Outrage of the Ancients (LitRPG Apocalypse)

I actually recognized this guy. Not his face, even if the monster hadn't been an indistinct phantom, the only actual Nazi I felt comfortable identifying based on their appearance was the head asshole himself, but I recognized the reference in the name.

Heinrich Müller, head of the Gestapo, thought to have escaped Berlin at the end of the war, sparking endless manhunts for the following decades.

He'd been found sixty years later. In Berlin. In a mass grave. Where he'd been the entire bloody time.

Not that any of that information helped me any, beyond maybe confirming that his Level and tier were much lower than I'd have expected for someone as highly ranked as him. He was still plenty powerful, though, one below my own Level 51, as well as having the label of Field Boss, which generally meant you should have ten or twenty levels on him to be able to fight him solo …

"MIA!" I shouted at the top of my lungs, hoping she was still near enough to hear me, but judging by the cavalcade of gunshots from the direction she'd left in, she couldn't have noticed me even if I'd been close enough to tap her on the shoulder.

But even as I did so, I cast the one spell I knew that might allow me to win this entire fight in a single move.

[Grand Morality Play].

It was a spell I'd been taught by Merlin, something "essential for any court mage to have," given that it could alternatively create an illusionary play to display an alegory for a given issue … or trap an enemy within an illusion that struck back at them with all the dark deeds they had commited up until that point.

Against a fucking Nazi, it should have been an instant win; this bastard's hands so stained with blood it should have been impossible to see even a single patch of bare skin.

It. Did. Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Müller simply stared ahead, at me, and cocked his head to the side as though he were seeing something perfectly normal, rather than getting smacked in the face with the full weight of his sins.

This man, this … this monster in human skin, even before the System had made him an abomination in truth, he simply did not care. His soul was so vile, so rotten, that I could have probably just drawn a pentagram around him and called it a day.

But it did distract him. Just because he wasn't as disturbed by the scene before him as anyone with even the tiniest sliver of a conscience would have been didn't mean that he could function even remotely well with that crap in his face.

In the end, however, it did achieve one thing, it had to have: an illusion in his face would have inevitably blocked some of his vision.

I drew Nagelring with my right hand while summoning orbs of fire to hover over my left, ready to hurl at him …

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the phantoms emerge from seemingly random nooks and crannies, gun-toting limbs poking out from under trash cans and even out from the end of a rain gutter, as though this were some kind of Looney Tunes sketch, rather than bitter reality.

Obviously, these were just arms and guns, rather than acutal, full-body minons, but they were still mere seconds from turning me into a sieve and they were also clearly capable of tracking me … I threw up my hands in instinct, as though that could do anything, and activated my portal, right between me and the wall, open end facing said wall.

And as for the exit portal, it was likely the shortest distance I'd ever teleported anything, given that it was barely further away than the width of my shoulders, on the other side of my body, right in front of the Field Boss.

Then the world was drowned out by a thunderstorm of gunfire.

Flashes of light, bursts of noise, like a hundred of the loudest firecrackers in the world going off in an instant, my ears ringing so loud I could barely tell when it had ended.

Yet even with all that firepower having been directed at him, Müller was still standing.

Well, stumbling, but it only took me a couple of seconds to realize it was due to confusion, the combination of the illusion still messing with his vision, and him somehow having been shot by his own power had apparently left him reeling. And given me an opening.

I lunged, driving Nagelring into his stomach just below the sternum, blade angled upwards and into his … into whatever organs were protected inside of his ribcage.

They were certainly tough beyond anything I ever could have expected, forcing me to seize the hilt of my sword with [Telekinesis] at the last moment and pushing it further, feeling something burst with a "pop" that vibrated the entire blade.

Also, there was the small issue of, even with him technically being blinded, it couldn't have taken much brainpower to put two and two together and realize where I was after I stabbed him.

I threw myself backwards, avoiding the first punch, then scrambled several more steps away while twisting back around, hurling all three of the fireballs I'd cast, the heat of the detonation instantly drying my sweat and making my eyes water even at that distance.

The monster in human skin stumbled, charred and smoking, though it also did manage to jar loose my sword, and a burst of telekinesis managed to pull it back into my hand.

Yet it seemed that I'd been a little too noisy … or maybe [Grand Morality Play] had finally broken, because he threw himself after me, perfectly aiming at where I was, without any of the inaccuracy or uncertainty he'd shown previously.

Müller's forearm came down like the executioner's axe, but my hand collided with it before he could strike me, having let go of Nagelring's hilt. I could feel the energy in his blow, the deathly cold energy attempting to either reduce my bones to powder or shift into a spectral form to bypass my "feeble" attempt at a defense entirely.

Neither happened.

There was nothing even remotely courteous about this activation of [Polite Rebuke], and the fact that he'd tried to kill me only provided the tiniest portion of the counterattack's power.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

No, this was all my rage and disgust at everything his people had done, all that I had learned in school, the emotional gut punch of having walked through the remains of Dachau's concentration camp only to, mere minutes later, see the photos, the piles of corpses staring at the camera with empty eyes, all where I'd stood just a short while ago, everything else I'd ever learned about what absolute monsters this man and his comrades had been …

Righteous fury fuelling a Skill with an absolute effect, against a half-hearted (though still lethally dangerous) smack by a ghost of a bygone era. It was no contest.

The arm was blasted back in a hundred pieces, tearing off most of his torso along the way, leaving only half a man standing where the Field Boss had been a mere second earlier.

And then, I ripped Nagelring out of his body and brought it down on Müller's torso in a strike that would have cut him from his right shoulder to left hip … except that shoulder, along with much of his torso, was already gone. So I just hacked through what little was left.

So … I guess that worked too. Though now [Polite Rebuke] was on cooldown for the rest of eternity. Or at least until the end of the day, the absolute longest cooldown that particular Skill allowed. Not having it available going forward was going to be both annoying and dangerous.

Now what?

I summoned another orb of fire and sent it levitating upwards, then made it flare on a repeating loop.

Three short ones, three long ones, three short ones, redux.

SOS.

Granted, that was for asking for help, rather than offering it, but it was also near-universally recognized.

Morse code was actually one of the many, many skills I'd picked up using [Knowledge Trade], but just because I could understand a more complicated message did not mean that the people it was intended for would have the same capability.

The hope, at least, was that some would either come to help or actually take the message in the spirit it had been sent in, and then I could keep working on creating a safe area.

As long as another boss didn't show up and encounter me, personally, things should be fine. Besides, Mia would deal with those.

And Dietrich and Ogier were already dealing with the heart of this entire mess, which was most likely the Fühererbunker, wherever that thing was.

***

Dietrich

Part of him had assumed that, at the end of the day, Tristan had been exaggerating the goings-on in the middle of the 20th century.

Even if this thing was potentially exaggerated by the System's interpretation of what had happened, if the true past had held even a fraction of what he was seeing in the here and now, this Hitler fellow had been worse than any monster he'd ever faced.

Well, "worse" in the sense of having committed worse atrocities, rather than being more powerful.

This city had certainly become a vision of hell, armed figures in a myriad of dark and menacing uniforms slaughtering their way through the populous everywhere he saw.

Ogier was charging through the mess, slowly but steadily accelerating as he ploughed under any enemies while swerving around any civilians with surprising agility.

Dietrich, meanwhile, had summoned his horse and had applied [Endless Cut] to his sword to prevent himself from being slowed in any way whatsoever by the monsters he carved through, all the way to where the heart of this entire disaster was waiting.

Now that he was closer, he didn't even need [Knight Errant's Quest] to guide him anymore, the dark edifice of concrete and steel that had risen from the ground clearly visible.

It wasn't any higher than the surrounding buildings, granted, but it still had a presence that seemed to bear down on him like gravity itself, impossible to miss even if he was looking in the opposite direction.

Dietrich drew back his sword, ready to use the impossibly sharp blade of the legendary Mimung to project every offensive Skill he had from, cracking open the entire fortress with a single blow and … and then Ogier smashed into the wall before him with a tremendous impact every giant Dietrich had ever encountered could not have replicated even working in lockstep.

Boom.

The point the armored titan had hit outright disintegrated, shattering into a massive cloud of dust that was only visible for a moment before the shockwave of Ogier's arrival blasted it inwards, while cracks shot outwards at impossible speeds, making the entire building go from "solid" to "on the verge of collapse" in an instant.

Then, a boulder the size of a man fell onto Ogier's head, shattered, and the man didn't even notice.

"Let's flatten the whole thing," Dietrich decided. "I don't fancy walking in there."

And then he swept Mimung from left to right, triggering [Grand Slash] in the process, the wave of energy pulverizing the first wall it touched and weakening as it continued onwards, but still managing to collapse a massive chunk of the fortification.

The draw from [Knight Errant's Quest] was lessening, indicating that they were doing something, but there was clearly still something there to kill.

Ogier's fist hammered into the wall next, and the whole thing just … caved in on itself.

Dietrich let out a snort of laughter despite himself. These powers would have made taking castles so easy if he'd had them in his first life … but the sight of the monster erased that mirth in an instant.

An absurdly gaudy uniform liberally splattered with blood, black hair and moustache styled with so much of that disgusting hair gel that it looked more like a solid block of plastic or the like, rather than anything that should be a part of a human body … yet even if this particular being had been the original, "human" would still not have been an adequate descriptor.

… and no boss tag. But that didn't mean this bastard would be harmless.

Dietrich unleashed the [Sword Art: Giantsplitter] as he swung Mimung down in a simple chop, a line of energy leaping from the tip of his sword to carve the "man" in half, neatly cleaving him twain from the top of his head all the way down to the bottom of his pelvis, both halves falling into the ground in a stinking pile.

Nothing happened.

This had all been too easy.

And that damn nameplate was now hovering in the sky

They would have to kill the entirety of the "reborn" Nazis, obviously. But there had to be more to it than that … a sting in the tail, in all likelihood. But what was it?

What horror would the "fragmented" title turn out to be? Even if it "just" meant they'd have to chase down the legacy of the Third Reich all over the continent, that would already be a titanic problem in and of itself, but he doubted that would be the end of it.

Even so …

Dietrich pulled his horse around and looked at Ogier. "We've got a city to purge of monsters. Let's go."

***

Arthur

Excalibur hit the asphalt with a loud clatter as it slipped from his fingers, exhaustion heavy in his bones.

Finally.

The monster in question had been a Raid Boss going by the name of "Night Terror," but based on what he'd heard from the civilians during the fight, it had had another name in the past.

The Blitz.

Day had turned into night as massive clouds covered up the sky, and an ungodly roar like a thousand of those infernal helicopters starting at once, strangely small and simple versions of the planes he had become familiar with dipping in and out of the darkness that had swallowed the world overhead, dropping devices that revealed themselves to be older versions of the bombs he'd seen usedover the past few months.

And around him, London had burned.

Arthur used his bond with Excalibur to recall his sword and sheathed it, then let himself sit down heavily on a nearby rock, a chunk of rubble that had come from a nearby building.

The city was still there, mostly, but duelling something flying through the clouds overhead had been difficult and time-consuming.

[Grand Slash] had carved apart the darkness and whatever hid within, and hurling Rhongomyniad at anything that came too close also achieved some things, but in the end, it had mostly been fighting literal shadows.

Merlin had been the one to do most of the work, while Arthur had simply exhausted himself.

And overhead, the nameplate of this entire mess still burned.