Apocalypse Redux

Chapter 210: The Round Table Convenes

The [Round Table] had changed when it had hit Level 10. What had once been merely a powerful way to share one’s abilities had now become the mother of all covert communication [Skills].

Any member could mentally enter the separate space that existed solely within the [System], completely impossible to eavesdrop.

There were plenty of abilities that allowed for magical communication, of course. [Message] spells, magically manifested radio sets, arcane encryption, the list went on and on, but those still worked in the real world, with there being some kind of emission to track.

This space existed wholly within the [System], impossible to affect from Earth, inaccessible to anyone not a part of this group. In other words, they couldn’t be overheard no matter what.

The only issue was that for there to be successful communication, they needed to be in the space, which required some careful arrangements ahead of time for face to face meetings, considering how busy everyone was. And using phones or other more easily trackable means of communication to coordinate would give away the [Skill’s] existence pretty damn quickly.

In the end, they’d resorted to checking the place daily and using the provided “paper” to leave notes for each other. They couldn’t be taken out of the space, but they did allow for secret communication.

And then, across all their busy schedules, they’d finally managed to come together in one place, to talk securely for the first time in a long time.

The meeting room itself was an immense castle hall straight out of an epic fantasy movie.

Banners hung along the walls, each a [System]-generated symbol representing one of the members of the round table. Arthur had a traditional knight’s heraldry, Elena had an almost scary combination of white seafoam, the peaceful surface of a lake and the very darkest depths of the ocean, and Isaac’s was a clock, floating above a sea of blood with a pair of crossed swords behind it.

As impressive as those were, though, there could be no doubt as to what was the most important thing in the room. A massive table in the center of the hall, an immense stone slab that would have weighed several tons in the real world, four meters across.

The granite-colored surface was sparsely inlaid with a simple gold and lapis lazuli pattern that subdivided it into thirteen areas, each bearing the name of the person meant to sit there. These nameplates were randomly swapped around every day to promote the tables idea of “all are equal”. They were always going to be around different people, clique forming was going to be prevented, and no one could ever be stuck with the position at the “door”.

Isaac was the first one here, and as he waited, he looked over the small parchment list hanging next to the entrance.

Round Table of Camelot

Member

Assigned Shade

Arthur Wells

none

Elena Hightower

Arthur Wells

Steff Cooke

none

Adam Bailey

none

Seon Yoo-jin

none

Franz Habicht

none

Isaac Thoma

Seon Yoo-jin

Fenrir Olgeirsson

none

Han Junu

Steff Cooke

Amelia Shaw

none

Jason North

Amelia Shaw

[Empty Slot]

[Empty Slot]

Eleven of the thirteen slots were filled, the last two still waiting receive a worthy person.

The first three members were Camelot’s own headliners, the Returned King, the Fairy of the Deep, and the Living Blade.

Then, of course, there was good old Professor Bailey, who’d earned his place a thousand times over.

Franz Habicht, a member of an exemplary law enforcement group and one of the global authorities when it came to anti-monster response.

The fact that Seon Yoo-jin, the Guildmaster of the Korean Hunter’s Guild was only one of themost famous people at the Round Table was a testament to the sheer quality of people that had been recruited. Initially, he’d been the head of the Dungeon Guild, but he’d started running disaster drills after the meeting at the Starhail Bar and decided to rename his organization.

Then there was Isaac himself.

The next person was one Isaac and Arthur had only briefly met in this timeline, but that had been all that was required. Fenrir Olgeirsson had been one of the people who’d assumed the end was nigh when the [System] had appeared, so he’d gathered a solid group of people and run off to Antarctica under the assumption that places with large concentrations of people were the most likely to turn into hellholes. When the world hadn’t ended, well, they’d just decided to stay, and train.

When Arthur and Isaac had shown up on his door, telling him that he’d been absolutely right, just early, he’d joined in a heartbeat.

Fenrir was … a lot. He was the kind of person who’d drive halfway across the county in the middle of the night for a friend, but so, well, loud, that you’d wonder why you were ever friends with him after spending five minutes together. Even so, Isaac was beyond happy to have him as a part of all this.

Han Junu was another man who’d jumped at the chance to help make the world a better place once he’d understood what was at stake.

Amy had joined just a few weeks ago as it had taken Arthur that long to decide whether to add her or Patrick.

And then there was their latest member, Jason North. He was an interesting person, one of the few members that Isaac hadn’t known from the other timeline. However, several people working on finding the cult had encountered him, with the coincidences mounting until Isaac had finally asked Zambon to look into him.

As it turned out, he was a typical victim of “[Rogue] induced Edgelord syndrome”, but unusually enough, he also had a good head on his shoulders. An analytical mind to rival Isaac, dogged determination to match Arthur and investigative skills that had impressed even Habicht.

Of course, he also had his fair share of flaws, specifically, the black leather wearing and alleyway skulking kind, but he was still a solid addition.

So, after running him through every background check available, they’d decided to officially invite him.

Norht was one of the few people who’d grabbed the [Rogue] [Class] and stuck with it all the way to the fourth Evolution, never specializing into any aspect of it.

Early in the game, [Rogue] was pretty much the strongest common [Class]. [Warriors] couldn’t ignore a knife to throat yet, [Mages] lacked their detection spells, and Healers were not yet in a position to fix lethal injuries with a wave of their hands.

[Stealth] was functionally complete invisibility, [Hundred Faces] was enough to fool almost anyone unless you were trying to impersonate someone’s spouse, and the various blade-related [Skills] made normal knives capable of bypassing any armor one was likely to encounter.

Later on, the functionality of that overall power-set fell off. [Skills] to heal from or straight up ignore lethal attacks meant that someone intending to become a blade in the dark had to become an [Assassin]. Stealing stuff required a bunch of anti-tracking abilities to be effective. Sneaking around, especially considering the existence of sensory [Auras], required more than light footfalls and near-invisibility.

In other words, making a powerset that general work was pretty difficult, but North had managed it. In Isaac’s mind, that alone qualified him as an expert in the field of general “sneaking around”.

“Hey, Doc!“ a boisterous voice called from next to Isaac, who was still staring at the parchment.

Isaac internally rolled his eyes as he turned to face the newcomer.

“Hi Fenrir.” He said, craning his back to look at the man’s face. The Icelander was one of the largest non-giant people Isaac had ever seen and tended to dominate most rooms he entered even before he opened his mouth.

“So, I hear you had some trouble with a fish?” Fenrir asked, clapping Isaac on the back as he began to walk towards the center of the room “Tell me everything.”

“It wasn’t trouble.” Isaac shook his head “The Salmon of Wisdom is squirrely as hell and we kept having to chase it down when it decided its pool wasn’t big enough. Cleaning up the fish guts, on other hand … I’m really glad someone else did that.”

“Sounds like something that the people who pissed off their commanding officer would have to do.” Fenrir commented.

“Is that what you do when there’s trouble? Cleaning duties?”

The big man shrugged “Our biggest disciplinary problem is people deciding to adopt penguins. Toilet duty seems appropriate.”

Isaac nodded. They ended up chatting for a bit as the rest arrived.

Arthur was the first to sit down, a broad and welcoming smile on his face, both hands resting palm down on the table.

“Thanks for coming, everyone. It’s been too long.”

Isaac nodded “So, what’s everyone been up to?”

Another five or so minutes were spent on exchanging pleasantries, then, they went onto the meat of the matter, starting with progress reports.

“… and we’ve spent the last several months kicking around Tier 6 [Raid Bosses] like footballs.” Fenrir finished “It was good training in the beginning, but now, it’s honestly having the opposite effect, people are getting bored.”

He winked at Bailey “Maybe someone get started on normalizing Tier 7 [Raid Bosses]?”

“We’re working on it.” Bailey said. When Fenrir looked at the professor expectantly, he shrugged and gave his own report.

“Basically, we’ve been exploring the eighth Tier for normal monsters and the sixth for [Raid Bosses] and now we’re getting ready to see what Tier 7 boss monsters looks like. The usual.”

Then, he reached under the table and brought out a jar of what looked like jelly beans, taking advantage of a very useful property of this space that allowed those present to create “props”. Even laptops and projectors were possible, though so far, those hadn’t been needed.

“And a couple of our researchers made these. They’re spatially folded edible potion vials. Just pop one into your mouth and bite down. They each contain a normal potion vial’s worth of liquid, and for all practical intents and purposes, they’re equal to a standard dose of whatever potion you fill them with.”

“Where can I get them?” Yoo-jin asked immediately, only a split-second ahead of the others around the table.

“We’re in the process of finalizing the announcement. The dean wants to brag about it properly.” Bailey replied with a wry smile “We’ll send each of you an entire crate’s worth of these as soon as the meeting is over. But I do have to warn you, they’re a bit of a chocking hazard.”

“We’re not children.” Fenrir said acerbically.

Amy chuckled “As it turns out, they’re a problem even for some adults. If you bite down on one, and your mouth floods with liquid without being fully closed …”

She winked at Isaac, who had to resort to [Hundred Faces] to avoid flushing in embarrassment. That particular episode was one of dumber things he’d done in this lifetime.

He’d checked the potion, it was safe.

He’d checked the volume, it wasn’t big enough to injure him.

The casing wasn’t toxic.

The spatial warp was so weak that it literally couldn’t do anything other than fail.

There’d been literally nothing dangerous … but he’d been so focused on making sure it was safe that he’d forgotten to keep his lips sealed, which had resulted in him spilling half the potion down his front.

“They work perfectly in a combat scenario, they’re easy to access, you can place them inside bracers, even in false teeth.” Isaac explained to try and distract from the embarrassing topic.

“The healing beans are the pinnacle of alchemy, just remember, always, always keep your mouth fully closed before biting down.” Amy reminded the group. Isaac just rolled his eyes and tried to move the conversation onwards.

“Alright, what about the investigation team?” he asked “Where are we at finding the cult?”

“We …” North began, only to stop talking when everyone turned to him “Maybe someone else should take this?

Habicht shrugged “I mostly know about the German side of the investigation and I’ve been incredibly busy in the last week, and Dr. Han is mostly helping in the background. Right this second, you’ve got the best overview over the situation.”

North cleared his throat and looked around nervously before finally giving a full and proper report.

“Basically, we’ve been hunting down every possible lead we can find and unfortunately, it’s been tough. Once a part of their network has been uncovered, they cut and run, abandoning entire nations.

“There isn’t a single member left in Germany or the UK, and believe me, we’ve looked. None of the leads recovered after the raids panned out after around a week. The members uncovered were either dead, or they vanished into thin air after that. These guys are scary thorough.

“[All See] is helping, but we’re dealing with information that’s too divorced from our targets for it to really help.

“But based on Dr. Thoma’s investigator and the stuff I found before joining the round table, we have been able to take several actions against the cult’s Canadian branch. We’ve managed to avoid spooking them enough to retaliate or jump ship so far, but we’ve gotten a ton of information so far. It’s not been very useful, I know …” North trailed off, awkwardly scratching the back of his neck. As capable as he was when out in the field, this was a situation he wasn’t very comfortable in.

“Every other action against these guys turned into a clusterfuck of epic proportions.” Arthur pointed out “Hamburg is still being fixed and I had to stop a zombie apocalypse. Less information in exchange for not causing a catastrophe is a great tradeoff.”

“Thanks.” North said awkwardly “That’s it, by the way. I don’t have anything important left.”

“Does anyone have any more ideas for who should be our thirteenth member?” Arthur asked.

“Too many to mention.” Isaac said “I’d have known in the other timeline, but in this one, too many things have changed and all I have are a ton of candidates. There’s also the problem that I only know a fraction of the important people in this timeline.”

He nodded towards North “We don’t want to focus so much on chasing a ghost that we miss the very real situation in front of us.”

North looked like he wanted to melt into the shadows, but thankfully, he held off.

“There are several highly capable members of the Hunter’s Guild that would be a worthy addition, but none as impactful as the people already here,” Yoo-jin said.

“Same here.” Habicht said, “I know plenty of good people, but no one who created a group with the firepower to rival some militaries from scratch or investigated a cult on his own and achieved more than most law enforcement agencies.”

Fenrir just shrugged “My guys are good, but they wouldn’t add anything we don’t already have.”

And so on, and so forth.

“What about the joint training exercises?” Isaac asked, “What’s the status on that front?”

“I’m damn glad Germany and South Korea were already strong allies when all this started, otherwise, it would be damn near impossible to arrange things.” Habicht said “As it stands, our political overlords still want to keep our tricks all to ourselves.

“Hell, they’re already pissed about how you give away your training [Skills] internationally, but they know they can’t control you and they’re too afraid of you running away to Korea to put any real pressure on you.”

“That bad?” Yoo-jin asked “It’s going decently well on my end. We’re trying to avoid revealing our real trump cards, but overall, we’re waiting on your ‘political overlords’ to come to their senses.”

Ah yes, the difference between someone in charge of a vast organization directly answerable only to the very top of their government and someone who was only a group leader, no matter how prestigious said team might be.

Elena and the pair of them headed over into one area of the room to discuss by coordinating without anyone knowing might help to make the joint training exercises happen.

The rest, meanwhile, were discussing personal combat tactics and other less stuff that was less “big picture”.

Then, something disturbed Isaac. While within this space, they were essentially astral projecting, but to prevent that from being a security risk, the [Skill] gave those within the mother of all danger sense abilities. In fact, even Isaac was more likely to notice something was amiss while within this space than while out there, actively sweeping his surroundings.

However, it also let the user know about things that he might want to know about, be it a news alert or a pet cat wanting scritches.

This time, it was the former. Isaac pulled most of his attention out of the [Round Table] and focused on his phone.

“City Rising from the South Pacific”

He’d waiting to see if that would happen in this timeline. After all he’d changed so many things. But now, it had finally risen, confirming once and for all that this city existed in this timeline.