Apocalypse Redux

Chapter 190: An Auspicious Start

In hindsight, walking to Korea might not have been the best idea, Isaac realized as he stood at the tenth border crossing and presented his passport. The problem with his fame was that it was perfectly possible for someone to realize that he’d been in Germany one day, in South Korea the next and not taken a plane. One might correctly guess that some illegal border crossing had occurred and then throw that in his face.

But [Continent Strider] was at Level 9 and Isaac really wanted that Level 10 boost.

And it wasn’t like he hadn’t endured worse superfluous bureaucracy.

For example, the Summer Event had started normal enough, just a repeat of last year's… until a few someones had gotten it in their heads that since the Event had already been explored, it had to be safe, right?

… except, of course, that was only true up to Tier 5 and the world was well beyond that now. There hadn’t been a repeat of the original eleven million casualties, but locally, things had still gotten pretty bad.

Which the various politicians hadn’t hesitated to make it infinitely worse by questioning why they couldn’t just stick to hunting the few highest-Tier monsters that had become “beatable” since the latest Event because mobilizing a decent chunk of Germany’s military for this was rather expensive.

Not to mention how the places that were being borrowed could have been used for more profitable harvesting operations, something they didn’t want to share with the international allies that usually helped.

So in other words:

Beating the new Event monsters? Took an hour, and was easy as pie.

Fending off the monsters in human skin that had taken vastly longer. But in the end, Isaac had managed to preserve the ability to go after an Event with all their old vigor and resources, but it had been utterly exhausting. Sometimes, it really did feel like politicians were a fundamentally different kind of person.

But eventually, the border guard put a stamp in Isaac’s passport, and he was allowed to pass. Damn, that passport was getting full. Barely three months old and he was almost ready to need a replacement.

Still, the Event had been vastly easier than breaking into the eighth Tier. For once, Professor Bailey’s team hadn’t been the ones to do that.

Tokyo University had done it … and earned a completely undeserved reputation for incompetency.

They’d summoned monsters, recorded their abilities, and killed them.

In exchange, they’d had to account for around three-hundred-thousand yen worth of damage, around two million in euros, some scrapes, bruises, and a few limbs that had probably been reattached or regrown by the time the word had gotten out. And one death.

For a new Tier, especially one this high, that was very good. In the other timeline, it would have been downright fantastic. Tiers 7, 8, and 9 had gone rather badly in that one.

Only one death and a bunch of repairable/healable damage was something that could only have been topped by being vastly overleveled or knowing what would happen ahead of time and preparing contingencies for everything.

The former wasn’t viable as that would have cost them too much time and the latter, well, they were doing this to figure out what abilities the monsters had, which made that level of preparation nigh-impossible.

All of the preparations that had been in place should have been sufficient, more than anyone had expected them to make, and certainly enough for them to not get raked over the coals for.

There was just one small issue. The yardstick they were being measured by was the nigh flawless record of a team that had a time traveler make contingencies for every possible issue.

The death had been caused by a combination of bad luck and unfamiliarity with their foe, it just wasn’t the kind of thing you could prevent with one-hundred-percent accuracy. Yet they were getting utterly raked over the coals for the whole affair.

That mess was one of the few things Isaac did feel a little bit bad over, despite how far removed he was from the situation and how completely accidental the whole affair had been.

The folks over at Tokyo University weren’t bad people, in fact, they were an excellent collection of researchers, falling short only when compared to the likes of professors Bailey, Kim, or Chandler, or Dr. Han.

… he’d try to try and make it up to them sometime. Somehow. Joint research project, maybe? Or maybe he’d figure out a way to point to all the great research they’d done in a way that seemed natural?

It would certainly be the easiest if someone just asked him about what he thought of the whole incident, that way, he could state that he felt that they’d done nothing wrong.

Tier 8 … that was a rough one.

At that point, the monster’s Fortitude Stat reached the point where it seriously affected the monster’s durability beyond resistance, giving them survival capabilities near that of a [Field Boss].

Sure, Tier 7 and its replication of vital organs like golem or elemental cores had been rough, but number eight took that issue to a whole other level.

Meanwhile, Tier 8 [Field Bosses] were as durable as Tier 7 [Raid Bosses] and Tier 8 [Raid Bosses] were just plain nuts.

Simply put, they had a second health bar. Kill one of the damn things, bring it down through all its ungodly durability, which went beyond what a Tier 7 [Raid Boss] had had … and then have it pop right back up, fully healed. Once.

Of course, Tier 9 was going to be even worse. That was when the bosses got minions.

And in the distance, Tier 10 loomed like a distant thunderhead. When that dropped, there would be hell to pay.

Even beyond that, at some point, there were [World Bosses] to deal with. Because there was no way in hell no one was ever going to summon one of those.

Isaac sighed as the landscape blurred past. All of that was a problem for the distant future.

Now, he just had to run through a dungeon while babysitting a bunch of politicians. Was it weird he’d rather fight a [World Boss]?

Eventually, Isaac crossed the border into South Korea and slowed to a gentle jog as he reached Seoul.

He quickly switched his clothing over to Hunter-chi que, close-fitting cargo pants with a couple of subtly-hidden knife sheaths, a shirt with armored fibers woven through it, and a blazer with enough metal within to qualify as brigandine, which also allowed him to hide a short-sword underneath it. He’d stuck his Kriegsmesser in there just for appearance's sake.

The outfit would have been completed by having Balmung in the sheath at his side, but that would have taken this from “Hunter-chique” to “geared for war”.

He still had a few hours to kill, so he spent it running all over town, teaching [Skills] in the Hunter Training Academy, stealing fire from Dungeons, and devouring street food anytime he passed a place that looked good.

And in the end, he even managed to get that elusive final Level.

Continent Strider (legendary, Level 10)

In olden times, it could take months or years to go from city to city, from country to country. Modern technology has shrunken the world somewhat, but it still takes quite a while to move significant distances.

This Skill not only removes the need for modern technology to travel vast distances in a reasonable timeframe, but further boosts the travel speed while moving on foot. Your movement speed on foot or horseback will increase exponentially with this Skill active.

Continent Strider cannot be activated in combat or while fleeing combat, it is purely a utility Skill.

This Skill can be applied to all party members so long as said party members are within 100 meters of the user and the user is the party leader.

Every day, the user accumulates a pool of movement equal to one hour of travel without using this Skill. This pool has an upper limit of 168 hours, and can be used to open a portal to an important location the user has been before. This portal can carry up to five times the user’s mass per activation and its cost amounts to how long it would have taken the user to make the journey normally, without using Continent Strider’s acceleration feature. Combat utility limitations still apply.

Each use of this portal a day after the first will double the cost each time.

Cost: 500 mana per hour, plus 100 per party member

Ah yes, perfect. Once a day, portal somewhere it would have taken an hour to travel, with any unused portal-time being saved for the next day. Or, you know, open multiple portals and burn through that pool of time hella fast.

As for the important location limitation, that was a fancy way of saying “work, home, family member’s home, travel hub, or central location in a city”. Geological landmarks also counted, if they were distinctive enough to be listed in a travel guide.

But an hour of travel skipped every day, that was basically an instantaneous trip to Korea every other day.

It also neatly solved the issue of having to deal with all the various border checkpoints. He could always just pretend to have teleported.

Isaac swore internally and contorted his body to the side to avoid dirtying his outfit with the red bean paste that dripped out of his Hoppang.

Even when deep in thought, he always paid enough attention to his surroundings to avoid sneak attacks or running into something. His food … not so much.

***

“Dr. Thoma, do you have a moment to talk? I’m currently working on a proposal to regulate industrial-scale summoning to preserve fair market competition …” the fifth attempt at getting Isaac to throw his influence behind a political party droned on. He sighed.

Once the speech was over, Isaac clapped his hands and loudly announced “Alright everyone, listen up. I realize that this is an interesting networking opportunity, but this is not a political excursion. You were all chosen because you’re someone we can work with and then picked from that pool of candidates at random, not because of anyone’s political affiliation. As far as you’re concerned, I’m a card-carrying member of ‘die Partei’, and so are all your other escorts.”

“Die Partei”, or “the Party”, as was the English translation of the name, was a satire of a political party that ran on such platforms as “boosting beer consumption” or “abolishing gravity”. They poked fun at other parties and the world in general by adding an over-the-top version of any issues they saw to their program.

The looks he got after that were almost enough to break his heart. Grown men and women should not be able to pull off the beaten puppy look that well.

“[All See] the darkness,

“Let schemes be revealed.

“And tyrannies fall.”

Isaac jolted slightly as the voice whispered into his ear, but he recognized the phrase after the first few words. The activation phrase of [All See], heard by all those affected.

He didn’t look around visibly but sent his [Aura] around to look for Han. He hadn’t invited the good doctor over, but now that he thought about it, it made sense he would show up. This was about powerleveling politicians and could go horribly wrong if they’d chosen wrong, but the empowering [Skill] cleared out all doubts.

They’d chosen well, though he now knew some things about the picked politicians he’d rather not have. There were skeletons in their closets, but nothing bad.

Sure, skipping out on an utterly superfluous but still technically mandatory meeting to bang your spouse in your office was unlikely to impress your constituents, but honestly, it wasn’t that bad. Thanks to [All See], Isaac had all the information needed to make that judgment.

There were a few more things of a similar level of severity visible, some made Isaac roll his eyes while others were a little funny. Either way, everything was good.

“Thank you.” Isaac sent back through auric morse once he finally located Han.

“No, for the millionth time, you cannot have powered armor in the dungeon!” a familiar voice sighed with “I’m about to toss you out the window” levels of exasperation.

“How’s it going, Wirt?” Isaac asked as he walked up beside the police officer and gave the guy he was talking to an appraising look.

Powered armor was cool, that was a night-indisputable fact. But somehow, the politician before him somehow managed to make it look utterly ridiculous. He was also definitely not trained to use it.

Wirt sighed again “In your professional opinion as someone who is widely considered to be an expert on the [System] and combat within its rules, what will happen if he wears that armor into the dungeon?”

“We’ll need to leave after the first fight because that armor will break him in half,” Isaac said.

“It’s armor, isn’t it?”

Isaac resisted rolling his eyes, instead pointedly looking the politician up and down “You don’t have the training to use that armor actively, so you’ll need to rely on the automated systems, which you have all the wrong Stats for.

“Your Fortitude is in its forties, your Agility is somewhere around twenty, and your Perception at around thirty. If the armor moves in a way you don’t expect, you’re not tough enough to withstand it, you’re not fast enough to move with it when it reacts unexpectedly and you don’t have the Perception to notice stuff before the armor reacts to it. If it has to save you from something, you’ll end up with torn muscles at the very least, but shredded limbs are a real possibility.

“If you had the training to move with the armor, it wouldn’t be a problem, but you don’t, you’ll likely end up with horrific injuries in short order.

“The only possibility to use the armor safely would be the rescue function, which injects the wearer with muscle relaxant so they can’t tense against the armor, but that would cost you any chance at getting XP. If you’re too out of it, the [System] won’t reward you even if you are in the party.”

“Really?”

“We checked,” Isaac said.

“How?” Wirt asked, curious.

“Do you really think it’d be hard to find students willing to get high or plastered on every legal substance we have access to while someone kills monsters with them in a Party?” Isaac asked, raising an eyebrow, then fixed the guy currently shrinking away, looking like he wanted to fall straight into the ground.

“In other words, you won’t be able to use the armor in the dungeon safely.”

“If I get injured being saved, won’t that mean that the armor worked?”

Isaac shook his head “The armor will react when something jumps at you, even if Wirt or I are close enough to intercept the monster. You won’t get injured being saved, you’ll be injured the instant something so much as breathes in your direction. I have no idea who thought it was a good idea to let you bring that armor here, but you’re not coming into the dungeon with us if you’re bringing it.”

Isaac stood there for a moment, but when it looked like the guy was about to say something, he just glared at the suited-up stormtrooper wannabe. The target of his ire wilted and headed off towards the changing area to strip.

“We’ve been here for ten minutes and I already want to eat my gun,” Wirt swore, speaking too softly for anyone but Isaac to overhear.

“I picked a good Dungeon; we should be done after one run.” Isaac whispered back “A swarm of Level 60s and 70s should be something you can keep of them, right? At least as long as your newest core [Skill] lasts?”

Wirt nodded.

“Each of those monsters will give somewhere between 750 and 1,250 XP, and everyone in the party will get two percent even if they don’t do anything. We should be able to get everyone to Level 25 in one run if we make it to the end. But if you have to trigger your [Skill], we’ll retreat and try again once it’s recharged.” Isaac suggested.

“I’ll be so glad to be rid of them.” Wirt sighed, marched up to the front of the room, and clapped his hands to draw attention “Alright everyone, listen up. I’m Polizeiobermeister Wirt, and together with Dr. Thoma, I’ll be leading you through the Dungeon. We’ll be powerleveling you using the XP share feature that’s a part of almost all Party [Skills], you won’t have to lift a finger to do anything but stay close and stay safe.

“Now, this should be an entirely safe process, but there is always a possibility of something unexpected happening, so here’s the number one rule for this run: whatever Dr. Thoma or I say goes! No questioning, no arguing unless we open something to discussion. Assume that when an order is given, something will go horribly wrong if you don’t obey in the span of a single second.

“Next, should something happen to both Dr. Thoma and myself, retreat. This is not a Dungeon that you can clear by yourselves, and trying would just get you killed.

“In addition, your usual security detail will not be able to come, as that would increase the size of our Party too much and give us an XP penalty, which we’re making sure to avoid.

“Lastly, the Hunter’s guild has generously agreed to loan out armor with all the bells and whistles, including internal potion dispensers capable of saving your life in case of an emergency.

“Now, before I explain the precise route we’ll be taking through the Dungeon, does anyone have any questions?”

… when they finally got to the plan itself, Wirt had a thousand-yard stare and looked like he’d lost the will to live.