Apocalypse Redux

Chapter 122: Long Term Issues

“As you can see here, Mr. Thoma, there’s significant damage to your muscles in your right arms and leg. You’re healing on your own, somehow, which is a very good thing, but it will take a while.” The [Doctor] explained, gesturing at a [Skill] generated image of Isaac’s body.

“The mere fact that your body is regenerating and the scar tissue is being broken down at all is nothing short of a miracle, but it also means there is nothing I can do that isn’t already happening on its own. That is the good news. Unfortunately, it will take a long while for everything to properly fix itself, and I’m not familiar enough with your abilities to know if this regeneration will allow you to regain use of your right arm. There is a massive amount of scar tissue formed inside the limb, with the muscle fibers woven between them. The only reason you can still use it is one of your [Skills], but with even that, I don’t …”

“Then remove it.” Isaac interrupted her “Amputate the limb, remove any damaged portions of the socket, ligaments and nerves so I can grow a new one.”

“That sounds … extreme. Are you even certain that regrowing limbs wholesale is within your capabilities?” the [Doctor] cautioned, though she hid her shock at the drastic suggestion masterfully.

“I regrew my right hand when my Level was less than half of what it is today, and I’ve since gained associated [Skills], as well as upgraded the associated Aspect. Also, my [Skills] explicitly state that they can regrow limbs.” Isaac said reassuringly.

“I see.” She frowned “While that does sound like a viable option, I’m not sure that is a procedure I or anyone else at this hospital can perform. It’s very extreme, like I said.”

Isaac could suddenly feel his temper flare. Not nearly enough to make him loose it or say something stupid, but still to a degree he was not used to. It wasn’t even his anger, not really. Ever since he’d gained his [Class], something had changed. A certain … presence had made itself known in the back of his mind.

Now, he’d known that choosing an inheritor [Class] would give him a new set of memories, but it was an entirely different thing to experience it.

Mind you, Hildebrand wasn’t a historical figure, he was a figure of myth and legend belonging to the pages of old legends like the ‘Niebelungenlied’, but like Sherlock Holmes, Davy Jones and Aeneas, he still qualified as an inheritor. These people were no longer specific characters from a given story, they were closer to ideas. As such, Isaac didn’t actually have another set of memories rattling around his brain, he just … felt the presence of the old weapons master.

He knew that whoever ‘Hildebrand’ had been, if he’d ever existed outside the pages of a storybook, he would have already told the doctor what would happen in no uncertain terms. He wouldn’t have gotten rude, he wouldn’t have raised his voice, he would have merely given the order in such a way that it would be followed. Isaac wasn’t that willing to throw his weight around, not when there were other options available.

“I realize that amputation is a very … out there procedure, and something that goes against the very core of what your profession represents, but it is viable in this new world. Try and think about it like this: surgeons cut bits out of people to heal them, chemotherapy pumps poison into people’s veins to kill the dangerous parts before it can kill them, and live vaccines involve literally infecting people with incredibly dangerous diseases. Yet outside of an incredibly small percentage that has negative outcomes, those horrifically sounding procedures work hard to save lives, don’t they?” Isaac gave her a wry smile.

“This is a new world, with new rules. Scarred flesh that’s basically still charcoal in places should have been removed, but it wasn’t, because I might be able to salvage it with my own natural healing ability. But by those same rules, amputation will actually be what fixes me.

“I realize this is a massive departure from any and all standard ways of doing things, but please, consider this like you didn’t know anything about medicine. There is a procedure that looks scary as hell, but it will return a patient control of a limb in a matter of days, possibly in less than twenty-four hours. Does this procedure sound like a good idea?”

“Yes, but this is still something I’ll have to talk over with some people, the hospital board, if nothing else.” She said.

“In theory, there’s another option, but it could be incredibly difficult to use. You’re a [Doctor], your [Skills] are all about healing injuries. But my injuries are already gone, it’s just that they healed in such a way that is giving me serious trouble now. Your [Skills] might not be what is needed here. A [Flesh Mage], [Biosculptor] or the like would be able to get rid of all the scar tissue in moments, but …” Isaac gave her an apologetic look “I’m sorry, it’s my turn to speak at the video conference dissecting the events of yesterday. I’d really have liked to finish this discussion, but it seems my colleagues didn’t stick to the schedule. I …”

“Really, it’s alright. You do what you need to do, I’ll talk to the necessary people about how to fix your arm, you take your time to make sure that the next Demon Lord that appears goes down easier.” She assured him and swiftly retreated from the room. It seemed that he’d earned himself a measure of respect and leeway.

Meanwhile Isaac grabbed the laptop that had been streaming the video conference with the speakers turned all the way down and pulled it into his lap.

When he switched on the camera, he got a good look at his current appearance. The left sight of his face had only suffered light, first and second degree burns and already healed up almost completely. The right, on the other hand, was swathed in thick bandages that didn’t really serve a medical purpose, but everyone else was probably glad he had them on.

In fact, one of the most common pictures about the fight was an image of his own face on one side of the frame, and a picture of the battlefield on the other, perfectly covering the horrifically burned side of his face. It had been a good decision, though, given that there were limits as to what kinds of pictures could grace the front of newspapers.

Therefore, he’d decided to keep on the bandages for the call. His mouth had been somewhat fixed

Up until now, the people on the conference call had been discussing the general logistics of the catastrophe that had occurred, everything from casually numbers to the estimated cost of repairs, all for the purpose of ensuring that the next time wouldn’t end up being nearly as bad. But now, it was time for Isaac to present his ‘paper’ on [Raid Bosses]. It wasn’t a full paper given that he’d barely had a day to create it and most of it had been spent to badly inured to do much of anything.

“Yesterday, we saw an incredibly powerful and dangerous monster appear. Now, said monster was beaten back, but not without grievous losses. The emergence of the Demon Lord alone inflicted untold damage and loss of life in the DMZ, followed by a running battle against military personnel and individual Hunters on the path to Seoul, until it was stopped for a time by a delaying action and finally brought down by a concentrated effort from the military and Dungeon’s Guild.

“I fought that thing for a full five minutes and in that time, I believe I’ve figured out some things about it.

“First of all, the descriptor of [Raid Boss] seems to fit the definition of the word in the realm of video games. A large monster, with extremely high offensive power, methods of blocking ‘easy win scenarios’, area-of-effect abilities to counter a large number of attackers and keep them away so that overwhelming them with sheer numbers doesn’t really work, but most importantly, they have an ungodly amount of health. Well, in the real world example, we’re dealing with extreme durability and redundant organs coupled with a near immunity to exsanguination, shock or death due to loosing individual vital organs. [Raid Bosses] are simply built tough.”

“Built?” another person on the call interrupted.

“For the rest of my presentation, I’d prefer to save questions to the end, but that question is actually pertinent, so I’ll answer it.” Isaac warned “Let me ask you all something: does the [System] feel natural, like something that could come about on its own? Or does it feel like someone took a bunch of video game ideas, the moderninterpretation of several mythological beings, and brought them into reality?

“I have no idea who is responsible for the [System] or what we can do about it, but the thing is that it has almost certainly been constructed in some way, and its creations reflect that. Case in point, the power distribution of this [Raid Boss].”

Everyone here had probably had similar thoughts at some point in the past, just not vocalized it in such a public forum, so when Isaac just breezed right past that, it wasn’t nearly as much of an issue as it could have been.

“The circle used was Tier 6, but the aspect of the monster which reflected that was its speed. The demon lord was faster than some creatures of its Tier, but nowhere near the top. Its strength, meanwhile, was immense, well beyond the strongest Tier 6 monster I’ve ever seen or even heard about. In fact, depending on how strong Tier 7s are exactly, it might even have been able to reach that level of strength. If the exponential growth of the previous Tiers holds true, its strength will be just below the seventh Tier, but not by much. Strong enough to topple the strongest of tanks like a bowling pin, but not enough to squash them like bugs.

“Meanwhile, its magical power is rather odd. Producing those area of effect attacks has to take an insane amount of mana, and its [Aura] should be classified as being a short-range combat version, even though its range is greater than even that of a sensory [Aura]. But while it clearly has an insane amount mana and offensive power of the magical nature, it is not overwhelmingly damaging, at least not on the same scale as the mana pool that supports it. It can be blocked by second Evolution [Skills], some of them not even cooldown [Skills], at least for the most part. When it can’t be, the power takes long enough to gather for people to react. This thing might be able to launch a hell of a lot more spells than any human [Mage], and target far larger areas, but they can still be survived, they aren’t as overwhelmingly powerful as they should be on something with such high Stats.

“Lastly, it is absurdly durable. I’ve fought monsters with some bits that were tougher than the matching body parts on the Demon Lord, but nothing that compares in terms of sheer overall toughness. And that is ignoring how it’s able to seemingly disregard fatal injuries. It needed to lose most of its vital organs to truly die.

“Heck, I might have been able to kill it on my own, otherwise. I was able to blast straight through its skull and out the other side, but it kept going. I cut its throat, tore open many major blood vessels, any one of which should have killed it. But it didn’t die.

“Again, this makes sense. After all, what use is a [Raid Boss] in a world with unstoppable, inviolable force attacks if a single one can kill it by blasting straight through its brain? But this leads to a situation where what would be a fatal injury on any other creature gets reduced to a mere flesh wound. Coupled with its overall toughness, I was barely able to do more than scratch it.”

“That thing came out of your dimensional space looking like someone had accidentally plastered an entire horror movie cast’s worth of fake injuries onto a single unfortunate extra.” Someone commented, prompting a slight chuckle from Isaac.

“I suppose that’s an adequate way of describing it. However, are those injuries really that bad when compared to what it looked like dead?”

“I suppose that at the end of the day, a [Raid Boss] isn’t going to be a chump, is it?” Bailey asked, the question clearly rhetorical. It also had a neat effect of putting an end to the whole discussion on the subject when combined with him moving on to the next topic.

“Now that we have a rough overview as to what level of strength and what abilities a [Raid Boss] has, we can try to plan around it, we can create a SOP for dealing with its kind. So here’s what I propose we do …”

***

The whole discussion had continued on for several more hours, with people getting into idiotic fights over the stupidest crap, arguments that Isaac could have cut short in seconds if he’d been able to reveal his knowledge from the other timeline. But he couldn’t, so he had to stare at people fighting over inconsequential crap.

… at least a few good ideas came out of it.

Also, when the whole affair had ended, a whole herd of doctors had entered the room to discuss the whole ‘limb removal’ thing. It had taken a bit for them to come around, but Isaac’s new status as a national hero gave him a degree of influence even in areas where such influence shouldn’t exist. After all, saving a city didn’t mean he knew anything about medicine, but that was how people worked. A famous person could get away with a lot.

From there, convincing them that he could stay awake and actually needed to be to empower the scalpels to be able to cut his flesh had been easy.

The procedure itself went off without a hitch, but while Isaac sat there in his bed, waiting for his arm to fully regrow, a visitor arrived. It was a visitor he’d expected, it was a visitor he’d planned on dealing with, but that didn’t mean he was looking forward to this meeting.

It was Germany’s ambassador to South Korea, here to talk about how he wanted to enforce Isaac’s right to the loot from the Demon Lord, and how Isaac, as a German citizen, had earned his home nation some small claim on the loot. Ugh. At least Isaac knew what use he could get out of this.