Apocalypse Redux

Chapter 206: A New Perspective

Pushing the boundaries of science was 99% grunt work, beating one’s head against a wall until eventually, you found the right spot and made a breakthrough.

Well, that, or until your skull cracked.

You had something you wanted to understand, figured out how to get some insight into that topic, and then you developed an appropriate experiment.

That was when the real work began. Doing the same thing over and over again, experimenting with every single variation of your experiment, doing the blank experiment that ensured that the results you got were related to the things you’d input, rather than being something that was always going to happen. And so on, and so forth until eventually, you were just the slightest bit more knowledgeable on the topic you wanted to research.

But sometimes, you just got stuck. Maybe, you couldn’t figure out a new angle to come at the problem at hand from, sometimes, the results of your experiments just didn’t make any sense, and more. Or maybe you just had no bloody clue where to start.

The reasons for that happening could be manifold. Established dogma might be in the way, people failing to see the thing right in front of their eyes. Or the “right way forward” had been tried, failed, and therefore discarded as a viable option. Or any of a million different things.

[Blessing of Innovation] might let the user borrow weak research [Skills] and that would be useful, but the real win here was the ability to look at, well, everything with new eyes.

The scenes from movies where the unknowledgeable protagonist walked straight into a scientists lab, made a single suggestion and solved the problem the considerably smarter person had been struggling with for years in a single sentence might not be realistic, but there was an element of truth to them. As you studied your field within the hallowed halls of academia, you absorbed a lot of the preconceptions built up by those who’d come before you.

So many people who’d created incredible advancements had been laughed at initially when they’d shown up with their new theory, which completely went against the ideas of the time. But these people had been the only ones who’d been able to advance science simply because they’d decided to throw the current “truth” out of the window to go look for the actual truth.

What would Isaac himself discover if he decided to take his fears of an apocalyptic future out of the picture and just looked at what he knew about the [System]? Looking at the current situation, without the burden of having already seen humanity die once, where would he see all this going?

And what if he decided to dissect a monster corpse while having access to a [Biologist’s] [Skills]? Examine the equipment the Death Knight had left behind the way an [Engineer] or [Metallurgist] would?

Sure, he wouldn’t be able to keep the [Skills] themselves, but there was no way in hell [Blessing of Innovation] would erase the information he’d gained while under its influence once it timed out.

But he could spend the rest of the day contemplating what his new [Skill] might do, and it might not even get him on the right path. Doing so would be dumb when he could just, you know, use it.

He wouldn’t use it here, though, not in the middle of this mess.

Isaac changed into clean clothes and strolled over to the university. Given that he lived within walking distance of the place, there was no reason not to head over there. Being surrounded by countless sources of incredible knowledge while using this [Skill] seemed like a good way to ensure it could be used to its greatest possible effect.

“Good afternoon Dr. Thoma, I thought you were with your family for Christmas.” Andre greeted him as the pair ran into each other in the lobby.

“I’ll head over there tonight. What about you?” Isaac asked.

“Still had some work to finish and didn’t want to come back to a pile of paperwork in January.” Andre told him “Do you need anything done? I’m teleporting to Johannesburg in five minutes.”

“No thank you.” Isaac shook his head “Merry Christmas.”

“You too,” Andre said and left the building.

Isaac headed towards his office but ran into Bailey on the way. The Professor looked surprised for a split second, then looked ever so slightly guilty.

“Gabriel thinks you’re doing something other than working, doesn’t he?” Isaac commented dryly.

“Don’t tell him,” Bailey whispered back as he hurried outside.

On the way to his office, Isaac noticed that several more people were building. He’d expected it to be almost empty on a Saturday, never mind a Saturday that was also the day before Christmas, but it seemed like he wasn’t the only workaholic in the department.

Sure, some of them were capable of using teleportation magic and reach their homes in time for something even if they only left this building mere minutes before they needed to be there.

But in general, he’d expected to be the only one here.

Still, it was none of his business what others were doing, he had his own tasks to do.

Isaac sat down in his desk chair, pushed himself into a comfortable position, then pushed himself away from the desk to pull a few books from his shelves, only to return back to the desk. He almost activated the [Blessing of Innovation] right then and there, but decided he wasn’t quite ready yet.

Then, he put up his perception blocking [Skill] to prevent anyone from overhearing if he decided to talk to himself out loud or let something slip in exclamations of surprise.

Five minutes later, he had a laptop on the desk with a word document open on it, a steaming cup of tea sat besides it, every book he expected to use was within easy reach as well … except there was one he might be able to use in the conference room, wasn’t it?

Nope, you’re stalling, cut it out! Isaac snapped at himself and before he could come up with new things to pile onto his desk.

Activating [Blessing of Innovation] felt … strange. Two empty slots appeared in his mind, ready to accept any of a thousand different [Skills], all he had to do was pick two. Useful, but not why he’d bought it.

Instead, he wanted the power to look at things from a new perspective. If he’d learned anything from the last two years, it was the power of knowledge, and this new [Skill] should let him compound that advantage to the point of absurdity.

So what could he know if all he had was his knowledge, but not the baggage that had come from having seen humanity die?

***

There was a desk covered in a seemingly random collection of biology textbooks, old-looking treatises on mythology and what looked like novels, all of which had descriptors like “Apocalypse”, “System” and “LitRPG”.

At that desk sat a young man, with pale skin contrasted by unnaturally dark hair and his eyes shone like emeralds. His elbows rested on the only clear spot upon his desk, one hand was clenched into a fist, the second hand was laid on top and upon his hands rested his chin as he stared off into the nothingness.

And that young man was muttering to himself.

“Why am I here? How the hell did I get here? I mean, I walked, obviously, but how the hell did I get this job? I’m … I know what I did, I’m one of the strongest people on the planet but how?

“Why did I decide that fighting Specters was the best thing to do when it looked like the world might end? Without [System]-empowered learning, I’d be dead, I know that. Did I just get lucky?

“But there’s an answer, something to explain how I got what I did, I know that. So, what is it? Let’s see …”

***

Isaac eyed the laptop, silently trying to judge whether or not it would survive the shockwave if he decided to facepalm. In the end, he decided to err on the side of caution and leave well enough alone.

He used the “see things from a new perspective” power of the [Blessing of Innovation], making sure to remember the feeling of frustration he was feeling.

It took all of thirty seconds for him to undo the effects of his [Skill].

Isaac swore softly and tried things again, from the top. And again.

“Future Isaac, I swear to Loki, if you deactivate the [Skill] again …” he muttered, cutting himself off before he finished the declaration as swearing an oath in the name of the god of mischief was probably a terrible idea.

***

There was a desk covered in a seemingly random collection of books.

And at that desk sat a young man. His right hand laid on the keyboard of a laptop while he was holding his left hand in front of his eyes, reading what was carved into the back of it while making sure no blood dripped into the delicate piece of electronic equipment.

“Do not remove the [Blessing of Innovation] you fucking control freak!”

Why had he done that to himself? What had happened to drive him so far?

“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” the young man yelled as his eyes cleared up. A mere thought removed the injury and the blood evaporated in a green glow that emanated from a knife that had appeared from nowhere.

***

Twelve tries, twelve failures. Why the hell was this so difficult?

After two minutes of cursing himself out, Isaac decided to put this topic on hold while he explored the rest of his new power.

He borrowed a couple of [Biologist] [Skills] and went into one of the summoning rooms so he could get a Drake for him to dissect. He needed something from one for tomorrow anyway.

The summoning circle was laid out with practiced ease and a Frost Drake appeared, immediately unleashing a flickering white cloud from its mouth, enveloping Isaac. Once it dissipated, he just stood there for a split, hoarfrost in his hair and clothing, before exploding into motion and skewering the creature through the brain with a single strike from Balmung.

Calling a Frost Drake’s breath weapon “fire” was probably enough to infuriate any physicist into a white-hot rage. In actuality, it was an energy-to-matter converter that looked like fire. It absorbed any and all free thermal energy in its path and converted into, well, matter, iron to be specific, in accordance with the good old formula of energy equals matter times the speed of light squared.

It wasn’t a good way to generate matter, though, considering how energy-hungry the process was. To put it another way, converting a few grams of matter into energy, for example, by bringing it into contact with antimatter, was enough to level a city.

End of the day, the breath of frost-dragonoids was just a way to erase all thermal energy above a certain level in the area it consumed. For a Drake, that was anything above negative 100 °C while a Tier 9 Frost Wyrm could bring the targeted area down to damn near absolute zero.

And while the phenomenon was very different from “fire” in the physical sense, metaphysically speaking, it was close enough for Isaac to steal it.

He watched white flames dance across his right flame for a moment before returning his focus to the specimenbefore him. Balmung was sharp enough to serve as a scalpel while floating Kabars held open his cuts.

Less than a minute later, he had the monster properly dissected, every organ carefully separated and prepared for preservation.

Isaac’s oft-neglected monster-harvesting [Skill], [Gralloch], shot up six Levels from this demonstration of ability alone. And seeing how capable the borrowed [Skills] could make him was heartening.

So now that he’d experimented with that part of the [Blessing of Innovation], it was time to try using the other ability it gave him.

Trying to analyze the current situation without his baggage failed yet again, and he gave up on that for today as he had a different use for it in mind.

He sat down in front of his laptop and began to write.

“How to defeat a Sanguine Monarch (Tier 7 [Raid Boss])”

Isaac still knew everything about its capabilities, how it moved, how it fought, what its strengths and weaknesses were, but only if they’d been objectively verified. The various dogmas about how it should be dealt with, on the other hand, were wiped from his mind.

The Sanguine Monarch held the secrets to the blood enchantments Isaac had often made use of and being able to officially use them should be useful.

It was a nasty vampire that started out relatively normal looking, but it only stayed that way for roughly a millisecond after being summoned as it immediately began to mutate, a surge of life force causing it to grow, skin splitting and blood pouring onto the ground, and then the blood would start to replicate. The entire area around the monster would become a part of it and its domain, bleeding, growing into semi-independent monstrosities that would lash out at anyone who got to close.

Eventually, the energy would be spent, leaving around two acres of ground covered in blood and viscera with a monstrous form the original vampire had grown into sitting in the center.

Killing the damn thing while it grew without lobbing a nuke at it was practically impossible, sadly, which limited the people fighting it to destroying vital nodes within it to weaken its final ability.

Essentially, fighting a Sanguine Monarch was playing a game of exceedingly disgusting whack-a-mole, exhausting yourself and your allies before the real fight even started. Well, either that, or you could wait until the monster had fully grown and then fight it at full, absolute power.

Both options had their drawbacks, but they had grown to be the only ones most people acknowledged. As more about the [Raid Boss] became known, that only calcified the opinions about it.

And now, Isaac was going to see if the tactical manual could be refined as long as one didn’t have any preconceived notions.

His fingers flew across the keyboard so quickly that he occasionally had to pause for the computer to catch up.

By the time [Blessing of Innovation] ended, he’d written a fifty-page manuscript outlining how careful mana management and use of stamina-extending Aspects could allow for the maximum weakening of the monster while still leaving everyone fresh. In addition, he figured out which parts to target to achieve the greatest effect.

Dogma had stated that the nodes that would eventually serve as regeneration needed to be prioritized because the beast’s recovery ability had been what people had struggled with the most during the first few fights, but they could actually be ignored if you weakened enough of the ones that generated its AOE attacks. A declawed monster that basically needed to be killed ten times over was annoying to be sure, but it wouldn’t be able to inflict any casualties while it died.

And he’d also written up a second manuscript that was twice as long and didn’t incorporate any of his future knowledge. It was merely a set of “common sense” tactics for fighting a vampiric [Raid Boss] for them to use when the first went up against the Sanguine Monarch in this timeline.

He’d also gotten a [Skill] the very instant [Blessing of Innovation] had ended. And boy, was it a strange one.

Accumulation of Knowledge (unranked)

This Skill serves as a repository for the knowledge gained via the use of Blessing of Innovation.

As Skills from research and science Classes are borrowed, they will sometimes bring with them new knowledge. Any parts of this information that the user utilizes can be remembered even after the borrowed Skill is lost.

The Accumulation of Knowledge serves as a general knowledge Skill, representing the amount of learning the user has done.

As Blessing of Innovation is used repeatedly, this Skill may unlock new functions.

“Unranked” rarity wasn’t something he’d ever seen before, though looking at the [Skill], it made sense. It was a way for the [System] to acknowledge that he’d learned new things from his [Skill], without outright giving him power.

Normally though, the [System] didn’t hand out [Skills] he didn’t want, otherwise his status would just have an encyclopedia’s worth of General [Skills] along the lines of [Housework], [Breathing] and [Walking]. You could make those [Skills] and train them up to the point where they became useful, but that was a lot of work for comparatively little gain. Something for after when he’d hit the Level cap, maybe.

This though, this seemed to be something the [System] couldn’t ignore, so it had given him [Accumulation of Knowledge].

Isaac checked the clock on his phone and realized he didn’t have enough time left to complete his second undead Aspect stack, so he cleaned up his office and the summoning room he’d used and headed out to make some final preparations for Christmas.

Yes, he fully knew that he should have done all that long before and that all the various emergencies hadn’t foreseeable, he should have expected something to go wrong, but as long as he got them done in time, no harm, no foul … right?

His plans for the holidays were pretty simple. Have fun with his family, experiment with [Blessing of Innovation] until he managed to finally get over his need to immediately know what he’d “forgotten” and then save the rest of his charges so he could give them to his colleagues after the holidays.

There were many other powerful [Skills] he could have gotten in [Blessing of Innovation’s] stead, true, but scientific advancement was the ultimate force multiplier. [Divine Fire] had practically been a mandatory purchase, sure, but the blessing was a very close second on the priority list.