Outrage of the Ancients (LitRPG Apocalypse)

Tristan

It had been obvious from the start, but the System had seriously driven the point home in a way nothing else possibly couild have: history was a horror show.

It wasn't just an unending parade of wars and famines and natural disasters, which would have been bad enough all on its own.

No, the real horror was how the System picked what to monsterize, which was an endless series of super-nasty … nastiness, such as the deeds of Jack the Ripper and Gilles de Rais.

Or that time it had turned Springheeled Jack real, a myth that had been created from the strangeness of the then-new industrialization and now coalesced into a beast of smog and molten steel.

But all in all, things were getting steadily ever worse, throwing ever worse shit at us, embodiments of pestilence, plagues, and humanity's bottomless well of cruelty.

Some I knew, some I didn't, and some I had learned about but deliberately pushed out of my conscious memory because they were just that awful.

Not to mention that "history" alone wasn't what we had to worry about, because the System often drew upon popular culture, rather than what had actually gone down.

It had happened with the Bismarck and her armor, which had been a pretty blatant incident, but also with Gilles de Rais, which it had called Bluebeard, a muderous fairy tail villain who had, centuries after the fact, been linked to the historical serial killer.

Although it did also somewhat work in our favor too. Because the other side was usually automatically the "villain" but that wasn't necessarily how they were presently talked about in the history books.

Jan Zizka must have been an absolute monster in the eyes of the Teutonic knightly orders despite him having been a resistance fighter kicking their imperialistic asshole asses, but nowadays, he was regarded as a hero, or a rebel with a just cause, ergo, we wouldn't have to fight him.

Or what about the literally unbeaten Admiral Yi Sun-sin, who'd obliterated the Japanese invasion of Korea while being janked up and down through the ranks like a damn yoyo due to political considerations, being placed back in charge of the whole affair only after the Korean military had been devastated under the far less competent leaders that had replaced him …

He was one man who had single-handedly annihilated Japanese territorial ambitions. From a Japanese perspective, he must have been the devil himself … but that wasn't the "current" perspective, and we hadn't had to fight him.

All that being said, on the other hand, Genghis Khan's horde had come back, and attacked him, incidentally proving once and for all that it wasn't the actual people coming back to life, as they were entirely immune to an entire slate of Skills he had that should have severely punished that kind of "treachery."

And we still had almost seventy more days to go!

***

Thirty days later

[Arcane Wanderer Lv. 61 -> Arcane Wanderer Lv. 65]

[Skill Boost gained]

[Skill gained: True Sight]

[Skill Boost gained]

[Skill gained: Art of the Deal]

Doing the same thing over and over again didn't do wonders for my progression, but I was still improving.

And, more importantly, my latest Skill was excellent.

It was, well, the [Art of the Deal].

So, basically, it let me make quests, and set the reward ahead of time, allowing me to get the most out of my cooldowns. A simple, straightforward, upgrade.

Although … how could I abuse this?

The fact that both sides of the deal needed to be somewhat equal did limit me somewhat, but I was never one to let the absence of an obvious choice dissuade me.

But could I set it to pay in advance?

As it turned out, I could.

"Job Offer: Field Hospital Worker

"Requirements: Announce yourself at the Field Hospital with the intention of working there for at least thirty days, then follow through once the pre-payment has been received and granted the necessary skills.

"Reward: A full transfer of a trauma surgeon's knowledge and procedural memory

"Limitations: 60 applicants only"

Trauma surgery was a skill among one of the hundreds I'd picked up on a whim, just to avoid [Knowledge Transfer] being wasted by being off-cooldown for too long.

And since I could use the Skill to affect an area around me in a "send-only mode," I could set the quest for as many people as could realistically fit within the radius.

But I'd hardly stopped learning after just trauma surgery.

In other words, I could set these up for every profession whose knowledge I'd "run off with" and train up people as needed.

Of course, even with this done, there had to be a way to get an even greater use out of it by prioritizing the most direly needed professions. And that was knowledge I didn't have, but that I could get.

I'm sure Charlemagne wasn't busy, right?

… well, he doubtlessly was, but he'd always make time for a good idea.

On the way to find him, I checked over my other "new" Skill, which I hadn't had too much time to look over, let alone use, even though I'd gotten it a while ago.

I hadn't found too much use for it yet, in fact, I hadn't found any, yet at the same time, it was borderline overpowered against anything and that did use illusions.

I'd also boosted [Catastrophe Sense], with both boosts.

I hadn't sensed anything, yet, but absense of information was informative in and of itself.

Therefore, I could tell we wouldn't have to deal with anything extraordinarily nasty until the next challenge hit.

***

Forty days after that

Three more hours until the next challenge arrived.

Chaoskampf.

The scholarly description of a tale of a battle between a god and the incarnation of primordial chaos in the form of a monster. Even if the System decided to make the actual beasts of this challenge somewhat weaker than "world-annihilating," they'd still be a huge fucking problem.

At least the latter half of the fifth challenge hadn't been too bad. There'd been comparatively little information on what had happened during the beginning of historical record-keeping, leaving us facing a whole lot of comparatively basic "this battle," or "that tyrant" as enemies, without any of the extra enhancements that came from stories getting blown out of proportion in the imagination of modern humanity.

Oh, and speaking of "modern" humanity, we'd regressed pretty hard, especially in terms of politics and society.

While the crackdowns on things like freedom of speech or religion hadn't come, and perhaps wouldn't come due to Charlemagne knowing how much of a mess that would make, the Frankish Empire had swallowed up much of Europe, while Genghis Khan had seemingly "by accident" expanded his own holdings to … well, the borders weren't exactly clear, but between the destroyed cities, those that had instead been evacuated, and the general mess of freshly nomadic refugees, there was absolutely nothing stopping him from taking over a good quarter of Asia's landmass in an instant.

Sundiate Keita's New Mali Empire was in a similar state, not yet holding any specific borders, but generally having expanded to become one of the biggest nations on the face of the planet.

And all the while, Arthur had just sort of "slid" into an informal leadership role in the United Kingdom. He wasn't actually in charge, but if he wanted to be, he would be in a matter of minutes.

In the meantime, Merlin stood behind him, helping in every way that was necessary, and solving many problems before he'd even heard of them.

Oh, and both Ireland and United States were the other two ofthe last three democracies standing, as far as I knew.

Ireland because Fionn had long since decided that he didn't want to be in charge and continued to support the prime minister come hell or high water.

And the US because, well, after they'd weathered the messes caused by the Europeans they hadn't had to deal with anything too bad afterwards. A whole lot of Field and Raid Bosses, but none of the Nation Bosses that would have denoted a large war or horrific massacre that involved more than a few thousand people.

Throw in a president who, for once, had managed to at least semi-unite both sides of the aisle and had a Class almost as good as Charlemagne at keeping a war economy going on top of having an ancient of his own … there were no guarantees that the US would survive very long afterwards, the stresses of war could tear a nation apart even after "victory" but for now, they were holding in there.

And so on and so forth.

Though the seemingly endless waves of monsters spawning repeatedly, rather than in one big burst, had caused plenty of issues anyway.

I'd grown, hell, everyone had grown, but ultimately, would that be enough for a battle of the kind about to hit us?

[Arcane Wanderer Lv. 65 -> Arcane Wanderer Lv. 72]

[Skill Boost gained]

[Skill gained: Bored Athleticism]

[Skill Boost gained]

[Skill gained: Joy of Discovery]

[Skill Boost gained]

[Skill Boost gained]

[Skill Boost gained]

I'd also thrown all those Skill boosts into [Arcane Core], for a truly absurd boost. In fact, I'd boosted it so often that the System had decided to, rather than tacking on a grand total of twelve addendums to the initial ability description, instead summarizing things.

The signature abilities had grown by one, the efficiency gained from declaring [Century Storm], [Fireball], and [Telekinesis] to be said signatures had reached the point where I didn't think it could be improved at all, the number of spells that could benefit from enhanced multicasting had doubled, and the ability to basically use twice my mana pool in one shot was busted.

Oh, and I now also had enough mana to cast [Century Storm] fifteen times in a row, even without resorting to that ability.

Combine that with the fact that I now had sixty-four daily portals, and said portals regenerated during combat thanks to [Escape Plan], I was now in a position to actually help in combat.

I still wasn't a front-line fighter, but honestly, I still felt awesome.

And my two new Skills were also perfectly awesome.

I mean, what was there to say? Superpowers through study, it was great. And having a supernatural immunity to boredom was one of those things I hadn't known I desperately needed until I'd gotten it.

As for this one, I wasn't sure just what to think.

I mean, it was attached to a Class that was all about walking around, so it was a massively useful passive enhancement, it would help me with literally anything I did,, but at the same time, the fact that it explicitly did not work with training meant I'd have a hard time using it to get better at fighting.

Which was kinda shitty … yet at the same time, it was attached to a non-combat Class, and there a whole lot of things that I could improve that would still be helpful. Hell, massively improved walking would translate into all sorts of advantages, from balance to footwork.

Even with the comparatively short time I'd had the Skill, I'd already noticed quite the improvement when doing, well, anything.

I could walk faster, move more easily, weave through dense crowds so easily that no one would have noticed me unless they saw me, I'd been able to avoid coming into contact with a single person, always passing by at a least a couple of milimeters.

The first time I'd pulled that one off, I'd felt like a goddamn ninja, and that was only the start of things.

… let's just say that I was damn lucky I the Untersberg's deepest chambers were mostly empty while everyone was out dealing the last of the monsters, and leave it at that.

I waved away all the System windows once again and sighed.

This was the same thing.

Every.

Fucking.

Time.

No one, including myself, liked to leave the preparations until the very last moment, especially when there were monsters waiting on the far side of that "last moment," so anything that could be done had been done before the next challenge began.

Which result in the current situation, where, at the barest minimum, there were several hours with nothing left to do save stare at the countdown that heralded the next part of the apocalypse.

Sooooo yeah … fun.

I wasn't too sure about the origin of the quote about how war was mostly boredom, punctuated by brief moments of utter chaos and terror, but I'd never felt it more keenly.

The only thing that kept me from crawling out of my skin was the fact that [Catastrophe Sense] was telling me the next two major issues would be twenty and forty days from now, respectively, the first being something vaguely earth-related in Brazil, twenty days from now, and the second being an air-related creature that would be arriving from the Arctic Circle fourty days into the challenge.

Now, that wasn't to say that everything else wouldn't be dangerous, but if it didn't register to a Skill that foretold of calamities, it probably wouldn't be too apocalyptic. Just the "usual" degree of free-roaming monsters, which may or may not surround the Untersberg due to all the ancients waiting here, in the hope that the geographic placement of the fifth challenge had been a one-off, connected specifically to that one.

Even so, this wasn't something we could actually do anything with, so we just had to deal with it.

Muttering curses under my breath, I resumed my pacing.

***

Okay, two issues: some quick mental math revealed that the final challenge would happen exactly three hundred and sixty five days after the start of the first one, meaning that it would apparently happen after the end of the one year period that was meant to be the entire duration of this mess. The fact that something was happening after it was concerning.

But, there was another, far more immediate, issue.

Where the hell were all the monsters?