Apocalypse Redux

Non-Canon Interlude Christmas

Isaac lay in the bed he’d had since childhood, sleeping. He’d been at it for quite a while, far longer than necessary, but staying asleep had been damn easy since he’d passed one hundred points in Fortitude, which had returned a high degree of control over his sleep back to him.

On December 23rd, he’d had dinner with his family, gone to bed after reading his little sisters a bedtime story, and slept from eleven pm onwards. It was a waste of time, but one that eh considered worthwhile. If he couldn’t ‘sleep in’ on Christmas, when else could he?

Being wrapped in Hypnos’ warm embrace was truly wonderful …

… at least until his phone literally exploded. Well, it didn’t physically blow up, but he’d set an absurdly loud ringtone for whenever Bailey called because when the Professor felt that he couldn’t wait on Isaac to answer a text, that he needed a response right the hell now, then that meant there was a massive problem.

Yet Isaac didn’t even have to pick up his phone to know what he was being called about.

Welcome, one and all, to the Christmas EVENT! (Also a belated Hanukkah Event, also also Yuletide, why don’t you jackasses celebrate that anymore, also also also an early New Years Event!!!)

“Deck the halls with boughs of mystic snow”

“’tis the season to be fighting snow golems”

“Literally troll this ancient Yuletide Carol”

… and so much more.

During this Event, you gain the power to ensure a white Christmas, grow fully decorated trees and even face off against the General that commands Winter.

There’s a jolly good time to be had by all, if only you dare to take advantage of all the things that have been generously provided for your summoning convenience.

What. The. Fuck.

Isaac took two seconds to leap to a fair distance out off and away from the building before letting loose an inarticulate scream of range, then picked up the phone.

“Yep, saw the message, coming in now.”

And then he hung up again, used [Fully Geared] to swap his pajamas for something a little more work-appropriate, and sped off towards the university.

As he ran, he sent a message to his mother about where he’d run off to.

Soon enough, Isaac had reached the team’s building and phase-jumped straight into the meeting room.

Although it had taken mere minutes to get there, he was hardly the first one there.

Amy was sitting there in one of those stereotypical Christmas sweaters, sweatpants, and there was a cup filled with eggnog in her hand as she glared at her [System] screen.

Raul was also there, though he was wearing his pajamas.

It took Isaac a moment to realize why they were here the first and dressed like that, but when he did, it made quite a bit of sense. They’d both been out of town for Christmas, so they’d returned via [Portal], wearing what they’d been dressed in at the time.

Meanwhile, those who lived nearby, like Isaac, had likely taken the couple of seconds needed to get dressed before jetting off.

Patrick was the next to arrive, using a phasing [Skill] combined with a flight spell to drop straight into his set.

It would have looked cool … if he’d hit the chair properly. Instead, he’d managed to plant half his ass on the armrest, the other half dangling over the seat, then promptly lost his balance and ended up sprawling over the chair in a heap.

“Professor Bailey will be here in a sec, until then, we’re reading through the summoning list to get a solid overview of what we’ll be dealing with.” Amy told him.

Isaac nodded and went to work.

Summoning List (Christmas Event)

Name

Material Cost

Mana Cost

Snowball Cloud

Tier 1 Circle, Shaved Ice, Mitten, Ice Cream Scoop

200

Snowcloud

Tier 2 Circle, Shaved Ice, Wool, Candle

1,000

White Christmas

Tier 3 Circle, Shaved Ice, Pine Needles

4,500 (3 person maximum)

Nicholas of Myra

Tier 4 Circle, Shaved Ice, 1 kg of Chocolate, Red Velvet

1,000

The General that commands Winter

Tier 5 Circle, Carrot, Shaved Ice, Coal Chunks, Top Hat

1,500

“Just five monsters?” Isaac asked, more out of surprise than anything else.

“Yep. It’s weird, right?” Amy said “Also, do those mana values look right to you? You said that the mana invested is what creates the monster, so you need a certain amount to summon high Tier monsters? But the fact that those low Tier monsters are that damn expensive would indicate that they’re a hell of a lot stronger than their Tier would indicate.”

“Shit, I didn’t even notice that yet.” Isaac muttered “A thousand-five-hundred is a mid-range Tier 7, not a Tier 5. Four-thousand-five hundred? That’s an upper end Tier 8. This is insane. Absolutely insane.”

Bailey finally burst through the door, not even bothering to sit down before barking orders. His shirt was buttoned wrong, and his legs were still facing the wrong way, he’d clearly transformed them into those of an animal better suited to quick movement. In other words, his travel here had been a mad dash and he was still very frazzled.

“I just got off the phone with the Bundeswehr, we’ll be able to teleport to Grafenwöhr in a few hours. Until then, check out the weakest monsters and come up with some theories as to what the stronger ones will be able to do.” And then, he stepped back out as he started to dial another number on his phone.

Normally, they’d have teleported straight into Grafenwöhr during an Event, but that was a damn military base. With all previous Events except the first one, they’d known ahead of time and everyone in the base had known not to freak out at a bunch of people suddenly appearing. So now, they were stuck waiting for some official approval.

“Monsters.” Patrick stated simply “The General has to be a snowman, right?”

“Yep.” Isaac said “Big ass golem, with what I’m assuming is a bunch of minions due to the ‘general’ moniker. As for Nicholas, I’m pretty sure that’s a giant chocolate Santa. Nicholas of Myra is the patron saint of a whole bunch of stuff, including children and students, and the basis for the modern Santa Claus. And the clouds … nasty crap, but I don’t know what exactly that’s going to be. But ‘White Christmas’ with four and a half thousand mana behind it, that sounds like a localized apocalypse.”

“Is it really that bad?” Amy asked “I don’t know what kind of power that mana buys.”

“The Tier 8 kind of power. Tier 7 is where the mundane, ordinary, non-[System] stuff starts to stop working, at least unless you go nuclear. Tier 8 … you need a good matchup, or even an entire carrier group will be as useless as tits on a bull. The only thing other than a high Tier monster that would require that much mana compared to the normal amount for its Tier is a [Raid Boss], yet the maximum number of people who can contribute would indicate a lesser type of [Boss]. This is something entirely new, something I can’t even properly categorize. And that is fucking terrifying.”

“I can always count on you to bring the nightmare fuel, can’t I?” Raul said after muttering a few swear words in Spanish.

Isaac just shrugged “Summon the Snowball Cloud, see what happens?”

“Sure.”

Isaac scraped some of the frozen condensation from the back of the drink fridge, then followed the others into a summoning room. Amy had meanwhile grabbed the ice cream scoop from the cutlery drawer from the small kitchenet across the hall and Raul had plundered the lost and found for a mitten.

“Any last predictions?” Isaac asked as he poured mana into the circle.

“You’re going to end up with snow down your top.” Amy commented dryly.

“Very funny.” Isaac said, and then his eyes damn near jumped out of his skull as everything in the circle simply … vanished.

“The fuck?” Patrick gaped at the space the stuff had occupied, swearing for the first time since Isaac had known him “Hold on, something’s outside!”

With that yell, he leaped out through the ceiling, with the others chasing after him.

“That cloud is awfully low, isn’t it?” Amy asked, not even bothering to wait for an answer before she sent a lance of flame straight through its center.

“That thing is only a hundred meters above the ground and getting lower.” Isaac observed, only to blur into motion a moment later, his [Far Strike] obliterating the first snowball as the cloud reformed to remove the hole Amy had blown through it.

“Snowball Cloud. Just what it says on the tin.” Raul shrugged “Aurelian, melt it.”

The little solar dragon launched itself off his shoulder, expanding to his full size, comparable to a pony, and launched a dazzling beam of light that obliterated half the cloud.

The response was immediate and violent. A massive swarm of snowballs began to hammer down like rain yet strangely enough, the attack was perfectly survivable even by an ordinary, unenhanced human. It would have been overwhelmingly powerful against anyone under Level 25, yet even a Level 0 child would have been fine if hit by the attack.

What. The. Hell.

Patrick just waved his hand and sent the orbs straight back through the cloud and surprisingly enough, large parts of it vanished.

“Did … did you just kill a cloud with snowballs?“ Raul exclaimed in surprise.

“Seems like it. Should we try again?” Patrick asked.

“Yeah, but where are we getting another ice cream scoop?” Isaac asked.

“Break into the other faculties and steal theirs?” Amy suggested “It’s for science, hopefully, they’ll understand.”

As it turned out, they didn’t have to go quite that far, though. Bailey got the military on the horn, and they teleported to the military base and were allowed to raid the dining hall for ice cream scoops.

The whole affair was a massive mess, though. Almost all the people there were wearing incredibly furious expressions, annoyed at having been torn away from their families on Christmas.

Sure, some of them had had to work anyway, so this mess wasn’t that big of an inconvenience, but still … annoying. Super annoying.

And things. Still. Made. No. Bloody. Sense.

Snowball Clouds that died to snowball fights.

A chocolate golem that collapsed into perfectly packaged squares of fine chocolate, each in a traditional Christmas shape.

And a literal army of animated snowmen that worked hard to not kill anyone while falling apart as they were hit by snowballs. Awesome for a snowball fight, but as a monster? They didn’t even give any XP, for fucks sake.

Meanwhile, Isaac’s family had headed over to his home at his request for safety. Better safe than sorry and all that crap.

The sun rose in the sky, and began to fall, and they were still getting nowhere. Just summoning crap, completely destroying the remains as the lack of a kill notification was making everyone antsy, over and over again. Over and over, with no effect.

“The definition of madness is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome. What are we doing different? What are we doing wrong?” Isaac muttered, collapsing into the snow onto his back, sighing deeply.

“What the fuck is all this?”

“What is this? I’d call it a prank well played.” A disturbingly family voice rang out from behind him.

Isaac leaped to his feet in fright, somehow not having noticed any sign of a person approaching him, Balmung already manifesting in his hand.

“Loki.” He sighed.

“Ah-yup.” The god grinned broadly “Gotcha!”

“What do you mean, gotcha?” Isaac asked, a horrible suspicion already bubbling up from deep inside. Had all this really …

“Well, this is the world’s safest Event. It’s all in the spirit of Christmas!” Loki shouted the final word, throwing up his hands in mock celebration.

“We’ve been chasing our tails because we were looking for danger where there was none.” Isaac’s facepalm blew away all the snow around himself “But why is it all so expensive?”

“Why, to prevent the snow from affecting the weather, of course.” Loki announced with a shit eating grin, clearly fully aware of the fact that the costs had massively contributed to everyone’s paranoia.

“… fuck.” Isaac sighed “And now, fuck off.”

With that muttered profanity, he headed over towards the others, shoulders slumped.

***

“Basically, all of this is just a temporary Christmas Event that gives us the option of summoning holiday appropriate stuff. It’s not monsters we’re dealing with … it’s magical holiday decorations. And now I’m leaving, heading home because I know my sisters are planning an ambush and if I take too long, that ambush might actually kill me. Goodbye, Sayonara, Arrivederci, Auf Wiedersehen. Can I get a portal?” Isaac finished his explanation and pretty soon, he was sitting in the bottom floor of his magical extradimensional apartment with his family, a gorgeous Christmas dinner on the table in front of them.

With a massive grin on his face, Isaac re-read the description of the new summoning option that had popped up.

Apology Christmas Feast (only summonable by Isaac Thoma)

A great big feast of traditional German, British and American Christmas foods, created by the power of the Norse god of trickery and mischief as an apology for a nasty prank.

P.S. Someone’s sleeping on the couch for the rest of the millennium. That was uncalled for.

-Sigyn

It seemed that even a god was powerless against the fury of his enraged wife.

And as his family began to dig in, snow gently fell outside, courtesy of the White Christmas that his colleagues had helped him summon before returning home to their families.