Apocalypse Redux

Chapter 12: After Work

Name: Isaac Thoma

Class: Rogue

Species: Human

Level: 1

XP: 799/200

Health Status: Healthy

Mana: 120/120

Stats

Fortitude

12

Perception

12

Strength

10

Agility

12

Magic Power

12

Magic Regeneration

17

Free Points: Stat, 0 Skill

Skills

Hundred Faces III

Stealth III

Power Strike V

Piercing Strike VI

Sundering Strike VI

Knives VIII

Sneak V

Sweeping Strike I

Far Strike I

Aspects

Aspect Skills

Specter

Spectral Shift

[Empty Slot]

If viewed purely through the lens of raw gains, today had been a waste. A mere 118 XP from the killed Slate Golems, one Level in [Knives] and two in [Piercing Strike] for hours upon hours of work.

In other words, basically nothing, at least when the Levels still this low. He could have literally killed two Specters and gained more XP than that.

Isaac grumbled something unintelligibly as he stumbled up the stairs to his apartment, his mind a mess. That work had been the exact wrong combination of boring and repetitive but simultaneously still requiring too much attention to just do on autopilot. Also, dangerous, but that wasn’t really an issue for Isaac. After all, he could literally phase and ignore a Slate Golem’s attacks outright.

Once his front door slammed shut behind him, he kicked the shoes off his feet, took two steps to the couch and collapsed into it.

Today had been a good, productive day, but all he wanted to do was sleep. Granted, he’d also been up since five in the morning, but today had also been incredibly draining, mentally. Just ... ugh.

Isaac ended up blindly groping at his coffee table until he finally got his hands on his phone. Two more taps and the song Gloryhammer by the band of the same name, began to blare out of the Bluetooth loudspeaker.

A slight smile began to creep back onto his face, heart beating faster from excitement. Good music pounding in his ears, adrenaline in his veins, determination in heart. Great circumstances for a nice fight.

He looked over the summoning circle on the floor of his living room, checking it for damage. A few nicks could be seen here and there where a Specter had tried to phase through the ground and driven the knife stuck in its body into the ground. Similar damage could be seen on the walls and even the ceiling, but that was alright, he’d fix that later.

As for the damage to the circle, all it took to repair it was maybe thirty centimeters worth of duct tape and charging it went by quickly.

Isaac made himself a coffee while his mana regenerated, then stepped up to the glowing circle. A pinprick of pain emanated from the tip of his left index finger, the spot he’d drawn blood for the temporary enchantment from. The same enchantment that remained on the kitchen knife he held in his right. The kabar was a slightly better weapon, but it also lacked the enchantment, so he decided to forgo it in favor of being able to do this right now.

The now very familiar sight of a Specter erupting from the ground greeted him, hands tipped with spectral claws reaching out towards his face. Isaac jumped backwards, letting the deadly weapons swiping past his face. Before it could pull them back for another attack, Isaac covered the distance between them and drove the [Piercing Strike] covered and enchanted knife into its center.

It wailed and stumbled back while Isaac drew the kabar. The Specter swiped at him, but he simply activated [Spectral Shift] and turned into an Ephemeral existence, just like it was. Now that he could also touch it directly, he batted away one arm and cut at it with the kabar, likewise Ephemeral.

Another ear piercing shriek tore through the apartment, drowned out by the pounding sound of Power Metal.

Isaac’s next punch sent the Specter reeling, already greatly weakened by the cursed knife in its gut. He followed it up with a stab from the knife, embedding it right next to the one already stuck in there.

It flickered and vanished, both knifes embedding themselves in the ground with a wince inducing thunk. Isaac sighed, hoping they hadn’t gotten damaged too badly.

Specter (Lv. 8) has been slain. 65 XP gained (50 base * 1.30 due to level disparity)

Another minute after that, Isaac had fixed the circle back up, added the ingredients back into it, bandaged his finger and left the apartment to go buy some dinner. He did have plenty of food in the apartment, but it was the same he’d had when he’d arrived a couple of days ago, rice and the like.

Somehow, that felt like it had been a lifetime ago. Since then, he’d dealt with an Italian Mobster, gotten hired by a soon to be incredibly influential group of scientists and turned from an ambitious and driven office worker to a hardened warrior, something that had taken years in the other timeline.

He’d also gotten fired … sort of. His boss had yelled at him and told him he was fired, yet said boss was a known dumbass. Besides, Isaac hadn’t gotten any paperwork yet, but he’d been told he was fired, so he had a good excuse for not going in to work. When someone finally noticed that mess, he’d probably either get actually fired or offered his old job back, which he’d decline. Either way, there was a chance he’d end up with some money in the form of a severance package and his boss would likely get into trouble, which he considered to be a bonus.

Isaac sighed internally as he looked around for somewhere to get some food. A lot of the smaller and family run businesses were still not working, but in the case of the big chains, there would always be someone willing to come in. Those would suffice, of course, but he’d have loved a proper Italian pizza from a stone oven or something, though it was not to be.

Twenty minutes later, Isaac was back in his apartment, subway sandwich devoured in under five minutes and mana fully recovered.

He shrugged his coat off his shoulders, took off his shoes and charged the circle. While his mana recharged, Isaac flounced on his couch and switched on the Tagesschau, the biggest daily news in Germany.

This was a familiar scene, comforting. Sitting here right after dinner, waiting to see what fresh chaos the world had birthed. He hadn’t done this in … oh, had it already been three years?

Yeah, that sounded about right. That’s when they’d stopped broadcasting it in the other timeline, and he’d been on a train while it was broadcasted the last two days.

The little melody played as the neutral background gave way to the familiar blue of the studio.

“As it has been in the last couple of days, our main story tonight concerns the initialization of the so called [System] that has affected the entire world. As a result …”

What else could there have possibly been? The world was absolutely not, in no conceivable way, settled after the mess that had been caused. The most severe consequences, stray monsters, were winding down a little. But the knock on effects from all that were only now truly becoming obvious.

The news only got hung up on this topic for only around five minutes, switching to a more regular story on the economy while announcing a special episode would occur after the actual news segment ended. That was something that happened fairly regularly when big events occurred and apparently, there had been special episodes the last two days too.

When his mana finally topped up, Isaac pushed himself off the sofa, summoned the Specter from the charged circle and stabbed it, dodging it until it dropped dead.

Specter (Lv. 9) has been slain. 67 XP gained (50 base * 1.35 due to level disparity)

And that was that. He reset the circle, charged it once his mana had recovered enough and resumed watching the news.

The TV switched to a more regular entertainment show, some kind of soap opera involving a cloister, unless Isaac missed his guess. He switched it off and proceeded to read a book until he was back at 120 points of mana.

Specter (Lv. 9) has been slain. 67 XP gained (50 base * 1.35 due to level disparity)

… and now he had 998 XP. Urgh. Missing any kind of numerically defined goal by so little … just … ugh.

Isaac sighed, trudged over to the pen cup on his desk and retrieved a pen and paper, drawing a simple Tier 1 circle on it. He’d created it as small as was possible and still have it work. One could actually vary the size of a circle by a lot, but it needed to be large enough for the specific creature one wanted to summon.

Isaac sprinkled some rock salt on top of it and poured ten mana into it. A Ghost emerged from it with a loud wail, but Isaac just waved a hand holding the glowing red kabar, the [Power Strike] hitting it like a sledgehammer. There was a brief sound like a tearing bedsheet, then it was gone.

Ghost (Lv. 2) has been slain. 3 XP gained

And with that, he even had a single point of XP left over. Yay!

Isaac just shook his head at his own silliness. He’d truly been awake for far too fucking long. But he had the XP to do what he wanted, so he did it.

Aspect of the Lesser Hydra:

This is the distilled essence of what makes a Hydra a Hydra. Regenerating from gruesome wounds in seconds, killing your enemies simply because they cut you as your blood poisons theirs or create redundant organs to survive lethal injuries.

Requirements for Activation:

1,000 XP

Open Aspect Slot

Grants:

+5 Fortitude

One of the following Skills:

Hydra’s Regeneration

Toxic Blood

Redundant Organs

Three fine [Skills] to pick, but only one had an incredible synergy with his other Aspect and stood to be the cornerstone of his build.

Hydra’s Regeneration (rare)

This Skill allows the User to rapidly regenerate from injuries at the cost of mana. Regenerating large amounts of flesh may be uncomfortable.

Cost: 5 mana per second of use, 50 mana per kilogram of flesh restored

A mere thought later, five points of mana vanished from his pool and the stinging cut on his left index finger closed up, vanishing like it had never been. Perhaps not the kind of life threatening injury he’d gotten the [Skill] to deal with, but it was useful to help with those as well.

Finally. His Build was complete until he gained an upgraded [Class] at Level 10. He’d be saving his [Skill] points until then as he didn’t really need any more of the basic [Rogue] [Skills] anymore. Theft related powers, the creation of toxins and traps, etc. But those wouldn’t be nearly as helpful as gaining more [Skills] than he should have been able to with his next [Class], whatever that might be.

[Class] Evolution options were determined by a few factors. Every [Class] had a few set evolutions that he would be able to easily predict, given that there had been plenty of people who’d started out as a [Rogue].

Then there were altered versions of those [Classes] available based on what [Skills] one had upgraded the furthest or just really liked. Even though Isaac himself had barely used [Hundred Faces] and [Stealth], that was because he hadn’t needed to use them, resulting in them staying relatively low levelled, he’d likely get a [Class] based on at least one of them. After all, he liked those [Skills]. They let him and would continue to let him get away with a lot of crap he didn’t want his face linked to.

And lastly, there were the [Classes] based on what Aspects one had. And he had two, something practically unknown for someone under Level 10. After all, the 3,000 XP needed to slot them and buy the additional slot would have sufficed to get him to Level 7 and left him just 2,500 XP shy of Level 10 and the [Class] upgrade.

Very few people would and had put in that kind of effort into getting Aspect [Skills] with the alure of all those sweet, sweet Stat points and the superhuman physique they promised right there.

Literally only a few Munchkins who’d wanted to maximize their XP gains by fighting higher Level enemies without having all that unused XP just sitting there, tempting them, so they’d spent the experience points to slot Aspects. Oh, and there’d been a handful of people who’d found the idea of having the [Skills] of a monster so incredibly amazing that they’d simply had to get as many as they could get their hands on.

Therefore, there were only a handful of examples that showed what kinds of [Classes] one could get in that situation.

And as tempting as it was to keep going at this Level, gain more and more Aspects to better his future [Class] choices, Isaac decided to dismiss it as a possibility. He’d need the Stat gains from levelling soon enough even if everything happened exactly as it did in the other timeline and the only incidents that occurred were the ones he remembered. Chances were, there had been a lot he’d never even known about, let alone cared enough to recall after they’d disappeared from the public consciousness.

But there were enough that he did know about, big ones, and Isaac knew that a fully optimized build that gave him the absolute best choices at the cost of progression speed was simply not feasible. Maybe in a couple of centuries, some young prodigy would level up to Level 9, then proceed to farm every creature it could defeat at that point until they stopped giving XP and get a godlike [Class] for having something like twenty Aspects. Maybe.

As fun as that thought experiment was, it wouldn’t be him who achieved that kind of perfection.

Isaac just shook his head. This, just ganking Specters over and over until they stopped giving him XP was just boring. But killing any other kind of enemy in his apartment was simply not feasible, if due to the fact that they’d leave a body behind for him to deal with, if nothing else. Also, his apartment would end up trashed in incredibly short order, which wasn’t an outcome he’d have been particularly enthused with.

But hadn’t been there the option to create permanent extradimensional spaces linked to a specific location in the summoning list?

Summoning List (Realm)

Name

Material Cost

Mana Cost

Extradimensional Pocket

Tier 5 Circle, Lesser Space Elemental Core

250

Extradimensional Room

Tier 6 Circle, Lesser Space Elemental Core

400

Eternal Wilderness

Tier 7 Circle, 10 different Aspects, Elemental Source, Nature Elemental Corpse (minimum 200 mana summoning cost), 1-ton assorted monster materials (minimum 200 mana summoning cost each), 10 crystals (at least as large as a ping pong ball)

100,000 (max. 500 people)

Void Island

Tier 8 Circle, Elemental Samples up to atomic number 50, 5 [Raid Boss] hearts, Space Elemental Core, Earth Type Golem Core (minimum 500 mana summoning cost), …

500,000 (max. 100 people)

Void Archipelago

Tier 9 Circle, Elemental Samples up to atomic number 75, 50 [Raid Boss] hearts, 10 Space Elemental Cores, 5 Earth Type Golem Cores (minimum 500 mana summoning cost), 5 Water Type Golem Cores (minimum 500 mana summoning cost), ...

750,000 (max. 100 people)

Void Continent

Tier 10 Circle, Elemental Samples up to atomic number 86, [World Boss] heart, Space Elemental Lord core, Void Ripper hide, …

1,000,000 (max. 100 people)

…

Ah, yes. But even the least of these things required the core of a Lesser Space Elemental, which were a stone cold pain in the behind to fight, let alone kill. Also, he’d need another thirteen points in Magic Power before he could summon one, even if he managed to get his hands on one of the required cores. Given how he liked to spend his Stat points, it would take several Levels, not just two, to get his mana pool to that point.

But that was merely the most basic of the extradimensional spaces one could get, there was so much more available and it got crazy, fast.

The next more expensive option was something called an Eternal Wilderness, an extradimensional plane filled with whatever monsters whose bodies one added. From then on, one could slaughter ones way through to one’s heart’s content, something that sounded pretty good right about now. Or at least it would, if he were in a position to start taking on creatures with a summoning cost of 200.

And given that one could have up to 500 people participate in the summoning, they only needed to have a mana pool of 200, each. As long as someone managed to get their hands on an Elemental Source, a rare drop one could get from a variety of Elementals, the participants should be findable. And from there, they’d be able to hunt and gain XP to their heart’s content …

… with the small caveat that an Eternal Wilderness continued to expand for as long as it existed, spawning in ever more monsters until a tipping point in population was reached and the realm collapsed, dumping every living being within on to the Earth, safe and unharmed.

In other words, they were a big shiny trophy made relatively easy to get at, yet beyond devastating if the summoners lacked the presence of mind to destroy the realm core before tragedy struck.

As for the various ‘Void’ places, even Isaac didn’t know too much about them. The closest anyone had ever gotten was summoning a single Void Island and exploring it a little before a [Raid Boss] had entered the real world anchor of the realm, stepped inside, and killed the summoner.

Basically, if what he’d been told was correct, they were all landmasses surrounded by ocean and if one went out too far into the water, they’d get magically turned around and be walking back towards the shore. A place that could be entirely created based on what one desired, a parcel of land far larger than anyone other than a billionaire would be able to get on Earth.

The working hypothesis was that those were meant to be one of the ultimate rewards, intended to entice people to go after them, summoning and fighting countless incredibly powerful beings to do so. Also, the sheer mana cost, which could only be spread out across very few people would likely result in some people making poor choices while distributing their Stat points. After all, to get a Void Island, everyone would need to have a mana pool of 5,000, something that would require 50 Level’s worth of Stat points to go solely into Magic Power.

It wasn’t actually a bad Stat to invest in, it was just that such a level of overspecialization into anything was a bad idea.

Too much Strength, too little Fortitude? Shatter your bones with the slightest movement.

Too much Agility, too little Perception? Have fun running into walls, dumbass.

And not having enough Magic Regeneration when compared to ones mana pool would let one create great works of magic while being utterly useless for hours, days, or even weeks as the pool regenerated at a snail’s pace.

Yet with the enticing lure of your own personal fucking continent, right there, it was pretty tempting to just focus a little more on that particular Stat.

But there had been an entire different issue he was wrestling with. The summoning of creatures itself was likewise becoming a problem. He was basically emptying his mana pool with every summon and having to wait for all that to recover was seriously slowing down the speed of his XP gains.

It would have been possible to just focus on the weaker creatures like Ghosts, but that would have been even worse, given that the amount of XP they gave was a hell of a lot less, not just in terms of raw numbers but also in comparison to the amount of mana invested.

That being said, Isaac did remember that there were other options to get monsters to kill, such as the Eternal Wilderness located in the Realms section. Maybe, just maybe, he could even already get one.

Summoning List (Structure)

Name

Material Cost

Mana Cost

Lair

Tier 3 Circle, Aspect of desired monster, granite slab

150

Dungeon

Tier 5 Circle, baseball sized gem, 1 liter of human blood, 10 different types of rock, 10 different types of gemstones

350

Dungeon (limited)

Tier 5 Circle, baseball sized gem, 1 liter of human blood, 10 different types of rock, 10 different types of gemstones, blood of the dungeon master in a silver chalice

350

Dungeon (bound)

Tier 5 Circle, baseball sized gem, 1 liter of human blood, 10 different types of rock, 10 different types of gemstones, blood of the dungeon master in a silver chalice

350

Elemental Land

Tier 6 Circle, Elemental Source of desired type, volcanic soil, 1 liter sea water, 1 liter freshwater, gemstone appropriate to element type (see list?)

10,000 (max 10 people)

Cauldron

Tier 7 Circle, Aspect of desired monster, 1 ton of Steel, football sized crystal, 10 diamonds bathed in the blood of innocents

15,000 (max 10 people)

…

That was not the case, unfortunately. He could get a Lair after one more Level up, but it would be mostly useless, given how weak he knew them to be. Also, using an entire Aspect for that would be absurdly wasteful.

There were also the various Dungeon kinds, monster and trap filled hellholes that would start spewing death and pestilence onto the land once they got too strong without being regularly culled. In fact, they were some the first sources of free monsters that hadn’t been directly summoned by a human.

One could also summon a bound Dungeon, which was less dangerous, but it would also not give any XP to its Dungeon Master or anyone he ordered the Dungeon to keep safe, making it a rather poor source of progression.

Lastly, there was the limited Dungeon type, which was basically the same thing as a bound Dungeon, except it could both hurt and provide XP to the Dungeon Master without the risk of monsters escaping. The drawback to this was that the Dungeon Master had to feed it literally everything it needed to get stronger, since the ‘limited’ attribute cost it any and all natural progression.

Then there were the Elemental Lands, a ritual that changed an entire area into something befitting the element used and kept spawning in Elementals that befit the type. Those things were astonishingly beautiful, but also dangerous beyond compare. Especially the Death Elemental Lands, aka zombie apocalypse light. Those things would animate any dead flesh on it, creating a massive horde of undead that would kill anything it caught and could casually roam off the zone that had created them.

But it was the ingredient list for the Cauldron that made Isaac’s blood boil. Cauldrons were really useful as they would periodically spawn in monsters of the kind whose Aspect had been used to summon it, no matter how expensive the ingredients would have otherwise been.

Specifically, it was the last one that made him angry. Countless atrocities had been committed to discover just what a ‘diamond bathed in the blood of innocents’ was, when the reality was far simpler, yet no less horrifying.

The [System] wanted conflict diamonds. One final fuck you to high Level people. The only way to get at the best sources of experience was to have, somewhere on the planet, a horrifying war where innocents retrieved the precious stones under horrifying conditions, at which point they would be sold to perpetuate the war.

But no, it was getting late and Isaac was getting tired. Now was not the time to get worked up. He decided to take one quick look at his stat screen before bed.

Name: Isaac Thoma

Class: Rogue

Species: Human

Level: 1

XP: 1/200

Health Status: Healthy

Mana: 120/120

Stats

Fortitude

17

Perception

12

Strength

10

Agility

12

Magic Power

12

Magic Regeneration

17

Free Points: Stat, 0 Skill

Skills

Hundred Faces III

Stealth III

Power Strike VI

Piercing Strike VII

Sundering Strike VI

Knives IX

Sneak V

Sweeping Strike I

Far Strike I

Aspects

Aspect Skills

Specter

Spectral Shift

Hydra

Hydra’s Regeneration

His Character Sheet was starting to look really nice, now. But even with the 17 points in Fortitude he had now, he was still tired. It would take less time in bed to fix that, but he’d have to first actually go to bed. It would have been too nice if boosting Fortitude immediately adjusted … ones … tiredness …

Isaac yawned, and before he knew it, he was asleep on his couch.