Apocalypse Redux

Chapter 215: Giantslayer

Now, having people engaging the monsters at close quarters could be as simple as just ensuring that no one was standing in the ship’s line of fire and that no one used an AOE while someone else was in range.

But that would have been taking the easy, lazy, route, wouldn’t it?

And while Isaac wasn’t someone who made a lot more work for himself when he could get the exact same result with less effort, no one could ever accuse him of being lazy.

Fenrir’s [Aura] could locally tear apart the Heart of Madness’ defenses and weaken them to the point where it might as well never have adapted in the first place.

Which was why Isaac had him move every few seconds so the fleet could take advantage of the opening.

Heavy weapons, artillery spells, combination attacks incorporating multiple cooldown [Skills], all were fired straight through one of the weak points in the monsters armor, frying its internals while blowing away a minimum amount of matter to minimize the risk of parts adapting and making their current strategy non-viable.

With so many people right next to the monster, they were tearing through it with great speed. Any tentacle that grew was chopped off in seconds, then shredded by the ranged attackers before it could return to the main body.

The monster’s body melted away like ice on a hot day, but so did the distance between it and the fleet.

It didn’t look like a problem until the closest destroyer suddenly lurched forward with seemingly no input from its helmsman.

Oh. Hell.

Either this particular Heart of Madness had learned a new trick, or it had always been a part of its toolkit and Isaac just hadn’t heard about it because people normally didn’t might its kind in the middle of the ocean.

The instant it had been close enough, the [Raid Boss] had sent a series of tentacles at the ship underwater, grabbed it, and yanked the vessel into the iceberg that held it. The grapple had happened so quickly that even though he’d seen it, Isaac hadn’t managed to intervene.

Lances of energy, depth charges, [Far Strikes], and the concentrated fire of every nearby vessel tried to sever the connection, but they were too slow.

Isaac swore internally as the ship collided with the mountain that imprisoned the [Raid Boss] and the ice shattered. He hadn’t known the damn thing could stretch that far.

Thankfully, none of the people on the iceberg were still in the target area when the collision occurred. The situation was already bad enough as it was.

The monsters mass surged over the badly battered vessel, mouths manifesting and slurping down unfortunate sailors like spaghetti.

Now that the few people left on the ship were surrounded by the monster, there was a constant bombardment upon their senses and there was no chance to escape the illusions before being swept up by the monster. Some had evactuation [Skills] that allowed them to escape the doomed vessel, but those that didn’t doomed.

Simultaneously, limbs began to be threaded through the vessel and infiltrated every part of it until the destroyer looked like some kind of mad bio-scientist’s rendition of a modern destroyer.

And then, it began to open fire, point defense system tearing into the flying mages while the 5 inch main gun hammered away at the closest melee fighters.

So the damn thing could integrate or control technology.

Today truly was a day for unpleasant surprises.

Without living sailors on board, the vessels power was much reduced, but it was still plenty bad. Mages that had to dodge or block streams of bullets had a hard time attacking and while most melee fighters could survive getting hit with a thirty kilogram shell travelling at several hundred meters per second, the sheer power of the impact still sent them flying.

Several torpedoes smashed into the side of the “posessed” vessel, but it didn’t end up doing anything as the monster’s flesh closed off the damaged sections less than a second after the damage was dealt.

[A Captain Goes Down With Their Ship]

That was the [Skill] that changed the course of the battle. A final sacrifice, burning the last scraps of power of both the vessel and its captain. But hadn’t the captain already evacuated ... he’d teleported straight back onto the vessel once he’d realized what was up.

The controlled guns suddenly fell silent and swiveled in their mounts, plastic shattering and metal tearing as they were forced to turn well past where they were designed to be able to turn and finally opened fire upon the vessel they were mounted upon.

One by one, the monster destroyed them, energy beams and writhing limbs lashing out, but when the ship lost all mounted weapons, it lashed out with the only thing it could still use. Its engine.

The Heart of Madness ballooned outwards like the surface of a gas-filled tar pit before it burst, a thunderous explosion and incredible hot blaze of fire erupting from the top of the monster, cracking it open like an egg.

A single long tongue of flame reached into the sky, towards Isaac, and when it touched his hand, he took control of the entirety of the blaze.

What had once been reasonably mundane fire powered by the anger, rage, and determination of one brave captain then began to be empowered by the full fury of the [Divine Fire].

A golden light began to shine as a series of cleansing flames were infused into the vessel’s funeral pire, scorching away the abomination.

The Heart of Madness writhed and tried to get away, letting go of the ship and looking like a leaky balloon as it pulled itself back together.

In the process, it was too slow to close the vast void at its center.

Isaac couldn’t exactly decline such an invitation, now could he? Even if his role was leadership, rather than kicking ass directly.

He ordered a brief ceasefire and dove downwards, then used a [Skill] he basically never used.

The [Round Table] allowed him to borrow a single [Skill] from another member and in the case of [Glacial Fortress], he could use it once a week. It was meant to be a hidden trump card, but in the here and now, it would also be this thing’s kryptonite.

An iceberg twice the size of the destroyer grew inside the abomination, stretching it to its absolute limit while Isaac escaped back toward the sky.

Sure, the monster immediately started withdrawing its flesh, condensing into a proper blob beneath the new ice chunk so it could use it as cover, but it was already too late. The skin stretched across the ice was rather thin and most attacks, even ones it was mosty immune to, tore straight through until the moster looked like a moth-eaten bedsheet.

[Tyrants Die].

The [Skills] name echoed across the battlefield like a divine declaration and the monster spasmed, its unnatural toughness having largely fled and it was finally forced to feel the full impact of its injuries.

It tore apart, bits flying off every which way as body parts stretched well beyond where they should have been able to twanged back into a more natural form.

Many of its smaller bits simply melted, having fallen beyond the minimum volume required to sustain life.

It didn’t die, though. No kill notification, no victory.

Every piece in sight was dead, though, literally dissolving in most cases.

“Everyone with sensory and scrying abilities, start scanning the ocean. Everyone with cleaning or water filtration [Skills], start getting this crap out of the ocean. I need alchemists and chemical warfare specialists to analyze the remains to see if there is any risk to us or the exosystem.

“Pull the fleet closer together, ensure that point defense can cover all vessels in chase the remains of thing starts hurling pieces at us, and ready the depth charges in case it comes from below again.

“Anyone not busy with the previous assignments is on S&R duty. Find and recover the survivors, get them to the medics …”

Isaac continued to rattle off orders. Everyone here who could should start searching for the last pieces of the monster, and everyone else should start cleaning up the mess.

In the end, it took them an embarrassingly long amount of time to find the small, car-sized chunk that prevented the monster from dying. It had been trapped in the original iceberg and floated away when it had been smashed by the grappled destroyer.

An almost contemptuous burst of fire from a jet’s gun tore it to shreds and that was the end of that.

Heart of Madness (Lv. 89 Raid Boss) has been slain. 50,000 XP gained (500,000 XP distributed across 7,487 people as per their contribution)

The black stain upon the world that was the last of the Heart’s vital fluids suddenly began to swirl around the place where the beast had met its end, slowly compressing and growing paler until all that was left was a piece of parchment covered in spidery writing that looked like it had been torn from an old book. The loot.

Isaac, having been fairly close to “check out” the body, grabbed it and flew over to the MEU carrier that had become the meeting point, being the vessel with the biggest meeting rooms.

As he flew, he looked over his gains from the battle. Many [Skills] had gained Levels, but both his training and leadership [Skills] had grown by leaps and bounds.

Knightly Leader (legendary, Level XX)

After countless fights where the user has used this Skill to lead a disparate collection of people to victory and empower them with new training, it has evolved to vastly empower the user’s ability to turn a collection of random individuals into a solid group.

Anyone who becomes a member of your party can now be taught directly using Legacy of a True Warrior, without requiring physical proximity, and will gain basic combat and cooperation tactics should they not already have them.

In addition, you gain an innate understanding of the dynamics of the people you lead, where the cracks in the group lie, and where your current subordinates are lacking. It will also provide hints as to how these flaws can be compensated for.

And that was an Evolution worthy of such a fight. The power to instantly turn even a group of random people of the street into half-decent fighters, if he had to.

However, the other [Skill] Evolution was so awesome that it made him forget all about the previous one.

Legacy of a True Warrior (legendary, Level XX)

After countless fights where the user has turned a disparate collection of individuals into capable warriors, forging them into warriors capable of slaying Demon Lords and even Dragons, this Skill has evolved to create an army of legends.

Any individual who walks the same path as the Heir and works with them to achieve their end goals will passively be taught the Skills that Legacy of a True Warrior can grant and these Skills will rapidly level (up to the Heir’s Level in the specific Skill) as long as they continue to support the Heir in their endeavors.

Sure, the ability to make temporary allies useful no matter where they started from was great, but the ability to constantly passively empower all of the people he surrounded himself with … incomparably powerful.

And now, he had a high he could try and ride all the way through what was sure to be an absolute nightmare of a meeting.