Apocalypse Redux

Chapter 216: Here we go again

Even the biggest room in the fleet still felt cramped when it had more than a dozen people stuffed within, and they still needed several additional individuals to be present even though there was no room for them.

Those people ended up having to sit in remotely using the videoconferencing equipment available in the vessel’s multiple conference rooms.

“The loot from the Heart of Madness.” Isaac stated as he dropped the parchment on the table “It says its the diagram for a spell that can unite two things that should not be compatible, though I’m not a spellcaster, so I can’t tell how good it is, or if it’s useable in the first place.”

Hak grabbed the parchment and held it out in front of him so that Patrick and Raul could read it as well.

That would probably take a bit, so the meeting itself started while they analyzed the spell.

“Wait, that’s it? A lousy spell? Where are the Aspects, where are …”

Fairfield shut the complainer up with a simple glare.

The Marine Corps Colonel was of average height, his impressively trained physique was mirrored by every other individual in the room and the fact that the jackass was located in another room meant that Fairfield couldn’t even get up in his face.

But this was the glare, the kind wielded by all with a great capacity for leadership, and struck like a physical blow.

“Mr. Sharpe, are you under the impression that we fought that battle for loot?” Fairfield asked icily “That the only reason we didn’t let a [Raid Boss] run rampant was the possibility of personal gain?”

The man, who Isaac remembered as having been a pretty standard adventurer, wilted, but Fairfield wasn’t done yet.

“We are here to ensure that this situation does not repeat itself, that we take out the problem at the root. If all you care about is your part of the loot, then your presence on this ship is no longer required. Someone will bring you your share once the actual issues are done.”

Sharpe wilted and vanished from the screen.

“We tore the hell out of that monster, and its pieces are scattered all over the place. The pieces are still being gathered and any discussion of loot will wait until we know what there is to be shared.” Isaac said “And even if we had the loot, it would have to wait until the situation is resolved. Completely resolved.”

“Right, how the hell did Lovecraft predict where …”

“Later.” Fairfield shut that down “Right now, our problem is that we don’t know what the status of the remaining cultists in the city is. A full Platoon of the Marines with the highest Level of mental resistance [Skills] has been dispatched with the proper support to investigate. In the meanwhile, we need to be preparing for what they throw at us next.”

The [System] message caught them smack in the middle of discussing what they’d do if another [Raid Boss] arrived.

Mosasaur Monarch (Tier 6) has been summoned near your location.

Summon Location: Pole of Inaccessibility, Ocean floor (4 km away, direction straight down)

Oh for fuck’s sake.

Isaac Thoma, you have been designated as Incident Commander.

You now hold Unified Command of the battle against …

Yeah, yeah, yeah, no need to deal with that.

“This one should be ea- …” Isaac began, then cut himself off when a sufficient amount of time had passed that he could have reasonably scanned the thing with the [Aura] he’d projected downwards “On second thought, I got this, be back in five minutes.”

Then, he phased through the floor and transformed the instant he hit the ocean.

[Form of Horror: King of the Sea] was the single least used shape he had, but it was very very powerful in the right situation.

A powerful fishy tail, borrowed from the Megalodon and with the countless small “teeth” that covered sharkskin replaced with metal from the Razor Apparition.

A pair of floating swords similar to his primary form swam alongside him, covered in sharkskin to reduce drag.

Hands with amphibian-like webbing between his fingers, though the material was, in actuality, a projection of force borrowed from the Arcane Poltergeist.

The primary body had been borrowed from the Hydra for flexibility and his head was mostly human.

But the feature he was most proud of was something he’d straight up stolen from nature. He’d added venom glands that combined features from both the Lindwyrm and Hydra, then hybridized the result with the ectoplasmic body of the Poltergeist that allowed him to unleash a burst of highly acidic slime that wouldn’t dissolve underwater, sticking to anything it got close to, clogging up gills, getting caught around fins and more.

There was a reason few creatures ate hagfishes, and his stolen version of their defensive mechanism was a million times deadlier.

“This [Raid Boss] is a lot weaker and cheaper than the last one. Either they haven’t regained enough mana to summon another Tier 7, or the Heart killed enough of them that their combined mana pools are insufficient?” Isaac asked while he ordered the Marines currently exploring R’lyeh to bunker down while the prehistoric apex predator was around.

The Mosasaur Monarch was one of the most basic [Raid Bosses] in existence, very uncomplicated, essentially being limited to just melee combat.

What made it so dangerous was the way compensated for that weakness, its ludicrously powerful defenses, which were especially potent against anything that wasn’t another melee combatant.

A hundred meters away from it, a shell of water several meters across was thick like syrup, able to block depth charges, torpedoes, and even projectiles with [Skills] on them to prevent the water from slowing them.

The monster’s hide was highly resistant to magic, rendering most mages about as useful as tits on a bull.

Furthermore, it was completely immune to any crowd control effect that didn’t have a physical component, such as [Sitting Duck] or [Fish in a Barrel].

It was not immune to things like being locked down in the same way they’d done to the Heart of Madness, it was only mostly immune to those.

And the rest of the list of its abilities continued in the same way.

In other words, methods that weren’t fighting it mano-a-mano would, at best, be vastly less effective, utterly futile at worst.

The Mosasaur peeled out of the darkness as Isaac got close enough to see it, a lizard head big enough to chomp a submarine in half sitting upon a powerful body with four independently moveable fins that granted it unparalleled mobility. And at the end, a long, flattened tail reminiscent of an axolotl’s whipped from side to side, propelling it through the water at blinding speeds.

In his standard form, that thing would have almost as fast as him despite being a hundred meters long and over sixty Levels below him.

Thankfully, while being far more maneuverable than it had any right to be given its size, it was slow enough at turning to give people going against it a fighting chance even at Level parity.

Isaac plummeted through the water as he used [Wave Charge], which could ignore water resistance, and at the very instant the [Skill] ended, [I Am The Sword] triggered.

He fell like a meteor, hammering into the monster’s tail from the top, tearing through the flesh like tissue paper while triggering his acid launcher, covering the wound from head to toe in sticky, incredibly corrosive, acid.

With its main method of propulsion crippled, the Mosasaur slowed down, which elevated Isaac’s next attack from “suicidal stunt” to “future military academy teaching material”.

He swam around the monster, floating blades cutting shallow wounds, until he found himself near the head. Predictably, the monster snapped at him, only to get a mouthful of acid as Isaac teleported to the side and used his second and final use of his defensive ability.

Adding insult to injury, he took this as an opportunity to put out both of the Mosasaur’s eyes. Against the fleet, it would have been a devastating enemy, against a single competent, high-Level melee fighter, it was pretty much useless. Sure, killing it through its [Raid Boss] futility was an exercise in frustration, but once it had lost its tail, both eyes, and all four of its fins, there wasn’t really much it could do as he destroyed its vital organs one by one.

Once the brain had been destroyed, its movements grew less coordinated.

When the heart went, it weakened.

Its supply of air was lost along its lungs and it began to thrash madly.

The liver, spleen, and kidneys each bled profusely as he stabbed them in turn, blood loss further reducing its physical capabilities until finally, the long-awaited message flashed in front of his eyes.

Mosasaur Monarch (Lv. 45 Raid Boss) has been slain. 50,000 XP gained

And that was that. Isaac took a moment to make sure there were no nearby drones or scrying spells, and when he’d determined there were none, he grinned. That had been fun.

He swam back up to the surface, climbed up the side of the carrier, and walked straight back into the meeting room, dripping wet but unhurt.

Throughout the fight, all five minutes of it, he’d never once stopped participating in the discussion via the party.

“Why the hell didn’t you do that to the Heart of Madness?” another person asked over the video call.

“Do I need to explain that a higher Tier monster is stronger than a lower Tier one and that seven is more than six?” Patrick asked, speaking up for the first time. The speaker flushed and walked out of the webcam’s field of view.

“By the way, the spell checks out, it’s going to be expensive as hell, mana-wise.” He said.

“I can see applications in engineering and Alchemy, but you’d need someone specialized in those things to get specific uses,” Hak added. He might have said more when he was interrupted by a frantic man whose eyes were practically jumping from their sockets as he stared into the webcam.

“Ok, seriously, can we talk about the fact that HP Lovecraft somehow predicted the city would be here? What else is real? The mountain full of Shoggoths in the Arctic, the serum that can raise the dead, extradimensional houses with baby-sacrificing witches?”

“There’s a reasonable explanation for why he was right about there being a city here,” Isaac said.

“Oh, do tell.” The man replied acidly.

“The place we’re at, Point Nemo, is also known as the Pole of Inaccessibility, is as far in the middle of nowhere as you can get without leaving the planet or tunneling under its crust.” Isaac pointed out “If you want to build a trade city, you build it on trade routes. If you want to build an observatory, you find a place with calm weather and minimal light pollution. And if you want to hide an eldritch city, you put it in the middle of nowhere, and avoid places with specific extraordinary features, such as the deepest point in the ocean.”

“Wait, you think we’ve been playing around in Cthulhu’s RV or something?” Fenrir asked even as the scared whispering began.

Isaac just shrugged “I’m just saying that HP Lovecraft is probably not a prophet. I still don’t know what the city is, and it’s still bugging me.”

“Why don’t we explore it? We survived the Heart of Madness just fine, didn’t we?”

… It seemed like Sharpe had found his courage. Isaac rolled his eyes.

“Because having once eaten Indian food with a single chili pepper next to its name on the menu does not mean that you’re ready to eat a Carolina Reaper raw. The city is a million times worse.” Fenrir pointed out. And as it turned out, his glare was almost as good as Fairfield’s.

Sharpe, once again, slunk off.

This time though, Fairfield made sure to officially ban him from the vessel. Having someone there to play Advocatus Diaboli was useful, but an uninformed contrarian was the exact opposite of that.

And then, the long-awaited message finally arrived via the Party. The rest of the cultists had been either captured or killed and the city had been secured.

Well, there were still various anomalies that might still be hiding nasty surprises, but for all practical intents and purposes, they’d now taken possession of the world’s creepiest city. Now what the hell were they supposed to do with it?