Apocalypse Redux

Chapter 254: Interlude Yoo-jin

Preparing to fight the Tier 8 [Raid Boss] had been one of the most painful experiences in Yoo-jin’s life. The issue was that, well, he knew so much about how this thing operated, and what would and wouldn’t work against it, but implementing his knowledge had been difficult.

The issue was that many plans could only be proven wrong by revealing the knowledge that he was not supposed to have.

Sometimes, he suspected that Isaac had let Korea take the lead on this Tier of [Raid Bosses] just so he didn’t have to personally deal with this stuff. After all, Tier 8 was where it got complicated.

Of course, he knew that there was nothing malicious about any of it, the extra abilities of a Tier 8 Demon Lord were infinitely less complicated than the powerset of a Crystalline Sage or Sanguine Monarch.

But then all he had to do was take one look at the standard complexity of planning for a [Raid Boss], then compare it to how the situation worked when he had to incorporate future knowledge without anyone noticing.

The person he really wanted to strangle wasn’t Isaac, though. No, that dubious honor went to the people who’d submitted a fully fleshed-out plan for summoning and killing the monster in question.

Of course, they didn’t deserve his ire either, in any reasonable world, they’d have been his heroes for saving him a metric ton of work.

At least the current plan had allowed for international help, “If he managed to convince anyone to show up”. A single note left in the [Round Table] had earned him a preliminary ok from everyone, and the email chains that followed had been staged to the point of absurdity.

He’d made countless proper plans, only to have them all crumble around his ears when Amy had unlocked her second Central [Skill]. It allowed her to take any cast spells that people let her have, as well as any that they didn’t hold on to well enough, combine them into a single powerful spell bomb, and then lob the whole affair at an enemy to create an explosion that dwarfed even the blast that had obliterated the boss of the Draconic Abyss. Incorporating that power had required him to reshuffle everything.

And then, he’d gotten more reinforcements that he hadn’t expected to receive, and he’d had to re-shuffle the plans once again.

In the end, he’d given up on trying to create a single unified plan and just created a dozen that could be changed out, depending on what they had available on the day of the battle.

And now, here they were, in the fire-blasted wasteland of the former demilitarized zone. It had become decidedly not empty of military action when that [Raid Boss] had been hurled at Seoul, and its importance as a buffer zone had collapsed alongside the North Korean state.

The situation up north was an absolute mess of various jurisdictional arguments and conflicting policies, but one thing was clear: they were not in a position to threaten South Korea anymore, leaving the site of this historic battle a perfect spot for a battle against a more powerful version of the same monster.

Walls had been set up to contain the monster as much as possible without triggering the dreaded “no traps” clause of summoning, and a second ring of walls removed line of sight to Seoul and other potential targets. Outside this wall sat a series of artillery batteries, ready to go to work at the right time.

But inside the walls waited over two hundred people, no one under the fourth Evolution, and anyone who wasn’t S-Rank tended to be at the upper edge of A-Rank.

And just outside the artillery ring was another group of two hundred, in case anything went wrong. General Park had been beyond annoyed at being relegated to playing taxi, but he had a rapid redeployment [Skill] that let him swap out two formations, and that had made for an excellent club to bludgeon his protests with.

The foreigners had to be spread evenly between the primary and backup formations to ensure that there was no perception of the foreigners doing the bulk of the work, or having them be the ones who saved the “local elites”.

Yoo-jin had accepted the role of guild master as it put someone involved in summoning and Dungeons in charge of the situation, rather than a random political appointee. It had worked and kept things working smoothly and from a perspective of looking at the overall result, his tenure had been an overwhelming success. But he’d be damned if the political aspect of his job weren’t beyond frustrating.

Fenrir, Arthur, and Patrick were in the first wave, and Isaac, Elena, and Amy were in the second. As were a few members of GSG-13 that Habicht had sent along.

The Demon Lord’s entrance into this plane was far more spectacular than that of its lower-Tier compatriots. Black flames that somehow managed to be even darker than those of the previous monsters of the same name licked towards the sky, a shadow that was inexplicitly visible growing within.

The lower the flame was, the more of the monster was visible. 60 meters tall, deep burgundy skin, teeth, horns, and claws as black and sharp as obsidian. Burning coals for eyes, a crown of thorns atop its head, and a loincloth of black silk covering potentially non-existent privates.

As the flame died down, the monster threw its head back and roared, the noise making the air quake. Windows shattered on cars that had been parked a little too close, and if this hadn’t been a fairly obvious trick, it might have hammered into unprotected fighters. As it stood, the sound-dampening enchantment cast over the entire group reduced the volume from “damaging” to merely “irritating”.

The very instant the demon was fully visible, chains flew through the air and wrapped it tight, flowing through the low walls that surrounded it to tie it down … only for the Demon Lord to briefly transform back into fire. The chains fell straight through and melted on the way, splattering onto the ground below as molten, glowing, liquid.

… Those had cost almost seven hundred billion won. Wasted.

What hadn’t been a waste had been training up the [Warden of Magic, Chainer of Legends] by having him try and restrain people with high physical Stats like Fenrir. That time, they hadn’t told the warden that it was a training exercise to make her work as hard as possible. It had boosted her [Chained Lockdown] by a whopping 9 Levels, but she might carry this grudge even by the time hell froze over.

But Yoo-jin had known that the ability to evade restraining effects only worked for a brief time after summoning, and managed to arrange for a second, different, attempt to be made later, citing that he wanted to make sure they had their bases covered.

In the few seconds between the first restraining attempt failing and the second activating, the demon had already flooded the area around it with hellfire.

Arrows, magically propelled rocks, even weaker spells burned up in the unnatural fire, wiping away a decent chunk of the opening salvo, number-wise.

But in terms of power, the stronger attacks went through mostly fine, slightly weakened but still coherent.

The monster roared in agony, having lost its eyes, eardrums, and if there’d ever been something under the loincloth, it was nothing but bloody ribbons now.

It was at this point that the second anti-movement trick activated, spectral chains briefly halting the monster’s movement while the ground underfoot reshaped itself to contain the monster.

Then, a hail of titanic arrows began to hammer into the monster’s chest. [Salvo of History] grew every time it was unleashed, and while it was comprised of just very powerful arrows, it did have one of the highest potentials for growth of any [Skill].

A lance of fire forced Yi to dive for cover, but when the demon had thrust out its palm to unleash the attack, Yoo-jin had trapped the limb in ice. A dozen additional cold spells cast upon the ice cube reduced its temperature ever more while the flesh underneath grew brittle.

If they’d left the limb alone at that point, that would already have left the monster greatly restricted. But of course, they didn’t.

Kyo Yubin was one of the most terrifying area-control specialists whose [Class] wasn’t based on nuclear weaponry, the S-Ranked [Verdant Spellweaver] of South Korea.

For a brief moment, it looked like a small patch of grass was growing underneath the demon’s armpit, but it only took a single second for that patch to explode into a jungle of vicious greenery. Thorn-covered vines snaked up the demon’s torso pushing it one way while others pushed the ice cube in the opposite direction. And then, a tree grew to a height of seventy meters in a split second, its crown a simple fist-shaped hunk of wood.

It hammered into the spot where the ice ended and the rest of the demon’s body began, shattering the limb like glass.

Where before, the demon had been fairly good at keeping its balance, now, it had lost the counterweight of the ice and the vines were still pushing at it.

The ground shook as the monster hit the ground, followed by every cooldown [Skill] not used so far unleashed upon it. Burnt, frozen, electrocuted, cursed, poisoned, and more besides, the monster looked to be on death’s door.

“Huh, I thought this would have been tougher,” Yoo-jin heard someone murmur. Poor bastard. What was about to happen wouldn’t be caused by Murphy’s wrath, tempted fate, or have anything at all to do with a “jinx”, but it would happen all the same.

The Demon Lord expired under the barrage of some of the strongest attacks humanity could produce, but they didn’t receive a kill notification. Instead, a sphere of light appeared around the monster, gently pushing back anyone within a hundred meters and growing opaque. The last thing that they could see of the monster was being lifted back into a standing position, then the sphere turned a pearly white and completely impenetrable to even sensory [Auras].

“Switch!” Yoo-jin roared both out loud while setting exceptions via the party, and in an instant, the rest of the group was swept away in a wave of magic.

Everyone else found themselves on the outside of the arena a split-second later, standing amidst as-of-yet-unused artillery pieces and concerned-looking Artillerymen.

But he stayed where he was, along with any S-Ranker that could still contribute significantly. He and Isaac took a second to make sure everyone knew Yoo-jin was still in charge despite the fact that the second group, which was under Isaac’s command, had been called in. And then they waited.

The time the monster spent in that cocoon could vary from one second to five, it could re-appear anywhere in the sphere and had the same immunity to movement-restricting effects it had when summoned. Thankfully, given the situation, that was something they could pretend to have figured out on the spot.

When the pearlescent dome cracked, they’d already prepared every attack that could be held for a few seconds before being unleashed.

A sphere of scintillating light hovered above Amy’s hand, a combination of every spell that the magic users with the second group had been able to cast in a couple of seconds. Elena was wreathed in her own personal hurricane, ready to hurl it at the monster. The handful of gun users in the group stood ready to unleash hell upon the monster, their firearms glowing with so much power they’d almost certainly explode once fired.

And then, the monster reappeared amidst another area-sweeping blast of hellfire. Isaac stepped out to meet it, absorbing enough to shield everyone behind him while various tanks or projected shields took care of the rest. The very instant the monster was no longer hidden amidst its flames, the counterattack began.

Once again, the eyes were the first things to go, exploding under the hammer blow impacts of bullets.

At the same time, Amy’s attack hurled it off its feet with the ball’s initial impact, and then the ball came apart into its constituent spells that detonated once more. As the monster was flung off its feet, Elena’s hurricane swooped in to throw it skywards. A blast of fire managed to disperse most of the water blast, but by that point, it had already been flung a dozen or so meters into the air.

Isaac slammed into the monster at that point, transformed into his monstrous shape, using his unstoppable force attack. The demon was hurled higher into the air amidst a spray of blood as Isaac tore through it.

The second group emptied their metaphorical clips into the falling monster, artillery spells, projected sword slashes, and more hammering into it.

But by the time the ground trembled under the demon’s impact, it was still more than capable of fighting back. Any normal creature, in any rational world, would have been dead by now. Eyes shot out, the projectiles that had destroyed them having continued onwards into the brain. Fifth and sixth-degree burns cover most of its body. A hole in the chest where a giant lizard monster-thing had cored the monster like an apple. And countless more injuries all across its body.

[Raid Bosses] were just built differently, and the ostensible “reinforcement group” could not be too designed to fight a completely fresh monster without giving away the game. They were meant to intervene once something went wrong, for God’s sake.

Fire erupted from the palm of the hand the monster used to push itself back to its feet, flowing across the ground like water, forcing people to go scrambling back, oftentimes with burned feet.

Isaac came back down like a meteor, wreathed in a white fire that somehow managed to hurt the Demon. Meanwhile, Yoo-jin charged in, using his [Aura of Winter’s Child] to keep the flames off him while his ice flowed off him in a constant stream to form a barrier to the left and right of him.

The Demon Lord might have been a fearsome enemy, but now, it was caught between Isaac’s hammer and Yoo-jin’s anvil. Gravity magic enhanced Isaac’s blows while barrier and earth-shaping [Skills] enforced Yoo-jin’s defenses.

A massive explosion of fire and fury tossed Isaac clear, momentum alone carrying him over a hundred meters away even if it didn’t damage him in the slightest. Two incredibly swift punches got Yoo-jin out of the way, the first planting him into the ground like a tentpole, the second forcing him to generate a massive shield of ice to hide under.

Both of them required mere seconds to fight their way back to the monster, but in that brief moment, the monster managed to inflict devastating damage on their allies. No deaths, the tanks in front managed to protect people and the teleporters were spot-on with their rescues, but some of the injuries would take weeks to heal even with modern medicine.

Demon Lord (Lv. 107 Raid Boss) has been slain. 65,000 XP gained (500,000 XP distributed across 739 people as per their distribution)

If it hadn’t been for the kill notification, they might have continued beating on the monster’s corpse for quite a while. As things stood, they weren’t entirely certain who’d felled the beast, they just knew that at some point during its rampage, the amount of damage it had accumulated had surpassed even that monster’s ludicrous capacity to soak up harm.

Once all the injured were seen, fires put out and everyone had gathered around Yoo-jin, he began his speech.

“Thank you all for coming on this historic day. I know this fight was tougher than we might have expected, and the monster literally resurrecting was a particularly nasty surprise, but while we’re all still here, the monster isn’t. And that wasn’t just luck or random chance. That was the cumulation of immense amounts of planning, strategizing, and caution to the point where some consider it to spill over into paranoia.

“Today showed us that no matter how much we’ve understood about the [System], it’ll always have new tricks up its sleeve as we climb the Tiers. But we’ve also seen as long as we prepare for the unexpected, we can beat it.

“Get your injuries treated, collect your share of the loot, fix your gear, and then head over to the Hunter’s Guild, we’ve prepared a little something. There are [Portal Mages] available for anyone who needs to get somewhere quickly.

“And once you’re ready to join us at the hall, I have just one thing to say,” he announced, switching to English for the final sentence, “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we’re having a very exhaustive debriefing session.”

Nearly everyone around him winced at that.

***

The party was in full swing by the time Yoo-jin was done with all the paperwork and headed out of his office.

On the way, he noticed Isaac had snuck off into a corner to have a phone call.

“Oh, I should have told you about the plans the moment I heard about them, should I? Keeping secrets is no longer needed?” Isaac asked, “In that case, why don’t I share the plans for Etzel far and wide? Or, how about the plans being drawn up for the Demon blood electric station? Should I share that? I heard about the plans for the Tier 8 Demon Lord before they became public, but I didn’t spread that around because I was told about them in confidence.”

Yoo-jin just kept walking, not overhearing, but even his hearing was good enough to overhear Isaac’s next response, though he didn’t catch the other end of the conversation. That would have required him to strain his hearing and actively eavesdrop.

“Matter of national security? Are you sure you don’t mean ‘matter of national bragging rights’?”

Yoo-jin sniggered as he heard Isaac hang up and jog to catch up.

“The more often I can rub a government official’s nose in the fact that them dragging their feet on following my suggestions had negative consequences, the faster they’ll move next time,” Isaac explained without prompting.

“How long do you think we’ll have to pretend to work before we can present the updated plan?” Yoo-jin asked.

“I think tonight will work,” Isaac said, “I’ve got a prank to play on Amy, and then I’ll head off to work on something else.”

“Prank?”

“She filled a really expensive bottle of scotch with rotgut and she’s trying to see how long she can get me to expound on its ‘flavor profile’. I’ll see if I can turn it around on her,” Isaac explained.

“Aren’t pranks a little beneath you?” Yoo-jin asked.

“Eh, as long as everyone involved is laughing, it’s fine,” Isaac shrugged.

“Not what I asked,” Yoo-jin said.

“Most pranks are just bullying, and that’s beneath me. Good-spirited pranks are just another form of humor, and how boring would life be without humor?” Isaac asked.

Yoo-jin shrugged, “You might want to make sure no one films that. Your dignity is kind of important, especially considering your position.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll be careful,” Isaac responded.

And that was how the rest of the evening went. Parties, planning, pranks.