Apocalypse Redux

Chapter 140: Material Gathering

A vast mountain extended upwards in front of Isaac. Deep crimson rock pierced the sky with vast gashes granting access to its insides, and the ores within. The rather dramatically named Bloodore Mountain looked exactly like you’d expect it to. Bloodred everything, pools of what looked like blood, monsters tarred in the same color, and a sky over top that wouldn’t look out of place in a post-apocalyptic hellscape.

For the first time in this new timeline, a Tier 6 Hunting Ground had been summoned and now, he was about to explore it.

Normally, this would not have been summoned at this point in time, and while there were where no outright laws against it, anyone else would have gotten in a world of trouble upon this place being discovered.

However, there were a few things playing in the team’s favor.

Firstly, this wasn’t on the books just yet, merely a material retrieval mission, so unless someone decided to somehow back trace the exact time something was forged using the materials they were about to retrieve, then cross-match that information with the known average power Levels of the team and if they should have already been able to summon a Hunting Ground with a Space Elemental Core. And by that point, it should have been abundantly clear that nothing had gone wrong and that they’d been correct in estimating their strength.

Secondly, the reason not to publish the fact that they were going against Hunting Grounds that powerful wasn’t that they didn’t want people to go after the Hunting Grounds themselves, the real issue were the Space Elementals you needed to kill to access them. After all, Hunting Grounds at Tier 6 and onwards couldn’t be created using the Lesser Space Elemental Cores they’d been using to date.

Therefore, even though they were currently in possession of what were most likely the only Space Elemental cores on Earth, which screamed to all the world that summoning these things should have been beyond most human’s power to deal with, things were actually not that bad.

Also, there was the aspect of how Space Elementals weren’t actually strong, just annoying to fight. Space-warping one trick ponies who were far stronger than normal Tier 6s against someone who couldn’t counter them, yet utterly boned against someone in possession of a counter to their abilities. And [True Cut] was the death to trick ponies.

Meanwhile, the kinds of foes they’d face here were perfectly average Tier 6s, though there’d be a lot of them.

And thirdly, they’d been given a lot of leeway to play with due to their exemplary safety record. A few nicks and scratches here or there, sure, but those were to be expected given the nature of their work, and they happened with a frequency that was vastly lower than in other professions that dealt with animals like a zookeeper or vet.

Hell, they’d never had a single accident in this faculty’s entire existence … at least if you didn’t count that one spill Patrick had taken down the stairs because he’d thought his [Aura] control was good enough to keep track of his feet while he had his nose buried in a book. Spoiler alert: it wasn’t.

“Are you sure you don’t want one of us to come with you?” Patrick asked from his desk on the other side of the portal.

“Yes.” Isaac nodded “I only need a few things, and I can carry those by myself. No need to waste anyone else’s time.”

“Then what do you call me having to sit on my ass out here to make sure nothing saunters out while you go in?” Patrick shot back.

“I say it’s doing paperwork at a different desk.” Isaac commented dryly. It was a task they all did on occasion, as even with all the power each and every one of them possesses, simultaneously being inside the space and adequately guarding the entrance wasn’t possible. But given that they all had vastly heightened senses, merely being in front of the exit was enough to be able to stop all monsters that might want to come out even without focusing their attention on that task.

And with that parting shot, Isaac marched into the vast space that, oddly enough, didn’t stink like a charnel house.

There were many resources one could retrieve from this Hunting Ground, ranging from rare ores that couldn’t be found anywhere else to the blood ‘water’ that sat in ponds at the base of the mountain, which had several alchemical uses.

It would have been easy enough to clean out the whole place in a matter of days, but that would have been an epically bad idea. The level of retribution from the space after it was closed scaled exponentially with the amount of stuff plundered, but the exact rate of increase varied randomly between summons, so it was functionally impossible to exactly predict what level of resource extraction would cause a cataclysmic reaction.

They might have placed the entrances to the various Hunting Grounds inside a buried, heavily reinforced corridor that made for a perfect kill-zone if one decided to stand at the top of the stairs and bombard the monsters below as they tried to get out, but that wasn’t a perfect solution.

Why? Because the number of monsters could swell up to the point where their sheer mass would rupture the room and crack open the earth above, leaving them free to swarm the campus freely.

Therefore, Isaac would only be able to take a small number of things from this realm of blood and monsters.

He slowly headed towards the mountain, separating his [Aura] into two parts. The first was an incredibly thin shell held at a distance of one hundred meters. It lacked the fidelity to properly analyze much of anything, but it could fulfill two very important tasks.

First, it could tell when something passed through it, be that a projectile or a lunging monster. It wouldn’t tell him what that was, but the mere fact that something had passed through this outer shell would give him a lot of information.

Secondly, it could tell when certain materials, such as the ore he was looking for, were in range. It wouldn’t give him a proper overview of the deposit’s size and purity given that he only saw a progression of molecule-thin slices as his [Aura] passed over it, but he didn’t need it, given that he could just do a deeper scan once he had it’s location.

Meanwhile, the second portion of his [Aura] was wrapped around him as it normally was, a single solid shell with a few longer beams roaming around to catch anyone who thought they were safe merely by being outside of the 25 meter radius his [Aura] had as its default area.

This was a highly advanced form of [Aura] projection that offered great information gathering potential without compromising one’s defense. It was something that offered great benefits, but was also ludicrously difficult to learn. In fact, even though it had been invented in the other timeline, Isaac had never been able to master it … until now. Once this little trick got out, people would once again believe him to be a genius of [Aura] control when he’d merely had a ludicrous amount of practice.

Still, the mere fact that he’d learned a new technique like this was an indicator that he could still grow with his [Aura], and that was an excellent sign.

Isaac’s first target was one of the pools of blood. He just walked over to it, dipped in a glass bottle, screwed the top shut and stored just the bottle and its contents, leaving all the liquid that had clung to the outside to fall right back.

Despite its appearance, this stuff wasn’t actually a collection of blood cells and plasma but some alchemical sludge with a lot of energy that mimicked what could be drawn out of blood and could be worked into several potions. Some of there were health potions, while others were exceedingly nasty poisons. But Isaac didn’t actually know any of those recipes, so this batch was solely there for Professor Chandler to play with.

It could also be used to form permanent versions of the temporary blood enchantments Isaac liked to use, but that required a ton of additional ingredients, expertise he didn’t have and

By the time the Blood Elemental, one made of actual lifeblood, not the fake blood that made up the pond, surged out of the liquid, Isaac was already backing up and bringing his sword around in an arc while infusing his [Aura] with [Death’s Embrace] as he collapsed it around the enemy, ruthlessly squashing the hostile energy field as it tried to make him bleed from every orifice.

The Elemental jerked away instinctively, focusing more on moving away overall instead of trying to shift its core. The thing about all manner of liquid Elementals was that their cores were constantly moving, making them a monumental pain in the ass to kill.

But while these kinds of creatures didn’t really feel ‘fear’ as beings of flesh and blood did, they still had survival instincts. And those now told the Blood Elemental to run, stiffening its body to maximize its speed, with the small side effect of not being able to shift its core anymore … a core that was promptly bisected by Isaac’s [Far Strike].

Blood Elemental (Lv. 39) has been slain. 500 XP gained

As the monster fell apart, Isaac snatched up both halves of the core, after all, they could be useful. But as the blood stopped being contained by the creature’s powers, the liquid’s coppery stench began to permeate the air. Even if Isaac hadn’t had a limit on how much he could take with him and therefore had a limit on how much productive time he could spend in here, the stench would eventually have forced him out. Sure, it wasn’t that bad after one monster died, but the chance of the number of the dead remaining at one was basically nil.

Isaac continued to head towards the mountain, occasionally slightly altering his course to dig out material deposits found close to the surface.

But there were also monsters. So many damn monsters.

Pink crystals veined with crimson, countless razor-sharp fragments all piled together into a roughly humanoid mess of sharp edges that would cause terrible wounds that literally dragged the victim’s blood out of their body.

Volcanic -looking rock golems that boiled the blood of those they struck at the point of impact.

Wyverns that spat crimson-colored acid.

And then, at the core of this temporary world, the Devouring Golem waited, a spike-covered metal monster that could absorb all blood and any non-mana infused metal that struck it to heal itself and in the absence of injuries, grow larger and stronger.

… if it hadn’t been for the monsters, this would only have taken half as long.

Isaac bent over, punched the ground with a [Power Strike], shattering rock into powder and grabbed a twisted chunk of Bloodore, the stuff the mountain had been named after.

That’s when a series of crystal chunks tore through the outer layer of his [Aura]. He whirled, Old Reliable morphing into its Zweihänder form with two copies appearing next to it, all three blades smashing aside the volley. Many crystals outright shattered, continuing along their previous trajectory until they eventually dropped to the ground, while the intact ones were merely deflected and returned to the monster that had unleashed the attack.

The Bleeder Crystal stood a full three meters tall, individual shards moving around to compensate for the damage with a sound of a bucket of broken glass being shaken.

Isaac charged, flinging the Zweihänder at the core with immense force, enhanced by [Power Strike]. Piercing individual crystals wasn’t the problem here, punching through the mass and shattering the heart gems was.

The golem charged as well, unleashing another volley of shards, though it was forced to recall each crystal once it missed. [Hunter’s Gaze] told Isaac that these crystals were flying based on their own power, which they didn’t carry very much of and had to recharge by docking with the main body. No vast flying clouds of crystalline blades, and any crystals Isaac broke were out of the fight, then.

Balmung flashed into existence a moment before impact and cut through every layer of crystal covering the second heart gem as well as the gem itself as if they weren’t even there.

Dozens of tiny shards tinkled against his skin, creating tiny cuts that bled far more profusely than they had any right to, but this fight was over.

During his charge, the Zweihänder had constantly been drawn towards Isaac’s hand until it had gotten stuck in the Bleeder Crystal’s back, lacking the momentum to penetrate the defensive crystal layers.

Its location? Right above the third and heart gem.

So while Isaac was moving past the monster, he spun on his feet and slammed a glowing red foot into the pommel of the Zweihänder, a [Legendary Blow: fivefold Power Strike] punting the blade into his foe’s body with such force that it not only was the intended target blown to flinders, but every shard within thirty centimeters of the impact site fell to powder as well.

Bleeder Crystal (Lv. 47) has been slain. 750 XP gained

And that was not only the fight, but also what finally brough [Power Strike] up to Level 30.

Power Strike (common, Level XXX)

The user’s next blow will hit as though their strength were three times as high.

This Skill may now also be safely used on fists and legs and has a reduced backlash on the user’s body.

After countless battles where this Skill has been used to drive a piercing blade into an enemy’s flesh, it has evolved to ignore the concept of an equal and opposite reaction, driving the cutting edge into the foe while pushing them with vastly reduced strength, massively improving armor penetration.

And now, it has reached the pinnacle of its power, infusing each and every attack with a permanent 20 % increase in impact power, regardless of whether or not this Skill was activated.

Cost: 12 mana per strike

Firstly, the first line of the description had shifted from a mathematical formulae that calculated the enhancement based on the [Skill’s] Level to a flat tripling of the impact power, aka a 200% boost, which was far more than the formulae could have provided with the [Skill] Level cap in place.

Secondly, it now boosted every attack by a flat 20%. No cost, no limitation, just a solid boost in attack strength. In other words, a power befitting a [Skill] at the Level cap.

Isaac cautiously reached out and rapped his knuckles on the ground. He didn’t feel like he hit any stronger, but there might be a good explanation for that.

Therefore, he punched the ground, and suddenly, he felt the power kicking in.

Then, he rapped his knuckles on the ground again, but this time he did so with the intention of breaking the rock. Once again, he hit harder than he should have.

That left him convinced that the [Skill] really only kicked in when he attacked, and when he meant to attack, neat.

However, based its increase based on the force he’d invested, which would take a while to fully adjust to as every move of his hits harder than he’d grown used to.

Still an awesome upgrade, though.

Before Isaac continued, he scooped up a bunch of crystals and stored them by burning another Lesser Space Elemental Core. He wasn’t entirely sure what they were used for but he’d seen them used in many weapons and pieces of armor but not in a decorative way, so they were likely useful for something.

In the meantime, his profusely bleeding scratches had healed when the Bleeder Crystal died and its curse had ended.

He continued deeper into this strange space, beginning to climb up the mountain at its center. It would have been a hellish climb for a normal person, but Isaac just kicked off his boots and jammed his toes into random cracks, then used that toehold as a springboard to jump off of. From there, he’d catch himself with his fingers wherever there was space and then either fling himself higher or find somewhere else to hop onwards from. There was such a vast disparity between his Strength and the weight of his body that that flinging himself around like a demented pinball was perfectly possible.

… and that’s when some manner of living being blasted through the outer layer of his [Aura].

Isaac kicked himself away from the mountain, manifesting a Kabar and telekinetically fixing it in place in front of him right where his foot was about to land and used it as a platform to cross the remaining distance between himself and the Wyvern, the less than a hundred meters that separated them not necessitating true flight.

He crashed into the winged beast’s belly, plunging a quickly conjured Balmung into the relatively unarmored flesh and gutting the monster. Even before it began to fall, he [Power Strike] kicked it with both legs, flinging himself straight back against the cliff face, where he clung like a spider.

Bloodborne Wyvern (Lv. 24) has been slain. 244 XP gained

The monster had been pathetically weak, but still far stronger than a regular ol’ Wyvern, which was a mere Tier 3.

Isaac glanced down at the mangled, pulped corpse lying at the bottom of the cliff and considered going back down to harvest it but decided solidly against it. In this place, using every bit of your kills was the exact opposite of a good idea. You’d still end up with the monsters on your ass if you only retrieved sup-par goods, with a vastly lower downside. He’d walk out of here with top-quality, nothing less. Besides, there’d be more Wyverns.

He continued to climb, eventually reaching a series of nests established event though this world had only existed for a couple of hours and would likely cease to be in a similar timespan. Just another stylistic choice, he supposed.

The Wyverns did not take to his intrusion kindly and took to the air, voicing their displeasure with a mixture of a dinosaur’s roar and a bird’s angry squawk.

Isaac just took his position on the largest flat section of rock and began to dodge globs of acid as the monsters began to bombard him. He kept dodging and weaving until one of them had enough and decided to charge, attempting to crush him in its claws.

This was, of course, not to be. He just jumped upwards, decapitated it, then relocated to a new spot so the perfectly harvestable corpse wouldn’t be destroyed by future acid attacks.

The pattern repeated over and over again, until Isaac ran out of available space and killed the rest of the Wyverns with a few well-placed [Far Strikes], then went on to harvest the finest bits of leather from the bodies. Everything else was left to ‘rot’, though they would never start to decompose as the world would have ended before then.

Another handful of minutes later, Isaac reached the top of the mountain, a large, flat plateau with the Devouring Golem waiting in the middle. It looked like a cross between a tortoise, pangolin and hedgehog, the top of its shell standing a full four meters tall. Twin heads sat at the end of long necks, not necessary for the golem’s survival, but functioning as a fantastic way to extend its reach.

A low growl shook the air as it charged, one head moving to each side to be in a position to catch him in case he decided to make a break for it. Not happening.

Isaac charged in turn, and as he did so, he grew.

Up until now, he’d only used the most basic version of [Form of Horror], a transformation into an amalgamation of all the monsters whose Aspects he’d slotted. And that had been enough. So when he’d gained the ability to create new forms based on his slotted Aspects and save them for later, he’d created one optimized for aerial combat, the other one meant for use underwater.

But eventually, after the [Raid Boss], he’d had too many Aspects, creating a massive mess comprised from tiny fragments of various monsters, still functional but hardly optimized. And that’s where this new form came in.

Isaac rose up to match the monster’s four meter height, a crown of bladed horns jutting from his scalp.

Overall, he kept the same basic form it had had in the beginning, a humanoid with serpentine features, long limbed, flexible, sinuous, perfect for his quick and agile fighting style. Old Reliable was turned into natural weapons, claws on his hands and feet, his teeth, and spikes on his knees and elbows that turned strikes with them into nasty weapons.

Two additional swords floated around him, courtesy of the Blade Tempest, while an outer layer of shimmering energy wrapped him, obscuring his form and when he attacked, it would slightly distort his image to fuck with those who would be on the receiving end of his attacks, or ensure that counterattacks would be off-target.

Finally, he’d added the Greater Hydra’s Acid-Spitting glands to his throat.

One head snapped at him but Isaac leaped over it, running past the side of his opponent to slash at its side, but before he could attack, the second head swung around, passing over the first, and tried bite him in the ass. It missed by half a meter, though, as it had been aiming for the illusion, not his real body.

For its trouble, it had a pair of floating blades driven into it, a venomous green glow slowly beginning to erode the metal’s structural integrity until there was nothing left but soup.

Meanwhile, Isaac just began to start clawing at the Golem’s side, the long ‘claw-blades’ beginning to glow with the light of Hellfire. Old Reliable had gained that power from killing the Demon Lord, though he’d rarely used it, given that it was vastly less flexible than his [Grand Hellflame] [Skill] as he could only apply it to the sword, rather than freely wield it. But it was fueled by the sword, rather than draining his own mana pool, and given that he was in a position to carve the thing up at close range, it was perfectly useable.

The various spikes on the Devourer Golem’s back grew, shortened, and shifted orientation as needed, trying to impale him, but Isaac just dodged most and lopped off the rest.

In the meanwhile, the first head and been reduced to goop so the flying blades thudded into the other one to work on that.

But that wasn’t all that necessary, given that the entire thing was currently ablaze. Hellflame could burn on life-force alone and given that the golem was partially based around blood and vampirism, it held said fuel.

As the heat grew greater and greater, the beast’s hide softened ever more, Isaac’s claws tearing huge chunks out of it with every strike until eventually, the Devouring Golem just stopped moving.

Isaac leaped back, expecting a trap or trick, but then realized that he’d cut apart the core without even realizing it.

Devouring Golem (Lv. 70) has been slain. 2,000 XP gained

And wasn’t that a fitting ending for this Hunting Ground run. Isaac threw the XP he’d just gained as well as sever ten-thousand into levelling up once again, hitting Level 73 and gaining the last [Skill] point he’d needed to buy [Fully Geared].

Fully Geared (legendary)

The historical definition of a knight is a lesser nobleman who maintains his own set of heavy armor and a warhorse. Therefore, a knight without his armor is no knight at all. And as sturdy as armor is, it can break, get stolen or simply fall apart if it gets too old.

If you want your armor to survive for more than a couple of fights, this Skill is essential. It allows the user to store three full outfits in an extradimensional storage and dress themselves with a mere thought. Armor and clothing is cleaned upon being stored and light damage is repaired.

Equipped armor can be reinforced using mana.

Cost: 10 mana to store/equip/switch outfits, 5 mana per second to repair clothing, 50 mana per minute to reinforce armor

Pieces of gear slotted into this [Skill] might not be soulbound, but they were the next best thing, practically indestructible.

To truly turn this into a [Skill] worthy of the title “legendary”, it needed armor that was likewise worthy of being written into a legend … which he didn’t have.

But he would, and even before then, it would be damn useful. For one, he could now teach a lesser version of this [Skill] to others, but there were also other awesome uses.

Reaching into his storage space, Isaac drew out several sets of clothing/armor, complete with underwear. Using an auto-equip [Skill] to armor up and forgetting the stuff you normally wore underneath, yep, that was the kind of mistake you only made once.

The first set of equipment was every piece of magical equipment he’d gained from Events and Dungeons, the ones he didn’t use in battle unless it was desperately needed because getting replacement would have nearly impossible.

The second was a set of regular clothing because, hey, instant clean clothes.

Meanwhile, the third was his ‘storage’ set. A bandolier of potions, which would allow him to quickly switch over to this set, then grab a couple of bottles. And by the time he started chugging said bottled, he’d already be back in his regular suit of armor.

Over the top he wore a massive trench coat whose insides were utterly covered in pockets to the point where it resembled a cartoon’s shady dealer’s favorite piece of clothing. It would let him store a lot of stuff without needing to burn a core. Sure, [Fully Geared] didn’t let him store raw materials and the like, but it would definitely take the stuff that were in his pockets.

Now all he needed was a full set of proper armor, which would likely take a while. Stagmer was an incredible [Blacksmith], but he was a blacksmith. What Isaac needed was a high-Level [Leatherworker]. His fighting style was all about mobility and flexibility, something that would be more difficult in metal armor, especially the full plate armor that offered the greatest protection.

It wasn’t necessarily the weight that would be a problem, at if one discounted several mystical metals, but flexibility. Metal armor, even chain mail, was far stiffer than properly treated leather, even with [Skills].

With all that done, Isaac summoned his Zweihänder and planted it in the earth, piercing the realm’s core, then left the space. It collapsed behind him soon after, spitting out almost a dozen Blood Slimes, Crystals, and a single Wyvern whose wings instantly broke as the struck the walls of the narrow corridor.

The fighting took less than a minute. The cleanup … far longer.