Apocalypse Redux

Chapter 49: Home Sweet Home

Isaac’s face sported a wide grin as he headed home, weaving through the forest at speeds that would trigger traffic cams if he’d done so in a city. Moving like this, no holds barred, was exhilarating. Not quite as much as, say, fighting a monster of the right strength, but still fun.

Fat drops of water splattered into his face as the rain poured from the sky and lighting crackled overhead, soaking him to the bone despite his raincoat, but that didn’t matter. Anything that couldn’t get wet was safely stored in a waterproof bag, so there were no issues on that front, and dashing through the woods in this kind of weather was somehow even more fun. And as for that other thing he wanted to do, well, this weather was actually kind of perfect.

Isaac reached his ‘house’ after maybe a quarter of an hour of running, the isolated clearing he’d bought with the money from Vegas came into view. It had been incredibly isolated, making it rather unattractive since it was so hard to get to. But Isaac hadn’t had a car when the [System] had appeared and with what he knew now, he was aware of the fact that he’d never really need one. Even the superhuman physical abilities he had now were enough to make the direct route through the forest faster than going around via the roads as he’d have to with a motor vehicle, after all. Also, the fact that it was so isolated meant he had his privacy.

He cleared the chain link fence he’d had put in with a single jump and then, he was home.

Just like he’d told Amy earlier today, a large chunk of the ground was covered in rock from defeated Golems that had been fused together by Karl. He’d set it up during one of the few breaks from working with the police he’d had to take due to some archaic labor laws that had failed to take into account superhumans with no need for sleep.

Then, with a little help, he’d brought two dismantled shipping containers here from the road five minutes away and set them up here. One was set up as his temporary ‘house’, the second was there mostly for storage purposes.

When he entered his ‘house’, he stripped off his jacket and placed his phone onto the table in the center of the room. A large closet absolutely stuffed with clothing sat against the far wall, with his bed sitting beside it. Ordinarily, this was where one would change out of the wet clothes and try to get dry as quickly as possible, but he’d transcended the point where the common cold posed any kind of threat to him.

He also switched out of his truly soaked jeans, replacing them with a more tightly fitting pair of shorts that would not get in the way. Given how isolated his property was, there was really no reason he couldn’t just run around in his birthday suit, but that just felt weird, so he didn’t.

With those preparations out of the way, he headed over to the other shipping container to grab some supplies. There was the slag he’d gotten from Stagmer when he’d first brought up the idea of getting an Aspect of the Forge Golem, some iron and steel bits, chunks of coal from a garden supply store. He also took some of his emergency long-reaching weapons he’d prepared in case he didn’t have access to the Zweihänder for some reason. They were basically just two meter long metal fence posts transformed into rudimentary blades using the [Blades] [Skill], but they should do the trick for now.

Back outside, Isaac placed the summoning materials into the Tier 4 circle he’d carved into the rock using a chisel and judicious application of [Piercing Strike]. In fact, he’d carved all circles up to that Tier into the ground so he could summon easily without having to repeatedly create new ones. He’d purposefully left out the Tier 5 circle, though. While summoning wasn't illegal, it was frowned upon and Tier 5 was still largely decried as a city killer. Having hard to erase proof of the fact that he summoned those monsters on the regular would have been a capital B bad idea.

As Isaac sat there in the rain, waiting for his mana to recharge so he could actually fight the monster, he thought about how easy it now was to gain resources just by summoning and what pitfalls there were he needed to warn people about. Sure, summoning monsters and killing them for their components was an easy way to get metal and the like, at least on the surface, but sadly, it wasn’t quite that easy.

A lot of the weaker monsters were made from really low quality materials, if they were useful at all. That meant that getting useful things required going after things like The Crusher and that was not going to be easy or painless. Bringing one down required someone like Isaac with a decently high Level and appropriately levelled [Skills]. Creating a person with that skillset required a not insignificant amount of time and effort to be invested, which was, in turn, yet another major source for monsters that could potentially escape and wreak havoc.

What was perfectly possible was to get the really basic building blocks of the world from weak monsters, water, decent quality soil and the like, something that had come into practice in the Third World recently. A certain someone had written up a lot of good advice for that, including a strongly worded warning about how Water Elementals should not be drunk directly because they were made from pure water and that was decidedly bad for humans. Well, only if you drank it, but still something people needed to be aware of.

After posting the little essay on the internet, Isaac had also made donations to several charities and asked them to spread the word. Given the state of the infrastructure in the places that really needed this information, Isaac wasn’t getting any direct feedback, but things seemed to be getting better.

Also, it seemed that things would be as calm as in the other timeline, with very few extraordinarily powerful monsters getting summoned. Given the option of fixing their basic needs using summoning, a lot of people seemed to be content with that.

There were several instances where people had marathon-summoned to topple the local warlord, which often ended up working, but the vast majority of summoners were being surprisingly reasonable and cautious. Not that ousting a despot wasn’t reasonable, it was merely that doing so via summoning required a not insignificant degree of risk taking.

Isaac wished he were in a position to help more there, but he simply didn’t know anything that would be useful. The media had simply not covered those things nearly as thoroughly as it had the messes in the west, leaving him sorely lacking in the information department where the third world was concerned.

He did know about several notable incidents, but they were only the biggest ones, and still fell into the category of ‘if people properly research these monsters, they’ll know better than to summon them’. And really, that was his solution to this situation. Just arrange to summon each of those monsters before they could play a part in those incidents and make sure the world was aware of the dangers.

And then, his mana ticked up to full and Isaac rose in a single smooth motion, fencepost spear in his right hand as the Forge Golem erupted from the summoning circle. Just like everyone had thought, it was a tall, humanoid form made from red hot metal, a white hot circle of material around where the mouth would be on a regular human.

Steam hissed it as the rainwater splattered off the monster, vaporizing instantly, dark splotches instantly forming as the material cooled. It began to march forward, shedding metallic flakes as the hardened outer shell broke off. Now, Isaac could just kept backing off, letting the monster die from the environment alone, but that would be boring as hell and net him precisely jack shit in terms of rewards, so he didn’t.

He did back up a little to get it clear of the summoning circles though, semi-liquid metal splattering across those would be a bitch to clean up.

The golem lashed out with one of its arms, the limb suddenly elongating to twice its original length, taking full advantage of the incredibly soft metal’s malleability. Isaac let it phase through him and charged, severing the arm at the shoulder with his fencepost spear.

A burning sensation spread out from his chest, the mana constantly superheating the golem’s body lightly scorching his insides, but the arm was severed nonetheless as a glowing neon blade empowered by [Piercing-] and [Sundering Strike] even as the overhealing pool from [Bestial Regeneration] vanished along with the injuries.

The blade, meanwhile, unfortunately came apart after the strike, having decidedly not been made to hit solid metal with, or be exposed to those kinds of temperatures.

The golem whirled again, the other arm lashing out even as more material was pulled from the core body to regenerate the missing one. This time, Isaac decided against trying to phase through the attack, a glowing red Old Reliable in the Kriegsmesser form chopping off half of it.

The Forge Elemental then decided to switch tactics, growing more arms that turned into a variety of weapons, from wire-thin whips to flexible arms closer to octopus tentacles with large spiked balls at the end. Isaac flung himself to the side as the heavy weapons hammered into the ground, sending shards of rock flying. The whips came from every direction, trying to trap him, but he jumped skywards and phased through the handful of limbs there while healing the infinitesimal amount of damage they inflicted, then tore off all of the extended limbs with a fully empowered [Manifold Strike].

That … hadn’t been the best idea. The white glowing circle on the monster’s face had been burning steadily despite the torrential rain, but as Isaac hung there in midair, it flared even brighter and spat out a stream of molten metal, easily enough to burn a hole clean through him, a wound he wouldn’t be able to heal with his current mana pool due to the fact that cauterized injuries were crazy expensive to heal.

Also, one of the most vulnerable positions anyone could be in was midair, where dodging was nearly impossible due to a lack of anything to push against. But there were ways to get around that with ease. Flight and other movement [Skills] that didn’t require the user to actually move to initiate them, for example, and it just so happened that Isaac could teleport.

[Phantom Step] engaged, fifty points of mana spiraling off into the void, carrying him well past the monster to grab the second fence post spear he’d left lying on the ground while the swash of fully liquid metal splattered over the ground, sending up clouds of steam and smoke. Now significantly smaller, the ranged attack having wasted a huge amount of mass, the Golem began to run at him, not even bothering to turn. With its physiology, terms like ‘front side’ and ‘back side’ were utterly meaningless. The ‘mouth’ slowly shifted back around to face him, flaring dangerously, the glow blasting through the wall of steam like a searchlight.

Isaac flung himself forward, lashing out with the Kriegsmesser to chop off a leg, sending it crashing to the ground. Instead of getting back onto its feet like a normal humanoid would, it simply grew eight spider legs and scuttled forward, creating a tough outer shell of cool metal while keeping the insides and joints malleable. Much like a Hydra’s Magic Regeneration was linked to the number of heads it had, this thing regenerated the resource needed to keep itself liquid and therefore mobile at a faster rate the larger it was.

The fact that it was smaller also increased its surface to volume ratio, making it lose heat at a significantly greater rate relative to its regeneration than before. In other words, this thing would have been pretty much screwed if it had kept fighting as it had before.

But that kind of solid material was a lot easier to destroy than something mostly liquid. The latter needed to be completely severed in a single hit, utterly disconnected, and if your blade was too slim, the appendage might regenerate behind your weapon as it passed through. The solid material, on the other hand, could barely regenerate.

Also, given that it had cooled down significantly overall, shuffling the core around to deny him an easy shot at it should be considerably harder, if it was still possible at all.

A devastating overhead chop removed two legs on its right side even as four multi-segmented, razor-edged limbs rose from the forge Golem’s back and lashed out at him.

They came down in a deadly staccato of blows, the sound of breaking rock audible even over the pounding of the rain and the hiss of the steam being created as it struck the still quite hot monster.

Another glowing red [Far Strike] bent two of the arms so badly out of shape that they could no longer be used as they had been, forcing the monster to slowly shift it back into shape. Isaac lunged forward and chopped into the beast’s side, evaded the follow-up attack by a hair’s breadth, and fully cut it in half. Only one of the two pieces was still moving, telling him exactly where the core had to be. And then, he caught a glimpse of a white orb that glowed with incandescent light, retreating deeper into the small bit that remained of the Forge Golem’s mighty form. It was already too deep for him to reach with either of Old Reliable’s forms without burning himself down to the bone in the process.

But that was why he’d grabbed the spear in the first place. Covered in a yellow glow, it slid through the soft metal like butter and for the briefest moment, struck something solid, but the resistance vanished a mere moment later and the Forge Golem slumped to the side, forcing Isaac to jump backwards as all of the still liquid metal sloped out of the outer shell and spilled towards him.

Forge Golem (Lv. 12) has been slain. 100 XP gained

Isaac wiped the sweat from his brow as he stared down at the mess he’d made. The summoning circles were still fully intact, but there were chunks missing from his previously pristine rock arena all over the place, not to mention the mess created when liquid or semi-liquid metal had hit the ground, hot enough to slightly liquefy the rock and bond with it as it cooled.

The holes could be quickly filled with the quick setting cement he’d bought a while ago once the weather stopped trying to create a biblical flood but removing the metal would be a pain in the ass.

Still, looking at his Status sheet, he could see that he’d managed to get three [Skills] to the next threshold, including the two he needed for the fight against the Space Elemental.

Piercing Strike (common, Level XX)

Users weapon is covered with energy, increasing its ability to penetrate armor. This effect lasts for a single strike. Should the weapon in question be stuck within an opponent, the effect will last for .5 sec, allowing for removal of weapon or further cutting.

In addition, it may now be used in ways beyond the original description, lingering on weapons after use, refining them, and being able to be combined with other Skills.

After countless battles where this Skill was used to pierce the very core of an enemy and slay them in a single, swift, strike it has evolved into an even deadlier form. It may now stab through space itself, any thrusting attack empowered with it launching a beam of all-piercing energy at quadruple the mana cost. In addition, using this Skill will give the user insight into the location of his opponents’ vital organs.

Cost: 10 mana per strike for regular use, 40 mana per ranged attack

The stronger the [Skill] was, the harder it was to disrupt. Simply applying it meant that weapon was more there, more real, piercing through magical effects like, say, the space-time twisting powers of a Space Elemental. And while ‘stab through space itself’ was almost certainly just a particularly fanciful way to phrase ‘stab at a distance’, it was still an incredibly powerful upgrade. The first threshold might upgrade a given [Skill] with a new power, but the second one actually gave an upgrade based on how you had used a [Skill], creating a powerful new effect.

The other two [Skills] might have only hit Level X, but that was still a nice upgrade.

Phantom Step (epic, Level X)

A single step is the beginning of a journey of a thousand miles. And if this Skill’s Level is high enough, then a single step can be a journey of a thousand miles.

You are a phantom in the dark, an unseen shadow that streaks past in the night.

With this Skill, the user can make a single step take them far greater distances than it would normally ever be able to. As a stealth Skill, it is vastly more efficient when used unobserved.

This Skill may now also be used simultaneously with either [Spectral Shift] or [Stealth].

Cost: 15 mana to initiate, 2 mana per three meters of unobserved travel, 4 mana per meter of observed travel, with a maximum range of 10 m +2 m per Skill Level

[Phantom Step] had gotten a little cheaper, which was always nice to have, but the real win was the ability to use his invisibility or walk through wall [Skills] in conjunction with the teleport, letting him jump directly through walls or rapidly move using the teleport [Skill] while staying invisible.

Gaze of the Hunter (epic, Level X)

There are many possible upgrades to the basic Inspect Skill. Some allow for improved examination of details, others are far better at piercing information protection Skills.

This one is different. It loses any ability to gaze past defenses for raw details unless the defenses are very weak, but gains an incredible power at getting rough information on the user’s foes.

Barring an incredible Level disparity, the user will be able to sense whether someone’s Stats are higher, lower or comparable to the User’s, how many Aspects they have and what their overall affinities are.

But by using the information gained via this Skill, an Undying Wraith will be able to deduce anything Inspect could grant, and more.

In addition, this [Skill] allows the user to see mana and sense the purpose of Skills being used in front of him.

And then there was this gem. [Hunter’s Gaze] let him see anything an opponent, be they monster or human, tried to use before the actual effect occurred, giving him an incredibly valuable split second warning for almost all [Skills] while the ability to see mana was all-round incredibly useful. The combination of those two effects would also make navigating the spatial anomalies wielded by the Space Elemental a hell of a lot easier.

But first, he’d try and finish getting that Aspect before the rain let up.