Apocalypse Redux

Chapter 232: Everything is fine … Mostly

Among the many, many, things the [System] had brought with it, food was one of the last things people would think of. And really, it didn’t get that crazy for the most part.

Sure, Kraken calamari was fancy, but it wasn’t that much better than regular squid.

However, there was a handful of extremely special dishes that could grant permanent boons. The Lindwyrm, the dragon-serpent of venom and death, could be cooked to grant the eater a single [Skill]. The Salmon of Wisdom, meanwhile, could boost one’s mana regeneration.

Isaac had, of course, already eaten them, he wasn’t someone to give up on such an advantage. But now, he’d gotten his hands on enough surplus ingredients to cook a meal for his family as well.

Thank god his sisters weren’t a few years older, or they’d not have gotten to eat for hours, not until all the various Instagram pictures had been taken. It was a little silly to be complaining about “today’s youth” as someone barely out of their teenage years, but, well, time travel.

So no picture madness, just a couple of overly excited pre-teens who’d just been fed “dragon” steaks and salmon sushi that seemed to glow with an inner light.

Just feeding people magical food before they unlocked their [Class] wasn’t going to result in an outstanding starter [Class] right from the outset, but in combination with proper training and support in general, it should give them the best possible start in life.

As for making sure that magical food was even safe for children, and anyone else who hadn’t yet gained their [System], that wasn’t something Isaac had checked himself.

In the other timeline, some researcher’s kids had eaten the food after explicitly being told not to and been totally fine, even in the long term.

Of course, people had immediately cried “human experiment”, accusing the researcher of orchestrating the situation, but she’d willingly submitted herself to truth-telling spells.

And, well, she’d ended up proving the old adage about how the fastest way to get something done was to tell your kids not to do it.

Long story short, the various enhancements would lie dormant until the [System] went active, and while the benefits weren’t as great as one might think, there was no reason not to strengthen them as much as possible.

So, dinner took a while, between the overly-excited kids and his parents examining the boons granted by the food, but it was fun. And, of course, tasty. Christmas shopping was done, there was no immediate issue to deal with, just the usual array of systemic problems. Playing Whack-a-Mole with those could be done alongside the usual family activities.

“Tomorrow’s Christmas!” Tanja yelled as she ran through the hallway the second she was allowed to get up from the table, all but bouncing off the walls.

“Yeah, and Santa can still take away gifts if you destroy the house.” Viktoria said, causing her sister to stick her tongue out “Santa’s not real, we both know that. Or are you still a baby?”

And that was the end of peace in the house for a good long while. Somehow, their mother was able to perfectly raise other people’s kids in her profession as a kindergarten teacher, but her twins … calling them the living reincarnations of chaos was an apt way to describe them. No amount of stellar parenting would make them into perfect little angels.

***

Christmas was … a thing. A very important thing, one that was meant to bring joy to all, and so on, and so forth, one slowly transformed into an occasion to force the whole family together, into a small area, where fights would inevitably break out while rampant consumerism sucked one’s wallet dry.

Isaac wasn’t trying to be a Grinch, he really wasn’t, but the situation wasn’t making it easy.

The Winter Event had gone well and all, he’d gotten the Christmas shopping done, and now, he was back in his childhood home, but he wasn’t feeling happy.

Sure, his family was great, but he could hear everything within several city blocks and the situation was overall heavily stressed. Isaac himself, well, he wasn’t exactly a paragon of relaxation either. He’d built the same snow castle he had last year, but unlike then, he didn’t stick around to supervise.

He was busy, and there was no way around work without also risking something going horribly wrong. And the chances of an incident taking place weren’t as small as one might think.

Christmas was when everyone was all in one place together, and tensions could easily boil over. Throw in the fact that, well, Christmas was bloody expensive, especially in a time of economic upheaval … in Isaac’s mind, it wasn’t a question of if something would go wrong, but when.

After all, when proving yourself was as simple as drawing a few squiggles in the snow, tossing in random household objects, and using a little mana, that seemed like an attractive option after getting yelled at for not bringing in enough cash.

Most people were smart enough not to behave like complete morons, but most people weren’t the issue, the minority of idiots was.

The [System’s] three-year mark was rapidly approaching, the time when shit had truly hit the fan in the other timeline, economy-wise.

Isaac had been working on that in the background from the very start, but if “fixing the economy” were easy, ninety percent of politicians, as well as most lawyers, and accountants, would have been out of a job.

The most important thing was to ensure that everyone had something to eat, clothing to wear, and a roof over their head.

Plans for living off the [System] did exist, an endless number of them, they’d existed for almost as long as the [System] itself. Isaac himself had written a couple, intended for people who lived in places without the infrastructure to reliably provide clean water and sufficient food.

What monsters were edible, which ones to eat how often for balanced nutrition, etc.

In addition, it also contained quite a few dire threats that your average citizen would not be aware existed. How many people knew that drinking pure water could kill you because it drained your body of several trace elements via osmosis?

Adults with a Fortitude above one hundred could easily survive drinking water elementals, their very cells clamping down and preventing the essential minerals from being sucked out, but children and less durable grown-ups couldn’t. That was why you needed to add certain trace elements and needed to know where to get those trace elements, as well as how much of them should be used.

Meanwhile, a way for every adult to have access to functionally free electricity had been “invented” by Karl, soon to be unveiled.

But living off the [System] was merely surviving, without most of the comforts that modern humans were used to.

In an ideal world, this was where something like universal basic income would have been used, in a situation where no one could argue that those unemployed were simply lazy because the jobs, quite literally, did not exist, but that was unlikely to happen in Germany. And even if it did, there were plenty of nations on planet Earth where it would never fly. Bloody politics.

A snowball thudded against his window, jerking him out of his musings.

Tanja had thrown that. Viktoria was starting to mellow out, a bit at least, but so far, it seemed that one of his sisters was determined to remain a little hell-raiser. And as the responsible elder brother, he couldn’t let such a thing happen, now could he?

Isaac flung himself through the wall of the house and landed on the street outside, making sure to hit an ice patch to send himself careening into the mass of snow in a seemingly uncontrolled manner.

By the time he came to a stop, he was lying on his back, icy water already soaking into his clothes as he stared up at Tanja. She chuckled … and promptly dumped an extra helping of snow into his face.

Oh, that did it!

Isaac surged to his feet as his sister ran, shrieking and laughing as he chased after her at a speed so slow it felt like he was moving through molasses. Snowball after snowball flew through the air, accurate but slow enough to give her time to dodge, which she did most of the time.

Of course, being the only adult in the winter wonderland actively chasing a little kid made him a target, and he got pelted with snow from every direction.

By the time Isaac went back inside ten minutes later, he was soaking wet, but happy. He headed into the bathroom to use his fire to dry off and finally ended up back in his room.

The work never stopped, especially now. Isaac had made every preparation he could when he could, but that wouldn’t be enough. There were some general plans he could make, which could be made to work irrespective of the situation, but much of what he did would have to be tailored to the circumstances at hand.

It wasn’t like there was some kind of perfect solution he could import from the other timeline, because this was a part of what had broken that world.

Of course, trying to fix everything himself was possible. The “trying” part, that was, to run himself ragged taking down the biggest threats while everyone else grew stronger until eventually he’d fall short and he’d have to just hope it had been enough.

Another snowball smacked into the window and Isaac sighed, heaving himself out of his chair while he closed his laptop.

This should be a time for happiness, for him to enjoy being with the family he’d once lost … except at the same time, he was listening to everyone else in the city, and so many of them were arguing, fighting. This was all sounding like the end of the world as he knew it was nigh. Again.

He knew that wasn’t the case, the issues were merely being exaggerated by everyone being cramped together in one place, but it still sounded awful.

And yes, reducing the power of his hearing down to near-original levels would have been an option, but that would just have driven even more up the wall. Hearing awful stuff was bad, being functionally deaf was a million times worse.

He chased Tanja around the snow piles once again, until it was time for the gift-giving. Just like always, the adults got the kinds of basic things that people wanted to get but weren’t quite willing to pay the money to do so. The kids, meanwhile, got a whole bunch of toys.

Isaac also handed out a few more protective amulets, on top of the ones that he’d already given his family.

Considering how little sleep everyone needed, the “party” went on until late in the night, and it was a lot of fun. In the end, the fairy tale ended, and Isaac had to go back to work.

The situation might be looking grim, but it wasn’t without ways to improve, and a hell of a lot better than it should have been.