Fionn
Things really were reaching the point where even he had trouble staying on top of things.
There was simply too much to do, too many things demanding his attention, and even among the topics he could directly find out about, it still took him a small amount of time and effort to reach that information. It all added up.
Finding issues that needed the help of the Fianna, dispatching them, ensuring that World War III wasn’t about to break out, between humans that was, searching for promising allies, training others, training himself, gathering general information, staying on top of the general issues bothering humanity as a whole … Oh, and then there was the fact that he liked to keep on top of what the world’s nuclear arsenal was doing. Granted, the only close call there had been North Korea, and the missile had broken down before even leaving the silo, but that had been a wake-up call.
How many others would believe that the world’s general state of utter chaos would spare them the full displeasure of the international community?
So yes, he’d forgotten to give the mental “okay” so that Tristan could represent him, and he’d certainly neglected to inform the man himself of that fact, but it wasn’t like representing a larger portion of Europe would make much of a difference. Hopefully.
It would give him a significantly stronger negotiation position, yet at the same time, was throwing around one’s strength a good tactic against the likes of Genghis Khan? Doing so would set up a fundamentally adversarial relationship, and … what had that one paper called him again? Ah, yes, a pragmatic universalist. Dealing with them was the right choice for Mongolia, and unless irrational or ridiculous demands were made, a deal would be struck.
Either way, there wasn’t much to be done about it now, so he did his best to put the issue out of his mind so that he could, at the very least, do his current self-imposed task right.
He sat, cross-legged, on on a cliff overlooking the sea, weapons spread out across the rock before him.
Gae Buidhe and Gae Dearg, a copy of Mimung conjured by Dietrich von Bern, and Ascalon, which he’d buried from the same.
Then, finally, he raised his hand, palm down, and summoned Gae Bolg, the barbed crimson spear manifesting and dropping to the ground with a soft clatter that nevertheless nearly made him jump to his feet.
That weapon, it scared him. It barely even existed as a weapon, being bonded with its chosen user, only being present in the real world when its user desired it to be, and it radiated malice.
One cut, and you’d be picking bone spikes out of your finger even if you immediately pulled back. A deeper injury would likely necessitate the amputation of a limb. And if one landed a solid strike to the heart, or the torso in general, not even an immortal would be able to free themselves, and bony spines were grown through every part of the body.
Being in the presence of the weapon was enough to make him uncomfortable, but he had it out for a reason. He wanted to explore the full capabilities of [Arcane Superimposition]. He had several Skills, but this particular one seemed to have the most potential.
Two weapons, any weapons, could be combined according to the description, but just how far did that stretch?
Fionn reached out and picked up the copied weapon, the sharpest sword in the world, only useable for a single attack before it would vanish. Could he stretch that usage window?
After a brief moment of contemplation, he decided to use Ascalon for the combination. If this exploded in his face, at least the resultant injuries would be able to heal normally. Because if he tried that with any of the others and it went badly … it would not be pleasant.
But he was able to touch both together, activated [Arcane Superimposition], and they slid smoothly into each other, transforming into something not quite greater than the sum of its parts, but a weapon that had all the strongest attributes of both.
The end result was a slightly shorter polearm, a glaive, to be precise, with a nigh-unbreakable shaft and a blade that cut through rock like butter when Fionn touched the tip to the ground while radiating a field of protective energy capable of deflecting almost any elemental attacks.
Of course, that same effect hindered him as well, but that simply meant someone else would have to wield Ascalon or its fusions into combat.
After considering it for a long moment, Fionn pulled the two weapons apart again, only for the copy to splinter apart and crumble into nothingness the moment it had been separated from the real spear.
Hm, he’d have to continue experiments with temporary weapons in the vicinity of the former Germanic ruler.
However, that experiment had just gone to prove just how potent [Arcane Superimposition] could be, especially considering the sheer number of artifacts in their combined armory, and the synergistic abilities they likewise possessed.
Fionn rose to his feet, turned around, and started pulling a few other magical items from the bag he had brought. The collection of gear the Fianna had acquired over the years wasn’t quite as potent as what their combined efforts had recently uncovered, but it was nothing to sneeze at either. And not only was [Arcane Superimposition] still in its base form, he had not spent a single [Skill Boost] since all this madness had begun …
***
Tristan
[Myth(ical) Mediator Lv. 30 -> Myth(ical) Mediator Lv. 34]
[Skill Boost gained]
[Skill Boost gained]
[Skill Boost gained]
[Skill Boost gained]
So … that was weird. Normally, the pattern of gains was Skill boosts for even Levels, unless they were multiples of ten, because those had been the final ones for a Class or when people got their [Physical Overhaul], and Skills for odd levels, with the first Level in a new Class giving two Skills instead of one. Well, that clearly had changed, hadn’t it?
My guess was that I’d gain a ton of boosts until I got my next Class, giving me the chance to upgrade some Skills that hadn’t quite gotten the love they deserved. After all, I’d gotten more Skills than boosts up until this point, and anytime I doubled down on one Skill, that meant I had to keep another at its baseline.
Yet even if I hadn’t gained all those extra Boosts, I’d still have doubled down on [Knowledge Trade] a few more times. Now, with magic around, it was even more busted than it had already been.
Also, four Levels? That seemed just a tad … excessive. Unless meeting Genghis Khan had been a hell of a lot more dangerous than I ever could have imagined, and I hadn’t even realized? Although, now that I thought about it, the simple fact that it had gone smoothly might have been how I’d earned those Levels.
Anywho, I had Skills to boost.
So …
[Skill boosted: Knowledge Trade]
You may also, alternatively, grant a smaller amount of knowledge to everyone within ten meters of yourself, this doubles the cooldown and prevents you from receiving any payment. In addition, your regular range is increased to ten meters.
That was useful, inordinately so. A regular “data pack” likely wouldn’t fly, but what about a plan, a complex plan, that could likely be very neatly, very fully, given to everyone who needed to know. And one could cram a lot of people into a twenty-meter diameter circle.
On the other hand, it wouldn’t do much for the thing I currently used [Knowledge Trade] for, which was transferring spells. There weren’t enough magic users in Fionn’s school for me to need the alternative mode, and said mode didn’t have enough bandwidth to be very good at that task either.
Therefore, I used my second Skill Boost.
In addition, you may grant or receive muscle memory and reflexes.
Okay, that wasn’t just huge, it was ridiculously overpowered. Even lacking actual physical Skills, and a superhuman body, for that matter, I should be able to make good use of borrowed sword fighting skill. Or parkour. Or whatever else I could snag. Borrowing Dietrich’s academic knowledge of sword fighting had been useful, but this would boost that to a whole other Level.
And yet … as much as the previous two upgrades were already game-changers, I still wanted something to enhance my spell-teaching potential.
Ergo …
Your maximum number of targets is increased to five.
And that was exactly what I’d needed. A 250% increase in what I could teach and learn with each application, allowing me to benefit doubly from the previous boost.
I paused for a moment, then pulled up the entire Skill description, just to get a full overview.
Knowledge Trade (sextuple boosted; evolved)
You can teach knowledge, reflex, or proficiency you possess to up to five targets within ten meters, every six hours. The recipients are able to likewise choose knowledge they possess to teach you, if they so wish.
All parties will be aware of what the other is offering, and will be given a chance to cancel the process if the knowledge is not suitable. If all parties involved agree, the transfer will proceed.
Transferred knowledge must be limited to a single subject, and large topics, such as an entire field of study, may not be possible to transfer in a single burst. In such cases, the basics will be taught first.
You may also, alternatively, grant a smaller amount of knowledge to everyone within ten meters of yourself, this doubles the cooldown and prevents you from receiving any payment.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
So, the formal name for a sixfold increase was … actually, it was entirely beside the point, even if it was interesting.
[Knowledge Transfer] had been one of my first Skills, and one that had always remained useful, constantly letting me teach others the things I knew, and while I might have been a little young to have much life experience, raw knowledge was something I did have. In spades, nowadays, given how often I used the evolved version, and that [Burgeoning Omniglot] was constantly vacuuming up any language spoken within earshot.
There were actually several languages I didn’t even know the names of despite the fact that I knew enough to get by in whichever place they were spoken in. Simply put, no one had spoken their name where I could hear, and the natural expansion of my vocabulary through the Skill hadn’t included it either. It was a pretty funny feeling, to be honest.
And anyway, I still had one final boost left. Where to put it, where to put it … there were just so many Skills that could use an upgrade. Even if they were fine at the moment.
For example, my temporary knowledge acquisition abilities, [Walking Encyclopedia] and [Legal Grounding] gave me the scientific and legal basics of what I was dealing with at a given moment, did exactly what they said on the tin, and did so well, though I’d never consciously used them. Yet if they were already that good to start with, how good could they be if they were stronger?
But in general, I had Skills I actually used or relied on to save me if push came to shove.
[Diplomatic Immunity] for defense, [Arcane Core] for offense, [Piercing Gaze] for information gathering. Of these three, I could only upgrade one.
Which to pick, which to pick … yeah, you know what, let’s make this simple.
[Diplomatic Immunity] was good, solid and generally useful pick, but honestly, if I needed to fall back on it, being able to ignore two hits instead of one, or whatever the upgrade would be, certainly wouldn’t save me.
[Arcane Core], meanwhile, let me cast everything except the ludicrously powerful [Century Storm] I’d finagled out of Fionn, and I had a way to be able to cast that, I just needed to wait for a certain cooldown to be up. That Skill would doubtlessly need to be upgraded in the future, but not yet.
In the meantime, information was power, and [Piercing Gaze] gave me that power. It was fine as it was, being able to tell people’s allegiances and see lies, and off the top of my head, I didn’t know what more I needed from it, but I also felt like it could only be useful. Ergo, that was my choice.
[Skill boosted: Piercing Gaze]
You may also discern truth from lie in the visual medium
Uh … what? I could already do that. Granted, I hadn’t realized that until I’d landed in Ulanbaataar and noticed I could tell everyone was wearing uniforms they’d actually earned and were supposed to be there, but I’d done it before.
Had the System glitched? Had I just wasted a Skill Boost?
Urgh …
I sighed and leaned back against the car’s seat. Just a couple of hours, then I’d be back at the airport and flying home. Sure, I could have just teleported, but I’d promised to fly back to ensure I could evacuate the crew if worst came to worst. That had been the only way they’d fly me here. And while I’d still be in a vehicle for several more hours, then, it’d be a vehicle I could move around in.
***
You know what? A private jet in flight wasn’t the worst place to ruminate on things. It was a little loud, thanks to the engines, and I lacked the amenities of my room and the Untersberg in general, but honestly, I had a place to sit, I had the space to move, and unlike a regular passenger liner, there were no kids kicking the back of my chair, or restless neighbors incessantly jabbing me with their elbows.
Would I have preferred being able to zap straight back home and wear a grove in the stone floor of the fortress as I paced? Yes, obviously. But I could do it here as well.
So, why had certain people returned, and others hadn’t?
I mean, granted, outside of certain truly incredible individuals like Genghis Khan, my knowledge was mostly centered on Europe, but I did know there were plenty of incredible rulers and warriors everywhere, plenty with their own legends and magic ascribed to them.
For example, Sundjata Keita, founder of the Malian Empire in Africa, who had been born a cripple and was said to have overcome his disability through sheer force of will. It was practically mind over matter, and only the start of everything. In the Epic of Sundjata, he displayed the ability to command nature, having outright supernatural charisma, and being near-immune to hostile sorcery.
That seemed like the kind of legend who should return, right? It couldn’t be as simple as there not being a concrete “once and future king” kind of legend surrounding him … right?
Or the person whom I’d thought of when I’d started questioning why certain people returned, William Marshal. Arguably one of the greatest knights of all history.
Francis Drake had “sealed his fate” to return when shit hit the fan by swearing to do so on his deathbed, and while I obviously had no idea whether or not Marshal had done something similar, a knight all but defined by loyalty to the British crown easily could have said something to that effect. So what had happened there?
I likely wouldn’t find out the answer to that particular question, ever. But there likely was a findable answer for why everyone seemed to be European; I just had no idea how to go about it.
It wasn’t like there was a unified way they’d returned. Genghis Khan had simply woken up in his tomb in the steppes of Mongolia, as the legend went.
Fionn and Arthur had been sealed in the “otherworld” of the British Isles, and slept away the centuries there.
Dietrich had been “abducted” by that weird horse of his.
Drake had simply appeared standing on the water, as word had it, with the sound of the drum that was supposed to be used to summon him sounding without any input and despite the fact that it was located on the other side of the planet.
And Charlemagne, well, he’d slept the time away under a mountain, watched over by the only non-System magical beings I’d met so far, with Ogier having been in a similar position in Denmark. Gone to sleep centuries in the past and woken up when shit had hit the fan
It was too disparate, too … honestly, just plain weird.
The only “normal” ones had been Abhartach and Merlin, who’d lived normal lives, been sealed using the magic of the era, and broken free in the modern day. Been broken free, in the case of the latter.
Genuinely, it made no appreciable sense. It seemed as random as … as magical affinity, maybe? Was that what it was? Arthur and the Fianna had been given the chance to guard the planet by the beings of the otherworld, and everyone else had, what, had some innate magic and used that to ensure they would return later, but …
Nah, that didn’t track either, if there had been any ancients other than Fionn with the capacity to sling spells, he’d already have been teaching them. Besides, while I could buy that happening in Dietrich’s time, I’d literally just confirmed that grand acts of magic had stopped being possible as early as the 13th century, never mind the 16th, when Drake had died.
And, once again, why was all the nonsense seemingly focused on Europe? Or rather, the British Isles?
Because think about it: the five Irishmen of the Fianna, for a total of six ancients if one counted Abhartach, three Brits, Dietrich, and Charlemagne from Central Europe, Joseph from Eastern Europe. Well, either that, or the Middle East, if he was as old as I suspected him to be.
Also, Not to mention that, well, the single most powerful magical “artifact” I knew for a fact to existed was the well of wisdom, whose power had been concentrated into the salmon Fionn had eaten to, in turn, gain his power. And it lay somewhere in Ireland. No clue where, not even Fionn knew since he’d gotten his hands on its power in a very roundabout way, but it had to be somewhere up there, right?
Also also, the first, and currently only, Nation Boss had shown up in Europe too. Granted, that could have come down to the simple fact that this was also where most of the Ancients were, yet it could also be unrelated, considering how the Bones of the Forgotten didn’t seem to be attracted to them.
Still, all of it was just plain weird.
Ergo … something funky was going on, but I had no idea what. All I’d managed to prove to myself was that there was something very weird going on up there.
Actually, you know what? I was starting to dislike where these mental exercises went. I never reached an actual goal, all I managed to do was make myself aware of some unseen mess of immense power to lose even more sleep over.
Sighing, I slumped back in my chair. I’d pass the issue along to Fionn next time we met, or rather, I’d head over there the first chance I got, and then tell him. I wouldn’t drop everything, of course, but I’d be relieved to not have the question resting on my shoulders.
Assuming, of course, there even was an answer to be found beyond “divine providence, don’t worry your pretty little head about it.”
Either way, there wasn’t much for me personally to do right now beyond read some stuff on Wikipedia, so I pulled out my phone and did just that, starting with an article about the Well of Wisdom, the Irish version, to be specific. Only to come face to face with something that practically screamed “wrong.”
As in, I could tell at a glance that it was almost entirely incorrect, somehow. I had no idea what the correct version of the information was, yet I also knew that what I was seeing here wasn’t right either, so how … I facepalmed. So that’s what “visual medium” meant in the description of [Piercing Gaze’s] upgrade. Yep, that was some real nice phrasing, and certainly not what I would have gotten out of that description. “Visual medium” meant photos and movies to me, not just things I looked at.
Seriously, System, that’s some real bad phrasing … do you take feedback?
I hung my head and started reading through various other Wikipedia articles. That upgrade was going to come in real handy overall, especially when it came to signing treaties, or evaluating written offers. But that didn’t mean the idiotic phrasing didn’t bug me.
Eventually, though, the jet landed in Berlin and I headed off into the depths of the airport so I could portal there later, then left via one of the same, heading straight to Dublin.
As chaotic and blood-soaked as my life was nowadays, the magic really was incredible. A single step to cross half a continent … the smallest one, granted, but a continent nonetheless.
The lobby of the academy was mostly empty, but an official-looking man I was yet to meet was sitting behind the reception desk, where I’d sat a few days ago.
“Good afternoon, Ambassador Vogt,” he greeted me. “Are you here to teach the new crop of mages?”
“I didn’t know there was a new crop,” I replied. “I can do that, but I’m actually looking for Fionn. Is he around?”
“No, and I don’t know when he’ll be back. He’s off training, I believe.”
“He should be back tonight,” I guessed. I knew which hotel he stayed in, so I’d drop by there later, ask the front desk if he was around, and so on. Simple enough, and him not being here right now wasn’t exactly unexpected either. “So, are the future mages around right now?”
***
Long story short, I walked upstairs, taught five mages while receiving athletics skills such as parkour and simplistic martial arts in turn, the new ability to learn muscle memory coming in very handy, and then, planned my ass in one of the training rooms to play around with lighting a little, in the hope that that would eventually make using [Century Storm] easier.
Then, my phone rang and vibrated, making one hell of a racket as it shook the pot I’d placed it in. I’d borrowed that from the kitchen, along with its lid and a rubber coaster, so that it would function as a makeshift Faraday cage and make sure I didn’t accidentally fry my cell.
Way too many people had that number right now, and most of them needed to be able to contact me.
On the other hand, if this was a robocall, someone was going to die toda- … I broke off that line of thought when I lifted the lid and saw that it was Arthur calling. Still not a cause for celebration, but hopefully not one for despair either.
“Mr. Vogt, have you ever been to Glastonbury Tor?”
He sounded winded. That usually required him to fight a Raid Boss or the like; this couldn’t be good.
“No,” I admitted as I put him on speaker and googled it. It was quite far from anywhere I’d ever been, over a hundred and fifty kilometers from London. On the other hand, unlike London, Glastonbury Tor was close enough to Dublin for me to target it via [Ambassador’s Instinct], seeing as my second Capstone had been automatically upgraded as I’d hit thirty.
It was meant to let me know when I was needed in a location within its range, which was now 400 kilometers, and it let me target such locations with my portals even if I hadn’t been there previously.
“But I can portal there anyway, if that’s where you are right now.”
“I need to get to Dublin and meet with Fionn,” Arthur ordered. “Can you do that?”
Yeah, I could.
[Ambassadorial Authority] let me reach out to those who’d made me their proxy, so I “poked” Fionn with that while I opened a portal in front of Arthur. He needed a portal at his location, and that was a diplomatic issue when seen from a certain viewpoint, so it worked out rather nicely.
Then, I opened a second portal in front of Fionn, using the same method, trusting that my attempt at contacting him ensured he wouldn’t be overly startled.
That’s when I noticed him staring, over my shoulder, where I’d opened the portal to London. I turned my head as well, and if I hadn’t already set down my phone, I’d have dropped it at that point.
Arthur. Looked. Terrible.
He was covered in a nearly black liquid that seemed to be blood, blonde hair matted to his scalp, and though he did not seem injured, he was holding Excalibur in his hand rather than in its sheath, for a very obvious reason. It wouldn’t fit, being bent to the point where it looked more like a banana than a sword.
What. The. Fuck. Had. Happened.
And more importantly, how on Earth had no one, ‘cough,’ Fionn, ‘cough,’ noticed this going on and called it in? It wasn’t like a battle involving ancients could be quiet, let alone something that had resulted in, well, that.