Apocalypse Redux

Chapter 279: New Area of Responsibility

For playing a part in preventing the World from ending another day, you are awarded 7,538 XP (partial reduction).

Every single day, at twelve pm on the dot, he got a message like that. Based on how well things had gone in this world, he could probably get up to a maximum of 10,000, but he’d never actually reached that point before, his record had been 9,998 with the tagline of (infinitesimal reduction). That had been the day after a particularly disastrous [Raid Boss] summoning in Arizona and basically every form of authority on the planet had been ready to drop an anvil on anyone who so much as put a single toe out of line.

As for what exactly caused these reductions, well, it seemed like anything bad that was also newsworthy counted, be it civil unrest that made the world situation ever so slightly less stable to, well, summonings that went badly enough to be more than a passing remark on the yearly report. The more people were affected, or the greater potential an issue had for spiraling out of control, the more of his daily income stream was confiscated. Yet even without ever reaching the theoretical maximum, he’d get enough XP for an entire fifth Evolution Level in a little less than a year, which was huge in its own right.

But the most important bit was that, in fact, the calculation was made on a day-to-day basis, so in a very real sense, his income report also served as a half-decent method of checking the current “vibe” of the situation, including such things as the number and strength of free monsters running around.

… Which had made it all the more alarming when there were massive reductions without an apparent cause, since something with such a huge impact shouldn’t have been able to be subtle.

Today hadn’t been the first day like that, and it hopefully wouldn’t be the last, but at least this time around, it hadn’t taken days or weeks to find the bugger responsible for the mess.

Unfortunately, this was also the biggest reduction he’d seen to date, which meant that the information he’d gotten had to only be a part of a bigger issue.

For over two years, through Event after Event, including a completely new and unexpected, demon themed, one on June 6th, 2026, regime changes all over the globe, another city-wrecking battle that had cost the cult another five members, albeit bottom-of-the-barrel ones, humanity had somehow not been this close to the edge. But now, there was a real problem facing them.

“What the fuck am I looking at?”

“I’d say it’s a golem,” Isaac answered the United States Space Force Admiral, then turned to the poor NASA techie who’d discovered the monster and was now forced to preside the meeting between high-ranking officers, influential S-Rankers, and famous scientists, “Can you get me the location data for that picture?”

“Name, location and direction of the satellite recording the image, lens and zoom configuration,” Isaac clarified.

It took a mere two seconds for the picture of a dark brown humanoid figure in front of a starfield to be ringed by a series of cryptic numbers and letters that an astronomer would be able to turn into a workable set of coordinates.

Isaac was no astronomer, but he did have the ability to temporarily copy their abilities with [Blessing of Innovation], working out the exact location of the monster in a matter of seconds.

He withdrew an earpiece from his storage, put it in, and walked out of the university conference room while saying, “I’m going to analyze it, I’ll be right back.”

A chorus of confusion met him in response, with several people asking if he was really planning on going out into space.

It was a little irritating how many people still held on to their pre-[System] preconceptions. At Isaac’s Level and with his focus on Perception, he could see pretty damn far as long as there was nothing in the way, and there was very little in outer space that could block his sight. Worst case scenario, there would be some cloud cover preventing him from looking up from the ground, but getting above those wasn’t exactly a challenge.

No, the real issue with analyzing stuff in space was actually finding it because space was fucking ginormous. But that was what he’d gotten the location information for.

[Continent Strider] spat him out in the middle of absolutely nowhere, a practically forgotten corner of Australia, and stared up into a cloudless night, a vast blanket of stars covering the infinite expanse of the night sky. It was a pretty sight, but the sight from Earth, even in isolated areas, had nothing on the majestic image that could be observed when one was out of the atmosphere.

Aaaaaannnnd then there was the monster marring the beauty of the universe, which he found with his eyes after a split second. He had, of course, known what the monster was the instant he’d seen the image, but he still needed an explanation for his knowledge.

“That thing’s definitely Tier 10, going by the Stats. I’d guess it’s The Golem, it’s too small to be the Walking Mountain and has the wrong shape and material to be the Marshland Avatar. Fortitude is through the roof, Strength and Agility are … concerning, Perception is better than expected, but not high, Magic Stats are in the pits. It’s also got some kind of ability that will likely make it hard to restrain using traditional crowd-control methods and I strongly suspect it can absorb earth to regenerate.”

In other words, that thing was immensely strong, fast, literally impossible to restrain, and damn hard to kill when it was on the ground. There was also the small issue of the fact that this thing did not have a core, or any other kind of weak point.

You needed to tear it into tiny little pieces or it would keep putting itself back together indefinitely … sort of. The way it worked was that there was one atom of the monster, utterly identical to every other atom in its body, that served as the core, and the way to kill it was to either remove it from its body, or at the very least, to remove matter from around it until it didn’t have enough left to animate and this somehow destroyed the thing.

In other words, keep hacking off bits, identify which of the pieces keeps moving, attack that one, and keep doing that until you got a kill notification.

Maddening endurance aside, the Golem was a pretty standard monster, all things considered. Three meters tall and hard to kill, but it was the very epitome of the concept “big things come in small packages” that seemed all too common in the tenth Tier. Nine Tiers of constantly escalating size and strength, and suddenly, you had a powerful monster capable of obliterating cities in short order and it was smaller than a car. The worst offender was probably the Primordial Phoenix, which was only the size of an eagle yet had a jumbo-jet-sized flame avatar around it at all times and wielded fire magic capable of melting mountains in short order.

In the case of the monster at hand, its Strength and Agility were somewhere above 800, and its Fortitude at 1,200. Isaac’s current highest Stat was Agility, and it was only at 900, and his second-highest Stat, Magic Regeneration, was only at 850. Between the, well, monstrous, physical abilities and the fact that it was immune to the standard methods of dealing with creatures like that, it could be a serious problem.

“Is there a reason I shouldn’t go up there and kill it?” Isaac asked.

“It’s Tier 10,” someone interjected, Isaac couldn’t tell who via the earpiece.

“And it’s in a place where it can’t maneuver well or access one of its key abilities,” Isaac pointed out, “I’m not going to go full YOLO, if it looks like it’ll be too much for me to handle, I’ll retreat. But if that thing passes through the atmosphere, the impact alone will be a pain, never mind actually fighting it. I know what I can and can’t handle. Does anyone have other objections?”

“Make sure to get some samples.”

That voice, he did know.

“Sure thing, Professor Chandler,” Isaac said and launched himself skywards.

At first, with a jump, then, he reduced his mass to almost nothing, phased to remove air resistance entirely, and unleashed a blast of flame downwards, causing him to rocket skywards.

The real reason he wasn’t too worried was that A. space was damn empty and you could be fairly certain that there was nothing nasty hiding, B. he knew that he could beat a standard The Golem under these circumstances, and C. Isaac’s first real [Skill] from [Challenger of the Apocalypse] hadn’t made so much as a peep.

It had been an incredibly difficult choice between [Final Defiance] and [Aspects of the End].

The former would continuously accumulate mana, to be point of only being full after a hundred thousand years and containing one billion points, which would be at his disposal if, and only if the world was threatened. Outside of that scenario, it did absolutely nothing.

The latter, and its various subskills, was the only personal enhancer in the entire [Class], yet the sheer amount of power it would hold when properly employed and/or upgraded practically eclipsed all of his previous cooldown [Skills] put together. Not to mention that it was insanely flexible. But it didn’t have the sheer “sneeze and obliterate a [Raid Boss]” energy of [Final Defiance].

And these weren’t the kind of [Skills] where the order in which he bought them would cease to matter once he’d bought them both. In this specific set of circumstances, it would, quite literally, matter for the next one hundred thousand years. If he lived that long, at least.

But he’d had plenty of time to think about it, considering he’d had to get another four Levels to unlock the first [Skill].

In the end, he’d gone with [Final Defiance] because, well, non-apocalyptic threats could be dealt with by others if worst came to worst. The sheer amount of power he could put into the attack when needed could simply not be undervalued.

Final Defiance (legendary)

What can one man do against the Apocalypse, one single fragile human against the fury of the very world?

Fighting, and subsequently dying well is probably the only thing that most people would be able to do.

However, the thing is, there are options to bridge even that gap in power.

Cooperation, vast spells on a continental, or even global scale, perhaps even the power of friendship?

Eh, maybe those work, but this Skill is a surefire option. It continuously accumulates mana while inactive, growing in power, until it discharges in a single explosive burst when it is needed most, the moment when the fate of the very world hangs in the balance.

It cannot be activated for any lesser threats, and automatically triggers in the appropriate situation, discharging all accumulated mana as it runs its course. The rate at which the mana is used can be slowed, possibly even stopped, by the user’s will and determination, but twenty-four hours after this Skill triggers, all remaining mana will be lost.

The fuller the pool is, the more slowly it accumulates (halved with every ten percent progress), and the maximum amount of mana in the pool (one billion) would require around a hundred thousand years to reach.

When this Skill is active, it significantly boosts the user’s Stats, regeneration, mana pool, as well as decreases their foes’ defenses and recovery ability (even if you don’t survive, leave them with a few scars to remember you by, why don’t ya?).

Current charge: 206,185/1.000.000.000

Synergy effect: Bladewraith

While under the effect of this Skill, the user’s attacks will gain a devastating additional effect, becoming able to sever limbs in ways that cannot be regenerated until Final Defiance ends, even damage Skills, and hack out Aspects (at a high mana cost).

The simple fact that that [Skill] hadn’t reacted at all meant that the current situation couldn’t be too dire.

Still, it held immense strength even before the synergy effect was applied.

It was unfortunate that the mana charge didn’t carry over once the threat was gone, but Isaac was pretty sure that was a visible “hand of the creator”, a modification made by one of the celestial sides. An obvious nerf meant to ensure the bearer of this [Skill] didn’t become too powerful. And he honestly couldn’t blame them all that much considering that he was pretty sure that injuring a god was within the bounds of his [Class], albeit barely. He was also certain that capability could be found at a fully charged [Final Defiance].

He’d gone ahead and ground out as much XP as possible until, two days ago, he’d managed to unlock the second [Skill] as well, which contained a clue to what [Challenger of the Apocalypse] could do at max.

Aspects of the End (legendary)

The End Times. Armageddon. The Rapture. Judgement Day. Ragnarök. The End of Days … and everything else.

Be it the impact of a gigantic meteor, divine judgment or celestial wars, there are things out there with the ability to destroy worlds. Nothing is safe from such power.

Yet it is power that can be used to prevent such calamity from coming about. Blow up the asteroid, broker peace between divine factions (if your sword isn’t at someone’s throat, they won’t listen), or maybe just poke out the eye of the chaos god about to devour the planet (something that is within the abilities of your Class as long as you play your cards right), if you dare.

And such power is what this Skill can give you. In its base form, it will merely boost you, doubling your physical Stats and quadrupling your Mana Regeneration while active, stacking (additively) with other boosting Skills.

However, this is merely the beginning of what this Skill can achieve. It can be upgraded to achieve specific things, to harness the power of certain world-ending beings.

The ancient bird who is so old it’s seen the universe end three times over, the snake that swallows the sun to bring about eternal darkness, the biblical sea beast, or maybe even the dragon that is unleashed upon the world on the heels of the Four Horsemen. By drawing upon the power of these mighty beings, even telling a dark god where to shove it is not necessarily off the table.

Upon purchase of this Skill, one such aspect will be gained for free (chosen aspect: Speed of Hati), each subsequent aspect must be purchased separately (five Skill points).

This Skill can only be activated for a certain span of time every day, but that time can be distributed across the day however the user wants. This time pool refreshes fully exactly twenty-four hours after the time pool was first used.

Your time pool is calculated as ten seconds per Level in this Skill.

If multiple Aspects of the End are used concurrently, time use is doubled for each one used beyond the original one.

By slaying a monster of the end times, you may gain a lesser version of its power, weaker than one of the various upgrades that can be purchased for Aspects of the End, but still significant. Should the associated ability have already been purchased, the weaker power is not gained. Furthermore, each unique monster of apocalyptic power killed by the user will increase the time pool by 10 seconds.

Time Pool 10/10

Synergy effect: Undying Wraith

The time pool of Aspects of the End can be used to also supercharge Aspects, taking their Skills to new heights. Regeneration that fixes limbs in milliseconds, phasing that allows even mana to pass through without causing damage (within reason), and more can be achieved.

He would be able to poke out the eye of a chaos god, whatever that was. And considering the wording of [Final Defiance], that had to be what it was referring to, right? “Leave scars even if you can’t win”?

Ominous warnings aside, Isaac loved this [Skill]. He’d been so obviously infatuated that Amy had made a version of the “I’ve only had X thing for twelve hours but if anything happened to it I’d kill everyone here and then myself” meme of him hugging a [System] box.

First of all, it stacked with [Chapion of Mankind] and [Form of Horror]. Even for just ten seconds, he’d hold ludicrous power.

And then there was the fact that it wasn’t a one-and-done ability, he could spread out its uses across the entire day, using up only a couple of milliseconds of its time to make a few incredibly quick steps to circle behind an opponent, then drop the [Skill] and still have most of it available.

Really, though, no single facet of this ability would be more valuable than its capacity for growth. Each time he killed a “monster of the end times”, which likely referred to [World Bosses], he’d get a boost to his time pool equal to the gains from a Level-up, and he’d gain a lesser version of the standard [Sub-Skills]. The growth ceiling for this ability was absurd.

In addition, the ability to use multiple [Sub-Skills] concurrently would allow him to go full “god mode”, albeit at a massive increase in cost.

There was so much potential packed up into a single ability and its [Sub-Skills], he would be able to spend so much time figuring out new tricks.

But a much bigger headscratcher than proper use of this [Skill] had been which upgrade to pick.

Aspects of the End

Power of the Behemoth

Wisdom of the Simurgh

Venom of Apothis

Wrath of the Dragon

Sails of the Naglfar

Speed of Hati

The Leviathan’s Sea

Primordial Hell of Ymir

Jaws of Cipactli

Presence of an Outer God

All of them were good, but only some properly synergized with his build. Most of them came directly from a creature that caused the apocalypse, but one of his favorites was related to it in a different way, being an observer.

The Simurgh was, according to some myths at least, an ancient being that had been around for such a long time that it had seen the universe end. Three times over. A manifold existence, made up of thirty birds that, together, became the bird of legend, a mighty beast of splendor large enough to carry off elephants or whales, wise beyond measure, and the ambassador between the Heavens and the Earth.

Isaac’s main knowledge was, and had always been, knowledge, and [Wisdom of the Simurgh] was perfect for doubling down on that.

On the other hand, Isaac already had a ton of knowledge, and he’d had two entire [Classes] dedicated to soft power, and [Speed of Hati] was beyond suitable for doubling down on that.

And he couldn’t forget about the fact that he could also shore up his weaknesses.

[Venom of Apothis] was a nasty as-hell poison capable of injuring even the most powerful enemies.

[Power of the Behemoth] would give him immense strength for as long as the [Skill] was active, the sheer power it could provide capable of crushing buildings with a snap of his fingers and making the ground tremble with a stomp.

[The Leviathan’s Sea], meanwhile summoned a kind of “selectively tangible ocean” while giving him insane, preternatural, swimming and underwater combat skills, which sounded weird but would be so, so useful in the right situations. Either he’d get the full, omni-dimensional mobility of being underwater with the swimming boost while everyone else was stuck on the ground, or everyone else could be bogged down by the weight of the ocean while he was fully unburdened.

Granted, this one was a bit more niche in its application, but still solid.

In the end, he could pick up the other [Sub-Skills] later, and right now, [Speed of Hati] just felt right.

Speed of Hati (Subskill of Aspects of the End)

The moon. It has moved across the sky since time immemorial, eternally chased by a wolf seeking to devour it, never tiring, never slowing, always catching up until the beast devours the celestial body during the end of times.

This is the power of a being that can walk on anything, be it solid ground or the empty void of space, move at speeds that exceed the orbital velocity of celestial bodies, and devour them whole.

While Speed of Hati is active, the bearer of this Skill can walk on anything, gravity’s hold on him is greatly reduced and he has his speed vastly increased.

In addition, merely by unlocking this Skill, he becomes immune to all manner of motion sickness, the negative consequences of moving at high speeds do not affect him and the resistance of the medium he is moving through becomes less of a factor (while this Skill is in its active form, medium resistance is completely nullified).

In essence, it more than tripled his speed and allowed him to treat anything and everything as solid ground

There’d also been a third [Skill] that he’d really wanted to get, known as the [Book of Seven Seals]. A biblical allusion, the scroll that unleashed armageddon as its seals were opened. It was a prophecy [Skill], one that could forewarn him of potential trouble ahead of time, but he’d seen in its description that it was limited in how much it could tell him, and how far ahead of time it would give him that information. Too limited.

The guaranteed power of [Final Defiance] and [Aspects of the End] had been preferable.

As Isaac rocketed through the air, the pale dusk sky became ever more dark, yet at the same time, bit by bit, it gained more and more stars, which became visible as the light pollution from Earth fell away.

[Continent Strider] activated a few seconds after lift-off, but it wouldn’t do much since he was “only” traveling 50,000 kilometers. An insane distance on a planetary surface, but out here, where he could just keep accelerating for basically as long as he had mana, there was no air resistance to slow him down and the pull of Earth’s gravity was already starting to lessen, he could get pretty damn fast.

Isaac was just glad that his earpiece was one of the new ones, which, according to Karl, could “withstand just about any idiotic stunts you might get up to with it”. That particular comment had been directed at Amy, but still, Isaac’s track record with non-soulbound equipment wasn’t exactly great. It also worked by directly manipulating the eardrum via telekinesis, rather than relying on air for transmission, and instead of picking up sound, it scanned the wearer’s mouth and throat and calculated what they would have sounded like if their surroundings had been able to carry sound.

In other words, it worked in space just fine, allowing Isaac to overhear several arguments in the background of the video call. The whole affair was shockingly polite, but stripped of all formality and military decorum, it boiled down to “bossman, we’ve got all these toys, including spaceships, we want to use them against the monster” vs “spaceships are freaking expensive, this is a Tier 1ß monster, that crazy German guy says he’s handling it, let him”.

Not that Isaac could blame either party in the argument.

Spaceships were awesome, but they weren’t particularly good just yet. They might be armed with a combination of half-decent lasers and particle beams, but they were fragile as hell, didn’t hit particularly hard, and while humanity could make some damn fine railguns, they were banned from being mounted on space-based platforms for fear of being turned on the planet. Light-based weaponry refracted when fired through the atmosphere, railgun darts, on the other hand, just got faster.

As for the ships themselves, there were basically two kinds. The civilian ones that basically amounted to “sealed containers that can be moved with the owner’s [Skills]”, of which around a thousand flitted around the solar system, and the military ones, which heavily relied on tech that was nowhere close to matching the arcane in terms of power or useability, but didn’t need specific powers to use either.

And neither was suitable for fighting the Golem. It’d just tear off a part of its body and throw it with enough power to tear straight through a starship, lengthwise. It wasn’t a tactic the creature liked to use, considering the cost, but it was one they all knew to use.

After almost an hour of travel, Isaac got ready to strike.

He projected his [Aura] forward, sweeping the area behind and around the monster. Once he knew there was nothing nasty waiting in the wings, he attacked.

Countless replicas of Old Reliable appeared, gathering around him, and braced against various parts of his body. Without an atmosphere to create drag and now that he was no longer accelerating, they weren’t moving at all relative to him, so he might as well not have been moving at all, allowing him to carefully arrange everything.

The end result was guaranteed to wind up on some website as the “dumbest finishing move of all time”, considering that he was doing this in full view of several satellites, some of which were actively paying attention to him, but he didn’t care. “It ain’t stupid if it works” also applied to things that looked stupid.

A split-second before impact, Isaac activated [I Am The Sword], transforming from a rough assembly of blades that would fall apart at the slightest sneeze to an indestructible, unacceleratable, ball of blades moving at speeds that outspeed sound by an order of magnitude.

He hammered into the Golem, which was moving far more slowly than he was, and slammed into it like a godsdamned meteor.

The consequences were twofold.

Firstly, the monster’s earthbound momentum was entirely negated and it was even pushed slowly in the other direction, though in due time, Earth’s gravity would pull it back.

And secondly, the monster had been hacked into over twenty different pieces, only one of which was still moving.

Now came the long, long process of turning back around to finish it off for good.

For this, he used [Speed of Hati] in incredibly brief bursts, the ground under his feet turning “solid” for brief seconds so he could kick off them to bleed off a little momentum, then waited for his bruised legs to regenerate, and repeated the method until he was moving back towards the Earth, albeit slowly.

This time around, he swept past the monster at only a few meters per second, giving him plenty of time to torch the apple-sized animated lump of mud with Prometheus’ Wrath.

The Golem (Lv. 160) has been slain. 10,000 XP gained

No Aspect, though. Ah well, it wasn’t like he was here for those. He gathered up the largest pieces of the monster for Chandler and began his return to Earth.

The monster had been decently easy to beat due to how it wasn’t at home in space. But where the fuck had it come from?

The good news was that someone spotted the source.

The bad news was that he was all the way back at the university when that happened. Sigh.