Apocalypse Redux

Chapter 251: Lunch Date

Arthur was waiting for Isaac on the roof of the great hall, legs dangling over the side. Surrounding him were multiple devices projecting an anti-eavesdropping field.

“So, I’ve heard that Brussels got a bit crazy,” Arthur called out, “I heard it got crashed by that Monkey King of yours.”

“He’s not mine,” Isaac shook his head, “Inviting him wasn’t my idea, and one of these days, I’m going to kick the ass off the German Foreign Minister until he publicly takes full credit for that.”

“Didn’t he already do that?”

“I’m going to make him shout it off the rooftops until every last hillbilly has heard it,” Isaac grumbled.

“Do you need any help with that?” Arthur asked, and unfortunately, Isaac wasn’t entirely sure if he was joking.

“No thank you,” Isaac told him as he passed over one of the rings.

“Wait, aren’t you supposed to get on your knees before you do that?” Arthur asked with a stupidly wide grin, “And you do know that Elena is going to murder us both if she finds out, right?”

Isaac groaned as he sat down next to his friend, “Seriously?”

“Oh yes,” Arthur’s grin somehow grew even wider at that, “All that sneaking around, one would almost think you had something to hide. A torrid affair, maybe my best friend is even the other wo-”

Arthur promptly shut up when Isaac pushed him off the rooftop. He might be able to survive a fall even at terminal velocity, but getting pushed off a four-story building was still a shock to the senses, especially when it came as a complete surprise.

Once he’d made his way back up, he was greeted by a smug-looking Isaac.

“Let me guess, Elena found out you know and before you could say anything, she threatened to do unspeakable things to you if you teased her. And now you’re trying to get off all the jokes on me before I follow her lead?”

“Eh, pretty much,” Arthur shrugged, “By the way, next time you push me off the roof, please aim for the street. If those bushes get broken one more time, the gardener … I don’t know exactly what he’ll do, but it won’t be pleasant.”

“Let me guess, those rose bushes have to be regrown every other week?” Isaac asked, knowing it was probably a lot more frequent. People with superpowers in a space where the buildings and even potential bystanders could survive anything short of an artillery shell to the face at the bare minimum tended to get a little reckless.

Arthur confirmed that assumption immediately afterwards.

“You know, there are some more durable rose strains in our greenhouses at the university,” Isaac offered.

“No changing the subject, now,” Arthur chided gently, “You and Elena, what’s going on there?”

“I like her, she likes me, we date, and we don’t have the time to go any further because of the whole global situation,” Isaac told him.

“So it’s serious?” Arthur asked.

“I wouldn’t be spending this much time with her if it wasn’t.”

“Do I need to give you the shovel speech?” Arthur followed up on his earlier question.

“Are you sure you could win?”

“If you ever hurt Elena, you’re only walking away from her in pieces. Yes, I could win,” Arthur said confidently.

“Fair point,” Isaac shrugged, “So, intrusive questions and potential relationship troubles aside, how are things? The troops, the politics, everything?”

“Troops are great, politics are a pain in the ass,” Arthur sighed, “Camelot has three of Enland’s seven S-Rankers. The people in power knew we were strong, but when official power designations became a thing, that kind of distribution started to worry them.”

“If it ever gets too bad, you might want to move,” Isaac suggested “Anyone on the Round Table will be able to get you a good deal in their home country.”

“It hasn’t gotten that bad just yet,” Arthur sighed again, then suddenly sat up straight again and stared right at Isaac, “Actually, I had an idea.”

“About?” Isaac asked.

“You know how, a while ago, you were complaining about how most people didn’t really fear [Raid Bosses] as much as they should because they didn’t have a good impression of what they could do?”

“Yeah?” Isaac said, not sure where this was going.

Part of the problem with [Raid Bosses] was that there was very little footage of them being a threat. The Demon Lord of Seoul had been very much in the focus of the situation, caught on video and everything, but it was the only one.

Any [Raid Boss] that was vaporized in a nuclear fireball tended to be something of a footnote, paradoxically. All the damage would have been caused by the nuke, with anything caused by the monster having been erased.

And the monsters that were successfully summoned in arenas and the like tended to get thoroughly trashed in a way that made them seem weak. In fact, releasing those videos would probably have been a problem because that would make them seem weak.

In many ways, the human brain was a highly intelligent organ, holding a pattern-recognition power that beat out the most advanced post-[System] AIs, capable of deciphering languages from nothing but context clues, inventing every technological advancement since the dawn of man, and more besides.

But in many ways, it was also a particularly stupid organ, more malleable to external influences than one might think. Something that showed, for example, in how people internalized bigotry even when said bigotry was aimed at themselves.

And as the old proverb went, a picture spoke a thousand words. You could tell people a million times how powerful [Raid Bosses] were, but in the end, if you showed people videos of the monsters getting absolutely trashed, people would believe the videos.

“See, there’s this crew of reality show pricks who’ve been bugging me for a while about wanting me to fight monsters on camera, and I was wondering, why not use your pocket space for that?” Arthur suggested, “No one can die inside, so it’s mostly safe, and as long as the group you send in to fight isn’t comprised of S-Rankers, it should be a bloodbath.”

“Hm, it’d get canceled in seconds, but that might be enough,” Isaac thought, pulling out his phone, “What was the name of that company?”

“Spectacular Productions,” Arthur told him.

“Ah, here they are,” Isaac said, “They were actually asking me about exactly that.”

“You don’t check your emails?” Arthur asked.

“I do, but I get too many to look too deeply at any single one,” Isaac said, “So, I’ll take a look at that production company, that was an excellent suggestion, but I do have other engagements.”

“Oh so …”

“Make a stupid joke and your gardener will be the least of your worries,” Isaac responded in a faux chipper tone as he jumped off the rooftop, nudging Arthur off the ledge on the way down.

From there, he made his way to Camelot’s huge, perfectly circular, lake. It belonged to Elena, in more ways than one.

As an Asrai, a water fairy, her water magic was massively boosted, but part of that boost stemmed from the fact that she was bonded to a body of water. Specifically, this place.

Of course, this place was important and no one was allowed to use it for bathing and the like, so he couldn’t just hop in and expect people to not take notice. Instead, he phased into the ground nearby and walked in from the side.

The lake was deep, over two hundred meters at the deepest point, but far darker than it should have been even this far down. In the regular world, water this dark would only be found a few thousand meters below the surface.

In fact, light was so sparse that even Isaac had a little trouble seeing. But he didn’t bring any light into this place, it was meant to be far from anything resembling normal lighting. Especially fire and sunlight. This was a place completely divorced from the rest of the world, completely cut off on a conceptual level. It should have merely been water that separated him from the world above, but as far as the universe at large was considered, this might as well have been a separate dimension. And while he could survive the pressure of being thousands of meters below the waves, if he hadn’t been invited here, even his current depth would have killed him.

Setting up the dinner table was a weird experience, as it was his first time doing this underwater, but he managed it eventually. A weighted table and chairs that wouldn’t float away, enchanted cups that prevented the liquid inside from mixing with anything else while allowing people to drink from them, and cutlery that repelled water enough to be properly used.

And lastly, he’d had to find food that wouldn’t fall apart underwater and taste good even when wet. That had been tricky, and in the end, he’d settled for a charcuterie board to go with the wine, and some Jell-O for dessert. It wasn’t exactly the on par with what they usually ate, but hopefully, setting things up underwater would make up for it.

For a long few minutes, he waited, half assuming that he’d misread the time, or that she’d gotten held up somewhere. He was even tempted to head out of the water for a moment to check his phone.

But then, light began to shine in the darkest depths, rapidly descending through the water. As it drew closer, the source of the illumination became clear, a pair of wings that resembled those of a Monarch Butterfly, though it was silver and turquoise rather than orange and black, shining with the light of a full moon.

This was only the second time Isaac had ever seen Elena’s wings, she usually kept them hidden as they were somewhat vulnerable and insanely attention-drawing. She’d told him that she preferred to shine through competence instead of, you know, literally shining.

As she saw what he’d set up, her face lit up, metaphorically this time.

“Aw, that’s beautiful, thank you,” she said before giving him a brief kiss, “But you didn’t have to go through all that trouble.”

“You invited me into your home, something romantic was the least I could do,” Isaac replied, hoping his grin wasn’t as dopey as it felt. Speaking through water made his voice sound weird, though long practice had made it possible for him to at least be understood.

“I meant the table,” Elena chuckled, “That looked like it was tough to get down there.”

“I think a picnic blanket might have been difficult to properly weigh down,” Isaac suggested as passed her the first goblet of wine.

“A picnic at the bottom of a lake would be nice, wouldn’t it?” she asked, grinning as she went in for another kiss.

Around them, the lake floor came to life, her own personal illumination being transferred to the lakebed as a whole, revealing a beautiful garden of underwater plants that had only existed as indistinct shadows before. Sand and silt shifted underfoot, rapidly transforming into a large blanket/mattress which was soon covered in comfortable-looking moss. Well, they were underwater, it couldn’t be moss, but Isaac couldn’t really tell the difference.

“I … I didn’t know you could do that,” Isaac said after a long moment.

Elena grinned as she gently bopped him on the nose, “You’re cute when you’re surprised.”

And that was the last thing anyone saw or heard of either of them for a few hours.