Apocalypse Redux

Chapter 127: Interlude The League

9 years

198 days

53 minutes

7 seconds. 6 seconds. 5 seconds. 4 seconds. 3 seconds …

The clock on the wall continued to count down, as it always did even when there was no one in this chamber.

A constant tick, tick, tick, a constant, inexorable march towards zero, and with it, the end of all.

None of the people in the chamber knew why they’d been given orders to not make overt moves until ten years after the Initialization, but that was just how they’d been told to set things up. Mind you, the ‘doomsday’ clock had been their own choice, though.

None of the people in the chamber knew the reasons they’d been chosen, though they’d tried to figure it out. Realistically, a group chosen with the purpose of ending the world would have been more established personages, not … them. They’d all been standing on the precipice of great calamity, with a slight chance of even greater gains being available. So while there had been a chance for them to reach the heights that would let them truly shape the world, there had also been a good likelihood of them turning out to be nobodies. Yet they’d risen, one and all, to have a seat at this table.

And furthermore, none of these people were honestly sure of who their backers were, beyond that they had something to do with the [System]. Also, while their backers, be they gods, demons, or beings that had ascended to be made up entirely of energy, they’d created other subordinates that no one in this room was allowed to contact or even work with.

All in all, very strange.

Yet they’d all ‘joined in’ regardless, the offer had simply been too enticing. Power in this life, infinite pleasure in the next. It had sounded utterly fantastical, just like all those little cults that promised its members to ‘ascend’, except their benefactors had had the greatest proof of concept to ever grace the world, the [System] itself.

“Well, that was a shitshow.” a man in a fox mask sighed as the video clip playing on the massive screen in the corner.

“What did you expect, Fox?” a woman in a deep crimson full face mask asked “They had more time to prepare than we ever could have expected, so they stomped the Demon Lord into the ground. If we ever try something like that, all we’ll need to do Is ensure there isn’t someone who can pull his opponents into a whole other world in the area.”

“Really, War? If?” another figure, fully wrapped in figure-concealing clothing and with a black mask, asked with suspicion “Are you planning on staying out of future events?”

“We didn’t have to do anything and a capital city nearly got flattened, Pestilence.” War rebuked “Do you really think we’ll have to lift a finger by the time that clock hits zero?”

“Do we really have to discuss this now?” another man, this one wearing a mask fashioned after a hissing serpent growled “We’ve already seen that video a hundred times, individually and together, let us be done with that crap and get on with what this meeting was supposed to be about.”

“Really, Jorm? We know you named yourself after something of a glutton, but do you also have to act the idiot as well?” another man, his mask a statue’s stony face cut in.

“How about you save the insults for later and tell us what you actually want, Kronos?” the figure at the head of the table cut it, his voice cold as an arctic wind.

Like Pestilence, he was wearing vast, black robes, but his voice was unmistakably male. As for his mask, it was a thing of terrifying beauty, fashioned from a pale, ethereal, transparent blue covering a human skull.

In a small, shocked voice, the man known as Kronos whispered a ‘sorry’, then shut up.

“Now, here’s what you shall do: take note of the standout contributors in that battle, and start to create a plan to counter them. When that clock hits zero, our followers and subordinates will take the war to them and end this world.”

And the five other people around the table responded as one “For the next world!”

But even as that statement echoed around the room, more and more figures became visible in the distance, beyond the confines of this room yet still connected by the chairman’s [Skill].

A bone white mask was the closest, closely followed by a metal sheet with Norse runes in the shape of a horn adorning it, a pair of figures that hadskulls for helmets, one seemingly burning, the other fashioned from ice.

Yet those were the only ones who could clearly be seen. Thousands more were merged into a seemingly unified mass in the distance, awaiting orders.