Apocalypse Redux

Chapter 162: An Enemy that cannot be Defeated

Paperwork. Effing Paperwork. Countless piles of it, multiplying like the proverbial rabbits, a foe that clawed at the sanity of those unfortunate enough to face it, until the only thing left to was to surrender, to drown in an endless sea of black and white pages until finally, the weight alone was enough to crush a human’s fragile body to paste.

Of course, none of those things described reality, but it sure felt like they did.

In this new world of magic and superpowers, how was there not a [Skill] that let him treat paperwork like the danger it was, an enemy he could face blade in hand, put to the sword and leave it lying on the ground behind him, never to bother anyone again?

Isaac sighed and slumped in his chair, forehead bonking into the table hard enough that a normal one would have gotten a sizeable dent. The only thing saving this one from the scrapyard was the fact that literally every part of the building had been designed to stand up to not just normal wear and tear, but the abuse that came from being used by a bunch of people with superhuman capabilities.

He knew that whenever he was contemplating murder, it was time to do something else. Like actually killing something. Stagmer wanted some more golem-sourced titanium, and one of those monsters would make a fine target to work out some aggression on.

A glance at the clock revealed that it was almost midnight, January 31st. Wow, he’d been at this for quite a while, hadn’t he?

But it had been worth it. The company had been created, officially registered, and he was currently in the process of finding people to fill all the required positions. Thanks to enthusiastic help from the rest of the team, he already had a chief engineer in Karl, Patrick and Amy would be taking care of the chemical and alchemical processes that would produce nigh-universal potion bases, Raul would be working with Isaac to work out an optimal hunting/harvesting method.

In addition, the university itself proved to be vastly more able to spit out adequate workers for his business than he’d expected. Something he hadn’t quite accounted for was that the university had a lab and office space available to any students or faculty that had an idea that might be turned into a business and, of course, a bunch of people had decided to try and create a startup based on the [System].

Many of those startups hadn’t gotten anywhere, stumbling over issues that they’d run into head-first as these things literally hadn’t been discovered before then. Sure, others had failed due to incompetence, but that still left Isaac with a massive pool of ambitious individuals who were glad to be working in this field. It certainly hadn’t hurt that he’d looked through all the ideas for the startups that he’d been able to locate, picked out those that would do well, and promised to fund those once his company took off.

Sure, the people who’d come up with the idea would end up as subsidiaries of Isaac’s company rather than their own independent entity, but it was more than they’d have gotten otherwise.

And they’d even gotten their first building. Well, they were in the process of buying one, anyway. It was an regular transit warehouse with three separate large halls, ten meters tall and four hundred square meters each, an elevated foreman’s office in each hall that allowed for six people to work within and overlook the goings on downstairs, as well as three stories of open floorplan offices on the street-facing side of the building, covering the entire front.

That gave them one hall for storage, one for “safe” material processing and one for summoning.

On the back lot, where the trucks dropped off their contents, there was enough space to erect a separate lab for the more volatile alchemical processes to be conducted.

Of course, the whole building was still in use and the owner had only been looking to sell in a year or so, but Isaac had bribed him. Not with money, mind you, but by teaching him [Phantom Armor]. Sure, the man wasn’t a fighter, but that wasn’t why he’d find it useful. Instead, it was the cleaning part of the [Skill] that made it so good. Instant clean suit, no matter what you spilled on it. Assuming it wasn’t caustic or damaging in another way, at least. And he could store one of his fancy suits and switch it out with his normal outfit when he went to work, then swap it back the moment he could, not having to endure confining formal wear for a second longer than was necessary.

Coupled with the fact that Isaac was paying ten percent over the asking price, it was a no-brainer.

The final costs came out to a little more than Isaac’s current fortune would allow him to pay, but that was easy enough to fix. He had piles of job offers sitting in inbox, so he picked the ones that paid the most for the least amount of effort without being morally questionable and did them.

Teach a rich guy’s bodyguards to handle their [Aura]? Sure, and he was immediately close to a hundred thousand euros richer.

Someone wanted the stuffed head of a Tier 7 monster for his wall? That one was even more expensive.

And so on, and so forth, money flowing in like a waterfall, even though he also had to give up basically all his free time.

But the sale was currently in the process of being finalized and in a week or so, he should be able to squeak by with ten or so hours of company work per day … in addition to the eight to ten hours at the university and whatever was required to advance his less public or aboveboard projects.

Isaac entered the summoning room, walked over to the wall-safe that contained the summoning materials and retrieved a series of metal bits, tosses them into the summoning circle that had been inlaid into the concrete (and repaired a thousand times over for obvious reasons), and then activated it.

The giant metal monster erupted from the ground, and fell apart in a dozen different chunks, neatly diced. [Absolute Blade Mastery] let him decide that the massively overcharged [Sweeping Strike] fired from three separate floating blades only carving through bits of it instead of reducing it to a pile of titanium shavings.

He swept up the loot, then returned to the wall safe when he heard the rest of the team head towards this room.

Hm, odd. People worked late a lot, especially when they barely needed to sleep anymore, but everyone showing up all at once was far less common.

Instead of resetting the summoning circle, Isaac dismissed his weapons and headed over to the door, opening it just as Bailey was about to reach for the handle.

The sight that greeted him … wasn’t what he’d expected. Instead of the grim expressions and dark looks he’d have expected, given that he thought an emergency had brought them here, they were wearing bright and happy smiles, with bottles of booze in each of their arms.

“Congratulations!” Bailey exclaimed “You’re finally old enough to drink legally!”

Wait, Isaac had been able to drink since he was sixteen … oh, right, Americans and their drinking age of twenty one. But why now …

“Crap.” Isaac spat “I missed my birthday, didn’t I?”

“Yep, worked straight through it.” Bailey said with grin “So, cake’s being delivered from the bakery and we’ve hidden some more other party supplies around the place. Shall we?”

“Thanks, Adam.” Isaac replied, a genuine smile stretching across his face “But I just need to send a quick text, then you’ll have my full attention.”

Then he turned and hastily yanked out his phone and messaged his mother. She’d asked him if he’d be dropping by today and he hadn’t put two and two together, completely failing to realize that what she’d meant was “are you visiting us on your birthday”.

After promising to drop my tomorrow, er, today evening, he joined Bailey in heading upstairs.

“Er, quick question, what’s up with all the booze?” Isaac asked “I mean, I like alcohol, but it’s a little … noticeable?”

“What do you get the man who has everything?” Bailey asked “We got you some other stuff too, but I figured booze was good choice for what to show up with.”

“True.” Isaac shrugged. He had to admit, this had been well planned. He was aware of literally everything that occurred within these four walls but didn’t dig as deeply into the goings on as he could have. And he didn’t doubt that such a level of scrutiny would have been necessary.

In the brief amount of time the text and conversation had taken, a large party table had been erected on the roof.

“You know, I don’t think I’ve ever been up here.” Isaac commented “It’s nice.”

“Yeah, we figured a place to relax this close to our workspace was a good idea, considering how stressful it can be,” Bailey said.

“Maybe. Somehow, for me fighting is the least stressful part of the whole affair.” Isaac said “As dumb as it sounds, for a moment, everything else stops crowding my mind, I can just focus on me and my opponent. It’s stressful in a different way, but somehow still relaxing.”

“At least under the [System], you have an endless supply of acceptable targets.” Bailey observed and Isaac just nodded.

“But now you’re up here with us, no need for distractions, right?” Amy announced, draping one arm over Isaac’s shoulder “Come on, it’s time for the cake.”

“Happy birthday to you, happy birthday …”

Once the song ended, Isaac blew out the candles, then lopped off the top before the trick candles could reignite.

“Yeah, we couldn’t really expect him to miss that, could we?” Amy deadpanned

“It’s cute you tried though,” Isaac said, slinging his arm around her shoulders in a mirror of her earlier action.

The party continued like that for quite a while, with the alcohol being put to the side rather soon. There were certain fancy boozes that certain people drank specifically for the taste, but in general, getting drunk was a part of why alcohol was consumed. But without that acquired taste and the idea of getting tipsy a pipe dream to poison resistance, drinks just tasted … bad. Bailey and Isaac shared a bottle of whiskey, but that was

“You know she’ll get you back for that,” Raul told Isaac later, jerking his head towards Amy.

“Oh, I’m counting on it.” Isaac flashed back an evil grin “A little prank war sounds like just what the doctor ordered.”

“You’re on.”

Amy’s disembodied voice rang out from right behind his ear, the far-speaking spell having been perfectly placed to be out of Raul’s field of view. Isaac had noticed it through his [Aura], but his philosophy on pranks was that he’d not outright ruin them. Turn them around, sure. But not trash them completely.

They “danced” the night away but come morning, Isaac returned to the fields of combat, slaughtering paperwork by the folderful, the horde endless but ever so slowly shrinking … until the next set of documents arrived in both his inbox and mailbox.

This time, his forehead did leave a dent in the table. Karl fixed it with a wave of his hand when he passed by him to get to the minifridge, but it was still not a good sign.

***

“Happy birthday to you …”

Thankfully his family birthday cake wasn’t topped with trick candles. Just a wonderful New York Cheesecake that his sisters were already drooling over. The twins on a sugar high … best to be far away by the time that kicked in.

After the cake had been devoured, it was time for presents, but just like Christmas, it was painfully obvious that no one was entirely sure what to get him anymore. And the mood dropped like a rock after that.

Isaac slunk back home after that, feeling barely better than he had before Bailey and the others had thrown his birthday party. He let himself fall, face first, into his bed and sighed. He’d wait a few weeks and then let it be known that he was “too old for presents”.

Finally, he curled up into on his pillow and fell asleep, taking a five-minute break until he had to go straight back to work.