isaac sighed, sorrow tinging his voice as he recalled those dark times “Communication was already shot to hell, we only heard about a lot of the incidents well after the fact. It was a tragedy, but it should tell you how bad things were when I say that I barely even remembered those incidents.

“The cultist told me that they’d barely have to intervene because humanity will kill itself without needing any help and they were right in the other timeline.”

“So even if we safe us from ourselves, we still have to deal with those bastards if we want to live,” Arthur growled.

Isaac just nodded sadly “I can’t do this on my own, no one can.”

“I think we all need some time to digest … everything.” Bailey interjected “It might be for the best if we meet again later, in, say, a month? Let’s bring all our new ideas, and see if we can come up with any new ideas.”

Everyone agreed with that, and the group broke up soon enough. Bailey led Yoo-jin to the university to show him around, Arthur and Habicht stayed at the bar to get properly drunk for the first time in months while Isaac and Elena headed across the street to his company. There were certain things that needed to be discussed in private and not at a bar.