Apocalypse Redux

Chapter 193: Interlude The Raid

“This is our target, the newly-established ‘Cooperation Central’ conference center. We have credible reasons to believe that it is wholly owned and operated by the group that was responsible for the Hamburg incident, a nihilistic cult that’s been given ‘Ragnarök’ as a placeholder name in the files.

“According to anecdotal evidence, they believe that the world is doomed to end once the [System] entered existence, therefore, they might as well cash in before then. This involves making some kind of nebulous deal with some manner of satanic religion, however, their religious beliefs are neither here nor there.

“As far as we can tell, this conference center is intended to serve two purposes. The first is as a cover for in-person meetings, as we wouldn’t be able to figure out which group is composed of members of Ragnarök.

“The second is, well, it’s a party pad. If we hadn’t known an even bigger catch was coming down the line, we’d have raided the place just for the number of illicit substances used in the inauguration party. These people believe that the world is doomed, so they don’t see much of a point in true long-term planning, they just want to live long enough to fulfill their side of their ‘bargain’. This is an out-of-the-way location to get wild without potentially landing them in hot water because we still can’t be sure if the people partying are members of Ragnarök.

“However, we also suspect this place is intended to be a massive summoning center, given the prevalence of extremely well-hidden storage spaces and the highly overdesigned nature of the structure, allowing it to ignore anything that isn’t inflicted by a Tier 7 and above monster, or a [Boss].” Chief Constable Caradec explained and clicked the presentation over to the next slide, which showed a shipping manifest.

“This is a shipment that will contain countless summoning materials, as well as several other illicit but extremely valuable materials that will no doubt be heavily guarded. We can deal a heavy blow to their operations, as well as capture some of their stronger combatants.”

Then, the Chief looked proud and studied the various other people in the room. Arthur graciously resisted the urge to avoid playing the sound of crickets on his phone. They’d been at this for an hour, with the same thing having been explained almost a dozen different times, where the final, concise explanation would probably have sufficed just fine. Not only that, but this was their third meeting about all of this, and each of them had essentially been identical to this one.

And they still had to plan the actual breach after this. Knowing Caradec, it would take a minimum of five hours to settle on “one team per entrance, send in a durable person to take down the door and absorb damage, everyone else takes down the targets”.

Still, there was one small bit of good news, the tiny silver lining of knowing there was a hard limit on how long this would take, as the operation would take place in two days. The only question was if Arthur could keep his will to live that long.

***

The revolving door that served as the conference center’s main entrance locked up against Arthur the second he tried to walk in, the bulletproof glass even managing to hold up when he walked into it. For all of one millisecond.

Then, Arthur actually put some effort into getting in and it shattered like, well, glass.

The secretary reacted with immediate surprise, slowly shifting into fear, yet despite that, she stepped out from behind her desk, trying to stop him. He didn’t even have to react, one of the police officers behind him waved his hand and she was picked up and deposited against the wall, with the [System] showing the warrant, communicating the brevity of the situation and why picking a fight would be a bad idea.

She was too low a level to be able to hide anything from their various versions of [Inspect], which meant that the snap judgment of “harmless bystander” was almost certainly correct. An innocent civilian they couldn’t let run around in what might soon become a warzone, but nothing more than that.

Both of Arthur’s [Auras] blasted out, stealth no longer a concern.

The [Aura of the Stalwart Knight] hung around him like a shiny grey haze, immaterial yet solid, a see-through bulldozer ready to tear through any walls in his way.

However, the [Aura of the Stalwart Leader] tore through the entire building, threads touching the front liners in all the other groups, ready to assist then with a subtle nudge here, a “football tackle out of the path of a fatal attack” there, it all depended on the situation.

An explosion rocked the building as something exploded in another room.

“That came from the warehouse!” Steff yelled from behind Arthur and made to charge in that direction, but Arthur snapped at him.

“Stay. back. Unless we’re ordered, or the Party menu says there’s an emergency, we follow the plan.

Steff wilted in place and stayed put. Looked like some more lessons on discipline and good order were needed. Arthur wanted to run to the fight as well, and if someone else hadn’t shouted about it first, then he might not have realized that staying put was the correct choice.

… yeah, he needed those lessons, too.

They moved through the building at a good clip, arresting civilians where they stood and taking down anyone who fought without holding back one iota more than necessary.

A small, wiry man popped out of a corridor that decidedly hadn’t been on the plans and tried to stab Arthur. Tried. To.

The dagger glowed in a bright green, evil, light, like the cursed artifact wielded by the big bad straight out of an RPG, but it was nowhere near as impressive in real life.

[Excalibur] smashed the weapon out of its wielder’s hand, reducing it to scrap metal in the process. At the same moment, Arthur’s shield slapped the attacker into the nearest wall with carefully measured strength, enough to prevent him from getting up in the next few seconds, but not inflict any serious or permanent damage.

And that was enough with all the coppers around. They had a million different versions of “arrest” [Skills], some of which locked down someone who’d been taken down, others drew on the mana of every law enforcement professional in range to try and take down a suspect. The latter version was insanely expensive, though, and not workable to take down an entire building’s worth of high-Level fighters.

Enchanted handcuffs were put in place even as Arthur started advancing again, knocking down anyone who attacked.

Not that it got them anywhere. He was wearing the latest set of armor made by one Helmut Stagmer, the greatest blacksmith in the world, durable as hell and further empowered by his knightly [Skills]. On his left arm, he carried a heavy heater shield made from the strongest metal and created by the engineers at Isaac’s university, enchanted to the point of absurdity.

And in his right hand lay Excalibur, the sword of legend, the greatest of swords, and visible proof of his status as the heir of a mythological figure. It could slow the bleeding of the wielder’s wounds down to almost nothing, slash spells out of the air, and could easily break any weapon that tried to stand against it, as long as said weapon did not likewise have the weight of history behind it.

Isaac had tried to explain it when Arthur had shown it to him the first time. Certain branches of magic, such as Alchemy and the use of Artifacts could harness the metaphysical meaning or weight of an object, using it in different ways. In Excalibur’s case, the weight of its legend was directly brought to bear against other weapons of war, be they actual weapons or merely something that could be used to attack, such as spells.

A mass-produced weapon or ubiquitous attack spell would fail utterly against him while someone’s signature attack or a weapon used by the wielder to fight tooth and nail all the way up to their current status might be able to survive a few hits.

Truly standing against Excalibur would require the likes of Mimung, Balmung, or a knockoff made by someone like Stagmer. On the spell side of things, an Archmage’s signature spell, or a spell that had become legendary due to having been used in a public and impressive way.

The instant the building had been cleared, people began to search for evidence. There’d been a few injuries at the loading dock, but those had been swiftly healed and now, it was time to tear this place apart. They’d found enough things to prove that something skeevy had gone down here just on their way through, and they’d arrested several people who’d be able to provide some great information in time.

Enchanted amulets that could cast stasis spells had been slapped on all walls where storage spaces had been suspected and now, they could tear those out at their discretion, taking along huge chunks of the wall in case there was a trap that would trigger when there was less wall detected. The stasis would slow down such a trap’s triggering, but it couldn’t stop everything, sadly.

All in all, between the material evidence and the high-Level prisoners, the whole raid had been a success. But it still felt a little … insufficient.

Magic surged and suddenly, a group of five people appeared in the lobby. One immediately phased through the floor, two more turned into blurs and charged at Arthur, and the last two went after everyone else. One was some manner of lighting mage, the other was the most heavily armored person with an anime-sized greatsword that destroyed vast swaths of the building with every swing. At range.

Arthur wanted to help, but he had his hands full at the moment. Completely full.

Metal scraped over metal with a terrible screeching sound as the first figure attacked him, moving faster than he could see. One moment, it stood there, the next, it flickered past, leaving behind a fresh, shiny scratch on his armor.

The only thing he’d had time to do was to activate [Fortress] and shift his stance to the point where he the dagger failed to hit one of the weak points in his defense. The [Skill] might prevent him from moving very far, but it also made him the closest thing to invulnerable.

His shield flashed out as the second phantom attacked and the figure bounced with a loud metallic bang, but for someone whose build was all about speed, the being was looking to be staggeringly durable, digging itself out of the crater it had left in the wall with ease and charged again.

The silvery [Aura] hanging around Arthur hardened, creating a series of blades for an enemy to run into. The figure came to a stop in front of him, arm pistoning forward and being yanked back a dozen times a second, each hit ringing his entire suit of armor. All but the last.

The one before had finally knocked loose a part of his pauldron so this final attack slipped into his flesh underneath but didn’t penetrate very far. It hurt but failed to do any meaningful damage.

Also, the figure had spent a little too long trying to get through his armor and caught Excalibur to the side. It had already been cut up badly by charging through his [Aura], so the massive gash had been the final straw.

The first speedster slumped against the far wall and drew out what looked like a healing potion while the second buzzed around him like an angry hornet. It seemed to be completely unable to do anything even slightly effective.

Most people would already have been cut to ribbons by now and even Arthur might have been in terrible shape if it hadn’t been for his armor, but for the sheer number of hits he’d taken, [Skill] enhanced or not, his situation should have been infinitely worse.

What the hell were these guys’ abilities, what was their build? They were the fastest beings Arthur had ever seen, without being at a vastly higher Level than him. In fact, he was almost certain that they were lower than him. While his [Inspect] wasn’t the best and these guys had decent [Privacy], he could still observe enough to understand that they could at most be Level 100, probably lower.

Yet they were faster than his eyes could track, there had to be a trick to that. They started to move and it was as if he were watching a recording of someone running, with the middle part cut out, leaving only the beginning and end of the motion.

Where the hell were those Stats coming from? Sure, they could have just not put anything into magic, and their Strength had to be damn low too, but none of those Stats could be below 100 or so. Otherwise, the difference between them would have caused them serious trouble.

Also, the first opponent he’d cut down was back on his feet again, so there was an absurd investment in Fortitude involved, even with a healing potion. That shouldn’t leave enough points to get Agility this high. Not in any sane universe.

But in the end, that level of introspection and in-combat research was something Elena and Isaac did. Arthur could do it, sure, but his talents lay elsewhere. Figuring out the trick would have worked but taken way too long.

[Phantom Armor: Raid Suit]. It wasn’t something he liked to use as he only had a limited supply of this armor type, but there were likely going to be more people coming after this, so he’d almost certainly be using it today. In addition, he needed to save the charges from [My Round Table] for further enemies as unlike the armor, they’d be unavailable for the rest of the day once used.

If he could be certain that it was just these two he’d have to fight, he’d have chanced burning the [Skills] for the week. But as tempting as it was to unleash a can of whoop-ass on these cucklefucks, he knew it would have been a mistake.

The needles of the Raid Suit jabbed into him, the boosting potions applied to just the correct muscle groups in just the correct dosages.

Cuts began to appear on the surface of the armor but they vanished in moments as the Suit repaired itself. The regenerative feature would wreck the whole thing in short order, but until then, between it and the integrated health potions, he was functionally invulnerable.

When he then dropped [Fortress] and took full advantage of the suit’s additional speed, Excalibur caught the attacker’s blade, reducing it to scrap metal, and continued straight through his opponent’s collarbone. The phantom tore its way free in a spray of blood, down but not out.

At this point, the second one was up again and prevented him from finishing the job. Bollocks!

Still, even as the second one dodged Excalibur his [Aura] slashed across them, leaving behind a dozen shallow but bleeding wounds.

A massive “boom” shook the room as the juggernaut in the back swung his ridiculous sword and the last of the cops was bowled over, flung out of the door if they were lucky, straight through the wall if they weren’t.

Then, the massive armored man stomped towards him, incredibly slowly yet inexorably closing the distance even as the giant sword was already flashing, sending a crescent of energy straight at Arthur.

That. Was. It. No more holding back. Arthur drew deeply on his new favorite [Skill] and two of the strongest people in the world suddenly had his back.