Apocalypse Redux

Chapter 313: Rage, rage against the dying of the light

But first, someone needed to clean up here.

Isaac kicked himself skywards, flames gathering around his hands as he glared at the General of Cocytus. It looked like absolute shit, cracked and battered, but it was still perfectly capable of moving and chasing after a badly damaged Dreadnought.

A massive burst of [Prometheus Wrath] wiped out the entirety of Isaacs remaining mana pool but slammed into the Generals back, slipping through a crack in its armor and knocking it down.

And that was it, the entirety of his contribution to the fight.

Everyone else did the same, discharging what powers they still had at their disposal at the monster, inflicting a hell of a lot more damage.

It was still alive after that barrage, but down a leg, leaving it a sitting duck for the bombers and battleships.

Iammax was still around, of course, but without the General to provide ice, he was reduced to generating ground for his soldiers. And while the monarch of warfares strongest weapon was his army, only wielding his army left him a far smaller threat. Small enough that Isaac could outright ignore it and focus fully on making preparations.

Steff had rallied the [Round Table] after delivering the summoning blockers to the circle, and Isaac had kept one hand in his pocket throughout everything that had happened after Goodman had finished, writing emails with enough speed to almost break his phone, cashing in every favor hed ever gathered.

Goodman. That had been a mess. Hed just stood there and spewed his nonsense while Isaac had taken precautions. Hopefully, hed burn in hell for what hed done, trying to destroy the world as well as failing to hold up his part of the bargain with the dark gods, but hed likely never know.

And that whole part about how intelligence was a mistake, something that had slipped past the dark gods that had all sorts of terrifying, existential, even, implications.

But that crap was a problem for later.

Right now, he needed to keep working.

Hed already gotten assurances that hed have a stage to talk on from the German Bundeskanzlerin, and every contact hed ever made was going to try and drag anyone they even remotely had a connection with to listen to that speech, but it needed to be a good one.

But he had a ton of favors to cash in, ranging from various Vegas casino owners hed shown how to not get driven into bankruptcy by highly perceptive people a couple of weeks after the [Systems] initialization to most of NATOs military, whose officers hed spent several months teaching.

Sure, the latter were a hell of a lot more useful than the former, but the former had enough money to exert influence. On general principle, Isaac really wasnt a big fan about how money could allow individuals to exert a greater than normal amount of influence over a nations policies, but right now, it was working in his favor.

Did that make him a hypocrite? Yeah, kinda, but something would have to be truly horrific for him to not do it if it could help save the world.

Favors werent contracts, of course, but combined with Isaacs own wealth, teachable [Skills], and the urgency of the situation, he was likely going to be able to get a lot of people with the program.

And hed be getting a whole lot of stuff done in this next week. In fact, the only person whod be busier than him was Jason, whod be visiting the bosses of every major crime syndicate in the world to warn them to not pull anything.

With more reasonable/pragmatic individuals, like Calise, this would likely involve a simple envelope, shoved somewhere no messenger ever should have been able to reach, but it would escalate oh so much more with the idiots.

Warnings drawn on mirrors to be revealed when the mist from the shower covered it, or scratched into the wood of the head honchos bedroom.

Hell, Jason had mentioned buying a tattoo gun, and Isaac was pretty sure he knew what that was going to be used for.

But that was just Jason.

Of course, the effectiveness of that whole stunt was limited by human nature. Some would blow their top at having someone violate their privacy like that, others would ignore the warning, and others still might even be replaced by underlings who perceived their boss hesitation as cowardice shutting down large-scale crime on a global scale for even a week would be impossible.

If things had been as simple as demonstrating the capacity to harm the people in charge of things and issuing a sternly worded warning, the Round Table would have already done so in the past.

In the meantime, Zambon had been sent off to pull some other stuff. Specifically, he was going to be combing through the most secret files on the globe, finding clandestine programs to create superweapons, both of the living and technological kind, which could be used against Leviathan.

Some nations would likely want to keep their aces hidden, not blow them on everyones problem, but that would be a hell of a lot harder to pull off when the ghost told everyone about those programs.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Oh, sorry, were those meant to stay secret?

Yeah, Jason would absolutely drop that line at some point.

However, all of those were guns had already been fired, and not something he needed to bother with further. Or could, really, time was in too short a supply. After all, he had a speech to prepare for.

***

Isaac had stood where he now was once before, but this time around, he was actually dressed for the occasion.

The Bundestag conference room, the secret, secure one, talking to everyone who was even remotely allied to Germany.

Bundeskanzlerin Heidi Goldschmidt had given a brief introduction, but then stepped back to give Isaac the position of speaker.

His first action was to mute all speakers on his end, ensuring that no one would interrupt him directly. There were people here who listened to those muted channels and would tell him if he needed to listen to someone.

Ladies and gentlemen, I will not mince words today. The world as a whole is in danger. In six days and eleven hours, a [World Boss] will be summoned, and it has the capacity to kill us all.

Its no secret that Ive been wary of where the [System] could lead in time, and my fifth Evolution [Class] reflects that. It is all about being warned of apocalyptic events before they happen.

Thats how we found the base we raided, why Ill be able to use multiple powerful [Skills] to support our fight, and how I know what boss will appear.

The biblical Leviathan will appear in the Pacific Ocean and it will be an apocalyptic event. Itll be three hundred miles long, though considering the age of our sources, it might be slightly shorter than a modern three hundred miles. However, thats still long enough to snap satellites out of low orbit with its jaws, and its fire breath will be able to destroy those further out. Simply by moving, it will shake the ground and unleash tsunamis, destroying costal cities without even noticing.

However, there is even more to the story of the Leviathan. According to some sources, it doesnt describe a single being, but a race of monsters, of which God created two, one male and one female. But he killed the female as he saw that if they were ever allowed to breed, humanity would go extinct. And thus, the male Leviathan is consumed with hate, envious of those who arent alone in the world.

And we never dared find out where the automatic summoning limit is for Tier 10 bosses.

Im aware of the fact that there are certain issues between nations, and an entire herd of elephants is standing in the room, and that we as a species dont have the greatest track record of cooperating for the greater good.

But Im not asking for world peace, treaties, or any other kind of long-term commitment. Im asking for two weeks. One to prepare, and a second to kill the monster in a series of hit-and-run attacks.

Two weeks, and your full su-

Isaac trailed off when the conference suddenly erupted into chaos. He didnt hear anything since hed muted everyone, but he could still see the chaos unfold via the video feeds.

Goldschmidt tapped him on the arm and showed him her phone, which had a text message open on it, written in perfect German.

Frau Bundeskanzlerin, as you may know, a monster of apocalyptic strength will be summoned in a little under a week, and unless stopped, it will destroy the world. Your government has multiple programs that could make a difference, and as such, I must entreaty you to deploy them.

The following programs would be needed: Professor Chandlers alchemical weaponry, Oberfhnrich Alexander Braun, GSG-13 Division S, Sun Wukong.

In addition, your allies have similar programs of their own, ask them about the following to find out more: Nemesis (USA), Portus Julius (Italy), Armageddon Gate (France),

That would explain the chaos, Isaac said succinctly, In your experience, how long should we wait for things to calm down before continuing?

Goldschmidt muttered something extremely uncomplimentary under her breath before telling him to try again in ten minutes. Things were a little chaotic even then, but in the end, they still managed to get things back on track.

***

Two days. That was how long it had taken for things to really get going. Fleets had already begun being deployed towards Oceania, but now, it was a full-on mobilization.

Plans were being drawn up about how to handle the fallout from the nukes that would be used, simulations being made to see how many could be cleaned up,and at what point the planet risked being damaged beyond repair.

This would be a mess, but if they had to clean it up, that meant that they were alive to clean.

But what made the biggest difference was the treaty. A deal between most of the NATO and several allies that promised that anyone who didnt help now was dead to them. The wouldnt piss on you if you were on fire kind of dead. No trade, no alliances, no nothing.

Russia was being more than a little stroppy, but that was just Russia being Russia. A big military riddled with corruption and incompetence wasnt what they needed right now. And they only had two S-Rankers. In fact, Isaac was secretly glad that they werent going to be mucking about.

Meanwhile, China was very much on board, to a degree that would have absolutely terrifying if there hadnt been a very obvious reason for it.

They were right in the line of fire. Of all the global superpowers, they were the closest to the place the monster was going to appear, and the only thing preventing the waves the monster would inevitably unleash from wrecking Hong Kong was that the Philipines were in the way, but Isaac was damn sure that those islands wouldnt survive very long.

The main thing they were doing right now was evacuating, trying to get as many people as possible out of the line of fire.

Forty-five million in Oceania was just the start. Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, Australia, China, all of them had significant populations on the coast that would be impacted by the waves and needed to be moved.

Not to mention the risk of the waves reaching India, or even the western coasts of North and South America. Isaac didnt know how far the monsters power would reach, sadly, only that it would eventually trash the entire planet, in due time.

***

Isaac also spent a little bit of time getting his family to Ceres using his portal. Everyone got a full stack of Undead Aspects to live out there, but all in all, he only spent perhaps half an hour with them.

On some level, he felt he should have spent more time on them, but at the same time, spending any time on preparing for the worst when he should have been trying to stop anything bad from happening in the first place made him feel guilty.

The world was currently in absolute chaos, with people clamoring to be allowed to flee to space or hide in bunkers that they just assumed the government had to have built and they werent getting anything like what they wanted.

Thankfully, the human population in space was viable for long-term survival, but it was still a messy, messy, melange of messes that infinitely bled together into a tapestry of awful.

And threatening crime syndicates had worked in some places, but in others, it had just fanned the flames.

Even if the Leviathan dropped dead of a heart attack the instant it was summoned, the world would never be the same.