Apocalypse Redux

Chapter 50: Interlude ???

“Hey, wake up!”

The crack of her hand against the young man’s cheek echoed through the cellar like a gunshot.

The young man strapped down to the table suddenly bucked, eyes shooting open as he woke with a start. Mana flared as he tried to activate some kind of [Skill], but her [Final Chains] made short work of that. They were expensive as hell to create and took a while to activate, but once they were on, they stayed on, hence the name.

“What the fuck!”

It was as much a statement as it was a question, anger and outrage bleeding into his voice, making it rather apparent that he’d not yet grasped the gravity of the situation.

“Really, I don’t know why I’m surprised by your lack of common sense after that stupid video.” she scoffed, turning to the side and opening up a surgical set. Not that she was planning on using them or even knew much about how to do so, but that wasn’t the point.

“Help! Hey, anybody, there’s a …”

That was the point. She ignored him for a few minutes, waiting for him to scream himself hoarse, but for some reason, that didn’t happen.

Even as she activated [All Things Lie Bare], she shot him a glare. The [Skill’s] name was incredibly fanciful, but she couldn’t deny that it was powerful. The fact that his Fortitude was incredibly high was the first thing that drew her attention, but she’d already learned that the first time she’d scanned him. Then there was the fact that his body was barely damaged and not really getting any worse despite all the loud shouting. The high Fortitude was letting that idiot keep that up for far longer than it would ever have been possible under normal circumstances. Of course.

Once again, the aura of defeated foes wreathed the helpless looking person on the table, powerful beasts that only a terminally reckless person would ever consider unleashing upon the world.

“You know, we’re in the middle of a city. There’re people all around us, as they always are in a place like this. Maybe not right outside the walls of this house, but still within ten, twenty meters or so, close enough to hear cries for help … makes you think, doesn’t it?”

“Think about what, you crazy bitch!” the man spat, both figuratively and literally, clearly having decided that the surgical set was just for show and that he was once again in a position to start acting all macho … despite being affixed to a table with a downright unnatural set of restraints.

“If people are close enough to hear you scream for help, that means they must be very close indeed. Close enough to, perhaps, be caught by a monster summoned in a basement like this one?”

Of course, her [Death in Solitude] [Skill] meant that there wouldn’t be anyone actually coming, under any circumstances, ever, but that wasn’t the point here.

“Is that wha- …” the outraged yell cut off as she whipped out another knife. This time, it was a basic self-defense knife with a cute little floral pattern on it. It was one of those silly gadgets ‘made for women’ that was 100% identical to the men’s product, except for the incredibly cliché paint job. Still, it did the job and her now-dead husband had gifted it to her, so she’d not only kept it, but she’d also turned it into her [Chosen Implement], a weapon that could never be lost, never kept any traces of the people cut by it and was impossible to identify as the tool used in anything via forensic sciences.

The blade was forcefully dragged over his arm, yet didn’t so much as scrape the skin, even as the strength behind it popped the blood vessels under the skin, bruising instantly. Impossible under normal circumstances, but perfectly doable with a weapon that she had perfect control over.

“What the hell is wrong with you, you damn pervert?”

She just shook her head sadly. This man was truly too stupid for his own good, spitting vitriol at the lady with the knife while utterly helpless. Then again, ‘too stupid for their own good’ was a good way to describe all the people whom she’d gone after.

“Pervert? That’s a new one.” she commented conversationally, looking around as she did so “I suppose that doing this in a basement does somewhat scream ‘sex predator’, but we can hardly do this out in the open, can we?”

Her knife trailed down his chest, not even damaging his shirt in the process, but it got the message across fairly well.

“You … you … you don’t have to do this, you know. I won’t tell.” he promised, nodding empathetically.

“And the allies could have simply chosen to not execute the Nazis found guilty after the Nuremberg trials, but they did, because the convicted were terrible people.” she shrugged.

“But I’m not a terrible person! I have a family, I have a girlfriend! You have my wallet over there, look, there’s a photo of the two of us in there! Please!”

“And now you start begging, as if that changes all the things you’ve done.”

She shook her head. This idiot hadn’t even considered the consequences of his actions, then proven he lacked even the slightest degree of common sense when he’d yelled at her, only to do a complete 180 the instant he realized that he was in actual danger, way too late.

“You’re not just summoning monsters, you’re doing so without precautions and you’re fucking filming it. People watch that, you know. Children! How many people did you nearly kill with the monsters you summoned? How many died because you encouraged them to summon? They warned you!”

She took a deep breath to calm herself, then continued.

“They had a warning out the instant someone realized the [System] let people summon monsters. They had a proper essay out less than two days later. And they had the first paper written in less than a single work week. Everyone who had the slightest bit of common sense knew that what you do is a truly terrible thing to do.”

Her hand blurred, the knife dancing across his chest, neck and head as she triggered [Art of a Beautiful Death], leaving behind fatal wounds that looked like some large monster had dragged a paw with four razor-sharp blades across his face despite how much he’d been trashing. Like all of the others she’d gotten from her evolved [Class], it had an absurdly over the top name, but it was also a damn good one.

At first, she’d gotten mad when the first evolved [Class] the [System] had offered her was [Serial Killer], followed by stronger and stronger versions of the same [Class] as per the things she’d done to get to that point.

But then, she’d realized something. At its base meaning, serial killer simply referred to a person who killed a lot of people. And that was what she was doing, except she was actually targeting these reckless idiots who ended the lives of others through reckless selfishness, not too differently to how a policemen or soldier would.

Sure, calling that serial killing was a little weird, but it was technically the truth. And now, she was serially removing the people working to make the world a worse place. Between the ones who publicly posted their exploits and the slain monsters her upgraded [Inspect] gave her, finding them was easy enough.