Apocalypse Redux

Chapter 14: More Experiments

When Isaac came into the meeting room, his backpack was filled with plenty of various items.

A water cooker went on top of the mini fridge that mostly just contained the beers Bailey had offered them yesterday evening with several boxes of different kinds of tea next it.

“Great minds think alike.” Amy commented from the door “They installed a beer fridge, but they forgot the coffee machine?”

“But Miss, zis is German univerzity. How vould ve be able to keep our pride as citisens of zis country visout beer? Zurely, vu do not zuggest ve should go vizout?” Isaac asked in English, putting on a German accent, badly.

“That’s your German accent?” Amy barely managed to get out between peals of laughter.

Isaac continued in fluent English “I’m actually pretty good at doing those exaggerated accents … just not the one I’m supposed to have.”

“So that’s what you sound like normally. It’s nothing like what people expect a German accent to sound like.” Amy observed.

“Yeah, the ‘normal’ German accent is basically what happens when someone tries to learn English from a book, pronouncing everything phonetically using the German pronunciation. That got fixed basically the instant the schools got proper English teachers. How ‘bout you though? How posh can a girl from England make herself sound?”

“I do believe that it is an indubitable fact that nothing can compare to the grace and poise of a member of the aristo-“ Amy told him in a flawless high class British accent … for as long as she was able to suppress her laughter.

“Seriously though, I think it was supposed to be easier that way. Most people get their coffee at home or on the way, but cold beer and soda are things you need to go to a supermarket for and Professor Bailey seems to like using beer as a reward for good work.” Isaac suggested.

“I think it would have gone over a whole lot better if he’d offered it a bit earlier. Everyone just wanted to sleep by the time he did.” Amy said.

“Yeah. Leaving here after a hard day of satisfying work with an excellent, cold beer in hand … I can imagine it would have been great. Stumbling home with my mind a whirl, less so.” Isaac sprawled out on the couch for few seconds, sighing contentedly.

He sprang up a moment later when the water cooker signaled that the water inside was boiling. No more than thirty seconds later, he was back on the couch with a cup of green tea that still needed to steep for a bit.

“That’s an, ahem, interesting cup you’ve got there.” Amy commented.

In response, Isaac pulled the cup up to his eye level and turned it so he could see the inscription as though he weren’t already well aware of what it said.

“’I’m not bitchy, I’m emotionally flexible.’ What’s wrong with that?” he asked, grinning widely.

“Nothing, it’s just an interesting choice.” Amy said.

“Well, I like it. Lets people know what to expect from me without even having to say anything.” Isaac replied, the idiotic smile still plastered on his face.

“What, cockiness and sarcasm?” Amy snarked.

“Also impossible charm, intellect, wisdom and artistic capability.” Isaac added, voice deadly serious.

“I’m beginning to see why you have that thing, then.” Amy sniggered.

“Good morning.” Bailey suddenly chimed from the open door.

“Morning Adam.”

“Good Morning.”

“So, I’m guessing we have more interesting things to do today, then?” Isaac asked.

“Yep, I’ll tell you in the meeting room in a couple of minutes.” Bailey replied and walked onwards, likely heading to his office.

Isaac casually stood up, turned to the wall with the meeting room, and walked right through. After all, what was the point in having superpowers if one couldn’t make one’s life a little easier?

He sat there with his tea for a short couple of minutes as everyone else trickled in. Raul carried the same inconspicuous case for his rifle he’d had yesterday and a backpack while everyone else just had some kind of backpack or briefcase for their stuff.

The only one who didn’t show was Wechsler, though Isaac hoped that whatever Bailey was intending on doing, it had already been signed off on.

“Good morning everyone. First off, I just wanted to say, good job everyone. Yesterday went really well and once I’ve finished typing up the rest of the paper, namely the conclusion, I’m going to send it off for peer review.” Bailey announced, grinning like a loon.

Isaac couldn’t blame him, though. A new, important and very helpful paper released literally fewer than ninety-six hours after becoming a professor. That had to be some kind of new record, right?

“Starting today, I would like to begin investigating how the [System] defines its summoning materials. Specifically, when it uses terms with extremely imprecise definitions.”

Summoning List (Slime)

Name

Material Cost

Mana Cost

Basic Slime

Tier 1 Circle, Bone

10

Acid Slime

Tier 1 Circle, Acid, Bone

25

Poison Slime

Tier 2 Circle, Poison, Bone

50

Giant Slime

Tier 3 Circle, Bone

75

Toxic Morass

Tier 4 Circle, Toxin, Mud

150

Devouring Horror

Tier 5 Circle, Acid, Toxin, Mud, Fabric, Flesh, Bone

250

…

“Specifically, just what it counts as ‘acid’. Technically, that means anything with a pH level under 7, but that covers everything from aqua regia to orange juice and even just normal rainwater. For that I’ve had a series of reagents prepared, on a pH gradient from 7 to one in 0,1 increments, which will get dropped off here later today. We’ll also be trying out the aforementioned orange juice and other various common household ingredients that also qualify as an acid by the strictest interpretation of the word. However, we will have to be exceedingly careful with regards to how we do this in order to avoid accidentally summoning the wrong creature. Therefore, I’m going to ask you to see if there is anything else that could be summoned by the combination of a Tier 1 circle, a bone and whatever else we add.”

With that, Bailey put a list onto the table.

“This is what I’m intending to use, Amy, Karl, Patrick, please check for any accidental overlaps. Raul, Isaac, I’ve received a few requests for someone to check if it’s possible to kill a Slate Golem with a firearm. To that end, I’ve secured you use of the firing range the forestry faculty uses for firearms training. Please summon one and take it down without breaking too much or damaging the front, then grab the engine hoist and cart it over there. Please be back here at around three pm at the latest. Questions?”

“How are you going to deal with the mess?” Isaac asked “There’s a good chance those slimes splatter and we’ll be up to our ankles is acidic goop after a few die. Also, what happens when it starts to melt the floor?”

“Excellent question.” Bailey nodded approvingly “We’re planning on using their ability to track their summoner to get them to climb into an acidproof container and then kill it there. As to just how acidic they are, we’re obviously going to check what happens when their bodies come into contact with our containers or the floor. Anything else?”

And with that, the meeting broke up, Isaac heading straight into the summoning room.

“Why the hell are there a bunch of mattresses in here?” Isaac called out as he phased back out.

“Those are so it doesn’t crack when it falls over.” Bailey called back.

“Ah, makes sense. I’ll get back to it.” Isaac said.

A minute later, he returned and grabbed the engine hoist.

“Wow, you really don’t use doors, do you?” Raul asked, shaking his head.

“Why would I?” Isaac grinned back at him, drawing a laugh.

“Nice.”

“Should we get a blanket to cover that thing? I think tromping all over campus with a dead monster in tow is going to cause us a ton of trouble.” Isaac suggested.

“If you can use the hoist on your own, I can go grab one.” Raul offered and Isaac nodded. He was the veteran of over a decade of brutal warfare, he could handle a relatively basic piece of machinery. At least he hoped he could.

Isaac tried, he really did. He fought valiantly, a battle fit for the ages, something that would be enshrined in history alongside tales of great heroes such as Gilgamesh, Solomon and Heracles. Yet despite all that, he failed. The dead Slate Golem slipped out of the straps’ grasp again and again, no matter what he did. And to make thing worse …

“What the hell are you doing? We can hear the bang- … I see. All you have to do is …”

When it had taken Karl all of five seconds to fix his screwups, Isaac had contemplated for a brief second to start hunting creatures whose Aspect’s gave memory manipulation powers, then dismissed the idea.

Wrangling the several hundred-kilogram slate hunk across the entire campus wasn’t exactly easy, but the engine hoist made it at least doable.

A lot of the people they passed gave them one or two interested glances, but then looked away again. It wasn’t like there were many people on campus, though. Classes were apparently still cancelled, so very few students would be hanging out in between lectures.

The few people who were here worked on campus and they were usually busy actually doing the work.

“Did you ever think this is what you’d be doing with your life? Carrying dead monsters all over campus?” Isaac asked.

“I don’t think anyone ever expects to be doing stuff like this.” Raul said “But then again, the one constant in life is that you can never truly know what will happen.”

“That is … very true. By the way, can I ask what your [Class] is? In case it’s too personal, you don’t have to say anything, of course.” Isaac asked.

“Why would it be? I’m a [Ranger], basically gives me [Skills] for wilderness survival, tracking and hunting. A single active [Skill] called [Enhanced Impact] that lets me make my bullets hit harder, though it apparently also works with any other kind of ranged weapons.” Raul explained.

Ah, yes. In the other timeline, a pretty serious taboo about asking other people about their [Skills] and [Classes], given that it could also be interpreted as asking how to defeat and possibly kill them. Only close friends and teammates would be told the specifics, which would be needed to create proper plans of action.

Literally anyone else would only know about various archetypes like Archer, Mage, Fighter, Healer and so on.

But that taboo wouldn’t really have developed yet, would it?

As far as Raul’s [Class] went, there were no real surprises there. It was essentially the job he was doing, magically enhanced. It would have some combat potential, but not too much. Some knife related ones maybe, and the projectile one that also worked with bullets.

Really, there weren’t too many good gun [Classes] out there. Firearms simply didn’t scale nearly as well with one’s level as magic did. They were powerful and effective at the beginning, before people really got going with gaining their superpowers.

And while there were [Classes] like [Soldier] or [Policeman] that got [Skills] that involved the use of guns, those weren’t that impactful. An entire build based around the use of guns would require high amounts of Magic Power and Magic Regeneration, making it essentially a [Mage] build with extra steps. Meanwhile, a lot of the [Skills] that affected guns only worked on them, while most other ranged weapon [Skills] didn’t affect them, forcing people to create specific and therefore rather limiting and inflexible builds.

In addition, the sheer amount of effort needed to create magical firearms was insane. Magical materials were harder, more durable, overall just better than what humanity had been using for the last several millennia, and that didn’t even began to account for the strange and downright supernatural qualities they might have.

Using modern tools and techniques to work on those materials didn’t really work out all that well, often breaking even the sturdiest of machinery.

Therefore, creating magical guns required not only getting the materials, but also redesigning the weapon from the ground up to take advantage of the materials’ special attributes, at which point one still needed to build the machinery necessary to actually make the weapons. And sometimes, build the machinery to build said machinery.

In the end, magical guns were possible, but wouldn’t be all that viable for a long while yet.

That being said, while making them was still a gigantic, world class pain in the ass, having a few magical bullets lying around could be useful. Making enough to use them all the time was not feasible, but a handful could make the difference between life and death in the right situation.

“Huh. So that’s basically just your job, but with extra superpowers, isn’t it?” Isaac asked.

“Basically, yeah. What’s yours?” Raul asked.

“[Rogue]. Knives and sneaking around, with a little ghostly boost from the Aspect of the Specter.” Isaac replied.

“Hm, is that the one that got offered right of the bat? What’d you have to do for that?” Raul wondered.

“It wasn’t, actually. It wanted to turn me into an [Office Drone], but I wasn’t a particularly big fan of that. Plus, like I said, whenever the blue screens start popping up in the books, the world ends. I wanted something to fight with.” Isaac explained.

“[Office Drone]? No offense, but that isn’t at all the impression I get from you.” Raul commented.

“Eh, it’s just that I get to do what I want to do right now. I started studying Economics to go into business, then start rising through the ranks, retire once I’d saved up enough. A boring life, but a relatively normal one. I’d be doing the actually interesting stuff in my free time, like parachuting, paintballs, all that good stuff. And then the you-know-what happened and I realized that I could do so many other awesome things. I want to know how all of this works, do everything it lets me do … just live you know what I mean?” Isaac explained.

“I do, I totally do. For me, it was pretty similar. I like the outside, I’ve been going on hunting trips since I was a kid, and I love hiking. So I studied Forestry and grabbed the associated [Class] after the [System] initialized.” Raul said.

“That reminds me, do you know what [Classes] the others have? I think maybe we should check that one of these days, just so we know.” Isaac suggested.

“The Professor’s a [Healer] variant of some kind, at least I think he is, I’m not sure. Karl’s a [Geomancer], but you knew that already. Patrick and Amy … I got no idea.” Raul told him “End of the day though, what someone’s [Class] is won’t matter much if they stay at Level 0 for the rest of their life.”

“Are you suggesting they should start summoning and killing creatures to gain some XP in addition to the dregs they get during the experiments?”

“Not what I was getting at, but yeah. No offense, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to depend on you for everything. Eventually, we’re going to have to summon and kill stronger creatures, or ones you don’t counter quite so thoroughly and it’d be great if someone else could help out.” Raul suggested.

“I’m just not sure if Bailey will go for that. Summoning and killing creatures for power isn’t exactly his mission statement, is it? And that’s assuming they’re even physically capable of killing one of the summoned creatures.” Isaac wondered.

As a [Healer], Bailey would make quite a bit of XP whenever he healed someone, especially when the injury had been caused by a summoned monster, so he wouldn’t have to kill anything if he didn’t want to.

But the others would have to start to get stronger the traditional, bloody way. The XP gains for just doing your job when said job wasn’t combat related were nothing to write home about.

“I think it might be worth suggesting though.”

“Oh, it absolutely is, if for how useful increased Fortitude is.”

“What about it?”

“Oh, it makes you need less sleep. It’s really useful. Did I not mention that I’ve started waking up in the middle of the night since I’ve started increasing that stat?” Isaac smiled coyly.

“That sounds kinda amazing, actually. How much free time do you have on your hands now?” Raul grinned back at him.

“More than I know what to do with. Really, I think suggesting it is worth it, maybe we can even phrase it as researching a good way for people to level when they aren't particularly fond of or adept at fighting.” Isaac told him “Anyway, is it much further?”

“Couple of minutes.” Raul said as they kept chatting about how useful something like an increased Fortitude was outside of combat.

In reality, all of the Stats had hidden benefits in addition to their obvious effects.

Fortitude hardened all of one’s physical resistance, be it to avoid shock, reduce the need for sleep or survive horrific injuries. Once it was high enough, only losing one’s heart or brain would be lethal and given that Isaac had [Hydra’s Regeneration], he could simply regrow the former if he had enough time and mana to do so.

Meanwhile, Strength would slowly transform into a form of tactile telekinesis that helped people properly hold onto whatever they were carrying, allowing them to, in theory, catch a plane superman style.

On the other hand, both Magic Regeneration and Magic Power increased the power of the human brain, allowing for better memory, faster and more complex thinking and overall making it better. In other words, increasing them was incredibly useful even if one didn’t actually need the mana.

Agility, meanwhile, increased one’s thinking speed in a different way, granting truly insane reflexes.

As for Perception, while it might sound like having better senses would come with some pretty significant downside, namely, overstimulation, it also granted a similar resistance to that as well as a perception filter to blot out unwanted sensations.

All of that would be discovered and thoroughly researched in the coming years, though some things, like the correlation between Fortitude and sleep, were rather obvious.

“We’re here.” Raul said, gesturing at a nearby, chest high fence.

“Oh, thank God.” Isaac slumped against the part of the engine hoist he was holding on to. The last part of the journey here had been uphill. Only slightly, not something he’d have normally even noticed, but when pushing around that stupid, multi hundred-kilogram hunk of rock … even that slight incline made things that much harder.

“Morning, Mr. Mina.”

An elderly man in a sturdy looking suit waved towards them from behind the cage. He was around fifty, maybe sixty with an already receding hairline, but looked to be as healthy as Raul or Isaac. Clearly, this was not someone who let themselves go as they got older, instead staying active and fit.

“Morning, Professor Bishop.” Raul greeted the man, then gestured to Isaac “I’d like to introduce you to Isaac Thoma, one of my new colleagues. He specializes in esoteric knowledge and combat.”

“Morning, Professor.” Isaac raised his right hand in greeting.

“Good morning, Mr. Thoma. Though I’m curious, what exactly does ‘esoteric knowledge’ mean?” Bishop asked.

“It means I know a bunch of stuff about mythology, video games, and literature that seemed to have been eerily prescient in light of the … situation involving the [System].” Isaac explained “Also, like Raul said, I’m a good fighter. Actually, I’m the one who killed that thing.”

He jerked his thumb in the direction of the covered Slate Golem.

“Ah yes, the monster. Let’s get it inside so I can get a good look at it.” Bishop opened a door in the fence and helped push it inside, then pulled off the blanket with a big grin.

“It’s hard to believe that that thing used to move, isn’t it?” Bishop grinned.

“If I hadn’t seen it, yep.” Isaac told him “It really is quite a sight.”

“I can imagine. Shall we get it up to the shooting range?”

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