Apocalypse Redux

Chapter 194: Stronger Together

Two shades appeared behind Arthur, one with magic sparking around its hands, the second wielding a large sword. Unfortunately, shades were very weak and slow compared to the originals, of little use against enemies as fast as the ones he was facing, but they were still going to be able to help. And it wasn’t like they were going to go away if he used them like this.

The real boost, on the other hand, was going to come from the borrowed abilities.

[My Round Table: Copy Aura, Isaac Thoma]

And suddenly, a third [Aura] bloomed around him, well beyond what he could control.

As an [Auric Knight], he’d gained the very rare ability to wield two [Auras] at the same time and worked damn hard to be able to make the most out of this ability. Properly controlling a third one, on the other hand, was so beyond his capability that it wasn’t even funny.

But it didn’t need to be controlled, not for this. The room was small enough that a sphere with a radius of twenty-five meters covered everything, no focus required.

10 minutes of localized omniscience should be more than enough, shouldn’t it?

For one moment, confusion continued to reign, then, everything clicked into place.

He’d been about to trigger a second ability, borrowing the [Skill] [Fimbulwinter] that belonged to one Fenrir Olgeirsson. But as it turned out, he didn’t need to.

Fenrir was one of the people who lived on the south pole, having moved there after the advent of the [System] along with several friends and acquaintances, becoming a clan of incredibly powerful ice and frost mages. According to Isaac, they’d become a force to be reckoned with on a global scale shortly, but until then, they were merely very formidable.

And a powerful AOE frost attack should have stopped a pair of speedsters cold, right? But now, it had become utterly superfluous.

Isaac could use his [Inspect] through his [Aura] and that power had been carried along when Arthur had borrowed it.

As it turned out, as fast as these guys were, they could only use it when moving in a straight line. They weren’t just moving faster than his eyes could track, they were moving faster than they could follow.

They’d functionally split their Stat points between Fortitude and Agility, putting only the bare minimum in their other Stats. Their [Skills], meanwhile, were clearly meant to support their fighting style of only standing still long enough to see where they and their respective targets were, then exploding into motion once more.

It was a cool trick, and it still didn’t let him move fast enough to hit them, but now that he knew what the blazes was going on, he could plan around it. If all things went well, he’d finish this before the heavily armored individual reached him.

A zapping sound echoed from deeper in the building as the lighting mage fought, but that wasn’t his problem right now. He needed to deal with these fuckers first.

The next speedster’s attack ended on Excalibur’s blade, blood spraying as it removed an arm. Of course, the severed limb was immediately snatched out of the air to be pressed against the stump so a healing potion could fix it.

The second one attacked in a vain attempt at distracting Arthur, and it failed miserably. He might be too slow to reach his enemy, but he still knew exactly where his foe had kicked off of from, as well as the specific force and angle of the charge.

Perfect targeting information, but he still couldn’t move quickly enough to use it. But he could think with the necessary speed.

The [Aura of the Stalwart Knight] formed a shield, the barrier formed straight in the speedster’s path and angled to bounce them away.

Superspeed might be cool, but seeing someone splat against a shield that they quite literally couldn’t see coming was one hell of a counterargument against specing into it. Especially as the speedster bounced straight against Excalibur’s blade. So high was their Fortitude that even running into the legendary blade, edge-on, at almost the speed of sound, they weren’t bisected cleanly, nearly ripping the sword out of Arthur’s hands.

The first enemy still crashed to the ground in two pieces, still alive and probably regretting how long their Fortitude would keep them that way.

The second hadn’t quite realized that there was no distraction covering their retreat so when Arthur charged, they were a little too slow to react. The head hit the ground before the body did, which left just a little problem. The big guy currently closing the distance at speeds barely able to overtake a snail, but he could tell that lack of speed was due to an overabundance of endurance and sheer power.

Arthur backed up as the giant sword was swung around almost lazily and an arc of white energy flashed off it, forcing him to dive to the ground as the wall behind him was annihilated.

As it turned out, keeping the range open with this bellend was not a good idea.

Then again, he hadn’t seen him use anything but the big, ranged attacks, and given how low this twat’s Agility was, this fight should be just like the one against the speedsters. Except this time, Arthur would be the fast one.

He exploded forward, Excalibur coming down in a shimmering arc, hammering into the side of the juggernaut’s neck. The armor split and the blade bit a couple of centimeters into one of the most vulnerable places on the human body, causing blood to start dribbling out before Arthur had even had a chance to withdraw his weapon.

‘Clang!’

Arthur looked down, dumbfounded, at the sword that was sticking out his gut and still pushing him back until his enemy stood frozen in a picture-perfect lunge, sword extended, and he flew through the hole in the wall behind him and into the wall of the room behind that.

The Raid Suit had fixed itself before Arthur had risen back to his feet and was already applying healing potions to his wounds, but the injury wasn’t his problem right now. The weapon hadn’t penetrated more than a couple of centimeters. Negligible damage even without the potions.

But how on God’s Green Earth had that twat hit him? He could see his opponent’s Agility, and it was low. So how the fuck had he moved just as the speedsters had, and seemingly with real precision, no less?

The giant sword flashed again, forcing Arthur to dodge as another wall was reduced to dust. At least it seemed like there was a minimum range for that attack, otherwise, that first attack would have blasted him to pieces.

Arthur ducked under another swing, the sword moving so slowly that he’d have had to actively try to get hit to take any damage.

Then, he stabbed the juggernaut in the throat … and went flying again. This time, it was a powerful sweeping blow that crashed into his side and slid up into his armpit, then flinging him into the ceiling.

And when he fell back down, the sword was right there once more, batting him into yet another wall like a baseball. Yet this time, the blade was slow as a snail once more.

Thankfully, this time around, it wasn’t very hard to figure out the trick. If he hit his knobhead, the knobhead hit back a million times faster than he should have been able to. A counterattack [Skill], no doubt about it.

Just what were its limitations, though? Would it work against ranged attacks? Would it work against magic?

There were a lot of questions to be asked, but only one of them was truly important, which was if the counterattacks hit harder if he did. And he’d already figured out they didn’t from his first two attacks.

And now, it just came down to a matter of who crumbled first. This guy was too much of a slowpoke to reach Arthur, so every hit he got in would be preceded by a strike from Excalibur.

Arthur charged, only to have to dive to the side as another energy blast hammered into the ground at the juggernaut’s feet. So, no minimum range, just a little trouble contorting to the point the knobhead could aim that close.

Should be easy enough to avoid, given the obvious signs that trick was coming … right?

Arthur launched himself forward once again, the incredibly sharp blade of Excalibur almost striking his opponent's weapon, but he managed to avoid that at the last possible second.

Damaging that monument to overcompensation might actually make it easier to use in tight quarters.

Excalibur struck the man’s armpit, causing another shower of blood to spray out but the retaliatory hit pounded him into the ground with enough force to smash Arthur down into the basement. The massively armored form dropped down after him but by then, he was already back on his feet, Excalibur striking out. However, his enemy’s wounds had also already healed. Fucking regenerators!

But Arthur wasn’t done yet. Slash, eat the counterattack, go flying, get up, charge, rinse and repeat until that motherfucker stayed down.

One more limitation of the retaliation ability, it obviously couldn’t be aimed perfectly as it wasn’t outright “an eye for an eye”.

Excalibur sliced open an eyeball for the third time and once again, Arthur hammered into another wall, spine screaming in pain and chest plate barely able to reform.

“Hey, want some help?”

Arthur grinned a bloody smile as he saw Steff walk up to the hole in the ceiling and look down. The whole party already knew about the counterattack [Skill] and that Arthur would be dealing with the big guy, so the question had clearly been rhetorical. But it was appreciated.

However, Steff was a mess, covered in electrical burns and smelling like that one time Arthur had tried to cook breakfast and burnt the bacon. Clearly, the lightning mage had been a tough customer.

“Eh, I got this!” Arthur called back with half-forced joviality as he charged for what would likely be the final time. The last eye he’d put out was still gone, the owner’s mana pool either completely empty or too drained for anything to be available to fix an eye.

Someone like Steff, someone with a build less focused on endurance, might have been in trouble, but Arthur was tanky enough to trade blows until his opponent broke.

His next attack saw him fly away with the Raid Suit crumbling around him, but his opponent was now hurriedly going for a vial at his belt. A mana potion, according to the borrowed [Aura].

Yeah, not happening.

Arthur charged, driving Excalibur into his opponent’s open mouth while his close-range [Aura] crushed the vial to powder.

Another slow but powerful attack came for his head, but without the mana to use the AOE or counterattack, the other man was a sitting duck.

With every movement, the Raid Suit around Arthur crumbled further, its energy having been exhausted in record time.

With every movement, he discovered a new pain, another wound he’d taken during the exchange, but even tenderized like a steak, he was still in fighting shape.

Blood flew through the air as he charged, ducking under a clumsy slash of the giant blade then rammed Excalibur into his opponent’s gut. He withdrew his weapon and attacked again, creating a cut along the side of his foe’s neck, dodged again, sending more crimson droplets flying from his wounds, and put out the other eye. Even without mana, this fucker was still one hell of a tough motherfucker.

At some point, enough mana had been recovered for another counterattack, and a backhand hammered Arthur into a wall, but that was the end of this.

There were a few drawbacks to being that durable.

Firstly, if you’d lost against someone who couldn’t kill you quickly, you’d suffer for a damn long time until they truly felt they won. After all, they had to know you wouldn’t be able to get right back up.

And secondly, when someone was looking for a person to imprison and interrogate, someone durable was the perfect target as they could be disabled without running the risk of accidentally killing them.

By the time the juggernaut had lost both arms and legs, he would almost certainly have been begging for death if his tongue hadn’t been sliced in half when Arthur had thrust Excalibur into his mouth.

Arthur sagged, rivulets of blood running down his arms and legs, the constant drip-drip-drip of it hitting the ground a constant reminder of how tough his opponent had been.

Steff grabbed the prisoner and carried him upstairs while Arthur dragged himself out of the hole.

“Where the hell were our reinforcements?” Arthur asked, “Did you see anything via the party?”

“Nope.” Steff grimaced “But I haven’t been able to contact anyone outside the building either, I’m guessing someone went after them, too.”

“Did you get the lightning mage and the guy who headed into the cellar?” Arthur asked.

“Lightning mage yes, cellar no,” Steff said grimly.

Arthur swore internally and shut down his [Aura of the Stalwart Knight] to throw his entire focus behind controlling the [Aura] he’d borrowed. He’d never used it before, but he was good enough with [Auras] in general that it was doable.

… holy fuck that was a large cellar. Stuff that hadn’t been on the plans. Thankfully, the underground was mostly empty … except for the fucking summoning circle. Arthur sent along the information to everyone in the party and while Steff tried to head off the ritual’s completion with a few allies, the remaining survivors were retreating with Arthur.

The bloody remnants of the so-called reinforcements met them there, finally reconnecting to the party.

“What happened?” Arthur called.

“Ambush.” The cop spat, blood tinging his spit “If the barrier hadn’t gone up, we might have had to deal with more than one of them, but one of those fuckers teleporting right in the middle of our formation was bad enough.”

“Hold on, what barrier?” Arthur snapped. They’d planned this organization to the point of utter absurdity, and he’d never heard anything about no bloody barrier.

“The Chief Constable put up a teleport barrier the moment enemy reinforcements started popping in so we could trap the vanguard here. That way, we’d have the numerical advantage and could get some prisoners.”

Oh, that bastard. That barrier not only blocked Camelot’s reinforcements but also all of the international allies that had been ready and willing to jump in should things truly go wrong.

Now, it wasn’t like the plan had been truly horrible but it had really fucked up plenty of fail safes. Just knowing the eventual plan was to lock them down with their enemies would have been beyond helpful.

Had Caradec been afraid of a leak? Or did he just not want to share credit when everything went well? Either way, he was in for the bollocking of a lifetime after this.

Simply knowing there was a limit to how many enemy reinforcements could arrive would have let him fight without having to save a ton of [Skills] to eventually fight future enemies.

As it turned out, the thing that had been blocking the party-based communication had been the guy the coppers had fought and clearly killed. So, when Steff and the others who’d gone down into the basement with him had come running back out warning everyone to run, they all heard it.

“Some kind of energy field that’s animating the corpses! We didn’t even reach the circle before we had to run!” Steff called.

Arthur decided to save the swearing in favor of snapping off orders. Caradec had vanished from the communication loop at some point and not spoken for some time, the official second in command wasn’t answering, and neither was the one who was meant to take command next.

There was definitely an official answer to who was in charge now, but they hadn’t stepped up and this was no time to be arguing about leadership.

“Set up a cordon around the convention center, stay in groups of at least five, and keep the anti-teleportation field up, we don’t want more people dropping right on top of us. Someone contact the numbers I’m putting into the party, if cellphones don’t work, use a landline, those are harder to block. Pass along where the edges of the anti-teleport field are, and tell them to get here ASAP. Someone else, contact the Air Force and tell them to get here with bunker-busters, we’re not going to be able to hold both hold the line and get down there to stop the summoning ritual.”

As he spoke, Arthur used the party to define just who he meant when he said “someone”, created properly balanced groups, and figure out what everyone’s status was. He was in some of the roughest shape of those who weren’t outright incapacitated, but very few people were completely fine. This wasn’t good.

He did one final sweep with his borrowed [Aura] before it timed out and blanched. Not only had all of the bodies that had resulted from the fight for the conference center started moving, but apparently, the various bigger-on-the-inside storage spaces near the ritual circle had been chock-full of more corpses. Had these fuckers started setting traps?

Not only that, but the grass around the center was starting to wither. Shit!

The first monstrosity that left the safety of the building was cut down in moments, but the second survived a few seconds longer, and things went downhill from there until thirty seconds in, the first beast had reached a pocket of defenders.

And then, the first giant arrow arced overhead, blasting apart the head of the biggest undead. And the next one. And the one after that. By the time it came to a stop, five monsters were either down or had taken horrific damage, and the next two arrows were already in the air.

At least they had some reinforcements, even if he didn’t yet know who’d come to their aid.