Outrage of the Ancients (LitRPG Apocalypse)

Ours had been a war with no front lines, no clear targets, no order or even the remotest semblance of the Geneva Convention.

Humans on one side, monsters on the other.

Us forever reacting to the beasts that showed up effectively randomly, the beasts trashing whatever area they appeared in.

There had been no way to prioritize places to protect because our enemy had no priority targets, and even making the attempt to collapse the defensive lines around vital infrastructure would have effectively surrendered most of humanity to the beasts.

Granted, the logic of "save some or watch everyone die" was sound if you were a heartless monster, but even if it had been attempted, with the system's empowerment, every single person might wind up getting the Skill that made victory possible. Trying to get past with only a handful of people wouldn't fly for reasons entirely beside the moral.

Munitions were starting to run low for those who relied upon firearms, food, and other supplies would follow suit soon, and then, the System had decided to drop the mother of all bombs straight into the middle of our … well, everything.

All the evil shit we, as in humanity, had ever done was clearly coming back to bite us in the ass, and while that made the location of the monsters somewhat predictable, name one country free of atrocities.

Case in point …

… yeah, when Mia had mentioned she'd love a chance to punch Hitler in the face, I don't think she'd meant it quite like this.

Not to mention that, of course, I was currently in the process of kicking most of our allies through portals because historic enemies meant historic locations, meaning their lands were actually under immediate attack now.

I might not have known what exactly the problem was at any given point, but I could guess.

I'd already opened a portal to London for Merlin and King Arthur, one to Prague for Joseph, the legendary Golem named after said city, one to Dublin for Fionn and his warriors, the bridge of the battleship Wisconsin for Vice Admiral Francis Drake, and was currently getting ready to open a portal to Berlin because the chance of that not being where we were going to see the main enemy forces were just about zero.

Speaking of, Drake immediately stepped through his portal since he was actually down here in the core of the mountain with Charlemagne, the strategist, and me, since he was here purely to increase the number of ancients in the mountain fortress, which should have called in monsters from further away.

Should have, because sadly, the bad guys were appearing where they'd been in the past, rather than where we needed them.

But since Drake's Skills were centered around ship- and fleet-enhancement, he wasn't much more useful here than Charlemagne, whose focus was on logistics, or me, who mostly played taxi. Everyone else had to run down here.

Joseph was there first, hands flashing into ever new signs as he started to ask me to send him to Prague, for obvious reasons, only to stop when he recognized the buildings visible through one of the portals I'd opened.

Then, he simply nodded, signed "thank you," and walked through.

I was really glad American Sign Language was a thing, communicating with the golem in any situation where he couldn't easily pull out pen and paper would have been … tricky. Sadly, golems, as a rule, were mute; Rabbi Loew couldn't have changed that.

One of Fionn's men was the next to arrive, Caoilte mac Rónáin, skidding to a halt in the room as he slowed down from the near speed of sound I knew he could reach if given enoguh time to accelerate, though the rest of the Fianna was right behind him, with Fionn giving a short goodbye before diving into the portal.

Then Arthur and Merlin showed up, simply appearing in the corner of a room. Huh … I hadn't known Merlin could teleport, though there were clearly limits, considering he hadn't just zapped the pair of them straight to London himself.

Once again, they headed "home," and I closed the portal behind them.

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Mia was the next to get here, with Dietrich right on her heels, and Ogier wound up arriving last, slowed down by his heavy armor, though he'd still run what had to be at least three kilometers in barely four minutes despite it.

"I'll stay here and coordinate," Charlemagne announced. "Any political or military leaders you'll send here, any civilians you are able to rescue are to go to the eastern grand hall, any files into Storage Hall C, any technology or machinery into Storage Hall F."

He didn't need to ask whether or not I knew where those were, nor if I'd been in them already, which was a requirement for being able to portal there.

Dietrich threw a dark look at the last portal remaining. I just realized that, despite all the far-flung places he'd had to go to fight monsters, he'd barely gone anywhere within Germany, thanks to the portals.

"So that's Berlin, I take it?" he asked. I nodded.

"You're coming," he said. Not quite an order, not quite a question, but definitely not something I could just say no to, even if I'd been inclined to do so.

Especially since that was probably the best place for me. When it was time for everyone who went to Berlin to head to the site of the next "fire" in need of putting out, it was better for me to have gone there with the original portal, rather than needing to waste another portal to reach them.

"I am," I nodded, reaching into my [Diplomatic Pouch] dimensional storage Skill to pull out a long coat I'd prepared a week ago and threw it around my shoulders, then triggered [Modern Makeover] to transform the fashion crime of an outfit into something far more functional.

Because, well, that thing was both ugly and impractical to the extreme, it having been designed purely to serve as raw materials for my clothing transformation/armor creation Skill. Kevlar, leather, and wood for a sword sheath, etc.

A split second later, I was wearing a dark blue, heavily reinforced but not outright armored, "uniform" without any actual insignia, and an empty sheath for my sword, Nagelring, which Dietrich had given me when he'd found the cache his men had left behind for him, centuries ago.

I actually also had a couple of spare cloaks, in case someone else was in urgent need of armor without being able to access it in time, but hadn't needed it yet.

Mia and Dietrich could both summon armor onto themselves at the drop of a hat, Charlemagne never went into combat directly, and I don't think I'd ever seen Ogier Danske outside his metal shell.

I mean, yes, I'd seen him with his helmet off and was pretty sure he didn't sleep in armor, but the two of us were usually only in the same room when there was combat imminent.

Then, together, all four of us headed through the portal, which I snapped shut once I was through.

Now what?

"That way," Dietrich announced, pointing in a direction where there was nothing special about that I could see, but was likely indicated as containing the big bad by one of his Skills.

Then, he turned to me and Mia, "Ogier and myself will deal with the heart of this Continent Boss. Can you contain or deal with the minions?"

Mia nodded, with me doing the same a moment later.

The gunshots in the distance were largely drowned out by the sound of sirens, shouts, and car horns, but they were there. Mia would be the one to "deal" with whatever was responsible for that, while I'd be at least decent at "containment."

My strongest spell was called [Century Storm] and, like the name suggested, summoned the kind of natural disaster that only happened once a century and would be remembered for much, much longer.

Dozens of lightning bolts just waiting to strike any target I designated, winds strong enough to me used to fly, though I wasn't confident in my control yet to try that, and sheets of ran that were nearly as hard to see through as actual walls … great for summoning on top of an enemy, less so in the middle of a city of millions, especially one currently trying to evacuate after a whole bunch of monsters had appeared in the city.

Which just left me with … well, a few tricks.

I summoned three [Fireballs] and had them hover above my hand as I walked down a random alleyway, looking for something to do, though Mia squeezed past me so that she was in front, which was probably where she should have been from the start.

A monster chose that moment to pop up at the far end of the alley.

And then it promptly fell to the ground, split from its left shoulder to right hip, neatly cut in half, the result of Mia's attack clearly visible in her wake as she burst into the wider space beyond, blade flashing.

As I hurried after her, I started to whistle the melody to "Hitler's only got one ball," a song which I'd found on YouTube during one of my brief moments of free time and then gotten stuck in my head. It seemed appropriate for the situation.

Well, whistling wasn't, but still felt like the thing to do.

The plaza beyond was already covered in corpses, both humans riddled with bullets and humanoid monsters hacked to pieces, but I was sad to say, that kind of mess was nothing new.

I threw a fireball at a single, lone monster that was too far from Mia for her to be able to get to him in time to prevent it from raising its rifle at her. Not that she was likely to be hurt by it, but I wasn't going to take that chance.

She turned around at the sound of the explosion, saw me, threw up a mock salute in thanks, and ran off to … somewhere. More monsters.

Glancing around, I realized there were only a few paths of ingress to this place, and it could be easily barricaded.

A good gathering spot … if it wasn't covered in gore.

I triggered [Restoration of the Old], instantly repairing every bit of damage to everything in range, including patching up the rifles belonging to the monsters, even the ones Mia had hacked to pieces along with their wielders, meaning they should be usable by any of Berlin's citizens who found their way here.

But, more importantly, all the blood on the ground was outright erased, along with the monster bodies, while the dead were stacked in the narrowest alleyways, out of the way but still possible to be buried, assuming we kept control of the city.

However, I'd managed to exclude the IDs from the cleaning Skill, leaving them lying on the ground where their owners had fallen, allowing me to easily sweep them up with a brief application of [Lesser Telekinesis] and drag them into the [Diplomatic Pouch]. No matter what happened here, there'd at least be a record of who had died here. And, more importantly, who hadn't.

Now, how to announce that there was at least a hint of a sanctuary here?

My initial idea was simply the old "trick" of using [Fireballs] as flares, and I was about to do that, when I saw him.

Shit.