Apocalypse Redux

Chapter 199: Talking

Two men sat in in a temporary office, set in a shipping container. At least that was how things appeared at a casual glance.

Looking closer, however, revealed that there were several odd things present.

For one, they were both rather young.

One was perhaps in his twenties, wearing business casual attire with a fancy-looking sword leaning against the wall behind him.

The other was very clearly trying to look older, despite being maybe nineteen on the outside.

The younger of the pair was also wearing all-black, very much not suitable for Texas weather. Sure, it was currently mid-October, so it wasn’t nearly as bad as it would have been in, say, the middle of summer, but that choice of outfit was still terminally stupid.

Unless your primary Stat was Fortitude or you were above the first Evolution, you still had to obey the pre-[System] rules of appropriate attire.

The kid in front of Isaac was very much not at that point yet, having barely had the [System] for a month.

Cameron Smith was a bit of an odd duck in most contexts.

For outfits tended to be bad enough that describing them as “edgelord chic” was an insult to edgelords.

He was also wearing over thirty knives all over his body, hidden in well-concealed pockets, behind his belt, up his sleeves, in his shoes, and so on, and so forth.

A few hidden weapons were all well and good, and Isaac would have several himself if he weren’t able to summon his soulbound weapon at the drop of a hat.

While giving an interview in the other timeline, 2028-ish, Cameron had said that when he was younger, he’d always wanted to recreate that one scene in movies where someone had to give up their weapons and created a literal pile of stuff.

In other words, he would grow up. Eventually. Except if Isaac waited until then to do this, he might not grow to his full potential by the time the conflict for the fate of the world came to a head. And Isaac sincerely doubted he could afford to lay his preparations.

As such, he’d used his company to create a scholarship for promising people. The vast majority of recipients were selected by various employees of his, then approved by him, but every so often, he’d skim the list of applicants and hand-select a few.

And not all of them were people he recognized from the other timeline either. He had a decade’s worth of experience in judging people’s potential from his life in the other timeline and several more decades’ worth of experience in training people from the ground up from [Hildebrand’s Heir].

Isaac’s ability to judge people just from their files was still not perfect, but it was pretty damn good. But that was what face-to-face meetings were for, though most of them were still done via videoconference.

Which left him with the current situation. Just as expected, Cameron had signed up for the “scholarship”, which was all about nurturing young talents, which should keep him on track to gain his legendary [Chimera] [Class].

There were very few legendary [Classes] that could be gained in a way that could be considered “formulaic”.

In fact, as far as Isaac knew, there were only two.

The first was the [Reaper] line of [Classes], starting at the third Evolution. You could get it by killing a [Raid Boss] that you could at most have twenty Levels on, which was an incredibly tricky proposition. Even if your entire build was a hard counter to a monster, these were [Raid Bosses]. They were kind of tough.

If you could get it, though, you’d be in a prime position to slaughter more [Raid Bosses] with relative ease.

The second was the [Chimera] line, which could be unlocked at the first Evolution. Getting it was a massive slog, even though the calculation for getting it was stupidly simple. Slot enough Aspects that the last slot cost fifty times as much as the final Level to your Evolution did. And you had to harvest all those Aspects yourself, without help beyond having someone summon monsters for you to kill.

That was eight Aspects before the first Evolution. The first Slot was free, the second cost 1,000 XP and the cost doubled with every new one, for a whopping 64,000 XP for the final one and a grand total of 127,000 XP just to buy slots. The 8,000 it would cost to actually slot the Aspects were almost trivial in comparison if you wanted to stick to single-stack Aspects.

Except you’d run short of XP sources pretty quickly and have to fight Tier 4 or even Tier 5 monsters with just starter [Class] [Skills], and those were usually pretty bad. After all, getting a good starter [Class] was a million times harder than getting a good Evolution. You’d also have only a hundred extra Stat points to spread once you hit Level ten, which was very little to up against those monsters with.

Between all your Aspects, once you had all of them slotted, you’d get a total of 40 Stats from eight single-stacked slots, and 120 if you double-stacked each slot.

You might have the Stats of someone close to their second Evolution near the end, and several Aspect [Skills], but that didn’t replace the true power of having evolved your [Class] before fighting monsters of Tiers 4 and 5.

With Isaac’s knowledge and [Skill] advantage, gaining that [Class] would have been perfectly possible.

However, there was the issue of how long that would have taken. Staying at a low Level would have left him with a relatively small mana pool, which would have massively slowed down how quickly he could gain XP, not to mention that he needed to get an absolute metric fuckton of XP until he could gain the Evolution.

He simply wouldn’t have had the Level to help chase down the serial killer, help at Seoul, and potentially he even wouldn’t have been in a position to fight in Hamburg.

But as hard as the [Chimera] line of [Classes] was to get, it was also stupidly strong. It increased the Aspect drop chances, halved the speed at which the slot cost increased and let you do oh so many things with one’s Aspects. [Form of Horror] with barely a cooldown, [Tools of Terror] with no limit as to how many body parts you could copy and at basically no cost, and near-Bailey level shapeshifting, albeit limited to the monster’s whose Aspects one had slotted.

And once you hit the Level cap, the [Chimera] had the best possible progression with its cheaper Aspect slots.

If you had the time to get it, the determination to go through with it, and the combat [Skill] to slaughter all those monsters, it was a damn good choice of [Class].

And Cameron had done it, gaining a measure of power that Isaac desperately needed at his side in the final battle.

If there was a final battle. It would be nice if everything could be fixed through social engineering, but there was a damn good chance that the cult would lash out the moment their divinely imposed waiting period was up.

Now if only he could get through this meeting without strangling the surly teen …

“So, where do you see yourself in ten years, Mr. Smith?” Isaac asked.

“On the field of battle,” Cameron told him, his [Sneak] Evolution making the shadows around him darken and loom threateningly. Of course, the [Rogue] had already evolved the sneaking [Skill], and what other Evolution could it get other than one to improve its holder’s “scary looming” potential?

“A combat role, then? I can see on your paperwork that you’re a [Rogue], and you intend to, and I quote, ‘take the power of my enemies and add it to my own’. That means getting a ton of Aspects?” Isaac asked next.

“There’s nothing better than using my enemy’s own power to take them down,” Cameron announced darkly.

Isaac was barely able to stop himself from facepalming. This meeting never should have happened based on Cameron’s application, and every answer he’d given should have ended it right then and there. But Isaac knew that eventually, the young man before him would grow out of it. Eventually. If no one murdered him before then. Isaac groaned internally. He couldn’t even bash his head against his desk in frustration.

“Hypothetically, how far would you be willing to take your effort at gaining Aspects? Would you be willing to keep slotting Aspects until you gain a legendary [Class]?”

“It will be a bloody path, but I will walk it.”

He’s going to be useful, he’s going to be useful, he’s going to be useful. You’re just going to give him somewhere to summon and some people to take care of things if he screws up. That’s all. You’re never even going to have to see him again …

Isaac kept working to convince himself of the fact that this would go well.

In theory, he could get some random Joe Schmoe to keep fighting until he unlocked [Chimera]. Except, you know, a rando might also use the power in ways Isaac didn’t like, or even potentially work against him.

Cameron’s picture might be in the dictionary next to the “Edgelord” entry, but he was a good egg, deep down. Very deep down. Under enough edge to shred just about anything, a grumpy attitude that put a wet cat’s hatred of the world to shame, and a cloak of darkness befitting a Saturday morning cartoon villain.

Maybe Isaac had focused on this guy because he was someone he hadn’t been able to properly help from the start?

Hopefully, the rest of the meeting would go better.

“Have you summoned before?” Isaac asked.

“No, however, I have succeeded in taking down my neighbor’s rogue summon,” Cameron said.

“When was this?” Isaac asked.

“Months ago.”

Isaac frowned “Did you even have your [Class] then?”

Cameron shook his head “I used my father’s hunting rifle.”

Isaac almost facepalmed, this time, he was annoyed with himself. Texas was in a bit of a weird spot when it came to summoning. There were a ton of incidents, but they tended to get resolved by a neighbor with a shotgun or an Aspect with offensive capabilities more often than by the authorities.

The spike in sales numbers for guns and ammo had alarmed quite a few people, but at this point, it no longer mattered.

The whole issue of gun control was a purely academic debate now. The [System] made the issue of gun ownership and the Second Amendment pretty much a moot point. Who cared about firearms when anyone could gain powers that were nearly as deadly, if not more so, and said powers were literally impossible to confiscate?

“What have you been doing with the [System] so far?”

By the time Cameron had finished explaining, Isaac’s mental bingo card of “what will and edgelord do with superpowers do” was completely full.

The teen had stalked his school’s drug dealers, which was how [Sneak] was already so damn high. He’d gone snooping in old graveyards and mausoleums, even a deep well that had been rumored to be a serial killer’s dumping ground. And oh so many other things.

But even though you’d expect the exact opposite out of someone like him, Cameron hadn’t summoned any monsters save the most basic ones. The safe ones, which you could always escape, and who were so slow that they wouldn’t become a problem even if the cops took an hour or more to get there. And true to his earlier words, he’d already started slotting Aspects.

Yet there was something weird about all this. Cameron was being too cliché, too over to the top, too … everything.

It might have even worked if Isaac had been some kind of bloodthirsty fighting mania- … oh. Oh fuck.

“Who am I?” Isaac asked.

“You’re one of the strongest people in the world, and eventually, you’re going to be in charge of the place. Basically, you’re the MC of this story.” Cameron said with a straight face.

So close. So fucking close. Isaac managed to stop himself before his palm slammed into his forehead, but his hand had already started the journey toward his forehead before then.

Cameron noticed “Something wrong?”

Isaac sighed “You just caught me off guard. Walk with me for a minute, would you?”

He got up and walked towards where the summoning area was being built.

“Why would someone want to ‘be in charge of the place’? You were talking about the world, weren’t you? Running the world is a ton of thankless work.” Isaac asked.

“Because … because that way, no one can do anything stupid!”

“That’s a child’s answer.” Isaac pointed out “A singular ruler can correct what they see, and they can see very little.”

“Then why …” Cameron trailed off, evidently unsure of what to say.

“Why do I do what I do? Because I want to make sure the world doesn’t end.” Isaac said “Individual strength still doesn’t matter all that much on the large scale of things. You might be able to punch one person’s head clean off their shoulders, but you can’t do that to a nation. If an individual is, well, villainous enough, people will deal with them, as long as at least some of the ‘good guys’ are strong enough. That’s what I’m trying to do. Find people who will do the right things when the chips are down.

“The real question is: what would you do if some supervillain showed up tomorrow?”

“I would fight until the …” Cameron paused for a moment, thinking “I’d help.”

Isaac grinned “Good.”

It seemed like that little speech had convinced Cameron to stop hamming it up so much. Sure, he was still very much a teen in his edgy phase, frustrating as hell to deal with, but things would be fine. Hopefully.

But even if this Cameron didn’t turn into the man he’d been in the other timeline, he almost certainly wouldn’t turn into a problem.

They kept talking for a bit, Isaac showed the kid a couple of tricks and watched him take apart a Slate Golem with an interesting mix of skill and showboating, but eventually, the meeting came to an end.

And after dealing with several administrative issues, it was finally time to go to the talk show.

***

“Thank you for tuning into our show, welcome to Nonsense Patrol!” the host announced “We have some very interesting guests with us tonight for our six-month anniversary.

“These people are real superstars in their respective fields. Up first is Professor Harrison Lamb from Harvard University. I believe you all know him since he’s been on here a few times, and it’s always been great.

“Then, we have Special Agent in Charge Elliot Allen of the FBI, the man who managed to bring the catastrophe in LA to a swift end, saving most of the city in the process. Agent Allen, I believe you’ve worked together with our final guest during that process but never met?

“And here he is, Germany’s own Dr. Isaac Thoma!”

The [Skill] cloaking each of the guests dropped as the host, Oliver Johnson, introduced them.

“Actually, we met once in Singapore.” Allen corrected.

“Well, I’m happy that this finally worked out, Oliver,” Isaac added.

“This is your first time on a talk show, isn’t it?” Harrison asked. He looked like a pretty stereotypical professor at a glance, complete with an academic’s standard suit.

But it wasn’t what it appeared to be. Every single thing on his person save his phone and wristwatch was a plant, grown by the professor’s magic and shaped into an incredible combination of armor and weaponry. Reactive armor plates that could be activated at the drop of a hat and would send devastatingly sharp slivers of wood into anyone who tried to attack him, the innermost layer was essentially powered armor that strengthened his every movement and so on.

He was even more heavily defended than everyone else here, including Isaac. That would have been weird under most circumstances, but he’d been in LA when shit had gone down. The caution was understandable.

“Yeah, it hasn’t really worked out so far.” Isaac said “Something always went wrong. I was busy, the show was outside of my wheelhouse, etc.”

… and he hadn’t really liked any of the other shows who’d contacted him. Or just plan had better things to do. This one was a good one, though. It was all about busting myths about the [System] and humorously exposing scams.

“We’re certainly happy that you’re here as well.” Oliver announced “And we’ve prepared quite a few things that I think you’ll find interesting. For example, here’s ‘the world’s first spatial storage device that you can put inside another spatial storage device’.”

Both Isaac and Harrison blanched.

“I sincerely hope you tested that somewhere well clear of people,” Isaac said cautiously said. Some personal spatial storage device prototypes had been completed back at his university, but those were prototypes with tiny amounts of space. And sticking a pocket dimension into another pocket dimension …

“We tested its storage capacity and it’s tiny.” Oliver said, “We haven’t actually tested what happens if we try to combine storage devices.”

“Good,” Harrison said.

“What happens if you combine things?” Allen chimed in.

“The engineers have a field day seeing how fancy of an explosion they can create,” Isaac said dryly and Harrison laughed.

“Basically, when storage devices overlap, everything that isn’t ludicrously magically reinforced is destroyed on the molecular and released into the air as the devices disintegrate. There’s often a lot of air accidentally stored in devices so when that happens, a dust explosion is likely.” The Professor explained.

“That sounds like … a lot.” Oliver said “We do have a secure room for testing. If either of you would like to demonstrate …”

He caught Allen’s dark look and added: “We won’t show how it’s done, don’t worry.”

Isaac chuckled internally. The recipe was stupidly simple. Literally, any kind of material unless it was stupidly fire-resistant, a little water, and some alkaline metal such as potassium. Everything would intermix when the storage devices broke, the potassium would almost certainly hit the water somewhere in the cloud, explode, and set off a bog-standard dust explosion. It had taken Karl and the other loons about two seconds to come up with that combo. It was also a nasty trap one could set. Just sneak an appropriately prepared storage device into something you expected someone to place inside their dimensional storage, be it a device or the [System]-version, and boom.

Scale that up with stuff like Thermite Avatar powder or Alchemical concoctions …

Isaac passed a list of stuff he needed to a crew member and promised to set it up during the commercial break while Harrison regaled them with a tale of how the first “created” monster had turned out stupidly cute. Well, that had been the intention, but it was still a funny story.

The professor was a [Botanist] both in [Class] and vocation and had taken a standard slime mold, made it bigger, stronger, added the capacity for rudimentray though, given it great big googly eyes, and made it have the consistency of silicon putty.

Of course, it was also considered a nasty biohazard, so he’d kept it in a secure room and incinerated it within an hour of creating it. But damn it had looked adorable.

“Aw, so cute. When you create safe ones, where can I buy one?” Oliver exclaimed.

“We probably won’t be selling them personally, but they’ll likely be available at some specialty pet stores,” Harrison said.

They spent a few more minutes cracking jokes about the slimes and some other cute pets.

“Doctor, Professor, now I have a question specifically for you: what are some things that sound like we should be debunking them here, but are actually true?”

“Oh, I got a good one.” Isaac announced “Catgirls, and cat beastkin in general might look cute and all, but in reality, they are incredibly lethal. Cats are natural-born killers, you know, and the human version is just as dangerous. The lethal instincts of some of the world’s most dangerous predators, inch-long extendible claws, and a bite that will go through anything short of plate armor.

“In terms of sheer lethality, only the really powerful races a human can evolve into can compare to them. Dragonkin, Kitsune, people with the traits of exceedingly toxic serpents …”

“Really?” Allen deadpanned as Harrison nearly died laughing in the background.

“Really.” Isaac nodded “Have you ever studied how big cats kill? One swift bite to drive teeth through the back of the skull and into the brain, crushing the larynx between powerful jaws, or a bite to the back of the neck to sever the spine, depending on the cat in question. And cat beastkin can do all of those.”

“Can they even get their mouths open wide enough? Unless they’re hunting something tiny, like mice …” Allen asked, clearly still skeptical.

“Most of the other races gain a series of small physiological changes to allow them to use their new bodies to abilities to their fullest effect. A human suddenly being able to open their mouth wide enough to bite through the neck of a water buffalo shouldn’t be out of the question.” Harrison explained.

Allen winced, then came out with his own story.

“If you mess up enough times with a [Skill], you can literally get an Evolution that reads ‘you won’t be able to f-up with this [Skill] anymore’. We had this thief in LA when this madness started who could steal things at a distance, which included things like snatching the bullets straight out of the magazines of the officers who tried to arrest him, also running off with taser cartridges and everything else he could get at. Dear God, I’ve seen more requisitions for new handcuffs and belts in one month than in the entire rest of my career.

“Except this fellow wasn’t exactly the brightest bulb and tried that trick on a can of pepper spray. Twice. When that [Skill] evolved, he was in holding and bitched about the Evolution so loudly that one of the officers outside noticed and asked what was wrong. I have photographic proof that those Evolutions exist.”

Then, he passed along his phone with the relevant pictures.

“Eh, I can’t top those stories.” Harrison shrugged “But one of my coworkers managed to figure out how to grow plants that taste exactly like meat and replaced all the cafeteria’s meals with it once it was FDA-approved.”

“That sounds like something that should revolutionize the meat industry,” Oliver remarked.

“I’m afraid the process requires a lot of mana and constant managing. It was enough to pull off a prank, but not sufficient to sell.”

The show continued for a bit like that, with Oliver either asking questions or showing silly scams for them to mock.

But Isaac knew something more was coming. Having all three guests be connected to the LA incident was unlikely to be a coincidence.

And after he’d spectacularly detonated a spatial storage device, the question dropped.

“Being three people connected to what most people consider to be the first great disaster of the [System] era, what are your thoughts on the danger posed by our new reality?” Oliver asked.

“The [System] has become a part of nature.” Isaac answered “Nature is dangerous, but holds many opportunities as well. The question is how we interact with it. It’s human nature to explore such things, then exploit them, and a lot of the time, that ends with something disastrous happening and everyone going ‘Who could have seen that happen’. We just need to keep our heads, act with caution, and be smart about this.

“The old nature was dangerous too, but we managed to navigate that as well, most of the time. There were no predators that hunted us anymore outside of very few exceptions. Then there were mosquitoes, disease-carrying insects, and various venomous animals that you really shouldn’t scare or accidentally corner, but really, nature was mostly tamed. Under the [System], we can literally choose what wild creatures we encounter. Doing this safely is perfectly possible.

“And I know that a lot of people promise a utopian future, but let me say this: if we’re smart about this, we can gain everything from the [System].”

“Smart.” Allen scoffed.

“Has any of you ever heard of Ilha da Queimada Grande and the golden lancehead?” Harrison asked.

Isaac had, and he was about to say something when Allen asked “Is that an Indiana Jones movie?”

Both Isaac and Harrison nearly started laughing at the surprising reply but managed to keep their cool. Allen still noticed though and looked at them in annoyance. Oops.

“The golden lancehead is an incredibly venomous snake and it’s only found on Ilha da Queimada Grande.” Harrison said “The fer-de-lance is widely regarded to be one of the most dangerous snakes in the world and native to much of South Amerika. The golden lancehead is its significantly more dangerous cousin and found on that island at ridiculous densities. Fishermen who landed there have disappeared, and after the local lighthouse keeper was attacked in his home by a golden lancehead, the island was abandoned and put under quarantine.

“Unless you count the inside of active volcanoes and the bottom of the ocean, it’s one of the most dangerous places in the world, fit to be a Bond villain’s execution area. But we’ve managed to get use out of even that place, harvesting the snake’s venom to search it for medicinal purposes. If we can turn even a place that hostile useful, why not the [System]?”

“Humans have the survival skills of a cockroach, the adaptability of Darwin’s Finches, and the killer instinct of the common housecat,” Isaac added.

“Why Darwin’s Finches?” Oliver asked.

“A single flock of birds arrived on the Galapagos islands a while ago. Now, they cover all of the various small bird ecological niches and a subspecies had even started drinking the blood of larger birds.” Isaac explained.

He worked within hearing range of a lot of auditoriums that taught biology and while he didn’t actively listen to them, he picked up a hell of a lot.

“So you think things will be fine, then?” Oliver asked.

This time, it was Allen who answered “I’ve been a member of law enforcement in various capacities for several decades. And if I’ve learned anything in that time, it is that if a stupid thing can be done, someone will do it. If humanity’s survival hinges on all of us being smart, we’re doomed.”

“Gloomily put,” Harrison commented.

“Sadly accurate.” Isaac commented “It shouldn’t be true, but it is. If we keep going like we are, we might be screwed. But here’s the thing, we might not be.

“Under most circumstances, some of the things I’m about to say would not be things to be proud of. But these are extraordinary circumstances and those require extraordinary measures.

“Mankind drove the Woolly Mammoth to extinction using flintstone spears. Throughout the ages, all of the extraordinary megafauna died out. Some of that doubtlessly happened without humans helping the process along, but we did exterminate a lot of them, often with very primitive tools.

“We fought off some of the most dangerous beings in the world with basically nothing. Did you know that tigers rarely ambush creatures that are looking at them? People started creating masks of human faces, then wearing them on the back of their heads. The biggest, toughest, most dangerous big cat of the current age, beaten by paint and flimsy wood.

“And we’ve never stopped evolving, fighting back against nature. Africa’s lions are still so badly traumatized that they run from people if at all possible, decades after we stopped hunting them. The only reason we can watch them from cars is that they don’t see them as connected to ‘the big dangerous two-legs’.

“There is not a single animal we couldn’t wipe from the face of this Earth if we were willing to go far enough, we’ve clawed our way to the top of the food chain, to the top of the world.

“We beat the main game, now we just have to beat the DLC. It’s been proven that we have the capacity to do this, now we just have to actually, you know, do it.”