Outrage of the Ancients (LitRPG Apocalypse)

Tristan

The veil covering the sky overhead vanished like morning dew under a noonday sun, the light of the sun further illuminating the mess the battle had left behind.

For starters, it appeared the desert Cipactli had created was here to stay, though about half the place wasn't a desert anymore, instead having been reduced to a bloody swamp by the various fluids leaking from the gigantic corpse.

Fucking hell, what a mess …

There were a whole host of things that needed to be done, but there was always time to pay attention to the voice of the System, after all, it might provide something that trivialized the task ahead.

[Class Evolution: Arcane Wanderer Lv. 72 -> Sage of All, Archmage of History Lv. 77]

[Skill Boost gained]

[Skill Boost gained]

[Capstone Skill gained: Dimensional Sidestep]

[Skill Boost gained]

[Skill gained: Akashik Retrieval]

Uh, yeah. That was certainly an impressively inflated Class name. Although … the general assumption was that Level 100 was the max, combine that with the fact that the [Arcane Wanderer] had lasted for 25 Levels, and this new Class was unlikely to be any "shorter," this might actually be my final Class.

And as a final Class, perhaps I could earn those titles? I was vacuuming up both knowledge and practical skills like nobody's business, there might have only been a limited pool of what was actually useful in the current situation, but as long as I had time and people to learn from, I could learn anything.

Now, improving said skills was a whole other problem, but ultimately, for that, I just needed time.

"Archmage of History," on the other hand, was relatively spot on. After all, I was learning a whole lot of spells not only via [Magical Traditions], but also directly being taught new tricks from the likes of Merlin.

I still wouldn't have called myself an Archmage, not without prompting, hell, even with the System's seal of approval, I felt I needed some more before I could claim the title out loud, but even so, I liked that part of the Class' name.

Though I still had one final Skill from [Arcane Wanderer] to look over.

Alright, that was cool. In a way, it was basically just a different kind of portal, a form of teleportation, but that was the boring version of using it. It was right there in the name, [Dimensional Sidestep].

Apparently, I could dive into some kind of space between worlds to avoid just about all attacks, though even if the Capstone had built-in protections to prevent the more classical kinds of teleportation mishaps, there were still plenty of ways using this Skill could go very, very wrong.

Though that would have to wait until later, considering the current situation.

As for the first Skill of my new Class, it was certainly sounding great, though it was a separate question whether or not it would actually be great.

So … I could basically ask any question, yet the System reserved the right to play games with the answer if I was edging into topics it did not want me to explore, which would further be complicated when I knew very little knowledge I could base my questions on.

I could already imagine what would happen if I asked about what the System was. In fact, I was ninety-nine percent certain that the reply I'd get would simply be "the System," or maybe, if the damn thing was feeling bold, "the System is the System."

Therefore, I decided to ask a different question.

"What is blocking the otherworld of Ireland?"

The first had been the general assumption, though it was nice to have that confirmed.

As for the addition in brackets, that was just an excellent bonus.

Yet, all in all, I hadn't gotten anything that would help too much with the situation at hand.

I shrugged, pulled up my proverbial sleeves, and went to work, casting [Restoration of the Old] on the area around me whenever it came off cooldown.

My thinking was that that was the most "fair" and "equitable" way of doing things, rather than seeking out "people of importance" to clean first, which wasn't necessary since the person who had gotten the dirtiest, Dietrich himself, had been in the range of my first use.

My thinking had been oh so very wrong, as the chance at getting clean in an instant slowly began to warp the efforts of everyone present. Charlemagne noticed that issue well before I did, however, and decided to set a schedule, one that involved me heading to a certain place covered in filth, and people congregating in those locations to maximize the effect.

As I worked, though, I also thought about how to best use my remaining Skill Boosts.

… ah, what the hell, let's upgrade [Restoration of the Old]. Even without a use in combat, the current situation proved just why I loved the Skill so much.

Not the upgrade I expected in the form of a shortened cooldown, but a borderline overpowered one anyway. Now, what if I did that again …

Excellent, but in a different way. Starvation was not yet a serious concern, but if I could turn destroyed farmland into ripe fields ready to harvest, it would be possible to completely forestall it, albeit on a small scale.

Oh, and, of course, it would help clean up this desert.

But I'd still leave the Skill at that point, for now.

That being said, there was one more Boost looking for a good home …

It was tempting to, as I seemingly always did, to throw it at [Arcane Core]; it gave me some of my most visceral superpowers, the ones that I could most easily and directly push out into the world.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Of all my Skills, that one made me feel the most "super." It was also my best way of doing damage in a fight.

Actually, both those things also sort of applied to my portals, but being a Capstone, [Guide's Shortcut] couldn't be directly improved with boosts, instead getting better on its own.

Still, much as I liked [Arcane Core], it was already in an excellent place. With it at its current state of boosting, I had enough mana for most tasks I could realistically expect to face, and most of the tasks that went beyond that were so far out of my reach that a single additional Boost wouldn't have done much either.

Hell, I could probably pump every boost I got from now until Level 100 into my magic Skill and still get nowhere near the amount of power needed to face a World Boss on my own.

Nah, I needed a different approach.

So, what other Skill was there that could empower me in all respects?

I used my head to fight, got creative, and if I had the opportunity, created nasty surprises ahead of time.

And I just so happened to have a Skill that helped with most of that …

Therefore, I threw the Boost at [Magister's Mind].

And to be honest, I was pretty happy with that.

From that point on, I worked and ran through things in my head.

Eventually, [Catastrophe Sense] activated, warning me of something involving fire, which would appear just north of central Africa. Going of off a mental map and gut feeling didn't give me the most precise location, nor was my mental map of the area accurate enough to match a real map, but even so, I was able to determine that this thing was going to appear either at the southern edge of the Sahara, or just shy of that, in the dryiest portion of the savanah.

… God, I hoped it was in the Sahara.

So I walked my ass over to Charlemagne, told him that, and then went back to work yet again, my head up in the clouds.

Knowing when the third World Boss was going to appear actually provided quite a bit of extra information; for example, the pattern seemed to be staying consistent, which also made it highly unlikely we'd be seeing 6 World Bosses to cover both the Greek and Chinese systems of the elements. We had a hard deadline, and with three data points to establish a pattern, twenty days between bosses seemed to be the rule.

That also meant the final monster would be water, and in my mind, that meant it could only be one creature: Leviathan.

Although, come to think of it, it might also be Tiamat … urgh.

That being said, a creature that fit the Chaoskampf motif, was related to fire, and from Africa, made me think "Apothis."

Yeah, sure, it wasn't going to appear anywhere near Egypt, but then again, Cipactli's origin in Aztec mythology was located in Mexico, and the area was currently standing in used to be the Brazilian rainforest.

Actually, did that mean that the air boss could be from any European mythology?

Shoot.

My reaction?

Turn around, report, walk away while Charlemagne starts cursing internally and externally about all the extra preparations he has to do, and go back to work.

Then, that got me thinking: I'd just seen a World Boss, could I use that to figure out how the next fight would go? Was there a pattern to World Boss battles?

I mean, there should be, right?

So, what the hell was that pattern?

A "annihilate everything" stage initially, followed by a second part of the battle where it locked in everyone who had proved capable of hurting it with the World Boss, granting it a better shot at killing everyone who stood a chance at stopping it.

Or was it more of a symbolic pair of stages, where the first one was all about avoiding getting into the monster's element, followed by a second where you were forced to fight in said element, except that the element was no longer being used offensively anymore?

That did certainly seem more likely, yet … how the fuck would that work with any of the other elements? Water would be doable, though the inherent threat of drowning would be a problem, unless the monster were to cast some kind of water-breathing buff on us, and that was the least of the issues.

Air? I could fly by transforming into a bird, so could Ossian, and I was pretty sure both Fionn and Merlin were capable of the same even if I'd never actually seen them do it, but if air spells were supressed the same way Cipactli had blocked earth spells during the second phase, then a whole lot of other ways to get into the air would be blocked.

And as for fire … yeah, nope. That was where that hypothesis fell apart. Of course, we'd be staying out of fire, at any point in the fight, and the sheer amount of buffs that would have been required to make that anyhting other than an instakill did not seem like the kind of thing the System would do.

I mean, at the end of the day, trying to nail down a pattern on a "mere" single data point would be inaccurate at best, an exercise in idiocy at worst, but I still felt like I should try.

Even if, in addition to taking precautions against anything plausible I came up with, we'd also have to be planning for literally everything else that could possibly occur.

And yet, I wouldn't be me if I didn't spend far too much of my mental energy on chewing through problems, trying to figure out something that would help … even if I didn't seem to be getting anywhere at the moment.

***

Charlemagne

The cost of war could be measured in many ways.

Lives lost.

Psyches destroyed.

Whatever metric could possibly adequately summarize human suffering into a numeric statement.

And he'd be seeing all that first-hand when he visited the infirmaries later.

But right now, he had to take a far more clinical approach to all this, do a cold, clinical, logistical analysis of what they had lost, what they had left, and what they could rebuild before the next World Boss reared its ugly head.

The state of materiel was just as dismal as the state of morale.

They could fight the fight they'd just fought again. Once.

Even if the air monster somehow turned out to be on the same level of difficulty, they would have real trouble defeating the third World Boss, never mind the fourth.

If humanity wanted to live to the end of the year … they'd have to shape up.

Desperately so.

***

Temujin

Back in Ulaanbaatar, he made sure to take the people who had fought Cipactli with him along the main thoroughfare, a rather indirect way that allowed as many as possible to see them.

After all, despite the fact that the World Boss had been beaten, it had been a near-run thing and the news that had trickled through to his people had, somehow, managed to make things sound even worse than they'd actually been.

Demonstrating strength, good cheer, and a large number of victorious "survivors" should help morale. At least a little.

Hopefully, no one would be able to adequately count them and realize their numbers had been cut in half. But he'd coordinated the route to allow as many people as possible to see their return, without allowing such access that the losses were likely to become obvious, until they reached their destination.

He marched up the stairs of the State Great Khural, paused at the top step, and turned to wave for a bit before heading inside, allowing himself to slip deeper into thought.

The battle against Cipactli had been a hard-won victory. Losses had been terrible, and the logistical situation may be even worse; he'd have to take some time to properly look into it.

That being said, the real issue was all about his fellow Ancients, and how they'd fought, both yesterday and further in the past.

They'd perfected the art of not getting in each other's way.

However, what they should have been doing was learning to work together.

And it had shown.

Granted, they'd been able to get away with those things in the past, against Nation and Continent Bosses, but World Bosses were different beasts entirely.

Yet it wasn't just him who'd have to learn to work with, properly work with, others. His men would too. And that could become a true problem if any of the alliances wound up breaking down …

Yes, that would be a serious issue, but honestly, he felt it was unlikely to happen.

For the most part, none of his allies had put any serious thought into betraying him. That wasn't to say there'd never been any murderous ideas sent in his direction, but as he'd sadly learned after getting [Sense Dark Intent], those kinds of things were a lot more common than one might otherwise expect.

In fact, he was finding them a lot more often in his own mind than he'd thought, now that he'd started paying attention to it.

Yes, there were several areas in the land that used to be China where people were seriously and thoroughly plotting his demise, but do you know who'd also considered throwing him out of the nearest window?

His secretary-slash-assistant, Sarangeral, after several nasty coincidences had combined to keep her working for two days straight.

Ultimately, after a week of extreme paranoia, he'd learned to ignore "lesser" detections of the Skill.

And therefore, it did not seem as though there would be a real problem involving the bonds of camaraderie that would form during combined training.

That also led into a separate issue, spreading his influence and expanding the Mongolian Empire. Or, as it were, not expanding those things.

He'd held off on making any plans in that direction already, the overall threat of the System was too great to risk infighting. Besides, there'd been more than enough areas to spread into without even the smallest risk of accidentally picking a fight with another ancient.

Yet, something he was only beginning to realize, as he truly internalized history, was how thoroughly he'd have to build his empire to avoid it crumbling apart the moment he retired, died, or otherwise passed along rulership to another.

Grabbing as much land as possible, subjugating as many people as he could, was simple. Instinctive.

It felt right, yet history had rather definitively proven it was not the correct thing to do.

By the time he was done with the easy "conquests" that were really just lands devastated by the System accepting his protection, he'd rule most of Asia. Were he to focus on building a legacy rather than expanding beyond that …

He'd been playing around with the idea of putting a permanent end to thoughts of expansion for now. It seemed he'd have to make that decision for good, at right this moment.

Temujin sighed and leaned over to reach for a drawer he almost never opened, pulled it open, then lifted up the floor to reveal a far larger hollow, opened by [Dimensional Storage], yet utterly stuffed with papers, detailing plans that would horrify anyone who happened to stumble across them, though that wouldn't happen, since they would not be able to access his Skill.

Plans he would not need anymore.

A thought and a brief activation of the Skill [Garbage Disposal] had reduced it all to dust. Traditionally, he used the ability to annihilate anything that might pose an issue in the hygiene sense, it could also wipe out rotting corpses after a battle en masse, or empty out the sewers if the normal methods failed for some reason, such as blockage, natural disaster, or sabotage … the latter of which that had actually happened already.

Twice.

The Chinese really hadn't been happy about his return, and attempted several acts of sabotage that had remained limited enough that any retaliation would have hurt more than it helped.

Emphasis on had, after all, China wasn't exactly in a position to be doing much of anything anymore; the fifth challenge had quite thoroughly wrecked the nation.

Instead, he was slowly starting to escalate the support he gave, to make them see him as a provider, until he could properly begin to govern. It should be done before the end of this challenge … though all things expansion were at the very back of his priority list at the moment.

Because there were only nineteen days left until the next World Boss showed itself. Between the need to let the men rest before they'd have to fight, general logistics, and everything else that also needed doing, there wouldn't be much time left for training.