Apocalypse Redux

Chapter 80: The Madness within the Method

They’d decided to meet up again in the morning, but with their Fortitude, even the weakest among them was back up and fully awake mere hours after going to bed, leaving them ready and raring to go at 2 in the morning,

So that was where they were doing now, sitting around a table in a random ‘conference room’ in their hotel, though it clearly was just a random spare area that got rented out by the owners to make a little extra cash. It was also the very definition of ‘not secure’, but that didn’t matter, given that they could throw up a magical privacy shield with casual ease. Most people who reached high Levels through combat had to invest most of the their gained [Skill] points into combat [Skills] to keep growing stronger, but not for them. Their [Classes] let them pick up countless combat focused abilities while also gaining access to every utility spell under the sun.

Sturm was sitting at the head of the table, tapping away on a tablet. It’s screen was getting scanned by a [Scry] spell and projected onto a nearby blank, white wall so everyone could see what was going on.

“Basically, I ran the numbers. The model I used earlier, the one based on your research into how much prehistoric summons were boosted by their Tier, was pretty accurate based on what I saw earlier today.”

He paused for a moment and looked at his wristwatch “Er, yesterday. Point is, my earlier hypotheses and calculations were correct and the math on all the known incidents having only involved a single shark holds true.”

On the screen, a map of the lake appeared, populated with dots marking the location of each incident, complete with a timestamp.

“Based on travel time, this shark either did not take the direct route or move at its absolute top speed, but that is well within the margin for error for any wild animal’s movement.

“And that time difference is key. If there were multiple sharks, it would be quite conspicuous for them to all strike at intervals that would allow for them to be mistaken for a single individual, no? But we know there was more than one shark in that lake.

“So here’s the issue: I think that the other two sharks were summoned later, between the original shark’s attacks and our arrival, but I can’t fathom why. The original summoning was stupid enough and should have proven without a doubt that that was truly terrible idea, so why do it again?”

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” Patrick quoted “You’re going into this assuming the person or persons responsible for this are in their right mind.”

“But assuming that one’s opponent isn’t mentally sound is as bad an idea as assuming they’ll act rationally.” Bailey reminded him after a brief moment of silence. Amy had always been able to tell he didn’t like to play devil’s advocate, but he always did when no one else would speak up. Letting people continue making false assumptions wouldn’t do them any favors.

“Right now, all we know is that these sharks were summoned after the initial incident was already over and done with, but we can only speculate as to the reason behind it.” he concluded,

“Maybe they wanted to block the lake for some reason, but also wanted to keep casualties light? Dump in the first shark to scare the hell out of everyone, make sure they stay out of the water, then add more to make sure everyone stays off the lake permanently. They just wanted to avoid causing a higher number of casualties by letting lose multiple sharks right from the get-go.” Raul suggested.

“I doubt it. If they’re willing to kill in the first place, would they really care about a few more people dying? They’ve crossed the line into murder already and there was no way for them to direct the shark, so they couldn’t have spared a specific group of people that they didn’t want to kill for ideological reasons.” Karl suggested.

“What if they were there for us?” Patrick asked, face grim “What if they summoned the first shark to create the reason of drawing us in, and then the other sharks were summoned to …”

He swallowed, steeling himself, and continued.

“… What if this was some kind of hit?”

That was a terrifying thought. Amy glowered at the map, that seeming like the safest place to glare.

“Theoretically, yes.” Bailey agreed after a long moment of silence “But if so, it was an incredibly poorly thought out one. We dealt with the first shark easily enough, and the others two were … doable, though not nearly as simple to take down.

“Also, that was with an understrength group, which they couldn’t have anticipated. Isaac staying back was only planned for after we learned about the first shark. He’s actually properly geared up for a fight underwater, and his reputation for combat prowess is towering after the Leipzig incident. Either we’d be dealing with someone who didn’t know about the latter, which would make them woefully underinformed, or someone who did know but massively underestimated him.

“As terrifying as the idea of someone going after us with murderous intent is, I do believe we can safely dismiss it.”

“Uh, who’s Isaac?” one of Sturm’s assistants asked.

“He’s the last member of my research group, he stayed back to babysit a few of our experiments. I originally hired him because he had a lot of knowledge on mythology and literature, he was also incredibly enthusiastic.

“Now though, he’s our self-proclaimed ‘hatchet man’ and a professional paranoid to boot. He manages to set up some pretty solid protections for new creatures, perfectly covering every power we know they have, as well as all we can assume they have. He’s also prepared for a wide variety of monsters ending up in the wild and needing to be hunted down, including a monster ending up in the ocean by grabbing an Aspect for water breathing.

“If he’d been here yesterday, he’d have probably taken out the first shark before it ever got close enough to strike at the boat and fought the other two in the water while we peppered them with spells. I don’t think he could have beaten all three simultaneously, but his help would have made this go a hell of lot more smoothly.”

Sturm tsked “Yeah, I think not coming back with a wrecked ferry would have gone over a lot better than that hulk we dragged into the harbor. We might have even been able to get back out on the water.”

“Oh, I doubt it.” Patrick chimed in “With more sharks being summoned, possibly because we were out on the lake, we’d have been told to stay on the shore until that situation was solved no matter wha- …”

He paused, staring off into the distance. Sturm threw him a questioning look, but he was the only one. Bailey’s team knew what it meant, though. Patrick had incredibly powerful magical senses and could even tell when other people were summoning nearby. When he sensed that, he tended to get incredibly antsy.

“Just basic, Tier 2 summons. It’s also nowhere near the lake, doesn’t seem like a problem.”

“At 2 am?” Karl asked “That alone makes it weird, anyone still going after Tier 2s shouldn’t have the Fortitude for minimal sleep.”

“Maybe.” Patrick grumbled.

“Does it really matter?” Bailey asked “Someone can check later if they’re still there with [Scry] and if there’s a problem, cleanup should be a piece of cake. For now, let’s focus on the situation at hand, shall we?”

And that was what they did from then on. For hours. Create hypothesis, tear them down, create a new one, tear that one down as well. And so on, and so forth.

First of all, they’d managed to pretty definitively figure out that the bodies in the lake were unlikely to be a big issue, long term, but they’d still get them out just to be sure. Plus, they belonged to a pretty damn impressive species of monsters, so there were countless uses for them. At some point, a text from Isaac came in, half-jokingly asking if they could get him an Aspect so he could stack that with his existing underwater breathing one.

Bailey had replied with a short ‘we’ll try’ and also sent along a brief overview about how the day had gone. What followed was a series of curious but nervous questions, but eventually, they managed to convince him to not abandon the experiment and rush over here. He sounded damn worried though.

As for the reason behind the sharks being in the lake, they couldn’t settle on any one thing.

One hypothesis had been that this might have been an attempt at messing with the three nations that bordered the lake, but why? The lake was big, but not so big that getting around it was particularly difficult, be it by train or car. There was no flow of goods across the lake, and fishing industry wise, well, it existed, but they were already having to increase its fish populations via fish farms. Hell, the only large vessels out on the lake were big ferries like the one they’d taken out yesterday, no cargo ships, no nothing.

You had tourism, booze cruises, sailing sports and the like, but none of those were important national industries one would go after to weaken, well, and entire nation. The lake was large, yes, but deaths aside, this entire thing had been almost … petty.

Yet whatever the intention behind this had been, it hadn’t been pettiness, nor a simple prank. Anyone who did this because they thought this was funny would not, under any normal circumstances, summon more sharks after seeing the holy havoc the first one had wreaked.

So, was this really just the work of a madman? It was possible, but like Bailey had said in the very beginning, just assuming that someone was mentally unstable was an invitation to underestimate them, and that was just plain stupid.

They kept going in circles, over and over again.

Rational actor? What kind of rational actor would target this place?

An irrational actor out to hurt people by any means necessary? Then why use that monster, one that would be stuck within the lake, functionally unable to get out, instead of something that could exist in a wider variety of areas?

Or had they truly been targeted, but in such an inexpert, poorly thought out way that they hadn’t even noticed?

Aaaaannnd that brought them back to the original idea, of there being some kind of properly thought out idea, one they couldn’t figure out, but they just couldn’t see a rational reason for that. So then what were some less rational ones …

The discussion was only interrupted once when Patrick noticed that the constant stream of summoning had ceased, checked what was going on and found the group of ‘legally adults but still basically teenagers’ who’d been doing the summoning trying to run away from their first Tier 3 summon.

It got fried with a single wave of his hand and he then spent the next ten or so minutes until the police arrived verbally tearing them to shreds. Those folks would now be subjected to monthly checks of their Level and XP amount as they’d solidly proven irresponsible summoners. When it worked as intended, that system would be a solid way to ensure people with a past history of irresponsible behavior wouldn’t keep going, the [System] equivalent of taking away someone’s driver’s license after a DUI.

But even with one of their members away ‘saving the world’, the discussion continued to rage.

Eventually, Meier showed up, though it was morning by then. They then spent another hour or two brainstorming new ways to deal with the sharks without trashing a million Euro ferry in the process … and then they got word. There was another goddamn shark in the lake.

***

This looked like a terrible idea, but it really wasn’t, no matter how bloody stupid it seemed while she watched it go down from the shore, safe and sound. They all were there, on the shore, all of them except Patrick.

Sure, they were ready to unleash hell on any shark that dared show itself, but the point was to only have one person out on the lake, someone who could both sense the shark well before it showed up, and then also escape.

Patrick was out there, in water barely deep enough for the shark to try its attack that involved diving deep and erupting from the water, on a small motorboat with stupidly easy controls that even someone with no prior experience concerning boats could drive, waiting for the shark to attack. The moment that happened, he’d use his newly gained flight ability to get the hell out of dodge while his colleagues on the shore obliterated the monster while it was busy chewing through his boat.

Then, he could just head the few hundred meters back to shore and that was that. One dead shark in exchange for one tiny, dingy, motorboat.

As for the trick with the flight, it had an absurd ongoing mana cost that made it ill-suited for travel and the like, but a short hop like that was no problem, no problem at all.

Just like with the first shark, taking this one down was stupidly easy, practically anticlimactically so. Patrick took a giant leap out of the boat, which erupted into a mass of splinters as it was crunched between the emerging sea monster’s jaws. Less than a second later, it was falling back into the water, dead.

And ten minutes later, once everyone’s mana had recovered, he headed back out there to see if doing so would attract another shark, but it didn’t appear. Now the only question was if that particular shark had been new to the lake, or if it had been there yesterday but not attacked for some reason.

From then on, they continued to try and figure out new tricks, ones that worked on any situation they might expect to encounter here, from something improbable like mad cultists or something more logical, if unlikely, such as some weird stock market manipulating scheme.

Throughout the day, Patrick continued to pick up faint hints of high Tier monsters being summoned, but it was too distant for him to be sure about anything, so there was nothing actionable. Also, given the distinct lack of large spread devastation or new sharks in the lake, it didn’t seem like there was actual trouble occurring, just someone reasonably summoning monsters to farm for XP.

At some point, an email from Isaac arrived, detailing the results of the experiment into autonomous summoning.

Eventually, they found themselves back around the hotel conference room table. Well, some of them. The Professors, Karl and Sturm’s assistants were working to design a new ship that could effectively fight a Megalodon or other large aquatic monster. Raul had gone shopping, picking up food for his pets and seeing if he could find something unique to the area at one of the many farms that were located inland.

Patrick had gone out for a walk and so had Amy, though they’d gone in opposite directions.

She sighed as she walked along the harbor wall gazing out across the water, bathed red in the light of the sinking sun. This whole thing had been interesting, exciting, unique, but also incredibly stressful. Outside of sleeping and eating, she’d spent maybe 6 hours out of the last 36 hours not working.

Around her, the world slowly dissolved into a swirl of colors. Magical, mysterious lights glowed from her surroundings. This was her world. Not the basic one that a [System Researcher’s] sight [Skills] let them see, but one only available to a [System Magus].

One where most of the normal issues didn’t seem so important, where nothing mattered but the magic and other effects that swirled around her. It was her world, her sanctuary, her sanctum sanctorum.

Eddies of dark mana swirled in the lake, echoing of rot and death. The Megalodon closest to the harbor, the one they’d only just killed, was starting to rot, but they’d decided to not try and get it out just yet, not until someone had caught the summoner.

Really, that wasn’t their job, though. They were [System] and monster researchers, not detectives, no matter what certain colleagues of hers did in their off time. After today, they’d likely be able to present a cookie-cutter solution to the problem at hand, and the locals could take it from there.

Magic swirled around her, making the dizzying rainbow tapestry of mana shift and warp, covering up the mess. She’d come out here to get away from work, after all, not so she could wax poetic about it.

She stood like that for a few more minutes, observing this strange, other, world … until a massive wave of power tore through it.

Thankfully, this wasn’t quite what happened, though. It was less physical threat, more alarming by its very existence. Someone was fighting over there, a dark column of power erupting out of the woods and vanishing in the sky above.

A vast [Aura] manifested near the origin of the attack, hungry and demanding. Sadly, it was one she knew. What had that idiot done now?

Amy sped off, heading towards the site of the battle while dialing Professor Bailey’s number on her phone.

“Patrick got in a fight with someone in the forest to the east of the hotel, I’m heading over there now. We might need help, and could you please direct the police to us? Just tell them to follow the explosions.”

And then she hung up again.

She used her own flight spell to make it to the roof of the nearest building and kicked of the chimney, going from rooftop to rooftop in gigantic bounds. It was nowhere near the madcap sprint that Isaac had apparently pulled off in Leipzig, leaving boot prints on random walls all over the city in the process, but it still got her across the city far faster than even a car could have managed.

Ahead, magical energy crackled, though the physical effects were still thankfully quite minor, something that would likely still change soon, given how things were going.

She took one final leap upwards, flung herself forward with her flight spell and then came down like a damn meteor. Her [Aura of Mystic Union] burst out of her, collecting the air and beginning to stick together more and more nitrogen molecules, compressing it and cast [Thermal Conductor], allowing thermal energy to flow and disperse more easily. It was an engineer’s spell, designed to rapidly cool down hot equipment without risking said equipment being damaged by the sudden contraction.

Normally, compressing air heated it up, but said heat flowed away like water off a duck’s back while her [Aura] ensured that the nitrogen actually stuck together, rather than merely reacting to the sudden closeness to other molecules with increased movement. It was a little more complex than other methods, but infinitely cheaper.

So when she slammed down the middle of the forest, near Patrick and the guy he was fighting, but far enough away that the literal sheet of liquid nitrogen didn’t hit anyone.

Mist erupted from the frozen ground around her as she glared at Patrick’s opponent, a Level 26 [Instinct Mage]. She didn’t have much time to skim through his list of abilities, but from what little she caught before he sped off, it seemed a lot of his magic wasn’t structured, but rather, well, instinctual. It was somewhat similar to how she used magic, but infinitely less complex.

The man took one look at her and the blast of ice she’d seemingly created with barley any effort at all, and ran, a wave of his hands unleashing a massive bank of fog to cover his retreat.

“What the hell is going on?” she snapped, glaring at Patrick and raising a magical barrier to ensure that if that guy came back, she wouldn’t be left completely open. Her colleague could be annoying, but usually not to a murderous rage inducing level. He was also smart enough to not pick random fights. So what the hell had just happened?

“Went for a walk, trying to see if I could figure out where the summonings were happening, found a far closer summoning, it was a shark, tried to call you, he attacked. Then you showed up, now let’s get this guy.”

As he said that, his [Aura] suddenly compressed and lashed out, seeking the man within the fog. He was taking the concept of reducing the overall volume of an [Aura] to increase the range at which it could be projected to the absolute extreme, three thin needles less than a millimeter across extending hundreds of meters away and sweeping through the forest. They weren’t anywhere near wide enough to paint him a proper picture of his surroundings, but they didn’t have to, all they needed to do is tell him whenever they touched human flesh.

“Fucking asshole.” Amy stated matter-of-factly, eyes sweeping through the dispersing fog.

“No, found asshole.” Patrick replied, making his first idiotic joke, at least where she’d heard it.

Bubbles of temporal distortion burst from his hands, lancing through the air and coming to a sudden stop at one specific tree, a tree from behind which their quarry suddenly burst at three quarters of whatever his normal speed was. Magic glimmered at his fingertips, the classic, stereotypical fireball coming into existence, but Amy generated another mass of liquid nitrogen using her [Aura] and heat dispersion technique and flung it at him with a telekinetic spell. This time, though, she wasn’t actively working to avoid hurting him.

The mass of liquid nitrogen erupted as it was flash-boiled by the fireballs, but said fireballs winked out the instant they touched it. A few drops still got through and the asshole summoner’s skin turned blue wherever it hit, eliciting a yelp of pain.

He cast a more classical attack spell, [Force Bolt], she ducked and then, he was within the range of her [Aura].

The [Aura of Mystic Union] could combine many things, but there were some limits. For example, sapient beings, high Level beings or simply things soaked in mana that weren’t her spells were a lot harder and slower to truly combine with other things, but a full bonding wasn’t always necessary.

Therefore, she stuck him to the ground, his shoes melding together with the dirt instantly and he pitched forward, arms flailing wildly as he faceplanted. His shirt and pants glued themselves to the ground as well. The man himself, meanwhile, wasn’t combining with the ground, but he was sinking clean through in preparation of the dirt actually melding with him. She stopped the process before things went that far, but he was still well and truly stuck, especially as she cast spells to harden his new earthen shackles, trapping him.

He did try to fight her [Aura] with his own, but he clearly hadn’t had much training. Sure, her training had consisted mostly of pushing various effects until something blew up, and then, depending on the result, trying to make it happen on command or ensuring it never, ever, ever happened again. But that was alright, as chaotic as it might have been, it had also worked, as evidenced by her victory here.

Patrick was beside her a moment later, casting a series of spells that should keep him down.

[Magic Dispersion], [Mana Channel Dampening], [Temporal Bubble], [Sensory Block], …

Yeah, he wasn’t going anywhere.

And then the cops finally showed up.

***

Three hours later

Amy glared at the battle-axe at the reception desk. The middle aged woman looked like she’d seen some shit, but the looks she was giving Amy didn’t really reflect that. They seemed to seesaw between fear and pity, fear of her power, and pity for someone she saw as a ‘young girl’ who’d been involved something no one should have been in.

Except Amy was not a little girl, not this time around, and that desk sergeant or whatever her title was should not only be aware of that, she should also have made up her frickin mind on what she thought of Amy.

Pity was annoying, but it was understandable.

Fear of the person who’d blown apart a good chunk of forest close enough to the police was also understandable, but it was unreasonable to pity the ‘helpless little girl’ while also being terrified of her, as that implied a level of power significantly greater than ‘helpless’.

The others were scattered to the four winds, with Bailey on the phone with the university higher ups to explain the situation, Sturm and most of the rest trying to help. Patrick was trying to discreetly listen in on the jackass’ interrogation, while Raul was scouting the area around the site of the battle for ‘clues’.

Meanwhile, Amy had just parked her ass in the precinct’s front lobby and cast a spell that enhanced her hearing and listened in.

It was an interesting tale, but also quite alarming. There was the usual ‘I’m not alone’ and ‘there’s thousands standing behind me, ready to pick up the mantle’ bluster one saw from zealots in movies and TV shows, but it didn’t feel like bluster.

He claimed that their ideals were the world was ruled by the [System], where it wasn’t the government forcing people to study whatever they deemed important, but people learning what they needed via gaining and levelling [Skills], as the single diamond located in a mountain of literal garbage served up by some aging Politian.

That had been followed by some bullshit statistic about how you only heard half of what a teacher said, remembered half of that, kept half of that past school age and then only needed half of whatever remained.

The conviction and eagerness in his voice was downright scary, especially when he started talking about how gaining access to the [System] had felt like a god had reached out and given him a purpose.

These people hated the idea of structured searching for knowledge, of institutionalized learning, of, well, everything she’d been doing in the last few years.

So, as it turned out, it had been a hit after all, executed by an idiot. Or a group of them, if this one was to be believed.

The basic idea had been to see whoever came to investigate the shark killed by their own research subject, but that had gone incredibly poorly and not worked at all.

As she continued to listen to the rambling of the likely madman, a soft ‘thud’ from outside reached her ears. She got up and walked towards the glass doors to look out, only to spot a familiar figure walking towards the precinct.

It was Isaac, though he looked unusually exhausted. His massive pool of Fortitude should have made it near impossible for him to show any sign of physical exhaustion. Had he run here in the two hours since the incident?