Apocalypse Redux

Chapter 89: A new kind of monster

Come Monday morning, Isaac once again found himself on a military base. Just like last time, breaking into a new Tier of summoned monster required a hell of a lot more than just the normal precautions, the kind that came out of the barrel of a Panzerhaubitze and could level a house or tear a main battle tank to shreds with a single shot.

Paradoxically, unlike for Tier 5, they didn’t go to the single largest military base in the country for Tier 6, but there was a very good reason for that. Trust. They’d proven time and time again that they knew what they were doing and could properly predict the level of threat a monster posed. So instead of a full, all hands on deck, everything and the kitchen sink approach that saw the military throw everything they could into position in preparation of facing a godsdamned Kaiju, they saw a measured response.

Mobile Panzerhaubitzen were stationed in a ring around the summoning area, with a dozen or so Mars II long range rocket launchers placed almost 50 kilometers away, well clear of anything a Tier 6 monster should be able to reach. It something went wrong, all there’d be left of the monster was a smoking crater. This little trick wouldn’t work on monsters Tier 7 and above, but it would still be doable here. Besides, by the time those things showed up, there’d be enhanced artillery available.

Isaac had levelled once more during the weekend and thrown all of the Stat points into Magic Regeneration. Sure, his Strength and Fortitude were falling badly behind, but that was fine. His phasing and regeneration could compensate for a lack of the latter and he didn’t need the former because, well, his fighting style didn’t require it. He used a bunch of cheap, practically free [Skills] to augment his strikes rather than relying on brute force. It gave him flexibility and the power to pour so many more points into Agility and Perception, his main Stats.

Getting onto the base had been a pain, though. He’d been tagged as being at a high Level and therefore a very dangerous threat and been treated as such. Sure, the gate guards had been warned that the team would be coming and that they were damn powerful, but they were still wary and had triple-checked his identity before letting him in.

But now, finally, everything was ready, the circle was prepared, the team had gotten into position, and the military could turn the entire area into a crater at a moment’s notice.

“Ready?” Bailey asked, looking each of them in the eye in turn “If you don’t feel ready, we can still turn back, don’t feel like you have to risk your lives.”

“Ever the caring the boss, eh Professor?” Amy chuckled, quite deliberately using his title instead of his first name “We’re ready.”

“Alright, summoning.” Bailey announced and triggered the circle, the piles of various rocks, dirt and metal vanishing only for a gigantic golem to rise in their place, ten meters tall, with a skeleton of titanium, sheathed in layers of rock and dirt to withstand various kinds of attacks. A Lesser Rock Titan.

An oppressive [Aura] that felt like a mountain pressing down smashed into them, or rather, it tried to.

Raul, Karl and Amy stood in the front, using Amy’s [Aura’s] combination ability to meld their [Auras] into a massive wall of power.

Patrick and Isaac stood on opposite sides of the trio, their sensory [Auras] sweeping over the rock monster, dragging out its secrets no matter how hard it tried to resist.

Behind all of them stood the healer, Bailey. He’d not been happy about having to use his students as ‘shields’, but recognized the logic of ‘so long as the healer is still alive, everyone else can be saved’. For this fight, he’d stuck with his preferred rubber-man form, which provided a decent level of protection against many types of attack, but was especially resistant to blunt impacts.

“So, monsters gain an [Aura] at Level 25, just like people.” Isaac observed “Physical Stats in the low two-hundreds, Perception around fifty, both magical Stats around eighty or ninety, higher than expected. It might have that magic just to support the [Aura], but it might also have some active abilities.”

“I’ll intercept anything earth- or rock-based.” Karl said.

“It’s powered by a magical network similar to the human circulatory system, with a core near the deepest part of the body, but not in the dead center. There are also several redundancies built in, destroying the core will kill it, but not immediately.” Patrick added.

“Anything that might pose a problem?” Bailey asked even as the Titan began to charge.

“Nothing we can see yet.” Patrick said.

“Alright, we’re going with Plan A but call out any deviations.” Bailey ordered.

They’d made several predictions for how the monster could end up looking and then created plans for how to beat each possible iteration, but this thing really wasn’t that complicated. It was a big, tough brute with weak geokinetic attacks and an auric battering ram that could push aside foreign [Auras] or be turned into a shield.

The opening step for Plan a was a magical barrage to check for potential anti-magic protections, which it sort of had in the form of its [Aura].

The oppressive feeling vanished as the Titan yanked the energy field back and focused it tightly on the area that a dozen different spells were flying through, weakening them all somewhat, but only snuffing out the weakest, one’s included just to see if they could be snuffed out.

Some splattered harmlessly against the outer layer of dirt, the most effective being a [Fireball] that blew away a lot of loose material, but no real damage was done. That dirt had been there as an ablative layer or armor, not meant to endure any significant punishment.

Amy flung out a sheet of liquid nitrogen, condensed with her [Aura], onto its right leg, freezing it solid. A telekinetic blast from Patrick then snapped it off, causing the monster to pitch right forward, right into a patch of dirt Karl had loosened up to the point where it was practically quicksand.

The Titan tried to counter with its geokinetic powers, keyword being tried.

First, Amy’s [Aura] turned the quicksand back into a single, solid, block of material, then Karl had hardened it to an absurd degree. It could still try to struggle out, cracking its earthen straightjacket, but it nonetheless failed to get out.

At that point, it had already lost, but no one would relax until it was dead.

As per the plan, Isaac moved to the front while cramming every penetration-based [Skill] into his blade in case the monster got free while Patrick and Amy rose into the air and began to bombard it with anti-armor Spells.

It was interesting to watch how they cast.

Amy wove the magic like a conductor directing an orchestra to create wonders, a combination of [Class] [Skills] and his [Aura] creating a devastatingly powerful, armor-shattering bolt of plasma able to outright ignore armor, which ended up tearing a gigantic hole into the monster’s back.

Patrick, meanwhile, had a far more cold and analytical approach to things, casting several Spells in quick succession, nestling them inside each other, still separate but as interwoven as they could be without an [Aura] like Amy’s, creating the magical equivalent of an armor-piercing bullet. Needless to say, when it hit the hole Amy had made, it tore almost all the way through the monster even as she followed up with the next blast. It turned out to be the last one that was needed.

“So, it’s very tough, has geokinetic powers that aren’t very powerful and only used as a matter of last resort, a defensive [Aura], and no clearly visible signs of intelligence.” Bailey summed up “Ludicrously high Stats, though, and we’ll need to seriously upgrade our summoning rooms to handle those things.”

“Yep.” Isaac said “I believe that the individual fights should be feasible?”

“Of course.” Bailey said. They’d agreed to all fight together for the first one to reduce the risk to the maximum amount possible, but if the monster turned out to be weak enough for one or more of them to fight on their own, they could choose to do so.

“Can I go first?” Isaac asked, getting a nod in reply “Alright, so I got a new cooldown [Skill], which I’d like to show you. It’s a pretty solid counter to extraordinarily tough monsters.”

Two minutes later, he was facing a monster they’d faced as a group of six the first time all on his lonesome. Shit odds, for his foe, that was.

Isaac charged, hopped over a spray of stone shards it sent its way using magic, made himself weightless to turn that jump into a leaping attack, kicked off a rocky arm that was swung at him, and then, when he was right over it, flung himself downwards with [Wave Charge] and belly-flopped clean through it, ending up buried almost a hundred meters underground.

For a single, incredibly juvenile, moment he considered taking a few seconds to emerge just to screw with the military officials, but common sense prevailed. He phased and used [Poltergeist Shift’s] selective tangibility to treat anything he was standing on as solid ground and began to jump up upwards, emerging from the ground before the monster’s two halves had even had time to topple over.

“Like I said, anti-tough monster [Skill].” he shrugged “Also, I think geokinesis might be used even if it isn’t an emergency.”

“Yep, let’s do another one, who wants it?” Bailey asked, looking around. Now that the monster’s abilities had been appraised and found to not be overwhelmingly powerful, a lot of the tension had drained away, leaving behind just infectious enthusiasm and a burning need for discovery.

What happened next must have looked extraordinarily odd to the military personnel watching. Everyone but the person fighting backed up a hundred meters, close enough to intervene if necessary but far enough away to not get accidentally targeted by the monster or caught in AOE attacks. And then, they pulled out lawn or camping chairs and laptops from thin air and began to type up their reports on the monster, be that its anatomy, powers, or the myriad uses for its parts, seemingly oblivious to the magical storm raging a short distance away.

That was how the rest of the day went. Monsters rose, fought them all together, died, fought them mano-a-mano, died, and then the team moved on to the next type.

There was the occasional injury, here and there, caused by a flying piece of monster or someone getting too close to a monster that created some kind of environmental hazard, such as heat being generated by a monster that was on fire. But nothing so much as slowed their efforts and any damage vanished within literal seconds of being inflicted.

Isaac ended up levelling once again, split the Stat points between Fortitude and Perception, and bought himself another [Skill].

Compounded Impact (legendary)

When striking at the same place, over and over again, each blow will cut deeper than the last.

With this Skill, a bond will be created between the user’s blade and an opponent, every additional strike hitting harder and harder, drawing an ever increasing amount of mana until even a casual tap contains the force to shred mountains. (Combo resets after 3 seconds of no successful hits)

Cost: 1 mana, doubles every use, resets after 3 seconds

It was a wonderful [Skill] that could use as much or as little mana as he wanted, and would grow massively stronger as his mana pool increased. Between it and [I Am The Sword], his anti-boss abilities had grown massively stronger.

[Sweeping Strike] had also finally hit Level ten.

Sweeping Strike (uncommon)

Upon the users next attack, 5 blades of 3+.3n meters in length, where n equals skill level, will extend from the blade, allowing the user to strike at a large area. Spread of blades must be specified by user, maximum spread is 45°. Length of blades may be reduced to reduce mana cost.

The user may also now choose how the blades are spread, it is not necessary for them to be evenly spaced.

Cost: 30 mana + 5 mana/meter

By the time the sun fell behind the trees, they’d thoroughly looked over the Lesser Rock Titan, Lava Warrior, Lesser Cleaving Tempest, Lesser Nature Titan and Animated Tidal Wave, leaving what had once been a pristine grassy field a mess of mud, scorch marks and craters.

The materials were shipped off to the various organizations they’d agreed to supply ahead of time, such as the Crafter’s Association that Isaac had created, the university’s various faculties and the Bundeswehr’s R&D division.

As it got dark, they turned in for the night, though not to sleep, as they didn’t really need to, not anymore. But the soldiers did, and trying to hit a monster in the dark would have been a hell of a lot harder than during the day.

In the end, it wasn’t a big problem, though, they’d gotten oh so much information that needed to be written down and analyzed. Besides, tomorrow was likely going to be a hell of a lot more hectic than today had been, a little rest would be good for them.