Apocalypse Redux

Chapter 219: Digging up the Past

Two months. Two bloody months of standing vigil over the city of nightmares, just waiting for shit to hit the fan, again. Things had been quiet on the combat front, but everything else had been pretty crappy.

Taking the city had been easy enough with how the cultists had all been drained of mana after summoning the [Raid Bosses] and practically helpless, but that had been the only thing that had gone well.

Everything that followed after, that, had been unpleasant in the extreme.

First, there’d been the arguing about who owned the city, being rehashed now that proper representatives from the various countries involved in the mess arrived. The US Marine Corps was the biggest military contingent, and the one who’d been there the longest, but everyone wanted the city, risk of spontaneous brain melting be damned.

Any nation with a citizen present during the affair used that as a basis for a claim.

Isaac had even heard about a couple where the “citizen” in question no longer had citizenship as they’d emigrated to another nation. But that was no reason to not act as though that extremely tenuous claim made their former home a shoo-in as caretaker of the cursed city.

Secondly, there’d been incessant discussions about the city’s nature, with most of the participants never even having seen the damn place. Listening to that lot, you’d either think that being on the same hemisphere as R’lyeh was going to kill you in short order, or that all claims of danger were vastly overblown and that exploring that place wasn’t going to be any issue at all.

Thirdly, there’d been their prisoners and all the depressing things they’d found out about these poor saps. Interrogations had gained them very little useful information. They didn’t even remember why they’d started doing what they did, just that it seemed like a good idea at the time. Of course, it was entirely possible that both their goal and method had slowly fallen into darkness and the result had been a far cry from what they’d been going for initially.

And fourthly, he’d gotten something of a reputation. Müller had ended up talking to a different ship’s psychiatrist, another one with a confidentiality [Skill], who’d then ended up, in turn, talking to a third one, and so on, until eventually, someone had noticed that six different psychologists had ended up badly rattled by either talking to Isaac directly or being visited by someone who he’d been honest with. At least the rumors were connecting that to the city, rather than some secret centered on Isaac himself, but it still wasn’t helping the matter.

With the assumption of him having seen something truly insane came the assumption that he’d lost at least some of his marbles.

Before, him proposing something that sounded dangerous had been met with caution and his proposed plans had been carefully analyzed. But nowadays, people’s first assumption seemed to be that he’d gotten reckless after visiting the worst city on Earth.

The situation would hopefully calm down in time when it became apparent that he’d continue his nigh-perfect streak of summoning monsters and killing them with no deaths and very little destruction of property, but right now, it was getting on his last nerve.

Or it would have, except that he was feeling a lot better. Talking to a professional was helping, though finding another psychiatrist capable of comprehending the insanity that was Isaac’s past without having to be committed would be a pain in the ass. It wasn’t like he could pop down to Antarctica twice a week to talk to Müller.

The Spring Event had also happened during this time, but that had gone decently well. The fact that Events repeated meant that there was a lot less pressure to fight the strongest monsters right the hell now, so while casualties and property damage still spiked during Events, it was hardly cataclysmic.

However, it hadn’t been completely bad. A free-floating summoning area had been created nearby via frost magic, a series of tied-together, never-melting, ice floes working to support anything up to Tier 7, as long as fire wasn’t involved.

Isaac had used that to train both himself and others, working to ensure that when a proper garrison for this place was finally established, it would be in a position to deal with anything.

Secondly, while the prisoners had been mostly useless, the sparse documentation that had been found down in the city had yielded quite a bit of information, especially when combined with the rest of his research.

“What a fucking mess,” Isaac muttered as he withdrew his [Aura] from the waterlogged journal in the evidence bag.

It had been informative, but depressing, which was a good way to sum up the last two months in general.

However, the recovered journals did contain something relevant. They didn’t explain everything, but they did contain unaltered records from a time when their writers had still had all their marbles.

Isaac looked down at the summary of the journal he’d written.

The people they’d fought down in the city had been a group of oceanic researchers who’d found the city a few weeks after Initialization and decided to keep it a secret.

Initially, the journals had read like a series of scientific notes, proper documentation of the city’s exploration.

They’d repeatedly visited the city after that, exploring further each time. With each visit, the notes became less and less thorough, slipping into vague assertions along the lines of “the city is beyond human comprehension, but I see the truth”.

Things kept going, devolving further and further into madness.

“The city speaks to me, it finally all makes sense.”

“I can see it all.”

“This is a gift that has to be shared with the world.”

The last coherent thing written down in the journal was the plan for raising the city, but even that was barely understandable.

In essence, the “plan” boiled down to making the city “safe” by installing shielding around it and its nastier aspects,then raising it and inviting people to use it as a neutral zone. Of course, they wouldn’t be the administrators in charge of that, they felt they were above dealing with “unenlightened beings”, but they’d be around.

Eventually, the shielding would slowly be taken down to ease the various visitors into the truth of the matter … who would then accept stuff, instead of freaking out and calling for the city to be bombed to the bedrock?

Isaac waved again yet another message about him having gained XP due to [Incarnation of the Promethean Spirit] partially being a research [Class]. Initially, he’d been getting huge chunks of it, especially when he’d observed the city using the [Blessing of Innovation], but the flow had petered off after he’d gained six Levels, at which point he’d bought his next [Skill] from his fourth Evolution [Class].

Lessons of History (legendary)

Those who don’t study history might be doomed to repeat it, but those who do study history will most likely end up watching someone else repeat it. Sucks, doesn’t it?

History is filled with great examples, both ones to live up to and ones to avoid living down to.

This is a Skill to help turn those lessons into plans of action. It allows the user to uncover things about the past by supporting the discovery of new information based on mere context clues and will then check the veracity of this information.

Once such information about the past is in your hands, the Skill will point to the core lessons to learn from the past and allow these lessons to be communicated clearly and unmistakeably to others.

He’d been buying [Skills] out of the planned order for a while now, but that particular ability had been too useful to pass up right that moment. Not only had it helped him gain enough XP for another five Levels until the flood had completely dried up, but it had also helped get his point across when arguing about how carefully the city should be treated.

But even though he was being rewarded for uncovering information about the city, he still hadn’t gained a clear picture of what it was about. He’d been able to determine it had arrived with the [System], there hadn’t been an eldritch brain melter in the middle of the Pacific gods only knew how long, he’d been able to determine that nothing was living within the city other than microorganisms and it wasn’t about to spit out a horde of nightmares, but beyond that …

R’lyeh was a chunk of rock at the bottom of the ocean, carved into a bunch of funny shapes and it started to melt your brain if you looked at it too closely. And looking at it too closely was the only way it could hurt anyone, but looking was what people could not stop doing.

So many scientists had claimed to have come close to understanding it, the answer being on the tip of their tongue, but never been able to fully make the leap to true understanding.

This phenomenon had been so common that concern over a memetic hazard had arisen and most had fled from the region to continue their research well clear of the hell-city.

Even Isaac had taken a crack at it, once [Blessing of Innovation] had hit Level 10 and gained a new ability. Across several attempts, he’d gained seven more Levels in the [Skill] but failed to grasp the real “secret” behind the city.

Blessing of Innovation (legendary)

A lion has teeth that can shatter bones, claws that rend flesh like tissue paper and the strength to bring down all but the largest of animals in its habitat.

A human has … what exactly? Sweating that allows for long pursuits and bipedal locomotion that allows them to carry stuff in their hands?

Yet it’s man who hunts lions, not the other way around. In fact, Africa’s lions are so badly traumatized that they are terrified of humans and will run from any they see if they can. So why is that the way of the world? Well, as a kindergartener would put it: “lions are stupid”.

The Blessing of Innovation boosts the recipient’s ability to figure out new things, to create new inventions to benefit the world as a whole, to make their mark on civilization itself, for one hour.

(the recipient can be any willing sapient being within 10 meters of the user at the moment of activation or the user themselves)

While active, the recipient may temporarily selectively “forget” certain parts of their knowledge base or randomly remove certain preconceived notions to see their work from different eyes. (All memories and the old mental state will be restored at the end of the Skill’s effect. This can also be done at will and the possibility of restoration cannot be forgotten.)

Furthermore, the recipient may choose to divorce their knowledge from its respective sources, leaving them with nothing but objective fact for the duration of the effect.

Lastly, the user may draw on the knowledge of lesser science and research Classes, borrowing up to three Skills at a time, up to a rarity of rare and up to the second Evolution.

The Blessing of Innovation can be used once per day to start with and gains an additional maximum charge every five Levels in this Skill. Charges refresh at midnight and do carry over for up to a week.

And now, this Skill has gained the capacity to understand truths that man is not meant to know, and as long as Undying Focus is supporting the user during the learning process, this information cannot hurt them.

Another thing this upgrade hadn’t given him was an explanation of the nature of the secret. Was it merely about how the city had gotten there, or a single fact that cleared up every question ever asked about R’lyeh?

Now though, secure in the knowledge that the danger posed by the city was limited, he was leaving. There was a whole world to keep safe and he could not afford to spend all his time on a single city.

But the situation was still grating on him. The situation might have been “handled”, but it was by no means resolved.