Apocalypse Redux

Chapter 44: Proposal for a safer Future

The Rock Golem crumpled with Isaac standing on its chest, riding it all the way to the floor, core neatly impaled on his sword. As it fell, he made the kill notification visible to all.

“Basically, that’s how I’d suggest we level your officers.” Isaac announced, withdrawing his Zweihänder and resting it against the wall of the arena, then leaving it with a single leap.

“That’s the idea I’m proposing. For us to work together to find an enemy that can be easily taken down with a given officer’s skillset so they can farm it until they hit the XP cap for that particular creature. One of the problems with this kind of levelling style is that while you get a lot of XP, your [Skills] don’t grow nearly as quickly.

“In the beginning, the greatest gain in strength stem from Stat increases and [Skill] gains. Increasing any Stat by ten points the first time is literally life-changing. The ability to see in the dark, become as strong as any strongman, keep going on four hours of sleep, and so on, and so forth, you get the idea. In addition, you can use the [Skill] points to acquire the [Skills] needed to properly fight monsters even if their nature makes them hard to touch by ordinary means. Later on, however, at Level five and beyond, [Skill] Levels will become more and more impactful, especially given the bonus gained once you get a [Skill] to Level 10. But that can be deferred until a good basis with increased Stats and all the necessary [Skills] have been gained. However, it should be noted that having high Level [Skills] is necessary for [Class] Evolution, as it has been proven to increase the power of the [Classes] that can be gained.

“In essence, the core idea of my proposal is this: people work in the office space attached to this warehouse for a day or two, drop by down here to charge the circles whenever they have the mana and someone else kills the appearing monsters while they go back to work. That way, they can gain those first few Levels with a minimum amount of time being taken away from their work. Once they’re at a point where they can take on most Tier 3 monsters, they’ll be able to deal with most monsters that appear in the city and need dealing with. Or they can take over killing the summoned monsters. At that point, the XP can be concentrated in the people who’ve shown aptitude for [System] combat, slowly levelling up the entire force while making sure there are people available to handle threats at the upper end of the powerscale. The SEK might be a good choice for that.”

Isaac finished his little speech and looked over at the group of middle aged and elderly men and woman watching from the balcony in front of the foreman’s office. Polizeirätin Eisenberg, her superior, Leitender Polizeidirektor Kaiser, the mayor and a bunch of other officials who had less immediately impressive job titles but were nonetheless in the possession of significant authority, Eisenberg convinced them all to hear out the fully fleshed-out proposal Isaac had given her the evening after the Los Angeles disaster.

It was by no means the only one available, but it was one of the most fleshed out ones and Isaac had heavily drawn on Bailey’s star power when he’d handed it over.

‘Proposal from the staff of the guy whose papers had rocked the world multiple times’ simply sounded damn impressive and they’d needed a proposal, badly.

Politics, the internet, everything had exploded into a mess of arguments with some people holding fast on the position of summoning being awful, anything and everything it touched basically being radioactive, truly terrible creations that corrupted the very soul of anyone who used them, metaphorically speaking.

Or there were people who argued that summoning was wonderful and pointed out that it was summoners who’d saved the city. That the only reason there had been any kind of issues was that someone had made a mistake, which had almost certainly only happened because the summoner had felt pressured to stay hidden.

That dichotomy was nowhere more apparent than in the treatment of Rebecca Hess, a teenage [Umbramancer] who’d fought the Elemental and died in the process.

Chief Allen of the LAPD had held a big speech in front of a couple of reporters a few hours after the Elemental had been killed, thanking her personally and commending her courage and sacrifice, then promising that if there was ever anything he or anyone he knew could do for her family, they’d do it.

Subsequently, she was either being hailed as a shining example of how anyone could be a hero, of what even a teenager could achieve, or being condemned as the single most irresponsible human in the history of the world.

The whole situation was a mess and would likely continue to be for some time, but at the very least, it looked like there would be a small scale summoning program launched in the city.

As for the survivors of the actual battle, Isaac had to wonder, had they been acknowledged as having achieved a [Heroic Deed]? Or some other variant on [Legendary Deed]?

Basically, pulling off a truly legendary deed would be accompanied by an acknowledgement by the [System] and would almost certainly giving the recipient a chance at a legendary [Class]. At the very least, they’d get an epic one. The [Class] itself would be powerful, but flavored based on the exact deed achieved.

Isaac suspected there’d be quite a few new powerhouses popping up in LA in the near future.

Of course, he himself would never try for one because having something actually acknowledged required that thing to be a truly insane challenge, the kind not even he felt comfortable tackling. The less impressive and not officially acknowledged deeds that could still net him a [Class] that strong if he collected enough of them would suffice.

At least someone had had the good sense to tell everyone to not immediately shout that acknowledgement from the rooftops, otherwise, there’s have been a horde of copycats summoning Tier 5s in minutes.

“I’m guessing that you’re volunteering for the job of initially being the one to kill monsters, Mr. Thoma?” Kaiser asked “How would that work, when would you have time, how long could you do that for?”

“I’ve got basically no need for sleep at this point and can take down most Tier 4 monsters as easily as the Golem. I’ve got a meeting at the university in a couple of hours, then I’ll be free to work on this till Sunday, levelling anyone who happens to be working at the time.” Isaac told him “That should be enough to give you a decent cadre of levelled officers to work with without taking them out of circulation for other tasks while also working to figure out what combination of [Skills], gear and summons work best.”

“We’ll have to discuss that, please await our call, but I don’t anticipate any problems. Good luck in your meeting.” Kaiser dismissed him and turned to lead everyone else into a meeting room.