Apocalypse Redux

Chapter 40: There is such a thing as being too honest

The week started off in the same vein the last one had ended in. Conducting normal experiments and writing down conclusions based on them, all the while creating and refining ideas on how to best research autonomous summoning without putting anyone in danger in the vain hope the powers that be would authorize one of them.

Of course, there was a good reason for being super duper cautious about autonomous summons, given that they literally had the potential to end the world.

After all, Isaac knowing something was safe wasn’t exactly definitive proof without actual, well, proof.

… which would require him revealing the secret of his origins, which he may be willing to do for Bailey or the man’s team, but not a room of bureaucrats whose sole reason for existing was nit picking everything.

This, in turn, meant he needed proof entirely independent of his unique situation to convince them to let him conduct his experiments, which was hard to get.

Fortunately, however, he didn’t have to remain fixated on merely satisfying his bureaucratical overlords whose only perspective on the situation at hand came from dry and boring reports which failed to properly convey the gravity of the issue, there was so much more to do.

The wheels of bureaucracy turned oh so slowly but turn they did. Eventually, something would get authorized, but it would take far longer than he was used to. Having what basically amounted to a blank check to experiment with so long as they showed at least a little common sense had been awesome, but sadly that didn’t apply to the single most damaging experiment they’d ever done.

Mind you, said ‘damage’ consisted of a grand total of scratched walls in their summoning room, which had been fixed almost instantaneously, as well as alarming a few people. But that was bureaucracy for you.

All of that brought him back here to the engineering faculty of the university, chopping up random scraps of material with his soulbound knives, raw power, [Skills] and literally anything else the people around him could come up with.

Some of those scraps were the leftovers from old engineering projects about to be thrown out, others had once been a part of a [System] monster, donated by Isaac. That gave them a good variety of fancy, high tech artificial creations, more mundane, everyday construction materials and things that only existed since Initialization.

The goal was to roughly determine how powerful the [System] had made him and what it took to withstand his attacks.

Based on that data and what his [Hunter’s Gaze] could tell him about the stats of Tier 4 monsters, they wanted to extrapolate what would be needed to properly secure the new summoning rooms.

Thankfully, there was the small mercy of people being able to easily fix damage like that, meaning Karl. That let them build the rooms to a lesser standard given that they didn’t need to withstand heavy impacts over the course of years before being replaced, they just needed to survive for a couple of days before being restored to a pristine condition.

Still, unless they wanted to get Karl stuck on that one job for the rest of eternity, they would need to make sure they didn’t require repairs too often.

There was a delicate balance to be struck between cost, toughness, and time until repairs would be required. And quite frankly, those kinds of calculations were a little out of Isaac’s wheelhouse, pulling it squarely out of his control. He was just here to play the lab monkey, and to be honest, he didn’t like it.

But it had to be done, so here he was, doing anything and everything that was asked of him, until either the people he was working with were satisfied or he felt like things were getting ridiculous, at which point he’d make up a convincing reason to leave.

Besides, this would be over by tomorrow evening at the latest as the team had other requirements on their time, and they’d already promised to do certain things on certain days. Namely, giving the police’s summoning rooms a good once over before they were actually used.

Some of the research they were doing right now was going to be directly required for that, but mostly, this was something done to check things over from a new perspective, one that came from someone with far greater knowledge.

The rest of the day flew by in a blur of doing things that didn’t feel at all productive, even though he knew it needed to be done.

Ordinarily, he’d have been wary of giving people such an in depth look at his stats and [Skills], but right now, it was still early, his Stats would increase.

And as far as the [Skills] he demonstrated went, those were pretty basic ones that people would soon be able to recognize on sight while also being common enough that their descriptions weren’t really secret anymore.

Even if someone cared enough to go looking for a report on his capabilities, this was merely a momentary snapshot that showcased a small part of his abilities and would soon become redundant anyway.

Later, however, he’d become rather more cagey, paranoid even, with the precise state of his Status.

It was inevitable that certain things would be found out, through simple observation, if nothing else, but last ditch defensive [Skills], Stats whose effects weren’t immediately visible needed to be kept hidden for him to be able to use them to their fullest.

At least his powers didn’t have any obvious weaknesses. The closest thing to one was cauterizing damage that countered his regeneration, but that was a general weakness of all healing [Skills] and could be powered through with enough mana.

Other [Classes] could be countered far more easily, for example, if one’s [Class] was based on an element, introducing another element you knew would react badly with the existing one could take out powerful enemies in a matter of moments.

Of course, that still left the entirely different issue of needing a source of said element, but that was where [Classes] like [System Researcher] really shone.

Isaac, meanwhile, just beat his opponents with raw power and skill because his [Class] didn’t really afford him what he needed to exploit weakpoints like that.

The next day was a lot more of the same, though they spent part of the afternoon actually summoning, finally free of the engineering faculty.

Which brought him to Wednesday. He showed up bright and early, dropped a few different reports on Bailey’s desk and then headed to the place they’d actually be working today, a police station.

It was one that was rather out of the way, with half the building having been mothballed because it was no longer needed as the industrial district began to slowly fall into disuse.

But now, that meant there were several large and available warehouses within spitting distance of that police station, making it a convenient spot to use for this.

“Good morning, my name is Isaac Thoma, I believe I’m expected?” he asked, presenting both his ID and the Email the team had received on his phone.

“Let me check real quick … yeah, I’ll call someone down to show you to your workspace.” the man at reception said after checking some kind of log on the desk before him.

When someone joined them a few minutes later, however, it wasn’t the junior officer Isaac had expected, but a middle aged woman with a single gold star on her shoulderpads. He didn’t actually know what rank that corresponded to, but he could infer it because he recognized her.

After all, not looking up the team’s new ally on the police force would have been criminally negligent.

“Good morning, Polizeirätin Eisenberg.” Isaac greeted her, noticing her do a small double take. After all, they’d never met face to face before.

“Good morning Mr. Thoma.” she responded “Walk with me to the new summoning center, would you?”

“Of course.” Isaac nodded and the two of them walked out of the front door, with her setting a very sedate pace as they walked next door.

He felt a slight shift in their surroundings the instant they exited the building. He knew exactly what it was, but he shouldn’t. So, he just asked.

“Was that you?”

“Yes, I just put up [Off the Record], a [Skill] that lets me have private meetings even with all that’s happened. I’m surprised you noticed.” she commented.

“I’m a sensory specialist.” Isaac shrugged “I’d be bad at my job and [Class] if I hadn’t.”

“Heh.” she chuckled “What else can you detect?”

“Pretty much everything.” he shrugged again “Detect most chemicals based on the slightest trace of it in the air, hear the slightest rustle in the underbrush, spot the slightest movement at a distance measured in kilometers … though I have to actually know what it is to identify it. A lot of the things I can now sense were completely hidden from me before, so I have to work to identify them.”

“I suppose that’s to be expected.” Eisenberg said, then flashed him a wry smile “You know, I’ve wanted to talk to you for a while. That mess back in the frat house … we got lucky.”

“Believe me, no one is more aware of that than me. I survived that mess by the skin of my teeth.” Isaac sighed “Of course, I can fully recover from anything I survive, which made getting stuck in the hospital a tad annoying, but I made it through that as well.”

“I heard about that.” Eisenberg shook her head sadly “Hardly our finest hour, I have to admit, though we’re making sure that something like that doesn’t repeat itself. Mostly, we’re working on properly incorporating this new reality into our training.”

“Yeah, I can see how that might be a bit difficult. Don’t get me wrong, getting practically shoved into that hospital didn’t feel good, but I could see that guy’s point of view. How can you know someone isn’t just being stupid? That being said, next time, I’ll likely be pretty mad regardless.”

“And that makes you more understanding than most people would have been in that situation.” Eisenberg nodded “But that brings up something else. I’ve been wanting to talk to you for a while about this: What makes an average student suddenly turn into a professional hunter of monsters?”

Isaac sighed inwardly, then rattled off the standard explanation he’d cooked up for anyone he didn’t want to show much vulnerability in front of. Mind you, ‘rattled off’ didn’t mean he wasn’t convincing, just that he’d actually practiced this whole thing.

“The end of the fucking world.” he stated dryly, flashing her a wink, then shifted his face over to a far more serious expression “I don’t know how much you know about the literary correlations to this situation, but suffice it to say, they’re not good. Seeing that screen pop up means the world is about to end. Sometimes, there’s a bit of a grace period where people can train themselves up before the monster’s get dumped in humanity’s collective lap, sometimes there isn’t. But just in case, I grabbed a [Class] with all the [Skills] I thought I needed.

“Something to give me basic knowledge of how to fight, something to let me hide, something to let me do damage, everything I thought I needed to survive anything the world could throw at me. And then, well, nothing happened. Eventually, I realized that the apocalypse I expected wouldn’t be coming, but I still had an entire build devoted to combat.

“But I still wanted to learn more about the [System], so I looked around, found Professor Bailey and joined the team. The rest is history.”

“I suppose assuming the world is ending is reasonable, given the situation.” she sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose “You would not believe some of the messes we had to clean up that day.”

“Oh believe me, I know what kind of nonsense people get to. After all, I was involved in the mess with the Swamp Knight and the Imp in the church.” Isaac said “I’ve seen humanity at its dumbest firsthand.”

“About that, I just wanted to thank you for your patience with Polizeimeister Langschwert. Most people would have bitten his head off for calling them in the first place, let alone having to do all that paperwork afterwards.” Eisenberg said.

“Look, I’m not going to insult your intelligence by pretending that I was happy about getting called out in the middle of the night after an intercontinental flight, but the thing is, he had a point. That could have been a fiendish trap, especially in hindsight. I’d rather get called in one too many times instead of people being too afraid of me to call for help and ending up dead.”

“Hindsight?” she asked.

“I thought about the situation afterwards and realized it could easily have been a nasty trap. How much do you know about how monsters track their summoners?”

“They automatically know where the summoner is and track them for a considerable distance.” Eisenberg said.

“True, but incomplete.” Isaac said “See, something was bugging me when we first discovered the tracking ability. Namely, doesn’t it completely negate all stealth [Skills]?

“Eventually, we figured out that the tracking doesn’t kick in if the summoner is using any kind of active stealth [Skill] and close enough that they’re clearly not running away. So if I wanted to pull off that trap, I’d summon a stealthy fighter or two, then slip into [Stealth] myself to force them to try and track me. The monsters wouldn’t be prone to running around breaking things, instead playing cat and mouse until another human shows up and their inborn aggression kicks off. End result …”

“… massacre.” Eisenberg completed his sentence, grimacing “I really need to stop talking to you people before I fall into a depression.”

“The truth sucks.” Isaac sighed “To be honest, the more we find out, the more it’s starting to look like we might be headed towards a catastrophe anyway, one of our own making.”

“Unfortunately, that’s pretty much our thinking as well, which is why we’re setting up this summoning center in the first place.” Eisenberg nodded “Otherwise, this would have taken a hell of a lot longer. Now, here we are.”

As she said that, she opened the door to a large warehouse, leading him in through the administrative part into the large open storage space. In addition to the regular admin portion, there was a foreman’s office up near the ceiling, to be reached by a long set of metal stairs. Perfect for keeping an eye on the happenings below, whether those were boxes being moved around or monsters being fought.

“I do have one more question: how come no one talked to us about the possibility of someone pulling off those summoning traps?” Eisenberg asked.

“Mostly, we’re trying to figure out how to warn people without giving them ideas. After all, how many people would be told ‘scan your mail for mana in case someone drew a Tier 1 circle on paper and dropped it in your mailbox’ and hear ‘draw a summoning circle on a sheet of paper, charge it and send it to your competitor’? Believe me, we’re working on it though, and coming up with new and nasty tricks every day.”

“If I’m ever in need of some nightmare fuel, I guess I know where to go.” Eisenberg sighed.

The warehouse floor had been covered with several sets of large walls, made from thick, interlocked iron bars with concrete walls reaching up to waist height to ensure that the various fluids created by combat wouldn’t slop everywhere.

In addition, there had been a sort of ‘firing range’ set up in one corner, with summoning circles drawn on the floor at the far end so that monsters could be summoned and gunned down before they reached their summoners, with a heavily reinforced back and side walls ensuring that it would survive the punishment it’d be put through for a while. Though soon, it would grow obsolete as monsters grew too powerful for that setup.

“That looks good, but it would require the people fighting to be able to kill the monsters. Given a concerted effort, it wouldn’t survive for too long.” Isaac observed, walking around one of the ‘arenas’, and finally turned back to Eisenberg “Might I make a suggestion?”

“Sure, go ahead.” she nodded.

“Basically, the way I see it, your biggest problem is that the police are a fundamentally reactionary force. You need time to train, but you also need to be available to respond to issues, while the criminals you deal with can spend all the time they want to level before engaging with you.

“In addition, you have the small issue of how long it takes to level, time you’ll have to take out of all your other responsibilities. But there is a way to level up your officers over time while still having them available to do their other jobs. This will also somewhat circumvent the issue of the danger summoning would put your officers in.”

“And that would be?” Eisenberg raised an eyebrow.

“Someone else could level them up instead, killing monsters they summon. All they’d have to do is walk over here, power a circle, and then get XP without ever having to lift a finger.” Isaac said “If the monster summoned is near the upper end of what a given person can summon but the guy killing it can do so in a single hit, things should progress quite rapidly. A couple-minute walk over here every half hour or so, and they’d hit Level 10 in a week.”

“Now all I’d need is someone who can take out a Tier 3 or 4 monster in one hit who’d be willing to do nothing but kill for extended periods of time. Unless you’re volunteering?”

“I kinda am, actually. I need less than an hour of sleep every night and I’ve recently commissioned a twohanded greatsword that will let me reach even the largest of monsters’ vulnerable spots. When dealing with monsters such as Golems with a single vital organ that die instantly if said organ is destroyed, it really is quite easy to take them down in one hit, freeing up the arena for the next monster while the mana spent will be recuperated in under a minute.

“Given how long I can be physically active without needing rest, I could kill dozens of golems every hour, each one giving out 10 XP, as well as whatever bonus would be applied due to it being a monster well above their Level. Now, it would obviously take five hundred and fifty golems to hit Level 10, but it wouldn’t require too much time on their part.” Isaac explained.

“It’s that easy?” Eisenberg asked, skeptically. She’d been a public servant for quite some time, likely having had to deal with countless budgetary discussions during that period and been feed numerous lines from people trying to sell their shit.

“Basically, there are three problems with that approach. Summoning monsters that someone else kills will still count towards the limited number of times you can get XP from a given Tier in a certain category, which will reduce the overall amount of XP they get in total. But that’s only ever going to be an issue for people striving to reach the very top, the highest peak possible.

“Then, there’s the issue of time. Anyone who accepts this offer would only be working towards levelling for a few minutes every day, but it would take a day or two for every Level. If you need rapid levels, you’re better off just setting them to kill monsters on their own. It’ll eat up a large chunk of their time, but you’ll see results sooner.

“Lastly, well, how much of a drawback this is largely depends on how much you trust the person doing the killing. After all, they’d be levelling up quite a lot faster than anyone else involved. If you have high level elites of your own, you can use them, but like you said, you’re only getting started on a levelling up program.”

“There is such a thing as being too honest, you know?” Eisenberg asked him with a wry smile.

“Oh, I do. But the point is, I want to be honest here, all cards on the table. Besides, how would it have looked if I hadn’t mentioned I’d be getting a lot out of this as well?”

“Not good, that’s for sure.” she nodded.

“I’ll get you a preliminary proposal by tonight and get started on writing down a guide on what to best summon for levelling and how to beat them, though the latter will probably take a while. Anyway, I’ll be off for now, checking over those ‘arenas’ of yours more closely. It was nice to see you, Polizeirätin Eisenberg.”

“It’s been nice meeting you as well.” Isaac nodded and bade her farewell, then joined the others, who’d arrived while the conversation had been taking place.

Hopefully they’d be taking him up on his offer. The police having Levels would hopefully allow them to avoid getting massacred by future summoning mishaps.

And if he had dozens or even hundreds of police officers summoning monsters for him to kill, he’d shoot up through the Levels at an insane rate.

Eventually, they’d be cutting him off, no question about it, for the simple fact that he might grow too powerful for him to be handled.

He might have worked hard to create a reputation for helpfulness and reliability, but there were limits to how far that went. People could count, adding up the XP he’d be getting from all the monsters he’d be killing for the cops and figure out where his Level should be.

He, Karl and Amy spent the rest of the day looking over everything, even summoning a few monsters to ensure everything worked as intended. A Slime to make sure the drainage system was up to snuff, a Rock Golem to make sure the floor could survive a large monster dropping dead, and so on, and so forth.

It was actually pretty cool, having a large warehouse practically to themselves, exploring every nook and cranny.

Occasionally, people would drop by and ask them questions, making Isaac feel like a true-blue scientific expert. That was nice.

Near noon, though, all that changed when a young man came running into the warehouse, calling for them to come over. Now, while this messenger was around Isaac’s age or even slightly older, he looked so incredibly young to his eyes. A little panic shining in the eyes, breathing far heavier than should be needed after running here from literally right next door, the unusually high-pitched tone in his voice.

“Hey, something happened, get over here!” the police officer yelled and ran off, prompting Isaac to sprint after him, a single jump catapulting him through the wall and out onto the street, arriving at the reception desk two seconds later.

“Hi, I’m Isaac Thoma, I was here this morning, a young man just came running over to tell us to come here. Where should I go?”

The receptionist jumped as he arrived, with the same expression on his face. Now, Isaac was getting seriously worried. Just what had happened? Someone couldn’t have been stupid enough to still summon that Elemental despite all the warnings? The dates certainly matched, but seriously?

“Conference room, two floors up, the signs lead the way.”

And just like that, Isaac was off again, sprinting through the building while occasionally phasing through people standing in his way.

But when he reached the conference room, he froze in his tracks. What seemed like half the station was standing in the room, staring at the wall mounted screen, which showed a dark city with lightning flashing deep within it. So not quite what he’d expected … but just as messy.