Apocalypse Redux

Chapter 261: Interlude Death and the General

Illusionists were officially on the top of his shitlist, no two ways about it.

His [Banish the Fog of War] removed that mess from everywhere within a hundred meters of him, but Ardouin could only deploy it at a distance five times a day and he had to save at least one of those charges to drop on the illusionist’s head when they actually found the fucker. And a second held back in case he misidentified the location would be practically a necessity.

No one could do anything in this absolute putain situation because any enemy they identified might just be an illusion tossed over a civilian. Seven innocents had died before he’d even arrived on the battlefield.

“It wasn’t this bad before, honest.”

Ardouin ignored the policeman who’d told him about the situation. He did believe the man, but that information wasn’t particularly helpful at the moment. The illusions either grew stronger over time, worked better when their target wasn’t familiar with the area in question, maybe both, or something else entirely. Vital information for the next encounter, but it wouldn’t help much in this one.

His [Integrated Radio] crackled to life, the [Skill] feeding information straight into his mind, “This is Thrud, I’m overhead with a complete loadout of air-to-ground munitions.”

At least the foreign reinforcements were all military so far. The German’s storm-wielding fighter pilot, and Greece’s [One Woman Phalanx]. And two more of France’s S-Rankers were in the mess with him.

Five of the strongest people in the world in one place, six if you counted Dr. Loup, and the non-combattant was the only one who’d actually managed to get anywhere.

Someone burst out of the illusionary fog behind him, flashing across the intervening distance at superhuman speed, only to suddenly trip. The figure looked confused for a second, but before they could do anything, coils of razor wire surged from the ground, wrapped them up, and then sank back into the ground, tearing the attack to shreds in the process.

[Instant Fortification] was meant to generate a single defensible structure, but [Spell Conversion] allowed Ardouin to treat many of his [Skills] as spells, letting him pull off such tricks as only using a tiny portion of their power in several small increments.

That moment of his dealing with an enemy directly cost him, though. While he was distracted, a dozen attacks in the illusionary mess went unpunished without him to drop a [Pinpoint Barrage] on the heads of the attackers.

“Someone find me that [Illusionist],” he growled as he slowly walked towards Dr. Loup’s last known position. If he could at least confirm the death of the living bioweapon by dispelling all illusions with his very presence, they could remove some redundant precautions.

***

Gods fucking damnit, Jim. What the hell did you do?

Joseph had seen a whole lot of bad situations since the start of the [System]. But that was to be expected, considering they were all human. Humans could be incredibly stupid, and that problem only grew worse the more of them were in one spot.

Even his people died to powerful monsters occasionally. Hell, Jim was the third Aspirant for Conquest, and there was a reason there were so many people waiting at the peak of the third Evolution, ready to evolve the instant the Aspirant of their chosen horseman died.

Even he, [Aspirant for the Mantle of Death], had half a dozen elites waiting in the wings, ready to step up to the plate if the unthinkable happened.

During the process, they’d also gone pretty far in figuring out what the requirements for those [Classes] were.

They were fairly certain that wanting to destroy the world was a requirement, but that wasn’t exactly easy to check. It wasn’t like they could put out an ad in the papers asking who’d been offered the power to destroy the world.

That aside, they’d discovered that the Mantle of War would go to candidates capable of great feats of battlefield control, Famine preferred those capable of inflicting significant debuffs and Pestilence seemed to only want plague mages, though there had to be more to that. All of the others had some kind of concept behind them, even Death seemed to only need a generic “combat power and leadership” powerset. Why was that one so hyper-focused on that kind of powerset?

But the real problem was that Jim had somehow managed to get his ass kicked by a medic of all people.

The man was a meathead, dumb as a brick, but he was capable of obliterating an army by sneezing. Literally. One “achoo” and the bodies would hit the floor.

In hindsight, he should have been deployed outside of Europe, away from not just the world’s best doctor, but also Isaac fucking Thoma, who’d somehow skewered Jim’s predecessor.

And now they had to rescue both Pestilence and Utgardloki.

Seriously, how the hell had things gotten this screwed up? The trick was simple, take fishermen from developing countries, power level them, and just require them to fish up all of a specific species to repay their “benefactors”. Store the eels in a warehouse for a bit until they could be portaled to their destination because the buggers couldn’t be put in a storage space, and done.

What had those two morons been doing?

It certainly wasn’t helping that Jim was screaming for help from everyone who would listen. Joseph was coming to save him, that should be enough.

But no, War, Fox, Surtr, and Kronos were all coming. Absolute overkill.

Running out of the coffee shop he normally did his work in had been the work of seconds, getting an available portal user to get him to one of their portal hubs had barely taken longer, and now, they were just waiting on the guy who’d actually been to Lorient to show his face. Joseph didn’t want to risk getting stuck outside of a perimeter or be engaged while he closed the distance on foot if he was dropped off a hundred kilometers away.

Looking breathless and panicked, the mage in question finally arrived, and looking into their [Room of Conspiracies], he could tell that Jim was still alive. Just in time.

***

“Merde,” Ardouin swore as he barely managed to use his [Gates of Hell] to prevent a particularly nasty case of friendly fire by summoning the projectiles to his location and firing them at the ground.

The situation was rapidly becoming untenable. Things were getting to the point where even he nearly unleashed an artillery barrage onto a residential building. He couldn’t work through this absolute clusterfuck of smoke and mirrors.

This, this right here, this was the putain de problème. One man was responsible for this entire mess, and no one could touch him. It wasn’t a matter of legality, the issue wasn’t his foe’s distance or anonymity. Just raw power. Power no one should have. The world had gone insane and now, it seemed like it was determined to drive him just as mad.

Suddenly, several portals flashed open nearby. Those couldn’t be his reinforcements, could they? Those would arrive at the staging area. And the [Skill] he had to counter this did have friendly fire protections.

He spread his arms wide, arms facing forward, as magic runes flashed into existence around him. And then he declared “[Sunder Supply Lines]”

He hate, hate, hated the pageantry of it all, acting like some show pony or wannabe superhero weeb idiot. But some of his truly magical [Skills] had a ritual component and he hoped anyone who decided to comment on his actions liked digging latrines with their teeth.

The portals snapped shut, all except for the one he sensed the target of his [Head of the Snake] behind. A single snapped order, a simple application of [Blurring March] later, and he and his headquarters platoon stood in front of the enemy leader. Trapped on the other side of the portal jammed open by another of his [Skills].

One by one, the [Gates of Hell] irised open around Ardouin, ready to unleash damnation.

***

One moment, everything had been fine. The portal was open, Jim was just a couple of hundred meters away and they could kick the ass of that damn sawbones together. It didn’t matter how powerful the people out there were, they couldn’t possibly be ready for him.

And then, a single phrase seemed to reverberate in the very fabric of reality itself.

“[Sunder Supply Lines]”

Next to Joseph, the portal mage collapsed, eyes bloodshot, fluid running from his ears and nose, very, very dead. But the portal was still there. It should have collapsed when its user died, so why hadn’t it?

He reached out, trying to pass through, but it was as if he’d touched a solid wall. And then, an entire group of soldiers appeared out of nowhere, taking up position in front of the gash in space, leveling their guns at him. But the biggest threat seemed to be the guy in charge. Dozens of small portals, the size of dinner plates at most, flashed open around him, each having some kind of soldier or heavy weapon on the other side, though Joseph couldn’t see much beyond their muzzles.

Oh, fu- …

He activated [Haunt of the Reaper] almost instinctively, transforming into a spectral form that was far harder to damage than standard phasing abilities while simultaneously emanating necrotic energies that would kill anyone who got too close in short order.

It wasn’t enough. The projectiles flew through the portal that had apparently become one-way when that asshole had done what he did and tore through his phased form. It wasn’t enough to kill, but by the time Joseph managed to get out of the portal’s line of sight, he knew he was going to be bleeding like a stuck pig the instant he transformed back.

And then a pair of air-to-air missiles were tossed through the opening, triggering their engines the instant they were through and shooting right for him. One died to his war scythe, which became solid only for the nanosecond of the impact, the detonation mechanism destroyed so thoroughly that it didn’t go off, but the second blew as it passed through his intangible leg.

The sheer shock of the situation nearly caused him to drop the [Skill], but he managed to sustain it until he was well clear of the portal.

But when he did cut off the flow of mana, he realized he was in worse shape than he ever could have imagined. Internal bleeding in most of his organs, his left leg was basically a skin sack of blood and bone fragments, and if it hadn’t been for [A Mind that Surpasses Death], he’d probably have taken brain damage too. Just how much mana had been stuffed into that attack?

***

“Zut,” Ardouin swore mildly as he didn’t get a kill notification. That man might have been powerful, and him still being on the board overall was a problem, but for now, he was out of the fight.

Now that that was out of the way, they had to go back to wandering the battlefield, trying to find that damn illusionist. He shouldn’t even be on the damn battlefield, that wasn’t a general’s job. He should be on the back lines, taking care of the big picture. But no, this fucking world didn’t support logic, sanity, or common sense. Or foster any of those things in its inhabitants.

“Hey guys, do you need some help?”

Oh God no, please let that be an illusion!

Ardouin sent a silent prayer toward the heavens as a horrifyingly familiar voice reached his ears. Of the caste of lunatics who felt themselves beyond normal laws and rules of common courtesy, the Monkey King was the worst.

But no, reality refused to budge. Eyes glowing a deep red, the monkey man fell from the sky.

“Yo, gramps, you’re having a problem with the illusions, right?”

Gramps, seriously? That … that wasn’t the point here.

“Yes,” Ardouin said and added the Monkey King to the army’s party. But before the connection had even stabilized, he was off. The fog of illusion vanished a moment later. Perfe- … oh no.

The Monkey King had stood amidst the rubble of a warehouse, one foot planted on the corpse of a truly massive man, but then he’d gotten blasted hard enough to be flung into the ocean. Not good.

Not to mention that things had gotten a lot worse while he’d been unable to get clear information on what was going on. The illusions hadn’t fucked with the information feeds he got from his troops directly, but the information they got could be manipulated, and not all reinforcements had been added to his party yet.

Party. That ridiculous name alone was enough to make his blood boil. But he could deal with it for the power it provided.

At least four enemies with Levels in the mid-130s if not 140s had arrived and were clashing with his reinforcements.

He quickly took control of the situation, using the soldiers already in his party to add those they came into contact with, but his plans weren’t going anywhere.

Sure, he’d started applying tactics, but then the Monkey King had emerged from the ocean with all the fury of a cat that had accidentally been hit with the garden hose.

The first enemy he’d clashed with had been a sound mage, who’d swiftly retreated until he’d managed to disintegrate the ground into quicksand and dump the monkey in. It didn’t stick, obviously, but no hurricane or tornado could match the havoc wreaked by an enraged primate with a size- and weight-shifting staff.

If a primordial force of nature had been unleashed in the middle of Lorient, it could hardly have been more destructive. Buildings shattered under almighty swings, formations scattered, and while there were no friendly-fire incidents, that almost made it worse. That foutou monkey was aware of his actions, he was just choosing to ignore everyone else. He was everywhere, almost always in the way, both physically blocking shots and preventing them from attacking for fear of a friendly fire incidents. Well, that, or Ardouin’s soldiers were afraid of drawing his ire by accidentally shooting him.

“Putain, il vas tout foutre en l’air!” Ardouin swore. No real tactics could be implemented with that fucker on the battlefield. If he’d just pick a target and stick to it, maybe that could be worked around, but with how he was moving, no, that wasn’t going to fly.

In the distance, a blast of sound shook the world, dust plumes rising into the world. Five seconds later, the initial attack was followed with a massive detonation, black flames rising into the sky like volcanic eruptions.

Even with [Sunder Supply Lines] having killed any enemy portal mages trying to portal in and preventing new portals from forming, it was still possible for enemies to close in on foot. And even just the people currently here were reducing Lorient to a scene straight out of hell.