Outrage of the Ancients (LitRPG Apocalypse)

Charlemagne

It was always going to come down to this. Some would say he had planned this the entire time, but that phrasing implied that he had had a hand in things turning out the way they had.

And, to be perfectly honest, he might have done that if it had, in any way, shape, or form, been necessary to do so.

But no, nothing of the sort had been required.

Because the current situation had been entirely and utterly inevitable, the only "choice" he'd had was whether or not to prepare for this eventuality.

Social order was inevitably going to break down as governments fell, and the dithering politicians and their infighting would have inevitably failed to grow in power to the point where they could do what he was about to do. Or, at the very least, the ones who were still alive had proven their shortcomings in that arena.

And so on, and so forth.

The only thing he hadn't, couldn't have, predicted was how focused this part of the Fifth Challenge had been on Berlin and razed the city to the ground. It had been like a dog with a bone or, as the modern man would say, "laser targeted," on modern Germany's capital, as well as the French capital of Paris, and Rome, the most ancient and revered of cities, had likewise been taken heavy damage from the System's recreation of Mousolini's coup.

All in all, it had been a huge mess that had removed most of the meager support Skills that the humans of the modern day had managed to develop, as well as the coordination that had made resistance possible in the first place.

And, taking all that together, things boiled down to a very special set of circumstances: there was not a single intact government in the area around the Untersberg, and he himself had the ability to take over all those duties, as well as the ability to extend a hand in friendship to all those left bereft of leadership without ever having to leave his throne.

He triggered [Spirit Envoys] every time the Skill came off cooldown, sending out ghostly messengers to every governor, mayor, and other local leader he could find to offer his help.

A flesh-and-blood envoy might have normally been far more useful, and flexible as well, but all in all, he neither had the people nor the need to do so.

And as he could see with [Empire Sense], the lands "under his control" were expanding faster than a horse could run, only leaving the occasional gap where someone had either ignored or decided against accepting his help.

No problem. Once he pointed out that it was infinitely easier to sense trouble within his borders, tomorrow, many of the holdouts would see the light. And those that didn't … well, sure, they'd still be helping, simply abandoning them in place would leave a nigh-indelible stain on his reputation, but that did not change the fact that said help would be more difficult. Not to mention how, in the long term, poor logistics would result in even poorer economies, and so on, and so forth.

Those that held out longer, years, even, they would either eventually develop into free cities that held onto their own independence with an iron grasp while also trading with the surrounding area, or they would become ghost towns as their inhabitants left for greener pastures.

All in all, the Frankish Empire would be resurrected in short order and, if only it survived the last three Challenges, it might bloom into a golden age to last a thousand years.

***

Tristan

Soooo … that just happened.

In fact, it had happened so quickly and so quietly I'd almost missed it, but being as connected to the Skill-based communications network of the Untersberg, I'd noticed even without having to be explicitly told.

But yeah, Charlemagne had just taken over a massive chunk of Europe.

Peacefully taken over, mind you, simply made on offer that had been accepted, but still, had this been attempted even a month ago, we'd likely have been seeing cruise missiles heading our way in a matter of hours … had this been the entire plan from the very start?

For about five seconds, I stood there, in the middle of the corridor, icy dread holding my heart in an inexorable grasp as that thought rattled around my mind.

The idea that this might have all been a ploy to do … well, exactly what he'd just done was … it felt like someone had yanked the rug out from under me at the speed of sound, my legs feeling like jelly as I stumbled over to the nearest wall and threw out my hand to catch myself.

So I stood there, heart hammering to quickly it felt like a lawnmower had roared to life in my chest, leaning on the smooth stone of the mountain, suddenly painfully aware of the hundreds of thousands of tons of rock that were up there.

Had it all been a lie? Or … or …

Someone slapped me across the face. And it was only when I felt my palm sting that I realized that I had been the one to do it.

At least my subconscious seemed to have been able to keep its cool.

Yet I could already feel the maelstrom of madness begin to suck me back down once more.

What the actual fuck should I do now?

Kill him? Try and fail and get executed, or manage it and wind up being responsible for the destruction of civilization in Europe … either way, that wasn't happening, even if this had all been the end result of a Machiavellian plot that had been in the works from the very beginning.

Yet … yet did that make sense? Could he have even had the knowledge to make those plans and influence everyone who'd have had to be influenced to make things happen?

No, he couldn't have. He wouldn't have known how the Fifth Challenge's spawn rules would have changed things to annihilate governments in an instant, and we'd responded to Berlin in a matter of seconds, and even that hadn't been enough. And it never would have been enough, evidently.

Unless Dietrich had played along, delaying and sandbagging until enough damage had been done, that was. But I didn't believe that. He wasn't the kind of person who'd pull something like that. If he wanted to do something, he did it directly.

And as for why this might have been prepared for anyway, it had always been an option. Of course, he, of all people, would have made plans for that.

All of that threw up another question, though: how the fuck had I figured that so quickly, while I was panicking?

I slapped myself again, entirely on purpose this time, on the forehead.

Goddamnit, I had too many Skills …

[Shifting Point of View] was one of those weird little niche tricks that could make a world of difference if it triggered, but oh so rarely did.

As for what it did, it was simple, it let my subconscious automatically and quite effectively play devil's advocate, and apparently triggered automatically during a panic attack.

Running through things again, from the top, I settled on two things: firstly, this hadn't been the result of Charlemagne's actions. And secondly, if he could have forced it to happen, he might very well have done it.

After all, this was the same man who'd been "crowned emperor due to a spontaneous decision of the pope, who had caught him entirely off guard as he attended mass," Charlemagne was certainly no stranger to faking fortunate happenings.

Although considering the "evidence," it was damn easy to find "proof" that he'd been planning this the entire time.

He'd even had he flag prepared already. It was a variant of the "coat of arms" I always put on my suit when acting as an ambassador, the one that had been attributed to him centuries after his death, the half-eagle, half fleur-de-lis, though this one in the colors of red, gold, and blue, red being shared by both the German and French flags, while blue and gold were each only found on one of the two.

Also, things were being planned to take things further, to prepare laws, and even name the new nation.

Thankfully, he had chosen against any kind of German name, neither directly nor indirectly, such as the Holy Roman Empire (though apparently, that term hadn't been in widespread use in his day).

Calling in the Frankish Empire made it clear that this wouldn't be the Third Reich, even though, by the Nazi way of counting, the Holy Roman Empire had been the first great "German" realm.

Or, to be specific, the Holy Roman Empire specifically referred to the Germanic portion of Charlemagne's empire, after it had broken up, despite the whole "liberated Rome, got crowned in the Vatican by the Pope" thing.

But as things were, the chosen name would stress that there were more countries with a claim to Charlemagne's legacy than just Germany, and that this wasn't a German conquest, not that this was a "conquest" in the first place.

Should be fine.

Hopefully.

Though claiming to be a new Germany would have caused no end of trouble, since Germany always had to be a democracy. It was in the constitution, written in a way that, regardless of what happened, regardless of circumstances changed, regardless of what the people themselves wanted at any given time, regardless of any new pressures that happened to have cropped up between the time of its writing and the present day … that part of the constitution could never be changed, nor could the clause that protected both democracy and itself.

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After Hitler, no one had been willing to take any chance of a future leader "legally" turning the nation into a dictatorship, least of all the victorious Allies who'd written the basic, "temporary" constitution that Germany had simply wound up keeping.

Then, I finally entered the throne room, after having tried to school my expression and outfit into a more "proper" appearance.

"Good morning," I said, and headed over to the table I used as a desk. Not the main one, mind you, that was currently piled high with random but relevant clutter, too crowded for anyone to use. Anyone save Charlemagne, that was, he knew where everything was and could navigate the mess, but if anyone else touched anything, even he would likely have some trouble, and then may God have mercy on the soul of the "perpetrator."

Although I'd settled on not pressing things further, and accepting things as they were, I did not trust myself to stay civil if I engaged in further conversation. Not yet.

The reply I got might have been a similar greeting, though it was hard to tell, and the new Emperor of Frankia had his head buried in paperwork and his mind too tied up in that to pay too much attention to anything else.

I glanced at things as I walked past.

Granted, my knowledge on this kind of logistics and general leadership wasn't perfect, but it was a hell of a lot better than it had been before the System arrived.

And this looked like things were currently in an incredibly chaotic transitional phase, but rapidly approaching stability.

What we had here would likely be functional, but then again, there were a whole lot of governments with titanically horrendous issues that had also been "functional."

After all, "it works and isn't actively exploding" was a very low bar to clear. So low, in fact, that the demons of hell had likely declared it a tripping hazard by now.

Though at the end of the day, it wasn't like democracy had been overly perfect either.

Like Churchill had said, "Democracy is the worst form of government … except for every other form of government there is," and while I did not know the origin of this specific quote, "democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner," it did rather succinctly sum up the biggest weakness of a democratic government.

Even so, like Churchill had pointed out, everything else was worse. Monarchies, specifically, could give you a leader just as bad as certain elections had done, with far less input on the part of the populace, and you'd be stuck with them for far, far longer.

At least the new emperor had a track record for long-term planning, supporting intellectualism, and generally not being a terrible leader … though he'd also had a reputation for religious intolerance and likely also had a few other negative traits that history had whitewashed … probably the best outcome for now, but it could end exceedingly badly in the long term.

***

Charlemagne

The next day, he was already seeing the fruits of his labor.

Not everyone had taken him up on his offer just yet, obviously, but enough for him to work with. More than enough.

[Empire Sense] extended to cover much of what was, once again, Frankia, and allowed him to infer what was happening in most of the rest of the country.

And from there, it was a simple matter of figuring out where the best places to farm were, how many survivors had to be fed, what the likely rate of attrition for farmland was, and how much of a buffer he'd have to build in, even according to the most pessimistic of predictions.

Then, looking into how Classes were distributed, finding farmers with the right kind of Skills to make the most of the opportunity to maximize output and minimize the time requirement, he found the best way to produce the necessary food.

And then, he went looking for the necessary guards for what he could expect to wind up attacking the farms, taking into account the speed of reinforcements, and so on.

And then he repeated the whole thing for all other needs.

Munitions.

Fuel.

Spare parts.

Basic clothing.

Books.

And then, after the needs, he went looking for the wants. Entertainment electronics, novels, fancier clothing, alcohol, tobacco, fancy luxury foods … much of that would have to be retrieved directly; there weren't any methods of manufacturing that were located within the realm, at least not directly.

Modern economies were designed around a vast web of supplier relations that spanned the entire globe, which was taking ever more damage with every passing week.

At least they had a set end date for this whole mess to look forward to. If the System's integration had been more open-ended, things would have looked far grimmer.

***

Tristan

Thanks to the range of all of Charlemagne's governing Skills having increased massively over the past twenty-four hours, losing access to the usual ways of learning about problems wasn't a big deal, but a whole lot of military units were still very wary of following his orders over those of the old government, those which would not be forthcoming.

Which resulted in the current situation, where I sent anyone who needed to be somewhere to that place, and then they were returned using whatever means were available, typically helicopters, which had the extra "benefit" of winding up their passengers because, to my knowledge, there wasn't a single ancient who did not regard them as overengineered noise machines, and riding in them an excercise in frustration.

Arthur, in particular, was usually in a truly foul mood after every excursion, though neither Dietrich nor Ogier was overly fond of the things either.

And Fionn was presently staying in Ireland, sweeping it clear before proceeding to Scotland and working his way down along with the Fianna, which should be done in just a few more hours.

As for what I was doing, I was writing wills, technically "abusing" my [Binding Agreements] Skill.

I was both very proud of myself for coming up with this and deeply disappointed it had taken this long for me to realize I could do this.

It had all started out when I'd been writing up a treaty for passing along magical knowledge from Fionn to others outside of the immediate "alliance."

The Americans, Eastern Europe, even the Russians, had they still had an intact central government, all thanks to the ability to use contracts to prevent that knowledge from getting turned around on us. Since one of the things that I'd chosen to be able to trade/transfer via contracts was magic potential. If someone took the spells and attacked humanity with them, that potential would get transferred to someone who wouldn't do that but was also ready to stand in defense of humanity.

And then that had gotten me thinking: what if I could twist things so that dying counted as breaking the contract?

I mean, people with magic potential were incredibly rare, and getting Classes related to that, Classes that could grant the ability to cast powerful spells, without already having some magic. A tiny sliver of potential would be enough, yet even that was practically non-existent.

So if I could save that spark of magic … well, the original bearer would still be dead, but I couldn't do a damn thing about that with a contract alone. Sure, it would have been nice if I could simply write "I solemly swear not to die in combat" and thereby make everyone who signed on the dotted line immortal, but that wasn't how things worked.

Nor was it easy to phrase a contract that considered dying in the defense of humanity a "breach of contract," it just felt plain scummy.

And then, finally, I'd come to two realizations: wills were just another kind of contract, and why the fuck was I limiting myself to just transferring magic?

I'd left myself several upgrade choices open for this Capstone Skill of my [Myth(ical) Mediator] Class, since I naturally gained those every ten Levels but hadn't spent those since things had been too chaotic for me to spend too much time writing stuff.

But now there were three important facts that changed that.

Firstly, I'd had this idea, and choosing the ability to allow my contracts to trade knowledge and skills, proficiency-skills that was, not System-Skills, I wasn't allowed to touch those, I'd tried, well, that had made sitting behind a desk a hell of a lot more productive.

Secondly, endlessly staying in one place, on standby, meant I'd have the time to write.

And thirdly, well, Charlemagne had a paperwork-supporting Skill that I hadn't known about, and had only learned of when I'd pitched him my idea.

It was actually an empire-wide Skill, but its effect was exponentially stronger the closer one was to him.

The governors of distant provinces, at least once those kinds of offices were installed, would be slightly faster at filling out paperwork, and any forms/proclamations that were created would be automatically duplicated.

And as for me, being literally within five meters of the emperor?

Well, my pen flew across the paper so quickly I half suspected that the Skill had a secondary effect that ensured the friction didn't set anything on fire.

And the moment I pushed a finished contract to the side, it immediately grew into a massive stack as long as my lower arm, enough that lifting it was actually somewhat difficult.

At the end of the day, even that was only a fraction of what was needed, and even doing this for weeks on end would be nowhere near enough, but it was working.

If someone died after signing that contract, their will would give their most important skills and give it to someone else who would use said skills to fight against the System's threats, and was in a position to make the most use of them.

Martial skills would go to someone in the same unit who did not already possess equal abilities. If the unit was wiped out, then they would go to the next larger subunit of whatever army someone happened to be a part of, and so on, expanding outwards until eventually, it would go to anyone who'd use them in the intended way.

People would still die, and that sucked, but ultimately, most wars saw the capabilities of the armies involved steadily fritter away, experienced commanders dying and being replaced by less experienced ones, which, in turn, led to increased losses that further reduced the amount of experience in the army as a whole … but not with this setup.

Those hard-won skills and experience would remain until humanity was wiped out to the very last man, or victory was achieved.

Though, because I was a paranoid bastard, I'd also added a clause about how killing someone for their "inheritance," either directly or through inaction, would automatically be disqualified from being allowed to receive any benefits.

I wasn't sure how long we sat there, working side by side, when Charlemagne finally stepped back from the table, the motion unusual enough to make me take notice immediately.

"How hated were the Nazis before all this?" he asked. "Would the average person on the street have known who they were?"

"They'd have absolutely known, and … I mean, people either loved or hated them. Most hated them, the ones who make excuses for them are usually at the same point on the political spectrum. But the word does get thrown around a lot of the time for people who aren't anywhere near that bad. Just because someone is telling you not to do something, they're not automatically a genocidal maniac."

Charlemagne raised an eyebrow. "For example?"

"Certain individuals were claiming that enforcing hygiene measures during a pandemic made the politicians Nazis."

"Were they good hygiene measures?" he asked.

I nodded.

He sighed as he stepped back up to the table, and muttered something about a "generation of spoiled children" I wasn't sure I was meant to overhear.

Part of me wanted to point out that people had been bitching about the younger generations since Ancient Greece, with a quote attributed to Socrates basically being a one-on-one copy of generic modern complaints, but that felt inappropriate for the situation.

"But people hate real Nazis," he said.

"I mean, there's a reason why 'would you kill baby Hitler if you could time travel' is a common ethical conundrum," I replied. "Even a whole lot of people on the far right still hate them."

And that seemed to be that.

"Would you?" he finally asked, a couple of minutes after we'd both gone back to work.

"Hm?" I replied, already a little too focused on my task to display proper manners, my distraction entirely bypassing [Innate Etiquette].

"Kill baby Hitler, if you got the chance? Or would you leave things as they are, even knowing what would follow?"

"Nope," I shook my head empathetically. "If I find myself standing over the future Führer, I'm kidnapping him and dropping him off at the nearest synagog. Problem solved."

"That isn't an answer to the question I asked," he pointed out, sounding intrigued rather than annoyed.

"I'm not a big fan of moral discussions based around a forced binary of choices," I shrugged. "I prefer to come up with answers that actually work when possible."

For a brief moment, he looked almost proud … and then he sighed, getting a look on his face that I recognized as him having been listening to some kind of message, rather than simply receiving information via the [Empire Sense], which was always active in the background.

"Could you go find King Arthur? He's apparently needed in London, again."

"Where?"

"As close to Whitechapel as you can manage."