Apocalypse Redux

Chapter 114: Slow Down and Take a Breath

Death’s Embrace (epic)

A hug is nice, isn’t it? The warm embrace of a loved one, assuring you that you are not alone in this world, that you are loved … yeah, this isn’t that. This is the cold embrace of skeletal arms wrapped around you, bones poking into you as the deathly cold that radiates from them saps your life force.

This terrifying effect can be created in one of two ways.

The first of these is to infuse you Aura with this Skill, increasing its ability to inflict damage, temporarily reducing an opponent’s regenerative ability and physical Stats upon dealing damage. This has an ongoing cost of 50 mana per minute for the Aura of the Desperate Seeker and 20 mana per minute for the Aura of the Crimson Dawn.

The second fills the space around the caster with a dark miasma that weakens any designated enemy to a degree proportional to the amount of mana invested. The target area is a circle with a diameter of 20 meters centered on the user and does not move with them, remaining where it was first cast. This costs thirty mana to activate, as well as twenty mana per minute as upkeep, and will reduce all Stats of affected enemies by 5. Investing an additional 20 points of mana will further reduce your opponents’ Stats by 10. Each set of twenty mana invested beyond that will be ten percent less effective, additively.

Cost:

Auric Infusion, Aura of the Crimson Dawn: 50 mana per minute

Auric Infusion, Aura of the Desperate Seeker: 20 mana per minute

Area Debuff: 30 mana to activate, 20 mana per minute of use, more mana may be infused at will

While the pair of them were running back to their work area, Isaac read over the description of his new [Skill]. It was pretty damn expensive to use, but would wreak havoc upon his enemies. The first way of use would stack perfectly with his ludicrous Level of [Aura] control.

The second one was pretty good as well. Unfortunately, the fact that it wouldn’t move meant that under normal circumstances, an enemy could just move out of it. However, Isaac had a second [Skill] that synergized perfectly with this one. All he had to do was suck in his enemy with [Grave of Swords], which would be almost completely covered by the field of death, greatly weakening his foe in the process. Not only that, but the combination would put quite a few foes into his weight class that would normally be outside it.

“You know, ‘godfather’ is an interesting name for the personification of death.” Raul commented, interrupting Isaac’s musing.

“Oh, absolutely.” Isaac agreed.

“So, what was that old fairytale you mentioned?” Raul asked.

“Basically, a destitute man wanted a godfather for his child and went looking. He met God himself, who offered to take the role of, well, godfather, but the man decided he didn’t want that because he blamed God for letting inequality exist in the world.

“Then the Devil showed up, promising the world, but was likewise rebuffed because the man said he was a liar and a trickster.

“Then, the man met a thin and emaciated being, the Grim Reaper. This was who the man chose to be his child’s godfather as all are equal in death. “

“That’s a rather depressing story, isn’t it?” Raul asked.

“Eh, it’s a German children’s story. Most of those are either dark, depressing or both.” Isaac replied.

“And are you really going to post those pictures of the carnage?” Raul asked “I mean, I can see why you would, but that’s a little fucked up?”

“Fucked up would have been heading over to that group of dead pre-teen children having a sleepover I saw in with my [Aura] and posting a picture of that.” Isaac growled “People need to remember that this isn’t a game. That there are real consequences to doing stupid crap. Putting pictures of dead children on the internet is where I draw the line, but every fucker on this stupid planet who thinks we’re being overly cautious needs to see what we’re trying to prevent, what they’re advocating for when they call us out for ‘oppressing them’. One of these days, I’m going to learn how to bring back the dead just so I can murder those bastards with my own two hands!”

The conversation came to a stop after that. They continued to hurry back to where everyone else was, not quite running, but still going at a good clip.

But even as he stayed silent, Isaac’s mind was awhirl. This mess had occurred far enough from their ‘research camp’ that they couldn’t immediately go there via [Portal]. Hell, the only reason they’d been able to portal somewhere Raul had never been before was a very specific set of abilities from his second Evolution that had allowed him to teleport somewhere nature related, which this town counted as, when he had the exact coordinates of where he wanted to go.

Thankfully, running at a dead sprint for ten minutes had gotten them close enough to use that spell, but those ten minutes had cost lives. Many lives. Enough to perfectly embody the saying of ‘one death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic’. He’d seen every body, every face locked into the ghastly mask of death in that town when he’d used his [Aura] to search for the source of the horde, but the only thing that had stuck in his mind were those children in their pillow fort.

So, had that been a carefully calculated move to make them late? To ensure that the slaughter didn’t end after thirty seconds when he fell out of the sky like some godsdamned superhero? Or had it merely been horrible luck? Really, it didn’t really matter until the investigations had been completed, and he knew whose ass he’d have to put six feet underground. If someone had deliberately unleashed those monsters upon that little village and was still breathing, well, they wouldn’t be for long.

As the two of them got within sight range of the experimentation grounds, a lot of concerned faces greeted them. Those faces began to grow even more worried, those with a high Perception getting a good look at them first, but pretty soon, everyone was staring at them with a mixture of worry, but also no small amount of horror.

“What happened?” Bailey asked.

“Bad summon, horrible consequences. Killed the monsters, left the cleanup to the local police and emergency services.” Isaac replied flatly “There are a few things about the Field of Death that need to go into the report and the body needs to be dropped off. Then we can get back to it.”

And with that, he stomped off to the area where they kept all the dead monsters for closer examination.

“How bad was it, really?” Bailey asked at a low whisper, far lower than most humans could even produce, but even so, it was just a hair too loud to go unnoticed by Isaac.

“First of all, I’m pretty sure he heard that.” Raul hissed back “It was really bad, though. I could only see a tiny bit of the carnage but … I’ve never seen something so horrible. And he saw everything, and I do mean everything, in that town when he used his [Aura] to look for the source of the swarm. I … I wouldn’t be fine if I’d seen something like that. At least not the first time.”

Most people would have interpreted the last statement as referring to the mess with the serial killer three months back, but to those who knew the whole truth behind Isaac’s past life would understand the true meaning. ‘He’s seen worse, he’s probably handling it better than I am’, or something to that effect.

Isaac realized that throwing himself into work, blowing off steam by hacking apart monsters wasn’t exactly the healthiest way to cope with his emotions, and everyone else would be able to tell, but he didn’t care. After all, he wouldn’t be hurting anyone else.

***

Four hours later, their deadline was up, and the whole world got the official green light to start summoning Event monsters themselves. Everyone here would have loved to have more time, but that time had been chosen specifically because they knew that trying to keep people from the goodies for too long would have simply resulted in the boundaries being ignored wholesale by all but the most law-abiding summoners.

There had been a grand total of two additional incidents within their [Portal] range, but they hadn’t had to actually intervene, because it had been handled locally. It was a good reminder that even if the strongest people in the country were a professor of biology and his research assistants, the members of the anti-supernatural branch of law enforcement were hardly slouches either.

Everyone involved in the research was somewhat tired after six hours of non-stop, fast paced work, but Isaac knew they had nothing on the people who were on ‘ready response’ for today. All those pilots who were on overflight all day, ready to take their jets to the fight against monsters at supersonic speeds. All those people in their bombers, waiting to take off at a moment’s notice and turn a few hundred square meters of this country into glass. All those police officers sitting in their station, fully geared up, looking at their phone and praying it wouldn’t ring … as much as playing ready response for most of the country sucked, there was actually something useful to do here. Just sitting there, waiting for something to go wrong … Isaac would have gone crazy within the first five minutes.

Really, all of this was a state of readiness that could squash almost all [System] incidents in moments, stop them before things got really bad, but it was utterly unsustainable in the long run.

“Ok, so we got a good look at all the beasties, and now we’re done with that part.” Arthur announced, clapping his hands to gather attention “What monsters do we need to get good parts? Or would anyone be interested in seeing if we can recreate the fighting style of medieval armies?”

“Well, those scythes could become really useful once some [Farmers] gain [Skills] to clear entire sections of a field using medieval tools. I don’t see anyone using something that old fashioned as if it were still the fifteen hundreds when there are combine harvesters available, but those could be a game changer if they can be used on a large scale with a little help from the right [Skills]. [Large Area Harvesting], [Scythe Master], or something like that.” Patrick suggested.

“Or maybe we could just donate some to places that don’t have combine harvesters.” Amy added in a ‘this should have been obvious’ tone.

“Charity work sounds good.” Arthur suggested “Any tricks to speed that up?”

The next few hours were an orgy of violence and bloodshed, monsters appearing and dying mere moments later, but no serious outside incidents occurred. There was trouble, sure, but nothing that required them. At least, nothing that happened where they could intervene. It was harrowing, hearing all the horror stories about what was happing yet being unable to help matters.

At the very least, having other people summon for him was doing wonders for Isaac’s Level. He’d increased it twice, reaching Level 48. Ten points went into his dump stat of Strength, the rest got split between Perception and Magic Regeneration, bringing both to 125.

And there was a picture of that bloody pillow fort posted in the end. All the bodies in that town had been long since cleared out, but the image still had the potential to shake anyone who saw it to their very core. If nothing else went horribly wrong, Isaac was sure that this photo would go down in history as a representation of the horrific toll the [System] extracted from those who used it carelessly.

That was how the rest of the day went, fighting, trying not to think about the dead, instead attempting to focus on the living, the lives saved. Emphasis on ‘attempt’.

***

“How are you doing?” Bailey asked Isaac. They were strolling through the woods a good distance from everything else, with [Perception Block] ensuring no one would overhear.

“Crappy. No rest, non-stop fighting, and dead kids. The only thing that could make this day worse would be getting dumped, but I’d need be dating for that to happen.” Isaac said despondently.

“We got the preliminary casualty numbers in. 1 million deaths.” Bailey said, though his voice was merely grim “Bad, but it’s got nothing on the first one. Whatever else happened, we saved lives.”

“Sure. Maybe I’ll even internalize that some day. On the other hand … dead kids.”

Bailey took a deep breath before replying with a simple nod. There was nothing to be said to that, and he knew it.

“I already asked the BAU gal back at camp, but did you hear anything about the background of the summoners on that?” Isaac finally asked.

“Not really. Seems to be the general ‘freedom from rules, but not in an anarchy way, but it’s still kind of like anarchy’.” Bailey growled and spat on the ground.

Isaac raised an eyebrow, so the professor elaborated.

“I’ve known people like that, and we do not get along. I get it, laws can be stupid, laws can have been created specifically to target minorities even if they don’t expressly say that … but ignoring them because you don’t understand why they were written after thinking about them for two seconds is incredibly moronic. Drunk driving because ‘I can handle it, what do the politicians know’ and all that crap.”

“Ouch.” Isaac winced. That had sounded personal.

Bailey sighed.

“If you ever want to talk, about anything, you know I’m here for you. And if you don’t, well, that’s fine too. Just, if you ever feel like you’re about to do something you might regret, speak up. Please.”

“Thanks, Adam.” Isaac said “But I’m fully aware of how irrational my feelings are. By all objective measures, today was a win. It just doesn’t feel like this, it feels personal. They’re feelings, so I can’t just rationalize them away, but I’m also not going to let them drive me to do something stupid.”

He chuckled darkly.

“No, I’m going to go to a place where a demon lord might be summoned even though the government that called it here in the other timeline is now gone, but I’m doing that fully aware of the danger involved, not as some kind of bizarre ‘suicide by monster’.”

“I wasn’t …” Bailey began to say, but Isaac cut him off “Oh, come on, we both know that’s what you meant, you just didn’t want to put it in plainly.”

Isaac swore under his breath in four different languages for a few moments, then sighed.

“I’m sorry, I’m …” he lost his train of thought and stopped talking.

“You’ve had one hell of a day, I think there’s very little you could I do I wouldn’t be understanding about.” Bailey assured him.

“Thank you.” Isaac slumped “I’ll take a couple of days, get my head straight, probably go visit my family … something.”

Bailey just nodded as they continued to walk through the woods, not speaking, just paying spending a little time together and knowing they weren’t alone in this fucked up world.