Outrage of the Ancients (LitRPG Apocalypse)

Tristan, Nine Days Later

The fifth Challenge was just about every kind of hell combined. Lots and lots of monsters, as scattered as they would have been in the first four challenges, with my job as a living taxi transforming from being my occasional objective due to immediate need to never-ending task of soul-crushing proportions that saw me yet all over the globe, any time not spent shutting people around was spent driving somewhere else to expand the reach of my teleports.

Serial killers, the "bad" side of a war, both sides of a war, reborn monsters that were actually monsters, such as the Beast of Gevaudan, or just even more jackasses like Jack the Ripper.

And the worst part was that even my sixteen daily portals, more than I could have ever dreamt of having when I'd unlocked the Skill all those levels ago, it still wasn't enough to reinforce everything. Sometimes I was told not to reinforce a place whose calls for help were reaching me either through our communications network or my [Ambassador's Instinct]. Others … others I had to turn down myself, simply because I knew there was somewhere else I was needed more.

It sucked. And since I was mostly just doing the same thing over and over again, I wasn't barely getting levels, despite the fact that I did, occasionally, get a chance to hose down an enemy with acid rain, or toss fireballs through portals.

Though that being said, I'd walked away with more than just the "satisfaction of a job well done."

And in the end, I'd also come to a conclusion: [Magical Traditions] was fucking overpowered. Really. Learning new spells purely by visiting new places? Yeah, hard to beat that, even if it did take a bit to get going.

Although, unlike what I'd expected, most of what I learned were protective rituals and techniques. Though that made sense, in hindsight. There were far more stories and old myths where the hero used magical tricks to stop a magical entity or exploit their weaknesses than ones where the hero hurled around fireballs or lightning bolts.

And now, I was learning all of them. Many were specialized against supernatural critters that had gone extinct as magic vanished or were just generally no longer around for some other reason, and others overlapped with similar but easier-to-conduct tricks I already had access to, but I knew a lot of them now.

Though my favorite was simply using rowan wood to line entrances and pouring mana into it.

The rowan, also known as the wayfarer's tree, or mountain ash, had long since been a bane of the supernatural, and while it was no absolute defense against even the medieval critters, let alone the walking natural disasters we had to contend with nowadays, it was still a powerful, all-purpose defense when there wasn't a known opponent incoming.

That being said, however, the single biggest area I'd grown in was that of augury and other forms of prophecy. Merlin and Fionn had been able to see the future, but the System was blocking them. My prophetic powers, however, were based in the System itself, and therefore, they worked. Of course, they were also highly limited by the System, and the things it showed were usually at least somewhat telegraphed by the well-known timing of challenges, but it was still helpful.

And finally, I was starting to get access to the tricks wielded by sorcerers in fairy tales, be they good or bad. Curses, scrying, and shapeshifting, mostly.

Presently, all of it was highly limited, but stories about magic users transforming themselves into animals to screw with people, or turning other people into animals as punishment, were pretty much universal.

Flying through the air as a falcon or eagle to get a hell of a lot more out of my surveying Skill, or taking full advantage of cats' ability to sleep just about anywhere, at anytime, to get around issues such as being needed on standby somewhere devoid of a proper bed, or generally being too keyed up to rest.

Oh, and I supposed transforming into a bear could be useful in close combat.

All that being said, though, there was a lot more to using [Animal Transformation] in combat than just turning into an animal and hitting the other guy as the literal eight-hundred-pound gorilla in the room.

There was a very specific story I'd read several different versions of, involving an evil magician fighting their apprentice, each transforming into something capable of beating the form the other had chosen, a battle that ended with the apprentice transforming into a handful of seeds, almost all of which the master destroyed, only to then resurrect from the only one the master missed while said master died from something else, as a consequence of the specific form they'd assumed to deal with the seeds.

Oh, there was also a rather interesting shapeshifter duel between the Monkey King, Sun Wukong, and the legendary deity Erlang Shen in the Journey to the West, though that one was even more beyond my current capabilities than the last-ditch emergency move of transforming into a bunch of seeds and praying one of them would survive whatever my opponent pulled.

Also, I couldn't do the "shift every few seconds" thing of the old stories; unless I was dropping the transformation, there was nearly half a minute between shifts.

But it was still a cool trick, and since, to my knowledge, the System monsters didn't trade tips, a sudden shift should be able to catch any opponent I could reasonably expect to face off guard.

My knowledge of myths and legends might be quite firmly centered around Germany and the writings of the Brothers Grimm, but that didn't mean I was ignorant of how things worked elsewhere.

But there were also other, simpler, tricks I'd learned, including countless uses for various plants.

Such as a way to use othalam nuts in a "trial by ordeal" that actually gave the correct answer, which was interesting but had already been made redundant by the numerous truth-telling abilities we had available.

Or a paste made from the burnet plant and the blood of a mole that could be smeared onto a sword to turn it into a conduit for a sorcerer's magic. It had just randomly popped into my mind while I'd been walking through Dublin. That one did come in handy, allowing me to enchant the swords of anyone who could also use magic to focus and direct their spells.

So Mia and Fionn, basically, though Fionn had already known it.

And I'd finally hit Level 59, earning another Boost, as well as two Skills, each with very different abilities, one of which I'd immediately upgraded.

Basically, it was a passive surveying ability that let me, you know, survey the land, grown to the point where I could easily navigate even a field of rubble blindfolded, without running the risk of tripping even a single time, just so long as I'd seen it for even a single solitary second.

Which was useful ... but would have been underutilizing the Skill. Massively.

It also provided information about things that entered a surveyed area, effectively giving me eyes on the back of my head, though that required a more thorough survey.

And with that, well, what coulnd't I do?

For example, flying using the winds from [Century Storm] was far easier, and there was very little risk of me slamming a tree into myself from an angle outside my field of view.

But tactical portals, assuming I had the spare charges, were also massively improved; I barely even needed to think about where I put them to maximize their effectiveness … at least in theory. Running through mental scenarios about how to use teleportation to get a bead on a specific place was faster, practically instantaneous, but getting to try anything out would have to wait until I hit Level 60, when my number of daily uses doubled yet again, for a grand total of 32.

Until then, they were for emergencies only, even if said "emergencies" happened several times every day.

And I'd also gotten a Skill called [Grand Working].

Another useful power. One that could be used to curse entire nations, summon massive [Century Storms], and overall wreak absolute havoc if I ever found the time to use it.

Although … the next time [Catastrophe Sense] gave me a more precise location of an imminent threat, it would likely be greeted with an overwhelming and devastating sucker punch.

Assuming it was somewhere I could get at, that was. Because as much as I might have wished to be able to "wander" the ocean's surface, the battle currently raging just off the Normandy coast was not one I would be able to help much with.

***

Drake

The Wisconsin trembled underfoot as a trio of cannonballs slammed into her stern, leaving massive dents he could not see but still sense through his newest Skill, as they were bruises on his own body.

It was only the fact that, despite all the upgrades the vessels currently standing against his had been given by the System, they still fired round cannonballs rather than projectiles shaped for optimum penetration and minimized air resistance, which prevented his flagship from starting to take on water right then and there.

The Spanish Armada might have returned, yet this time, it was already far too close for endless harrying to be an effective strategy, the time that required would have left it free to bombard the nearby French … no, Frankian or British coastlines, or even directly strike at London or what was left of Paris by sailing down the rivers that ran through said cities.

Of course, with the range held by modern weapons, especially regular missiles and those carried by fighter jets, it was quite easy to fire at the enemy from outside their range, not just their effective range, but how far they could reach, period … just one problem.

Well, two.

Firstly, the supply of those kinds of weapons was constantly dropping; they had burned through the entirety of the smart weapons that had been produced since the battle with the Bismarck in barely five minutes, and they were now steadily dwindling towards empty.

And secondly, while airbases on the mainland and British Isles were beyond the armada's reach, the combined warships of half a dozen nations that were likewise engaging the newly-raised fleet weren't.

Not to mention that the only vessel capable of standing in the line of battle, the only vessel capable of keeping the unnaturally fast sailing ship away from carriers and destroyers never designed for the kind of slugging match this battle would become once the forces met properly … well, that ship was the Wisconsin.

One battleship against an entire fleet for supremacy over the waves … despite everything, Drake grinned. This was his kind of fight.

No being ordered to stay back for an absurd amount of time in a way that would have kept him out of the fight entirely if things hadn't gone very wrong, no "winning" the fight after half an hour but then being forced to spend an eternity actually sinking the enemy vessel, nothing save a proper duel between him and …

… well, that thing.

Oh, and Merlin was standing on the deck of his ship, hurling magic and summoning a storm alongside Fionn Mac Cumail.

Though the latter's name had tripped Drake off the first few times they'd talked, simply because in the tales that reached England, the man's name had been Finn Mac Cool instead.

Sometimes, even now, being considered to be in the same category as those two and King Arthur still put a smile on his face.

But not today.

Today, it was the thunder of the Wisconsin's guns and the sight of burning enemy ships that made his heart beat higher.

Ahead, the first galleons were beginning to turn, presenting their broadsides and getting ready to burry his flagship in lead … and then, Drake cast [Numbers Don't Matter] and targeted a tiny pinnace at the rear of the enemy formation, reducing the entire battle to a duel between the pair of them, forcing all other ships to simply stop shooting at him while also preventing him from shooting back.

At the same time, the spellcasters ceased their own efforts, to avoid negating the Skill, which would also come with not insignificant backlash as the Skill wasn't a big fan of being used in unintended ways. Using a power that was meant to guarantee an "honorable duel" to set up the mother of all sucker punches was, for obvious reasons, not to be done. Not without consequences, at least.

And then, the Wisconsin simply steamed straight through the entire enemy fleet, which closed up behind her, ready to pick up where he'd forced them to leave off the instant he gave them a chance.

All around him, the enemy vessels seemed to prowl, simply waiting for a chance to shoot his flagship … but no one was stupid enough to give them a shot. Besides, while the enemy was focused on the Wisconsin, they weren't chasing the carriers and destroyers.

Besides, the sailors in the turrets needed the time to load in some special shells, so either way, the lull needed to last a few more seconds for this to have been worth it.

And then, the small ship he'd challenged to a "duel" came into view, suddenly able to fire at the Wisconsin without being blocked by its fellows.

Now all there was left to do was for the spellcasters outside to wreck that thing so that the deck guns could fire at everything presently surrounding the battleship.

Because they weren't loaded with something as basic as armor-piercing or high-explosive shells, or something as absurd, overpowered, and banned as mini-nukes, even though he had, in fact, gotten the chance to use one of the latter against a nation boss a few weeks earlier.

No, they were loaded with munitions based on the Dragon's Breath shells sometimes used in shotguns, that spat out massive clouds of burning magnesium shavings.

But the shells for the Wisconsin had been built after the boffins had rediscovered Greek Fire.

Ready the weapons, be quick on the draw with [Ramming Speed] the instant the target is damaged enough to crash through, then turn and punch out the most badly damaged enemy vessels.

Simple. But even he simplest things can be ludicrously complicated …

***

Merlin

This was hardly the first time he'd found himself confronted with something only vaguely resembling humanity, dark parodies of mankind's existence, and such creatures attempting to kill him and his was hardly a new experience either.

Yet there was something incredibly eerie about finding himself squarely in the center of a vast fleet of those very same beings, their murderous intent looming over him as though it were a mountain in truth, yet being entirely beyond their ability to touch.

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And ahead was a tiny vessel, straight in the path of the vessel, the only vessel allowed to fire upon the battleship Merlin had found himself upon.

That ship needed to go.

… when it was time.

Then the equally small cannons aboard the enemy vessel began to fire, the ironclad armor of the Wisconsin easily deflecting the impacts, and it would continue to do so while Merlin formed his spell.

[Storm's Judgement] was a very simple spell, very straightforward, and very, very powerful.

He cast his magic skywards and began to gather it there, creating a massive thunderbolt up there and holding it, charging it, preparing to smite the target.

The hull of the battleship continued to ring like a metal hauberk being pelted with hail, yet they continued to close the distance, to get as close as possible before wrecking this target to minimize the amount of time they were within the enemy formation without protection.

Merlin began to tune out everything around him: the sky overhead, the deck below, the ships hovering around the battleship, all of it vanished.

Only three things still existed: the lightning bolt charging overhead, the target, and the perfect moment to unleash his spell, slowly approaching through the river of time as he fully drew upon what precognition he still held beneath the auspices of the System.

The moment of contact came and went in a flash, the last couple of seconds down to the perfect instant vanishing in an instant, then a jagged lance of golden light speared down from the heavens and hammered into the deck of the vessel like the fist of an angry god.

Every piece of sailcloth and rigging burst into flame in an instant, even untouched wood charring from proximity alone, and a massive chunk of hull exploded outwards in the place the lightning bolt had spent its remaining fury against the inside of the enemy vessel after having punched through the deck.

And then, the rest of the Wisconsin's guns fired, finally free to engage.

Every gun of the warship beneath him roared as one, massive gouts of flame, each nearly two hundred meters long, bursting from each barrel, the name "Dragon's Breath" suddenly no longer seeming as presumptive as it had sounded when he had heard it during planning.

Even with him being as far from the guns as it was possible to physically be without leaving the ship, the radiated heat alone would have been enough to turn him to charcoal in an instant, had it not been for the countless layers of defensive spells he'd cast upon himself and his clothing.

A massive wedge of orange energy manifested before the battleship's prow as the vessel lurched forward at speeds that seemed utterly ludicrous compared to its previous pace, and the flaming wreckage of the ship he'd hammered with his spells was ploughed under in an instant, vanishing beneath the waves.

Hundreds of cannons fired nearly as one, unleashing a massive barrage of lead balls straight at the battleship as the suddenly unbound Nation Boss attempted to annihilate the British vessel in a single blast … and missed. Mostly.

Blinded by the malestrom of flames that had manifested between them and their target, they'd obviously been aiming where they thought the Wisconsin would be, not where it actually was, having been moved by the ramming Skill.

Yet even so, dozens of impacts rang out from behind Merlin, towards the stern of the ship, the clang of lead hitting steel, the tortured screeches of tearing metal, and the hair-raising "zap" of electricity going haywire.

And then they were past, outside the armada, and turning hard to port, the Wisconsin's hull still ringing from countless impacts, guns being brought to bear on the vessels with the blazing sails.

***

Drake

The entire fleet burned.

Or at least anything he could actually see, as, right in that moment, the world had become fire, the incandescent fury of Greek Fire hanging in the air and preventing him from seeing anything save white flames, leaving him unable to even see the burning masts of the ships that had managed to strike …

Therefore, he wrenched himself away from the spectacle of his surroundings to focus on the state of the ship.

That maneuver had hurt.

Turret III, the rearmost one behind the bridge, was utterly broken, beyond any chance of being repaired in time to make a difference in this battle, and the middle barrel of Turret II had wound up practically melted due to a missifire with the Dragon's Breath shell, but the armada was ablaze, with at least half the ships either having lost or being in the process of losing their sails, so … worth it?

He pushed himself deeper into [Unity of Man and Machine], checking for the state of the vessel, searching for the current status of the crew, especially those in the damaged turrets.

No casualties.

Definitely worth it. Though having lost nearly half his heaviest guns was unfortunate.

Then, he turned his attention back to the inferno that was the enemy fleet.

These specters of conflicts past may have been empowered to surpass modern vessels in terms of speed, toughness, and firepower if one did not count Skills, which few enough people had in sufficient quantity or quality.

But this arcane strength did not change the fundamental nature of these enemies. They were sailing ships, so they needed their sails intact in order to be able to move.

And while their point of ignition may have been significantly raised, sails were still made of cloth, and cloth was still flammable.

They were slow, nearly immobile, and even though the wraiths that he could see loading the guns seemed to be functionally immortal, but they were still clearly slowed by the Greek Fire that covered far too much of the vessels.

Which gave Captain Smith more than enough time to carefully line up the next salvo, consisting entirely of heavy, armor-piercing shells that were being aimed just below the waterline.

The following salvo was ragged, the turrets needing to turn to aim at the next vessel, yet easily punched holes in hulls of five of the biggest enemy vessels, holes that almost immediately vanished behind a surge of water as the ocean sought to claim its due.

Unfortunately, that was when the armada split, six massive galleons and three times that in smaller vessels resuming the attack on the carriers, while the rest interposed themselves between him and the rest of the international fleet.

Not great, but hardly catastrophic, it just meant that he'd have to chase them at maximum speed once both [Ramming Speed] and [Numbers Don't Matter] were off cooldown.

Was it time to use that Skill?

Well, it would certainly reverse the flow of battle, but if he just waited a little longer, it would win the whole thing in one fell swoop.

As long as he survived until that point.

Drake declined to give any orders about the Wisconsin's course, instead leaving those kinds of decisions to Captain Smith as he himself thought about how to best get through the enemy formation.

Going straight through unprotected was certainly not an option.

Repeating the maneuver once the Skills were ready … well, there were still two salvos of Dragon's Breath shells remaining, but even that had resulted in not-insignificant damage, even with each hit doing the absolute minimum possible amount of damage, between the shroud of luck and [Adapt Armor], and the hull would be weaker this time around.

The Wisconsin slewed to port, the motion accompanied by Smith sending a message with his intentions, which was to turn the battleship away from the enemy line of battle and keep moving in a huge circle until he was bow-on to the enemy line of battle.

Normally, that kind of maneuver was not a good idea, as it would prevent the guns behind the bridge from being brought to bear on the enemy, but there weren't any heavy guns back there anymore.

Or at least that was what it would appear like to the enemy, which was currently forming up into a solid wall of firepower, the line of battle that battleships had been named after.

Too much firepower for even his flagship to survive.

Yet there was a second part to that plan.

The Wisconsin continued to steam forward, seemingly about to attempt to punch straight through the enemy, as though willing to go full speed ahead, and damn the cannons … cannons which were already firing, the enemy fleet increasingly vanishing a wall of gunsmoke even as the five remaining sixteen-inch guns shelling the revenant vessels ….

And then the battleship turned hard to starboard, aiming past the fleet, assuming they didn't maneuver to intercept.

Which they would.

If he didn't act.

[Summon Fireship].

The vessel that emerged from nowhere, halfway between the Wisconsin and the unnaturally animated Spanish fleet and speeding onwards, closing in with the enemy … who backed off.

Drake's grin was back upon his face as he watched that reaction. That exact same trick had worked the last time, too.

Shortly before the actual first battle with the Spanish Armada, he'd had access to absurdly dangerous fireships nicknamed "Hellburners," though that name did not seem quite as appropriate anymore, not in the face of modern weapons.

Still, for their time, the Hellburners had been devastatingly powerful. The fact that they'd run aground on a sandbank and blown well short of the enemy had been a crying shame, but even the near miss had utterly terrified the Spaniards.

So when the Armada had been confronted with regular fireships, a few years later, well, they'd been forced to treat each and every single one of those vessels as though they were Hellburners.

And it seemed as though that impulse had stayed with the enemy, this time around.

Furthermore, whatever Fionn Mac Cumail had been doing, it was now reaching its peak, the storm that had been allowed to die down to prevent [Numbers Don't Matter] from breaking suddenly surging back to life, cracks of thunder splitting the sky as sheets of rain practically blocking his vision of any ship save the Wisconsin, and the orange glow of the fireship as it was about to blow.

Then even that was hidden from view as a massive fog bank rose up from the sea, leaving him staring out into a grey void, only occasionally punctuated with flashes of lightning, and the distant rumble of cannons firing, though Drake could still easily track the enemy using [Current Sense].

And, obviously, the Wisconsin herself had absolutely no trouble locating and targeting the enemy using her radar.

For about thirty seconds, that was how things happened. A duel in the dark, the sun a distant memory now that the light of day had been locked out by storm clouds, gunsmoke, and fog.

That was when a newborn sun briefly put everything in sharp relief, the cataclysmic self-immolation of the fireship visible even through the great wall of fog, the silhouettes of several Spanish vessels projected against the fog by the light, one of which was visibly falling apart, mast splintering, hull cratering inwards beneath the hammerblow of the explosion while flames consumed the hull.

One more down, a hell of a lot more to go.

But as the flames died down, Drake was once again left staring into the fogbanks, where he could tell the ships were, but was left unable to see them.

It was an eerie feeling, almost as bad as the submarines a week ago, which had been made all the worse by the fact that stripping out the torpedo countermeasures to add in depth charges had seemed like a very good idea … until the System had thrown a Nazi wolfpack at them.

At least these were all surface vessels, ones that wouldn't even be able to see the Wisconsin unless they got very, very close. Which seemed to be about to happen, as the enemy's small escorts were spreading out in her path, forming a web that would be hard to evade …

Drake reached out towards his comm control.

"Captain Smith, we're punching straight through that cordon, [Ramming Speed] is off cooldown."

The enemy vessels began to open fire the moment they caught sight of the Wisconsin, first one, then two, then, finally, four, each of the tiny escort vessels attempting to destroy the battleship, except this was the equivalent of one of those jappy chihuahua dogs attempting to bring down a bear.

There was not a single scenario under which the little barking bastards would survive that engagement.

Three were blasted apart by the battleship's heavy guns, and the third was crushed beneath its bow after a judicious application of [Ramming Speed].

Leaving the larger formation behind herself, trapped within the magically conjured cataclysmically terrible weather, the Wisconsin began to hunt the formation that had been sent after the carriers.

What followed was a very simple engagement. The rest of the fleet might have had minimal "traditional" firepower, but the Wisconsin had the overwhelming majority of naval guns of the entire human formation, and a sizable chunk of the total of all humanity, but they were hardly toothless.

Which had left the vessels that would have easily destroyed the rest of Drake's allied ships stuck between said ships and the guns of the greatest battleship ever constructed.

Sure, some people might have pointed to vessels like the Yamato or Bismarck as having been "better," but Drake considered that to be nonsense.

After all, where were those other classes of ships? Those were at the bottom of the bloody ocean, while his shi- … his flagship was still going strong after decades.

Drake affectionately patted the armrest of his chair as he watched the enemy formation melt beneath their combined firepower until nothing was left save the occasional charred timber floating atop the waves, at which point the battleship turned around to head straight back at the last enemy vessels.

Still a lot, the majority of enemy ships were still present while the human ships were scraping the bottom of the barrel for munitions… but he took this as his chance to finally use his latest and greatest Skill, which he had been charging up the entire time.

[I Make My Own Luck].

A very specific Skill, with a very specific set of activation conditions.

He needed to be at a massive disadvantage before triggering it, and then, it would begin to charge up as he continued to close the gap, to make up the difference, until eventually, he activated it.

And then, the better he'd done, the stronger it would be.

Activating it after sinking a couple of enemy ships would have certainly given him an edge.

Activating it after his first pass through the armada would have likely let him continue to trash a few more vessels with complete ease until the power ran out.

Activating it now, with over a third of the enemy fleet already beneath the waves? Even with the Wisconsin battered into a wreck, the rest of the battle would look like something straight out of one of those ridiculous Looney Tunes cartoons, with the armada cast in the role of the hapless antagonist.

Just as the magical fogbank was lifting, the spell having run its course, the enemy would find itself greeted with the finest firepower the Royal Navy could shove up their rear end.

Get bent, you Spanish Bastards!

The Wisconsin's guns thundered to life, hurling massive shells, each weighing over a thousand kilograms, straight at the armada of wooden sailing vessels that were paradoxically a threat to a warship centuries more advanced than they were.

Where Drake's fire hit, it tended to "randomly" impact weak points, chinks in the armor, cracks in defense, and he'd even swear that he'd seen a shell somehow ricochet off the deck of a galleon without exploding, slamm into the main mast, fall back down towards the deck but land in an open hatch and then detonate there, shattering both the keel and the base of the mast in a single strike.

Meanwhile, anything that hit the Wisconsin found itself facing sloped armor that proved infinitely more effective than in the designer's wildest dreams, or outright missing from seemingly random gusts of wind or even an errant and extremely unfortunate seagull.

All while he was busy hammering the enemy into kindling.

Three galeons down, and several smaller vessels crippled, only surviving due to the focus of the fire having been the capital ships.

And all that was happening before the battleship's point defense guns chattered to life.

A borderline ludicrous number of those had been tacked on during the retrofit, to deal with swarms of smaller monsters or in case the Wisconsin found herself on the receiving end of an airstrike. And then, they'd never bloody needed them.

Until now.

They were practically firing blindly, targeting the enemy vessels as they came into range, hosing them down with metal shards that nevertheless tore apart rigging, ricoched down the barrels of guns to foul them up or even, in one occaison, detonating the powder within before a cannonball could be added, and just plain, in general, making complete hash of anything the Nation Boss tried to do.

Yet even with every advantage on his side, Drake was still facing down a fleet with just a single ship. Damage was inevitable.

The hull of the Wisconsin continued to shudder under the impacts of massive lead spheres, smaller guns shattered into pieces, machinery atop the deck broke and sprayed fragments across the ship.

Something wound up wedged between Turret I and the deck, a massive grinding noise ringing out as the machine turned, and a second barrel of Turret II bent From a direct hit … and then, with the loudest sound to date, the hull of the ship was torn apart, a three-meter-gash opening up beneath the relentless torrent of cannonballs, only Smith's [Ethereal Pumps] preventing the vessel from taking on water by pumping it out as quickly as it went in.

But then they were through, the Wisconsin emerging out the other side of the enemy formation, down another primary gun, both the secondaries that had survived the refit, and a full third of its AA guns … yet the ship was turned around once again as Captain Smith went to ram it straight through the much-diminished enemy formation, spitting both massive shells from her main guns and thousands of small projectiles from the point defense weaponry.

When she was back on the original side of the armada, between the remnants of the boss and the carriers, well, went right back through. And one more pass after that was required to finally put down the final galleon.

They'd won … but the Wisconsin had been left in a truly awful state, damaged well past the point where a couple of Levels could make up for the lost capability, and that wasn't even getting into the casualties and fatalities.

Technically, writing letters to the families was Smith's job. In actuality, the only thing that would have been able to keep Drake from helping with that was his being among the dead.

[Fortuna's Favorite Admiral Lv. 78 -> Fortuna's Favorite Admiral Lv. 80]

[Skill gained: Fortunate Find]

[Skill Boost gained]

Drake briefly checked the description of the Skill, which was a very simple ability with a very simple effect that improved logistics; any deliveries he and the forces under his command received would contain more materials, with the exact amount varying randomly between a ten percent increase or an outright doubling, with the containers' insides magically expanded to contain the extra mass.

That would certainly help with the missile situation, assuming they played some games with him temporarily gaining command of any ships receiving deliveries during the instant they received the said deliveries, and so on.

Though right now, fixing up the Wisconsin was a far bigger concern.

***

Mia

The golem that had been forged from countless torture instruments and, for some ungodly reason, had been lit on fire, slowly keeled over, her finally having managed to land her [Sword Art: A Blade Across Time and Space] on something it actually cared about losing.

"Fuck," she signed, Balmung nearly slipping from her grip as the exhaustion she'd been holding back the entire battle hit her in an instant.

But that wasn't enough to prevent her from raising her other hand to the sky in victory, forming a tired fist, before dropping it back down to her side as she allowed herself to sit down on a nearby rock while [Back With Interest] healed the wounds she'd suffered during the battle.

Holy hell, that thing had been insane, even for the embodiment of the Spanish Inquisition.

And yet …

[Grandmistress of the Knightly Order of the Golden Rose Lv. 64 -> Grandmistress of the Knightly Order of the Golden Rose Lv. 65]

[Skill gained: Unity's Strength]

And yet with every Level she gained, the future enemies became easier and easier.

She'd actually shot past the point where most ancients had started out, little over a week ago.

Having a Class based around creating a knightly order certainly had been a change, but also given her a massive new avenue of growth, with Skills like [Field Training], which allowed her to pull up anyone who wished to become a knight to Level 25, and though they'd have to actually earn those Levels before they could grow further, that meant they'd be at least capable of helping in a fight without getting splattered five seconds in.

Though Dietrich's version of the Skill allowed him to do the same, but up to Level 50, rendering her ability mostly useless.

The important Skills were [Bestow Sword Art], which allowed her to grant one of her own [Sword Arts] to someone who still had any [Blank Sword Arts] left. And since her own had been created as the result of massively risky maneuvers, they were high-quality enough that someone else might want to gain easy access to them.

But the real power stemmed from what happened when it was combined with [All For One], which let her (with permission) put the [Sword Art] of someone she'd bestowed one of hers upon on cooldown to use her Skill herself.

Even with just four people aiming to become knights in the order the System had created for her, that still let her spam a ridiculous number of powerful attacks.

Furthermore, [Martial Artisan] counted all those other Skills as though they were hers, the Skill that increased the speed of her [Sword Art] cooldown recovery based on the number of [Sword Arts] not presently on cooldown, going from "useful" to "broken" in an instant.

And as for creating a code of conduct for the Knights of the Golden Rose, she'd decided to start from a basis of "don't be a dick" and go from there.

As long as you didn't become a pushover either, common courtesy and general politeness could take you surprisingly far.

Beyond that, well, it was the usual. Protect people, do good, and give asssholes their just deserts.

Simple.

Though for the foreseeable future, all they'd be doing was fighting the monsters of the System.