Apocalypse Redux

Chapter 128: The Trossachs

Isaac took a deep breath of fresh air and sighed contentedly. He might live in the ‘woods’, but there was something entirely different about the beautiful Scottish valley he’d found himself in.

Sadly, in the other timeline, this breathtaking scene before him had housed a dark secret, the horrific Dungeon that would eventually gain the designation of Sanity’s End.

First, it had become a black hole that people walked into, but never came out.

Then, that wave of deaths had seemingly come to an end, and people had come back out of the Dungeon, sometimes carrying one of the supposed ‘casualties’ out along with them. But that had only been the opening shot of an even worse catastrophe than the deaths of Dungeon delvers. Some of the people who returned. Went. Nuts. A few simply rampaged through whatever they were in when the madness began, but those were the lesser issues. No, the real problems were the people who had been set up to specifically cause trouble, keeping it together until they were in a position to inflict maximum damage, effectively crippling everything in the area. Law enforcement, summoner association, emergency services, everything.

And finally, when it seemed like things couldn’t possibly get any worse, the Dungeon had erupted into a flood of monsters, a slavering horde of beasts that tore apart a good chunk of Britain before an effective defense could be mounted. And even then it had taken weeks to put a lid on everything and shatter the Dungeon core by way of a trio of magically enhanced, nuclear, bunker busters. Millions dead, a country in ruins, and the manipulated cropping up even years after the Dungeon’s destruction to cause further havoc.

Yet despite all this, Isaac had been unable to place it in his data-dump because he hadn’t known when that place had been created. Well, in theory, he could have put it in anyway, but this was a situation where he absolutely had to make sure everything was correct. Any mistakes and that did mean any mistake, no matter how small, would have damaged his credibility, which he couldn’t have afforded under any circumstances. A message accusing a whole lot of people, some of them very influential would have been screwy enough. That same accusation accompanied by a bunch of mistakes would have sounded like a prank or attempted slander, rather than anything genuine and actionable.

Also, there was the small issue of him not knowing what kind of Dungeon this was. Had some numbskull created a regular ol’ Dungeon and accidentally turned it into a huge threat by giving it the Eldritch type, or was this all the work of a Dungeon Master who’d been a fan of Lovecraft’s work, built a Dungeon based on it and gotten himself killed, thereby freeing it? Or had it been a deliberate, slowly progressing terrorist attack?

Regardless of the information he found out about this particular mystery, at some point, he’d have to release an updated list, but that would take a while. The political and summoning landscape had shifted so massively that Isaac would have to put in a lot of research to make it good or even just acceptable and useful.

But that was a problem for future Isaac. Current Isaac had a Dungeon Core to find and if it had indeed already been created, obliterate.

Sadly, the lack of information about the creation of the Dungeon meant that he might also have to kill a Dungeon Master, and that could be a problem. As such, Isaac had made sure it would be damn hard to track him.

Instead of taking a plane or even a car here, Isaac had swum here. It had taken several hours, almost a day, in fact, but it also meant that there was no record of him ever having even entered the country. Coupled with the fact that he’d used [Hundred Faces] to make himself look both incredibly androgynous and of an indecipherable ethnicity, no one should have been able to connect him to anything that happened here.

The last identifiable thing about him might have been his weapon, every single form of his soulbound weapon, Old Reliable, having been caught on camera at least once. But he had a counter for even that. His [Skill], [Armory of Ancient Times], let him summon any weapon the progenitor of his [Class], [Hildebrand’s Heir], had ever touched. The primary use of this [Skill] was, of course, summoning legendary swords, but it could also project any one of a hundred different perfectly mundane swords. So Isaac had just grabbed one of them and slotted it temporarily in his soulbound weapon, boosting its characteristics by a significant degree and letting him call it back into his hand. And just like that, there shouldn’t be anything overly traceable about him.

Of course, he still had to find the damn Dungeon, and that was proving to be more difficult than expected. He’d seen a photo of the entrance in the other timeline and spotted that location, but there wasn’t anything there. If that Dungeon truly didn’t exist, that would have been a good thing, and it might not even be created in the future, which would have been fantastic.

However, Isaac was also fully aware of the fact that any of a dozen tiny ripple effects from his actions in this timeline could have resulted in the core being put somewhere else in this valley.

In theory, there was also a chance of the Dungeon being somewhere else entirely, but at that point, Isaac wouldn’t be able to do much about it. With a sigh, he resigned himself to searching for a while.

So that was how he spent the next three or four hours, marching through the wilderness, eyes roaming over everything while poking his [Aura] in places he couldn’t easily see.

Finally, he found it, and he honestly wasn’t sure whether or not to be happy about it. On one hand, he was in a position to destroy the sanity-wrecking Dungeon. On the other … sanity-wrecking Dungeon. At least [Undying Will] protected against mental attacks.

Muttering obscenities in a dozen different languages, Isaac leaped into the deep, dark hole. Almost twenty meters down, he landed hard, bending his knees to absorb the impact.

[Death’s Embrace] flowed into his [Aura of the Desperate Seeker], turning it dark and making it visible to normal, unenhanced eyes. The field of death stabbed out, piercing clean through the half-dozen balls of tentacles and rotting flesh that hid in the crevices that surrounded the entrance. Normally, [Death’s Embrace] only inflicted debuffs, but these things were so weak they actually died.

With a his mouth set into a grim line, Isaac unsheathed his boring, generic sword and marched off into the darkness.

Shadows played across the walls, stalagmites and stalactites appearing like the teeth of an immense beast whose mouth he was walking through, but that too faded as he left the daylight behind. Even for Isaac, the effect was somewhat disconcerting, so the gods alone knew how bad it would be for others without his experience.

A few more beasts moved in the shadows, all writhing tentacles and broken reality, flickering static wreathing them as they continued to change, but somehow always staying the same, shifting yet static, a set of living break impossibilities.

They were hard to look at, and the effect grew even more pronounced whenever his [Aura] brushed against them due to the sheer amount of information it could collect, yet all of that was perfectly manageable. They weren’t a physical threat to him and while they could inflict significant damage upon his psyche by attacking his head with their tentacles, precisely none of them lived long enough to get anywhere near him.

If this, a series of caves and corridors meant to slow down people while wearing down their wits and sanity was all there was to it, Isaac would have been happy. However, he also sincerely doubted he’d ever be that lucky.

Hiss.

Another mess of eldritch energy and tentacles lunged at his face, a great maw opening up at its center, gaping wider than the creature itself was large, appearing to all the world like an entrance into a dimension comprised solely of pain and horror.

One moment, the beast approached him like a bat out of hell, the next, it hung skewered on the tip of his sword, dripping vital fluids.

Yes, these things were Dungeon monsters with very little sense of self preservation, but seriously, you’d think they’d try something new after having already died by the dozens. They weren’t even getting any clo -- Isaac was standing on a battlefield, crimson skies extending overhead as far as the eye could see, a carpet of corpses covering the ground, spilled blood turning the dirt into a marsh. He’d never travelled to the past, there was only this world, and he was the only one, the last one, last survivoreveryonesdeadwhattodowhatdoIdoI –

And then the yellow thing collapsed, sliding off the tip of Isaac’s blade.

“FUCK YOU!” he roared, spinning in place as a ray of [Far-Power Strike] obliterating every stalagmite and stalactite in the corridor, along with the last few Eldritch Spawn that had still been hiding and a second Yellow Lord.

Breathing heavily, Isaac continued to glare around. On some level, he’d been aware of the fact that the other reality had been an illusion, half his mind stuck in the false world while the other had managed to hunt down the damn thing basically on autopilot, but that crap still absolutely sucked.

Most people could break free of the illusion in a couple of seconds, but the mental attack had a nasty secondary ability that sped up time inside said illusion, so even if two seconds might have been fast enough to counter the follow-up physical attack, but not necessarily sufficient to save their sanity.

But with enough training, defeating the illusion wasn’t even necessary. If one had internalized combat to the point where it was practically instinctual, one didn’t even need to mentally be present to cut apart a creature that was physically helpless.

Thankfully, the Yellow Knight was the nastiest pure mind controller in this Dungeon and would be for at least a decade. All Eldritch beings had a nasty, deleterious effect upon the psyche of their enemies, but these things were specialized in fucking with people’s minds.

He continued onwards, the corridor opening up into a vast cavern, with a lake of bubbling tar in the center. Most likely, this was the lair of the floor boss.

Isaac’s black-tinged [Aura] tore through the room, the last few Eldritch Spawn withering and dying as it tore through them.

Normally, this was where he’d have stopped enhancing his [Aura] with [Death’s Embrace] to save a little mana as it wouldn’t do much against the boss that had been sitting in the pool of tar, but he kept it up as it quite handily disguised the exact nature of his [Aura]. After all, anyone could have gotten that [Skill] during the Event.

And as for the boss, it mostly was the pool, a thin layer of tar over the top of the vast mass that was the rest of its body.

Isaac leaped skywards, unleashing a fully stacked [Manifold Strike] at the pool even as said pool exploded, a mass of tendrils and tentacles, exploded out of it and obliterated the place he’d been standing a moment before. The damn thing was fast, but he was a fair deal faster.

Unfortunately, even the incredibly damaging attack failed to kill the monster. Sure, its top half exploded into mush, but the lower half hauled itself out of the hole and reformed into a smaller version of the original beast while additional tentacles emerged from the mass to drag some of the splattered … biomass? into the main body.

This thing might not be a regenerator in the classic sense, but was rather a shapeshifter which was so incredibly capable that it might as well be a Hydra. In other words, a pain in the ass to kill.

Isaac sighed and flung his blade downwards, piercing the center of the body. The monster spasmed, and then went berserk, tentacles whipping around, yet where before they’d been changing length as required in a matter of seconds, they now seemed to be barely able to shift.

Using [True Strike] was something of a risk when he was worried about being recognized, but its nature was rather hard to determine from a visual inspection alone, never mind the fact that no one knew Isaac had it.

Summoning the weapon back into his hand, an ability was ubiquitous enough that he felt he could use it safely, Isaac dropped down, hitting the beast like a meteor with the red light of [Power Strike] glowing on both his feet.

Gelatinous flesh rippled and burst, splattering every which way as goo leaked out of the terrible wounds.

Another jump got him clear of the monster’s remaining tentacles as it seemingly whipped in random directions, having most likely lost its eyesight.

Isaac unleashed a [Far Strike], lopping off a good third of the monster’s remaining body, observing which part continued to move. That would have been the one that contained the closest thing to a ‘brain’ that thing had.

To his utter annoyance, both parts kept moving. Clearly none of the rudimentary organs his [Aura] could detect with were as vital as a standard animal’s brain was, but there seemed to be a hard limit as to how small its body parts could be and still function. Otherwise, every small piece he’d chopped off during the fight would have been up and attacking.

Muttering curses, Isaac charged, blade flashing, hacking apart the monster until it stopped moving.

Eldritch Flesh Abomination (Lv. X) has been slain. 500 XP gained

And just like that, the last bit of the monstrosity stopped twitching and the whole affair slid to the ground as a gory, disgusting mess.

At the end of the room, a small treasure chest suddenly began to glow in a strange color, one Isaac wouldn’t have been able to put a name to even if someone had put a gun to his head. It was still firmly located in the visible spectrum, yet by all rights, that meant he should have been able to come up with some kind of name for it. Yet no matter how long he thought about it, the only thing his mind seemed to be able to come up with was wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrongwrongwrongwrong… swearing softly, Isaac pulled back his [Aura] and closed his eyes as he marched forward, using his memory of the box’s location to navigate.

When his hands brushed across the top of the treasure chest, he flipped it open, the feeling of oddness vanished and Isaac opened his eyes to observe the contents.

It looked like a block of grey putty, much like what the now-dead monster had been made off, but Isaac knew it was a actually a set of stem cells that could adapt their DNA to match that of a body they were implanted in. In other words, these things could be incredibly useful in creating limb/organ regenerating medicine that didn’t require a high-Level [Doctor] or [Healer] to administer. A fantastic find, in other words.

On the other hand … they came from a place called Sanity’s End. Isaac tossed the glob into his dimensional storage so he could incinerate it after he was done here.

A low rumbling sound rang out from behind Isaac and he turned to see the ground in the pool the boss had been sitting in split open to reveal the path deeper inside.

“Shit.” He muttered. It seemed the Dungeon had indeed been here for a while, and created at least two floors, possibly more.

Thankfully, he’d just passed the XP threshold to Level 58, so he completed that Level up, gaining his fifth [Skill] point in the process and immediately spent it.

Legendary Blow (legendary)

A single blow to shatter mountains, raze city walls or split the sea, these are the things stories are written about and when someone uses this Skill, there is a good chance that too will end up being turned into a story.

When Legendary Blow is activated, the user may use any of their Strike/Blow/Shot Skills up to five times to enhance a single attack, massively increasing its power.

With every Level in this Skill, the cost of component Skills is reduced by 5 %, up to 25%, Levels past that merely boost the already ludicrous levels of power this Skill harbors into the stratosphere.

[Legendary Blow] was the epitome of the kinds of [Skills] that worked with and improved the basic [Skills], rewarding people who’d created a good foundation and brought said basic [Skills] to a high Level. A [Rouge’s] [Strikes], a [Warrior’s] [Blows], the various [Shots], all of them could be used with [Legendary Blow] and be useful all the way up to the final Evolution.

Best of all, it looked identical to a regular [Power Strike/Blow] despite its vastly increased power, so he could use it freely in this place.

Finally, before descending into the darkness below, Isaac allocated his Stat points.

Name: Isaac Thoma

Class: Hildebrand’s Heir

Species: High Human

Level: 58

XP: 208/29,500

Health Status: Healthy

Mana: 1,200/1,200

Stats

Fortitude

100

Perception

180

Strength

100

Agility

200

Magic Power

120

Magic Regeneration

180

Free Points: 0 Stat, 0 Skill

Aura

Aura of the Crimson Dawn (short range, combat, blood, regeneration)

Aura of the Desperate Seeker (long range, sensory, mental, projection)

Central Skills

Form of Horror XXI

The Chosen Weapon XXVI

I Am The Sword IX

Grave of Swords XII

Armory of Ancient Times III

Skills

Hundred Faces XXIII

Stealth XXVI

Power Strike XXVIII

Piercing Strike XXX

Sundering Strike XXVI

Blades XXVII

Sneak XXVI

Sweeping Strike XIV

Far Strike XXV

Manifold Strike XIX

Hunter’s Gaze XXVIII

Phantom Step XIX

Unknown Fear XIX

Bestial Regeneration XXV

Undying Focus XX

Tools of Terror XIX

Fleeting Presence XIV

Crippling Blow X

Absolute Blade Mastery XI

Compounded Impact XIII

True Cut V

Legendary Blow I

General Skills

Gralloch XI

Alchemy XII

Death’s Embrace III

Bloodline of the Survivor (Empower Relatives)

Aspects

Aspect Skills

Poltergeist (2 stack)

Poltergeist’s Flight

Poltergeist’s Shift

Greater Hydra (3 stack)

Hydra’s Regeneration

Redundant Organs

Ignore Injury

Megalodon (2 stack)

Shark’s Body

Wave Charge

Fata Morgana (2 stack)

Improved Basic Illusion

Perception Block

Blade Tempest (2 stack)

Blade Control

Eternal Blades

Acid Drake

Drake’s Heart

Least Demon Lord (2 Stack)

Moment of Immortality

Grand Hellflame

Overall, with the increased Stat point gain per Level from the 3rd Evolution onwards, he’d nearly doubled his primary Stats while increasing even his lowest Stats to one hundred points.

Blade held at the ready, Isaac descended down into the darkness.

The second floor kept up the stalagmite/stalactite theme of the first, but it was far wetter than the first and stank of mold, decay and seaweed.

Isaac wrinkled his nose but continued while reducing his sense of smell as far as he could. The floor had also gotten incredibly slippery, making the very act of walking a risky endeavor.

His [Aura] spread out once more, still empowered by [Death’s Embrace] even though it had become near useless. The single Eldritch Spawn he’d spotted so far was too strong to die just from that [Skill] but it was too weak for him to have to apply a debuff to beat it. His blade alone should suffice.

Suddenly, the entire space rippled and warped, twisting into a massive spiral of altered space that seemed break the very concept of a straight line.

A swarm of Eldritch Spawn exploded from their hiding places, charging straight at him, each one seeming to vanish amidst the warped space, functionally invisible among the mess of mind-bending effects, his [Aura] being hammered by a multitude of incomprehensible impressions that were starting to give him a headache. Increasing Perception might give a significant degree of resistance to sensory effects, but this crap managed to bypass that rather handily, not to mention it was hell on a sensory [Aura].

[True Cut: Sunder Eldritch Warp]

The energy field popped like a soap bubble, for the low, low cost of 200 mana, leaving the octopus-things out in the open and exposed, spears of deathly [Aura] hammering into each. The effect might not have been needed, strictly speaking, but given that he had it, he would use it.

Reality stuttered for a second as another Yellow Knight tried to attack him, but mental effects grew less effective the more often they were used, especially in quick succession. Between that, Isaac’s experience and his resistances, he barely even noticed the attack. He still killed the damn thing, though.

The swarm soon began to flee as it realized that not only was its defensive screen gone, its physical abilities alone were utterly useless against its foe. Letting loose another set of expletives, Isaac gave chase. No need to leave foes in place to attack him from behind at the worst possible moment.

Ten minutes later, he was covered in monster bits and dripping Eldritch vital fluid, but not a single one of the little fuckers still lived and a significant amount of mana had regenerated, almost topping it up.

From there, Isaac made his way along the corridor, ducking under and leaping over a few different dripstones in his path that shot out of the floor and ceiling like spears. They might have been a bit of a cliché, but they were effective … at least if they’d actually hit their target. The risk of getting stabbed would have also been massively increased if the Eldritch Warp had still been up and Eldritch Spawn had been leaping at him, but well, those were all dead and gone.

Finally, he reached the end and for the first time in a good long while, used [Phantom Step]. The teleport [Skill] was more expensive than [Wave Charge] and lacked its ability to easily redirect his own momentum, but it still had its uses. For example, when a Subway-car sized monster was sitting over the entrance into the next cave.

The mass of protoplasm with countless eyes roaming, appearing and disappearing constantly, limbs that had no earthly way of being described waving in the air, seemed to stutter in surprise as its prey vanished.

Isaac’s true target, a misshapen man in a cattle rancher’s outfit with a gun barely had time to react as he slammed his blade into his chest, the sword glowing like a red star with a full five stacks of [Power Strike] infused into a single [Legendary Blow].

Boom.

The humanoid monster’s torso exploded into a shower of tar-like gore and scraps of clothing with the lower half slowly collapsing and sliding out of the cargo pants, revealing a tightly packed set of tentacles covered in pustule-yellow eyes. Meanwhile, the massive, magical, revolver the monster had stuffed in its pants hit the ground as a mangled wreck.

And then the immense mass of flesh he’d so handily avoided dropped down onto the floor with an almighty splash, took a moment to collect itself, and charge.

Muscles were formed, used in ways that no ordinary living being could have without inflicting incredible pain upon itself, torn to shreds and dissolved in mere moments. Slavering mouths flashed into existence to take a bite out of the ground, the minerals being dissolved in digestive organs that hadn’t existed a moment earlier, then spat out of orifices Isaac didn’t even want to describe at half the speed of sound.

He shivered as his [Aura] passed through that mess of impossibility and sanity-wrecking fuckery, then leaped over the attack, hurling down a [Legendary Sundering Blow] into the center of the body.

As he landed on the end, he pulled his sword back into his hand, spun on his heels, and [Wave Charged] right back at the monster.

Sure, it didn’t so much turn as form the necessary organs on the opposite side where they’d been previously, but it was still not fast enough to prevent a [Legendary Power Strike] from slamming into its main body.

With its insides practically melted from [Sundering Strike], getting hit by a strike that powerful made the monster pop like a water balloon.

Cursing once again, Isaac leaped back to avoid getting covered in that mess. He stood there for a moment to wait for any additional movement but relaxed as the kill notification arrived.

This time, no treasure chest appeared, thankfully. What he found instead was a hole behind where the ‘farmer’ had been standing, and with his [Aura], Isaac could see he’d reached the Dungeon Core. Perfect.

Sure, the Dungeon had already gotten moderately difficult, but not insurmountably so and now, he was in a position to end it. His blade burned like the sun as two [Piercing Strikes] and three [Power Strikes] flowed into it, ready to shatter the damnable crystal, when a voice rang out from far behind him.

“Please don’t! Don’t do it!”

Oh, what was it now?