Apocalypse Redux

Chapter 181: Bossy Problems, Take Two

The isle of Etzel had grown a great deal since the last time Isaac had been here. It was now two kilometers across, with a low-slung wall covered in enchantments wrapping around the outside. If the [Raid Boss] boss couldn’t fly or tunnel, it wouldn’t be able to easily leave. Sure, eventually, even these defenses could be battered down in time by the might of a monster as strong as a [Raid Boss], but the monster wouldn’t have that time, or so was the plan.

Unfortunately, just leaving the monster trapped and shelling it to death from the outside would get them slapped with an XP penalty even when they succeeded, and that was very much up in the air.

In addition to the team, there were quite a few other Level 90-ish individuals. These weren’t individuals who’d been much in the public eye, but Isaac had known they had to be around. Special forces soldiers, high-Level members of the espionage corps, and others whom the government didn’t want to brag about, these people had been power-leveled to serve as a hidden trump card in case a war broke out. Heck, most countries probably had a few people like this.

Unfortunately, the right infrastructure to get these people into position for incidents the instant they happened just wasn’t there. If Isaac had to make a guess, they’d been stuck in some basement or bunker, unable to engage in situations like the Hamburg incident before the situation resolved itself. Without properly being the chain of command of these powerhouses, no [General] or [Admiral] could immediately relocate them, which was a bummer as they’d have come in real handy a few times.

Isaac could see that he wasn’t seeing the true face of anyone here, countless disguise [Skills] cast by others wreathing them, ensuring he wouldn’t recognize them even if he met the m on the streets later. Sure, he couldbreak those defenses, but doing so without anyone noticing was beyond him.

There was also another issue involving how someone who powerleveled tended to not get the best [Classes]. These folks had been heavily loaded up with Aspects and every other sort of support the Federal Republic of Germany could provide, but even so, Isaac could tell that the rarest [Class] among them was epic, and maybe only one or two of ten had one. The rest probably had rare [Classes], though. All that being said, these people were here to engage in case of an emergency, not to fight from the start. They were meant to be this nation’s hidden trump cards and while confirming they existed wasn’t a big risk, exposing their abilities could be problematic

In addition to these extremely high-Level individuals, several members of GSG-13 were, of course, present, as were quite a few high-Level soldiers.

There were also countless people and machines of war off the island, with four warships circling it and several artillery battalions waiting on the shoreline, ready to obliterate the [Raid Boss], well, try to at least. The ungodly durability of one of those things meant that it might reach the shore before succumbing to the bombardment.

But that wasn’t the weirdest part of all of this, that dubious honor went to the soldiers in power armor. That’s right, the full sci-fi stormtrooper getup, complete with artificial muscles and built-in weapons.

In any other world, those would have been the kings of the battlefield. But in this one, they were barely usable.

[Skills] allowed for the manipulation of materials on a level mere technology couldn’t, at least not yet. Throw in the ability to bypass a few crucial limits of the material used at key points and you got powered armor that was several decades beyond anything that had existed a mere year ago.

But therein lay the issue. All the [Skills] that went into empowering the end product were spent on making said end product viable, not enhancing it, so the end result was functionally identical to pre-[System] tech, material-wise. Titanium was just titanium, steel was just steel, and if Isaac were to wear one of those things and tried to move at even a third of his top speed, it would shatter like glass around him.

Once the world reached a level of technological sophistication where powered armor could be built without any [Skills], the armor could be enhanced to work much better, to be useful beyond slightly enhancing people who were basically just baseline humans, with physical Stats below twenty or thirty.

Yet even at that point, the armor would still fall short compared to high-Level people, for that, it would have also had to be upgraded using magical materials and manipulating those with the fidelity needed to create microchips and artificial muscles … if most people couldn’t manage that to make guns, why the hell would powered armor work?

Near the end of the other timeline, guns had barely started to become relevant for top-level fights again, and powered armor would take decades if not centuries longer.

The sole exception to those issues were people who’d focused their entire build to make using the armor viable, but then all you had was a viable set of powered armor and no supplementary [Skills].

In other words, having anyone around in that shiny glittering mess was just a vanity project.

Thankfully, the stormtrooper rejects were not going to be needed, only acting to stiffen the emergency defenses.

Really, the team alone was practically overkill here, having a million extra people around took this so far that it could practically be called ludicrous. Honestly, could deploying ten percent of a nation’s military deployed “in case this experiment goes wrong” sounded so incredibly over the top Isaac could barely believe it.

He’d made this happen. Sure, Bailey, Kass, Habicht, the few military officers he’d met in the wake of the Hamburg officers, they’d all helped, but so many of those threads led back to him.

He’d taught many of the people involved.

He’d pushed for this summoning to occur.

And he’d damn near written the rules of engagement for this fight.

If this went all according to plan, they’d be trashing the first [Raid Boss] in a matter of seconds. Of course, it would just be another Least Demon Lord with its abilities and weaknesses known, just to test their capabilities, but it was still a [Raid Boss] they’d be dealing with. Those were powerful, dangerous, and no one should be cocky while fighting one.

A siren rang out across the artificial island, informing everyone there that crap was about to go down.

… as if there was a single person who didn’t know what was going to happen in a few short minutes.

The last few people who wouldn’t be on the frontlines took this as their cue to leave, rapidly retreating onto the boats moored on the edges of the island, then taking those to the warships waiting at a safe distance.

The circle in the middle of the island flared to life a moment later every person here poured their mana into it, priming it for the summoning.

And then the waiting began. Isaac’s mana shot back up, reaching full in barely ten minutes, the mages recovering far faster while the rest took up to thirty minutes to top up.

Behind Isaac, the rest of the preparations began. Patrick and Amy were prepping their biggest [Skills], Bailey was running around ensuring everyone was fully healthy, Karl was building fortifications and Raul was warning everyone before he made his preparations.

“I’m going to bring my familiar back up to full size. No one freak!”

There were quite a few eye-rolls at that, but given how many people jumped or reflexively reached for their weapons proved that the warning had, in fact, been necessary.

Aurelian the Solar Dragon was tiny, most of the time at least, small enough to cosplay as a teacup pig, and spent most of his time napping in Raul’s breast pocket.

But he was not that small in reality, he was merely able to reduce his size and return to his true form at will.

In addition, both of Raul’s familiars had been heavily enhanced with Aspects.

Brisa, the Microraptor sitting on Raul’s shoulder like a particularly scaly parrot, had just gotten an Air Elemental Aspect to enhance flight, as well as the ever-common combination of Aspects of the Specter and Hydra, leaving her powerful but barely changed on the surface.

Not so the dragon. The Aspect of the Hydra was present, it was just too useful, but the other three granted Aspects were incredibly powerful and had visually changed him.

The Aspect of the Thermite Avatar was the first and one of the strongest ones, the solar radiance streaked through with fire almost as bright, the space between the scales on his chest shining like the crater of an active volcano.

Then, you had the Aspect of the Wyvern, which had increased the size of his wings and made him vastly more agile in the air.

And finally, you had the Aspect of the Thunderstorm, a combination of an Air and Lightning Elemental that granted him partial control over the things best described as “terrible weather”.

That dragon also shared Raul’s Level of 87, and could probably almost take down the Demon Lord on its own.

“Summoning in one minute!” the [General] in charge of proceedings warned through the party chat.

Everyone was already in place, though. Surrounding the summoning circle, front liners closest to where the monster would appear, mages ready to blast that thing with their strongest spells.

Sure, this thing was less than half Isaac’s Level and there were several others with a similar power advantage, but it was still a [Raid Boss].

And then, the monster finally appeared, roaring furiously and tossing around hellfire, aiming to fry the front liners before they could react.

The attack, of course, failed miserably. No one here was dumb enough to not have their defenses up by the time the monster was truly summoned and it showed.

The magically reinforced concrete before them turned to magma and the area of molten rock advanced as the heat traveled through the rock, forcing the people to slightly back up but that was all. No damage, no nothing.

The first attacks had already flown toward the circle before the monster had already appeared, but now, the flight of projectiles and spells was so thick one could walk on them.

Bullets that hit harder than armor-piercing artillery shells and caused wounds that could not heal.

A few actual artillery shells from the mainland and the main weapons on the nearby warships opened up, sending multiple 76mm rounds into the beast’s body every second.

And finally, the various military mages joined in with their powers, artillery spells raining down so thick that it might as well have been true rain.

Of course, that initial fire spray had merely been the monster’s opening strike, a probing attack to gauge the strength of their defenses because now, it knew it had to concentrate its fire to break through.

Hellfire built up in both palms and its crown of horns burst into flame only for it to be thrown backward as Isaac exploded through its head in the vastly larger [Form of Horror], annihilating its eyes and large chunks of the skull. A green glow radiated from his skin as he impacted his ability to apply [Strikes] to [I Am The Sword] paying off in spades.

The flames licking along the horns exploded into the sky, raining back down as a cloud of deadly embers even as the demon collapsed onto one knee.

It was already rising again as the ground underfoot turned shiny as Karl exerted his power, turning the rough concrete designed for people to not slip on even when it was slick with blood or water from the ocean into a mirror-smooth surface. That alone might not have done much, but the pair of spells that hammered into it finished the job handily.

Patrick’s very precise, almost mathematical approach to spellcasting had given him the [Class] of [Arcane Polymath], and with it, a core [Skill] that allowed him to interlink many more spells and cast a perfectly balanced binding spell that locked down limbs and bound the monster to the ground once it touched down.

As for making the monster fall over, that was Amy’s job. Her [Spellweaver Savant] was built to seamlessly interweave multiple spells. It was less intricate than what Patrick did, but far faster, and with the right kind of artistic creativity, it could be even stronger.

Saying that the bowling ball-sized sphere of energy hit like a wrecking ball was the understatement of the century.

The energy exploded clean through the beast’s chest, leaving behind a hole the size of the spell in the front but a gaping cavern the size of a car in the back, also throwing the monster back and onto the ground.

Finally, Patrick’s prepared spell connected to the anchor points Karl had raised from the ground as the monster had started to fall.

Binding the monster like that wouldn’t have been possible if it had still been healthy, but between Isaac, Amy, and the somewhat lesser contribution of the other ranged combatants, the demon was about as far from healthy as one could be without outright dying.

Hellfire flooded from the Demon Lord, its hands and horns being pressed against the ground preventing it from directly attacking, but it could still blast the concrete, liquefying it and spreading along the top.

Aurelian launched himself into the air and doubled in size by the time he was above the demon, courtesy of one of Raul’s cooldown [Skills].

Light gathered in the back of the dragon’s throat, shining brighter than the sun in the sky, and a ray of devastating power burst forth, a solid pillar of heat, lighting, and the same plasma that made up the sun. Enough to blind anyone who looked straight at it without an insanely high Perception of Fortitude Stat, but they’d warned everyone about this ahead of time.

By the time Aurelian’s jaws snapped shut, the Demon Lord resembled a charcoal briquette, one arm nowhere to be seen, the rest of the body scorched to hell and the hellfire had been subsumed by the solar flame.

Unfortunately, the same level of damage had been inflicted on everything around the beast, which included the things that had held the beast.

The Demon Lord rose back onto its feet, moving ponderously at first but speeding up and charging at the closest human, only to take a powerful force spell to the check, sending it stumbling back.

More hellfire flew, blindly tossed in a last-ditch attempt to inflict damage, it wasn’t enough. Too many people with defensive [Skills], too many able to extinguish hellfire, too many healers to fix any injuries that were inflicted.

Three superficial injuries from shrapnel, seventeen first or second-degree burns, two had accidentally stepped into the molten ground and one guy would require significant physical reconstruction to recover. Could have gone better, but it could also have gone a hell of a lot worse and they had beaten the Korean record for the least number of injuries while fighting one of those things. Sure, they’d only done so by a couple of very light injuries, but Isaac didn’t doubt someone would soon be crowing that from the rooftops.

By the time the ground had cooled enough for people to start harvesting the monster’s carcass, those injuries had almost completely been removed.

Sadly, this was the part where Isaac noticed another nasty trick the dark gods had played on them. Normally, [Raid Bosses] dropped three Aspects. When the second Korean Demon Lord had dropped only two, that had been strange enough.

But this one had only dropped one. Would the one after not drop any?

Eliminating some of the biggest rewards of the [Raid Boss] would massively reduce the use people got out of them, but if the first one gave the greatest rewards, people would start to feel the need to go after them earlier, to be the first to summon a given monster.

They’d be summoning a couple more Least Demon Lords to help iron out the last kinks in their cooperation, which should bring some clarity to the matter.

And once that was done, they’d be moving on to the Lindwyrm, another [Raid Boss], which should help reveal the true drop rate.

Once all of this was finished, then and only then, Isaac could evolve and gain his 4th Evolution [Class]. He already had all the required XP, but he wanted to get the last few requirements here before he followed through.