Apocalypse Redux

Chapter 236: All Around the World

“Why the hell does it require a twenty-page legal document to give stuff away?” Amy grumbled as she slapped her laptop shut.

“Because whoever invented the concept of bureaucracy was a sadist.” Isaac sighed as he read over the document she’d just sent him. They might have gone a little over the top in making sure this invention would remain safe and publicly available.

“They should have named the word for ‘sadism’ after that guy, not that Marquis.” Amy muttered under her breath.

“Now we’re …” Isaac paused for a moment and dramatically checked his calendar “A quarter of the way done. Next up, someone needs to make sure the meeting in Brussels doesn’t turn into a bloodbath.”

“Yeah, who thought that inviting a whole bunch of S-Rankers into the same place at the same time was a great idea?” Amy asked “[System’s] third anniversary, an auspicious moment, what better time to show unity and demonstrate that we have the power to deal with anything the world has to throw at us, blah, blah, blah. And who has to make sure this doesn’t turn into a big fight?”

“Karl’s insanely busy, Bailey’s making sure he doesn’t get overwhelmed, Patrick’s in Seoul doing research with Professor Kim that’ll either change the world or set off every seismograph in the hemisphere and Raul is back on the moon because someone accidentally killed half the biosphere. Lazy bastards, one and all, leaving us to do all the work.” Isaac listed off “Someone’s gotta do it, though. By the way, I booked the Draconic Abyss Dungeon for once this is done. Would you like to come?”

“God yes,” Amy sighed “I need to blow something up after this mess.”

They worked side by side for another hour or so before Amy slapped her laptop shut once again, leaned back in her chair, and teleported a beer into her hand straight from the fridge.

“Every S-Ranker in Europe. Sixty-eight S-Rankers, all in one spot,” she sighed and took a deep drink of her beer before continuing “At least the Monkey King isn’t coming.”

“Yep.” Isaac agreed “I’d have given it five minutes until utter chaos broke out.”

It had been pretty easy to make him stay put. They’d invited him as a part of the official German group, but he only lived there, he wasn’t a citizen or particularly patriotic about the place he now called “home”. He’d thankfully declined, fully convinced that it had been his own idea.

“That still might happen.” Amy pointed out “We should really drench the entire conference hall in wards and protective spells, but some diva would inevitably throw a hissy fit or decide the whole thing is a trap.”

“Yeah.”

There wasn’t really much more to say. Very few S-Rankers had their head completely screwed on straight. The team was mostly fine, but they hadn’t reached their rank through the crucible of disasters that created most people at that power level.

And then there was Isaac, who was, of course, the paragon of sanity, who dealt with all his baggage the very instant it cropped up. He did not have a problem with workaholism, a tendency towards paranoia, or any other kind of issues, no siree.

Sure, there were a few S-Rankers who’d reached their station through hard work and diligence, fighting a thousand monsters at the same time, soloing [Raid Bosses] and more, but were they really completely sane?

That kind of recklessness was normally a sign that someone was more than a little touched in the head.

“How many unknown S-Rankers are out there?” Amy wondered “There are what, five hundred, in the world right now, but those are just the ones we know about. And if someone as unsubtle as Sun ‘incarnation of impulsivity’ Wukong can hide for years, who knows what’s out there?”

“He lived in China, the government was probably keeping things on the down low,” Isaac suggested.

“So China is hiding some. Russia too, probably, maybe the US.” Amy began to count the countries off on her fingers “But there can’t be that many, right? S-Rankers are usually born from chaos, and a nation somehow managing to hide an S-Ranker amidst that kind of pandemonium … that would be kind of hard, wouldn’t it?”

“If your nation is in such bad shape that an S-Ranker rises to combat it, I doubt anyone would have the time, resources, or presence of mind to keep them hidden.” Isaac agreed “Can you imagine if Germany had tried keeping me a secret after I ‘discovered’ how to use [Aura] properly?”

“No, no, no, imagine they’d tried to deny they had an engineer of Karl’s caliber after we shared the magic generator.” Amy straightened a nonexistent tie and continued in her best “dusty politician” voice “Ahem, I, I … we do not have any kind of genius engineer, even though we just developed something that will revolutionize electricity generation. That … the machine just appeared … no, actually, what machine? There is no generator at all, is there, no one ever created anything new, you’re all imagining anything. What do you mean you heard about the generator? You’re all talking nonsense, people!”

Isaac burst out laughing “Sad thing is, I know at least three heads of state who would try something like that.”

“Obviously.” Amy nodded “It wouldn’t be politics if there weren’t at least one poster child for the Dunning-Krueger effect at the table. Seriously though, how many hidden S-Rankers do you think there are?”

“Maybe another one- or two hundred? Two-fifty at most?” Isaac shrugged “Like you said, some governments might have a few hidden aces, but S-Rankers aren’t quiet. Deliberately creating one means throwing them against [Raid Bosses] or monster hordes, which is hard as fuck to keep quiet. And one rising through adversity usually ends with them in the spotlight.”

“Jason and Fenrir managed it.” Amy pointed out after casting a privacy spell.

“Jason is a [Rogue], you become an S-Ranker in sneaking around by being inconspicuous, and Fenrir lives in the middle of nowhere. He’s usually just mentioned as one of the ‘weirdoes who live in Antarctica’.” Isaac pointed out.

There were plenty of known S-Rankers in most of the world, with the exception of central Africa, the Middle East, China, Russia and India.

The issue in India was obvious, it was too cramped, at least in the cities. Summoning there would inevitably lead to massacres, which was why hunting high Level monsters was right out. Sure, advancing and gaining a legendary [Class] without summoning monsters was possible, but hard. Therefore, there were only a few S-Rankers there, especially when you compared their numbers to the nation’s total population.

Both the Middle East and Central Africa had been in chaos before the [System], with civil unrest and several wars throughout the regions, and people gaining superpowers sure as hell hadn’t helped matters.

Those places were the kinds of crucibles that either created S-Rankers, or killed them before they could reach even a fraction of their true potential.

There were probably some in the mix, but there wasn’t much data available about the combatants, certainly not enough to determine whether someone could be considered an S-Ranker.

The “S” in “S-Ranker” or “S-Tier” didn’t really stand for any one thing in particular, though popular interpretations were that it meant “special”, “super”, or even “sugoi”, which was Japanese for “awesome”.

However, it had picked up a new meaning in recent years, Scalebreaker. Because, well, that was what that Rank was defined as, someone so powerful that the standard means of measuring power didn’t really apply anymore.

The problem? In an active war zone, displaying that kind of power made you a target, and if you were just starting to grow into your abilities, got you killed. The tallest blade of grass is the first to be cut by the scythe and all that.

Then there were Russia, China, and authoritarian governments in general, all of which had the same issue. The only S-Rankers such governments could reasonably create were the ones overthrowing said governments.

“Actually, I was wondering: are we missing anyone?” Amy asked “I mean, you’ve changed a lot. Are there specific, impactful people this timeline has to do without?”

“Hm, a few,” Isaac said as he scratched at his neck “But they might show up eventually, they’ve got a few years. The only ones I know well that we’re never going to get are a couple of France’s best.”

He then launched into an in-depth explanation of the history of other-timeline France. There’d been a small issue in 2024, which had completely blown up into full-on civil unrest in 2026

The situation had come to a head when the [Heir] to the Maid of Orleans, rallying support for the government, had run straight into the [Torch of Revolution], fanning the flames on the other side.

Somehow, that hadn’t sparked a full-on civil war, instead slowly simmering down into an uneasy peace and compromise. In the end, things hadn’t blown up completely and the nation had gained two S-Rankers.

But the original mess hadn’t happened, so the situation hadn’t escalated to the point where the S-Rankers had developed.

Instead, in this timeline, they’d gotten the world’s greatest doctor, the [Heir to Louis Pasteur]. In the other one, he’d been a weirdo doctor who’d decided to symbolically kill disease-related monsters on the original Pasteur’s grave to show “humanity’s victory over sickness”.

However, in this one, he’d kept on working even as the [System] made his job mostly superfluous, heading out with Doctors without Borders and making it his mission to ensure that the people not protected by the [System], namely, children, were protected from disease as well. Advanced vaccinations, touring areas and systematically eradicating certain nasty pathogens … eventually, he’d hit Level 100 through just doing his job and returned to France, where he was now working as a doctor to raise money so he could affect permanent change.

Isaac wasn’t entirely sure what he’d done to affect such drastic change, but he was really happy about it. Hell, he’d even sent the man a jar of the enhanced molten dragon scales so he could protect his head. Healers at a high enough Level could, in fact, recover from decapitation, regenerating their entire body in moments.

“Sounds like he was an interesting man,” Amy said once he was finished “But I was promised a Dungeon to blow stuff up in, so unless we’ve somehow managed to …”

“Yeah, let’s get out of here before someone decides we’re not looking busy enough,” Isaac replied hurriedly and pulled his laptop into his storage space.

Amy waved her hand and opened a portal to somewhere in the middle of Mongolia, they both stepped through and Isaac opened a second one to take them the rest of the way to Seoul, leaving them in the arrival area of the Hunter’s Guild.

They’d probably have to head home within 24 hours to do more work as the piles of paperwork grew into mountains with no one to do it, but for now, they were able to do something else.

One of the greatest Dungeons in the world awaited them, and despite how terrifying an enemy it was, there was no paperwork to be found within.