Apocalypse Redux

Chapter 156: Political Animals

The world around Isaac twisted and warped as if all of existence had just spontaneously decided to stop making sense. Up was down, left was right, and when he got his hands on that damnable Twilight Weaver, that thing was going to suffer.

Not really, he was going to just kill the damn thing and if he didn’t get the Aspect he wanted, he’d do the exact same thing all over again. Taking out his frustrations with the situation out on the monster he’d summoned would be rather pointless but fantasizing about it felt damn good.

39 of the fuckers had already died on his blade, but they’d blatantly refused to yield the desired loot.

Reality itself warped again, and Isaac was once again reminded that people had gone mad from fighting these things in the past, no longer willing or even able to trust what their senses were telling them because they’d been under the sinister influence of one of these monsters for too long.

[True Cut] tore through the sinister energy once again, gutting one of the monster’s world-distorting effects, but the remaining ones were still left in place, and cutting through everything would have blown through almost all of his mana pool and left him screwed.

But he didn’t need to remove all of them, just enough that he could finally get his auric hands on the damn thing. [Aura] a [Aura], Isaac could have trashed this thing in seconds, but the various other illusions were interfering with his attempts at locating the Weaver enough to ensure he couldn’t cheese his way to victory.

His inner ear screamed a warning at him, shouting that he was about to topple over, yet that was completely and utterly false, he knew that. Yet convincing himself of that fact, truly internalizing the idea that he was not, in fact, about take a big spill right at the feet of a terrible monster, that was vastly more difficult.

But what he could do was simply ignore the extreme sense of oddness and distraction, moving on regardless of what fakes and apparitions tried to push him away from his path, even as they grew ever stronger.

[True Cut: Annihilate Sensory Warp]

Another sweep of his blade and the energy lifted enough for him to continue his path, but a moment later, he realized he hadn’t even needed it as he was left standing in front of a beast of black mist, glowing white eyes hanging in midair, claws of black obsidian glinting at the end of barely material hands, and a lower body that diffused into mist rather than forming legs or any other kind of coherent form.

Coupled with the oppressive [Aura] of wrongness that rivaled many a true Eldritch being, the Twilight Weaver struck an intimidating form.

However, that was just as much smoke and mirrors as the rest of its powerset. Striking out from the safety of its illusions, this thing was dangerous as hell. Once one got to the real thing, though, it was dead. One slash of Balmung later and the smoky monster disappeared, yet a part of it remained, finally coalescing into a black orb that seemed to be continuously streaming mist. Fucking finally.

Aspect of the Twilight Weaver:

This is the distilled essence of what makes a Twilight Weaver a Twilight Weaver. Create illusionary doubles of yourself, manifest things straight out of your imagination, cloak yourself from downright unnatural senses, impact a foe’s mind or even turn their own senses against them.

Requirements for Activation:

5,000 XP

Open Aspect Slot

Grants:

+15 Magic Power

One of the following Skills:

Lesser Illusion

Warp Field

Perception Interdiction

Sanity Rend

Lesser Illusion (epic)

When first using this Skill, the user must choose two subjects to create an illusion of (specific person, object, creature, etc.). From that point onwards, the user may create an illusionary version of them at will (the illusions will update to match the chosen subjects).

In addition, the user may directly create illusions based solely on their imagination, though it will require a high degree of focus and concentration, with the cost scaling with the area of manipulated space.

Cost (preset illusion): 15 mana per activation, 1 mana per second of upkeep

Cost (direct manipulation): 50 mana per minute per cubic meter

[Improved Basic Illusion] became [Lesser Illusion], letting him do all the stuff he used to be able to do, as well as create illusions wholesale. What the [Skill] didn’t explicitly state was how difficult it was to use to fool someone, but that wasn’t why Isaac wanted it. Instead, he could use it as the ultimate visual aid, and then, as long as the parts he was trying to explain were correct, irregularities wouldn’t matter.

Perception Interdiction (epic)

This Skill allows the user to create a five-meter diameter sphere in which enhanced senses function considerably more poorly, reducing their effective power by the equivalent of 1 point of Perception per 10 mana invested.

In addition, the user may infuse a room with this energy, creating a stationary effect that will last so long as the user does not dismiss it, continues to pay the upkeep cost, and remains within 100 kilometers of the room. The cost is identical to the first effect but increases if the room’s size exceeds 125 π m3.

Cost: activation cost variable, upkeep cost 1/5 of activation cost per minute

Once again, it was an outright upgrade of his previous [Skill], and it would let him help with private meetings without actually being stuck in the room while said meeting went on.

As for his final [Skill], he’d gone with [Warp Field]. It was an immediate sensory disruptor, rather than [Sanity Rend], which was a debuff that would lightly fuck with people’s perceptions for a few hours until they felt like they were going crazy. Nasty and powerful, but the more immediate power of [Warp Field] was what he could use more.

Warp Wave (epic)

Up, down, left, right, what’s it all mean? Nothing!

This Skill emits a blast of energy that impacts nearby enemies and disorients them by messing with their senses, even inflicting synesthesia or swapping the sensory inputs between identical sensory organs. The power of this Skill increases against weaker enemies, as well as those whose Aura has been suppressed.

Cost: 50 mana

Now, in theory, Isaac could have also gone ahead and tried to harvest two more illusion Aspects for his parents, but there was no way in hell he’d remain sane throughout all that, which was why he’d already made arrangements to buy them instead, all he had to do was pick them up later.

First, though, he needed to also upgrade his Sword Aspect. [Blade Control] wasn’t letting him put enough force behind his blows and [Far Strike] was a little too fragile to properly use at his current level of strength without spending absurd amounts of mana to reinforce it. To fix that, all he had to do was kill a bunch more monsters and pray for an Aspect. Blech. But what needed to be done, needed to be done, that was how the damn world worked.

The Razor Apparition was a nasty piece of work with a humanoid central body, appearing to be a piece of modern art at first glance. But then, weird things would start to become noticeable. How the air seemed to move oddly around it, strange glints with no clear source, blades of grass or motes of dust being cut apart with so sign as to the source of the phenomenon.

But Isaac never got the chance to observe any of those little clues, the Apparition attacked far too quickly. It appeared in front of him in a blur, arms unfurling into a series of strings best described as “the bastard lovechild between a barbed wire and a razor blade”.

A dozen different tendrils crashed down on him like a tsunami but were met with a cloud of blades as he threw Old Reliable’s many forms against the attack.

Yet the flying blades were pushed back, or even outright knocked from the air, the power of Isaac’s [Skill] insufficient to hold up to the force they were subjected for. This was exactly why he needed this thing’s Aspect.

Bright green light stained the withdrawn limbs, courtesy of [Sundering Strike]. Isaac grinned viciously as he advanced, making sure to carefully avoid stepping into the places the blades on the monster’s arms had swept through. The incredibly sharp trails of energy that had been torn into the very world itself. They’d fix themselves soon enough, but until then, so much as brushing against them would leave a bloody wound.

The Apparitions legs split apart next, spearing the ground and then raising it into the air, making it appear taller and giving it a wider field of view.

Another tendril slammed into Isaac’s blade and fell apart, [Sundering Strike] having eaten right through it.

So when the Apparition attacked again, it had a dozen tendrils woven together into a massive club, studded with spikes and blades like a cactus raised in the bowels of hell itself.

Balmung shone an incandescent orange as it met the attack, shearing through it and sending a cloud of splinters and wires up into the air. At the same time, [Warp Wave] triggered, further reducing its ability to keep track of him. And lastly, [Lesser Illusion] triggered, creating an illusionary Isaac that charged ahead recklessly, outright ignoring the remaining trails. This made it vastly less believable than it could have been, but it didn’t need to last long.

With its senses disrupted, albeit only slightly so, its limbs compressed to give Isaac more space instead of covering the entire area in flesh-rending tendrils, and an easy target available, the real Isaac was able to slip in right under its nose.

That was the thing about monster trivia, sometimes, it decided the fight outright. For example, a Razor Apparition had several strands of glowing gold wires deep inside its body which served both as magical cores and sensory organs, ones that were unable to see through its own body.

Using the thick limbs as partial cover, Isaac unleashed another [Warp Wave] just as a Kabar he’d phased into the ground ignited, creating a pocket of superheated matter deep inside which subsequently exploded, throwing up another massive cloud of dust and debris.

Balmung came around in a devastating arc, carving clean through the main body and three of the wires. The top and bottom halves of the monster slowly slid apart, top half inert, bottom half twitching feebly as the monster tried to adjust to the damage, but as usual, Isaac didn’t give it the time.

Razor Apparition (Lv. 73) has been slain. 2,440 XP gained

But no bloody Aspect.

Summon. Kill monster. Be disappointed. Redux.

In between the pitched battles that were slowly reducing his nice summoning grounds into a debris field, he worked on the final draft of the proper threat ranking proposal. Much of it had been finished well before it had even been discussed officially, but he’d had to wait and adjust his proposal based on the discussions that had occurred during the initial proposal.

It was simultaneously both very simple, and very complex.

Classifications from F to S, based on power. Simple, right?

But he’d also had to add a lot of side-grades that were added to monsters that were firmly located in one category in terms of power, but had annoying gimmicks that meant that not all people of the same classification would be able to beat it. Spatial fuckery, intangibility, and oh so many more.

Yet the most important addition wasn’t on the page, it was in the hearts and minds of the people who’d be reviewing this proposal later. Through various backroom channels, he’d pointed out how stupid calling the ranks “Classifications” was and that maybe, they should change that back.

Really, it was a win-win-win situation. He got what he wanted, the politicians got to feel smart, and the ranking system didn’t have stupid terminology.

But work wasn’t the problem, getting the Aspects was. And he didn’t even have the time to finish getting them because he needed to head to Korea. He’d arranged quite a few things for this visit well ahead of time, so not going wasn’t an option. Maybe he could even find an Aspect of the Razor Elemental available for purchase.

***

Isaac sighed happily as he downed a can of ginger ale, crumpled it up into a ball, and lobbed it in the recycling bin without even looking.

Then he flipped the laptop open again and continued to work. Normally, he hated flying as it normally involved him being stuck in a metal can and unable to do anything productive. This time around, though, he not only had work but his plane was also one of the Dungeon Guild’s transport planes with a convenient flight plan. Instead of needing everyone with [Portal] to work together so he could walk straight to Seoul, all it had taken was a single hop to Rome and then he’d gotten on the plane there.

“So, Dr. Thoma, can I ask why you’re going to Seoul?” one of his fellow passengers asked.

Oh, someone clearly remembered what had gone down the last time Isaac had visited the country.

“Just planning on doing some grinding in Dungeons and there are a few things we need to iron out for the new classification system that I’ll take care of in person. Why write a million emails back and forth when a single face-to-face conversation will do just as well?”

“I see.”

The disappointment in the response made clear what the question had really been about.

“That’s not to say I won’t be teaching any [Skills] Ms. Bak,” Isaac said with a wry smile playing around his lips. The problem with preparing pleasant surprises for your subordinates was that if said subordinates expected to get said surprises but weren’t told they’d receive the useful or needed things … morale tended to take a hit.

“You managed to read my ID in my pocket without me realizing. How?”

“I didn’t, actually. I know all A and S-Rankers of the Dungeon Guild. I could have, though. Would you like to know how to prevent that?”

“Of course. But didn’t the ‘rank’ get changed into ‘class’?”

Isaac shrugged “We’re working on that. So, ready to learn some auric tricks?”

Time flew by as they were playing around with their sensory [Auras] and soon enough the plane finally touched down and let its passengers out.

The other passengers all had their own places to be and headed off in all directions. Isaac just walked over to the designated “anyone who flies away from the airport from anywhere but here gets arrested for endangering air traffic” spot and took off, sedately flying over the city of Seoul.

It had changed a bit since last time, with new defenses being erected in case of another [Raid Boss] being dropped on their heads, a couple of summoning centers being created, and several memorials stood tall to remind future generations of that day’s horror.

Soon enough, Isaac strode into the reception hall of the Dungeon Guild, being waved in by the receptionist without even needing to announce himself. The various sensory [Skills] and enchantments had already ensured he wasn’t using a shapeshifting [Skill] to disguise himself, nothing about him was throwing up any red flags, and he was expected.

As the elevator lifted him up to the second uppermost floor, Isaac considered how inefficient that was. Most buildings frequented by fliers had places to land on the roof, but that wouldn’t be possible here as the topmost floor was a huge mess of defenses and enchantments.

Sure, the windows of Yoo-jin’s office opened, but clambering in through those for a meeting wasn’t a good look.

This left Isaac knocking on the door and being called in a moment later, very unenthusiastically. He’d come here to talk to Yoo-jin about whom he should teach, and discuss some other things, but this didn’t seem like the right time for that.

“What’s wrong? And what can I do to help?”

“Bureaucratical issues, and nothing. Some deals fell through and some materials we’d purchased went missing at some point, poof, vanished. Before, I’d have chalked it up to human error, but they’ve disappeared even from my [Advanced Bureaucracy]. That’s not normal.”

Yeah, that was definitely odd. [Skills] to keep track of inventory worked damn well, and they would normally make finding missing inventory a piece of cake. The fact that it didn’t show up had to have a damn good reason. Or a concerning one. But something else was odd. [Advanced Bureaucracy] was a [Skill] that Yoo-jin shouldn’t have had access to, so …

“Is it possible you have a person who can teach [Advanced Bureaucracy]?” Isaac asked.

“Yes.” Yoo-jin sighed and flipped the laptop closed “That was meant to be a surprise for you, a little something in exchange for everything you’re going to be teaching my people.”

Sure, Isaac was also getting the run of several Dungeons in exchange for this service, which was plenty in his opinion, but he appreciated the gift. Finding someone to teach him a bureaucracy [Skill] would have been great, but he hadn’t known anyone from the other timeline, which had made finding someone a tad difficult.

“Now, you said you were missing some stuff. Do you need the exact stuff you lost, or would something equivalent work.”

Yoo-jin sighed again, opened the laptop and turned it around so Isaac could see the list on the screen.

“I can get you some of that.” Isaac told him, pointing out the specific materials he could retrieve “They’re back in Germany, though.”

“Anything is appreciated. We’re trying to summon a few rewards structures, and if we suddenly miss materials that should not have ever been able to be lost, there’ll be hell to pay.”

Working out the specifics of that took a few more minutes. Isaac ended up agreeing with Yoo-jin, whatever had happened to those things, they’d disappeared in an incredibly odd way.

Many of the materials were also volatile or could be used in nasty ways, and where therefore either regulated, or its trade was frowned upon. Why someone would have snatched it was obvious, and they were now pretty certain that it had been snatched.

But at the end of the day, this wasn’t a problem Isaac could help with, so he eventually headed back downstairs to teach the assembled A and S-Rankers some of his [Skills].

[Epic Blow] to increase power in those whose current [Skill]set could benefit it.

[Knightly Discipline] to allow for more Parties to be established.

And [Phantom Armor] for all the rest. It was an incredibly versatile [Skill] whose primary use was mere convenience, but that was only the start of it. Instantaneously replacing a ruined set of armor and facing a foe who’d been about to win almost unhurt was a nasty trick. But that wasn’t even getting into the option of creating a suit of berserk armor.

In essence, a berserk armor was a frankensteinian suit that looked like a torture device, with a series of needles that would pierce the skin of the wearer the instant it was put on, injecting countless stimulant potions, with additional potions being injected as needed.

Sure, [Phantom Armor] wasn’t needed for that, auto-equipping enchantments did exist, but those would cut into the amount of other enchantments that could be added.

The only issue with that plan was that, well, someone had to actually invent the damn things in this timeline.

What followed after that, though, that was something that would live on in Isaac’s nightmares.

Whereas his [Skill] teaching took a few minutes at the outside, getting [Advanced Bureaucracy] from the professor of economics required him to sit through five hours of the single driest academic lecture he’d ever heard. It was worth it in the end … but getting it had not been fun.

Advanced Bureaucracy (uncommon)

As the saying goes, money makes the world go round. But what makes money move? Bureaucracy.

And that is what this Skill is all about. It grants you a high degree of awareness into the rules that govern what you are doing at the moment (this effect can be toggled on and off), and allows you to integrate your bureaucratical tasks into the System, creating task lists, taking inventory without having to be physically present once it was taken in-person, and so on.

But as you continue to hack your path through the jungles of paperwork, this [Skill] is capable of extending to cover new applications.

He’d also have to send Bailey and the rest of the team over here now, this [Skill] was just to useful.

From now on, though, Isaac could go into the Dungeons and power level. He would still be on Christmas break until Monday, January 9th, and if he spent all that time fighting, he should be able to bag a decent amount of XP.

That date came and passed, but all that changed was that he’d now officially transitioned from being on holiday to “working”, which basically translated to showing up at Seoul University and working with Professor Kim on refining the ranking system.

He also managed to find a pair of Aspects that could grant [Perception Block] for his parents, and even an Aspect of the Razor Apparition. The latter ended up being priced insanely high, but one couldn’t put a price on the [Skills] Isaac taught, so that didn’t end up being a problem.

Aspect of the Razor Apparition:

This is the distilled essence of what makes a Razor Apparition a Razor Apparition. Make your weapons as eternal as a mountain, wield said weapons without needing to physically hold them, leave behind devastating cuts in the air for your foes to stumble into, or ensure that your wounds continue to grow more severe even after your weapon has long since been removed from your enemy’s body.

Requirements for Activation:

5,000 XP

Open Aspect Slot

Grants:

+15 Strength

One of the following Skills:

Immortal Blades

Remote Wielding

Razor Trails

Wound Shred

Once he’d slotted it, he chose [Razor Trails] as his new [Skill] and watched the existing ones upgrade. [Remote Wielding] turned out to be the exact same [Skill] as [Blade Control], having identical wording in the [Skill] description, though Isaac knew it would let him put more force behind his floating blades.

Meanwhile, [Razor Trails] was awesome.

Razor Trails (epic)

A blade is a nice weapon, isn’t it? Carves through flesh with casual ease, leaves big gashes that bleed so much that you can just take a step back and watch them keel over a moment later, dry as a bone.

But it’s a little slow, isn’t it, not when the monster is dancing around you like pinball gone wild?

Razor Trails allows you leave behind a barely visible trail behind any attack you made, following the movement of the blade’s tip. Anything that brushes against them will be sliced to ribbons.

WARNING: These trails are not indestructible and will break if struck with too much force.

Cost: 1 point of mana per centimeter of trail per second, cost doubles every second of an individual trail remaining

It was a nasty [Skill]. Sadly, the exponentially increasing cost meant that he needed to be tactical and cautious in its application, but it was still awesome.

And then there was [Immortal Blades]. In theory, using it was a waste of a [Skill] slot, given that Isaac had a soulbound weapon, but in practice, that simply made the [Skill] all the more necessary because fixing one of those was a pain in the ass. It could regenerate itself if he provided the right raw materials, but that weapon had absorbed so much stuff, including the blood of a [Raid Boss] that getting all those materials could be a serious pain in the ass.

But the reason he’d come here in the first place was an entirely different one, and after a little over two weeks here, he finally hit Level 83 and got the political [Skill] that had been so incredibly overdue.

Analyze Person (legendary)

Politicians, managers, hucksters. All kinds of people have all sorts of insights into the human condition, and the associated Classes have a myriad of Skills to help them with that, each one purpose built for a specific kind of analysis, giving them the exact kind of knowledge needed to do what they do.

This Skill, on the other hand, is the distillation of a lifetime of experience reading people, empowered to a supernatural degree. It might not have the power of a focused Skill and therefore falls far short of the combined abilities of a social Class, but it doesn’t have to match the might of an entire Class because that is not its purpose.

This is a Skill that makes your current social skills useful in a world where magic can interfere with social interactions, as well as empowering said social skills with a lifetime’s worth of experience. In addition, it allows for a degree of insight into what Skills are interfering with your mind/arguments. In addition, blocking hostile social Skills will be easier and will work with a smaller Level gap than normal.

It was simultaneously incredibly powerful and utterly useless. If he was on the same Level as his “opponent”, he was fucked. If he wasn’t, he grew progressively more untouchable.

As the Level gap between two people increased, the resistance to things like [Inspect], mental powers, and so on, steadily grew. Otherwise, a Level 1 [Pickup Artist] could trounce a Level 99 [Paragon Warrior] with ease.

Given that the people he’d be wielding [Analyze Person] against were politicians, who’d be people with a far lower Level than him, making it very useful.

It was also another [Skill] that didn’t really help with his fighting power, but that was alright. Now that he had something that ensured he wasn’t at the mercy of social [Skills], he could focus his growth elsewhere.

This also brought up another interesting issue. During this trip, the other Hunters had been treating him differently. Before, he’d been getting respect both for his power and knowledge.

Now though, he’d given up strength so he could empower others. And suddenly, he was being treated less like a person respected for his power and general capabilities, but rather like a village elder. Greatly, well, respected, but seen as more than a little fragile.

Sure, that view was correct in the sense that other people of his Level were almost certainly stronger on paper. But Isaac was not fragile, and he could still whoop any one of their buts because he’d created plans for that. Heck, he figured out how to defeat anyone he met once he’d discovered their [Skill]set, that was just how his mind worked.

By the time Isaac returned to the university after almost a month of being absent, it was almost time for him to leave again, though. The trial of one Arianne Krebs was going to start soon and he’d been called upon as a witness.