Hill of Allen, Ireland
There were few things stranger than seeing a grown man in full plate armor sucking his thumb to uncover the secrets of the universe.
In fact, any grown man sucking his thumb was a strange sight.
However, in this particular situation, there was a reason behind it.
The strange blue box that had woken him from his centuries-long sleep and was currently hovering in front of his face.
Warning, the System has descended!
Over the course of the next year, the world will have to face seven challenges, the last of which will be the opening of this world to the enlightened universe.
The First Challenge, [The Beasts of Legend], has already begun, and will ramp up over the next several days.
The Second Challenge, [The Breaking of Graves], will begin in five days.
Time remaining: 4:23:59:17
Fionn Mac Cumail was no stranger to magic, but this kind of thing was a first for him.
This “System” was strange, beyond even his ability to truly understand.
In his youth, he’d eaten the Salmon of Wisdom, a mystical being that supposedly contained all the knowledge in the world, and would transfer it to whoever ate it.
In fact, it just contained most of the magic and knowledge in the world. Also, he’d first “eaten” the salmon by sucking some hot fat off his thumb when he’d burned himself during the cooking process, which meant that he had to suck his thumb to access the ability. That always looked real mature when people saw it happen without the proper context.
But that wasn’t the point, now was it?
No, the point was that his “knowledge of the world” told him a lot about the current state of things, how it had fundamentally changed since his day, and how much chaos the System was already wreaking.
But he couldn’t see the System directly, not in any measure. He might be able to see its effects upon the population and the havoc it was already wreaking a scant five minutes after it had appeared, yet the thing itself was frustratingly evasive.
He shifted his thumb around to the point where it was barely hanging out of the right side of his mouth, giving the impression of him chewing his nail instead of, well, sucking his thumb. It still didn’t exactly look very mature either, but at least it wasn’t him sucking his thumb while walking into battle. It also made it a lot easier to free his thumb in a pinch and use both hands to fight.
“What’s going on out there? Are you telling me we might actually have something to fear up there?” Goll mac Morna complained. Loudly. He was loyal, but between his hotheadedness and general demeanor, you’d never realize it just by watching him.
“It’s complicated,” Fionn shrugged. “If you want, you’re free to head out and start fighting monsters, but a good plan will take a while.”
And off the man went.
“I’m going after him,” Caoilte mac Rónáin sighed. “Call me when you know what you want to do.”
Caoilte was Fionn’s strong right hand and played peacekeeper when needed. Or nanny. Which was required a lot more often than really it should be, considering that they were all seasoned warriors who’d been legends even during their “lifetime”.
And then, there were three.
Him, his son Oisin, and Conán mac Morna.
“Do you know what you want to bring?” Conán asked. He’d already been gathering supplies but now, he’d apparently hit the limit of the obvious picks, like food, camping supplies, and clothing.
“Bring some of the flashier treasures,” Fionn ordered. “We’ll need them.”
He’d been aware of the true size of the world ever since his fateful meal, but today was the first time he’d paid attention to more than just Europe and Greenland.
People really had colonized the entire world, including deserts and, to a small degree, even the vast icy planes at the poles that he’d have sworn were impossible to inhabit for more than a few days without freezing to death.
Machines that created heat on a scale unimaginable in his day, machines to create cold, machines to create lightning itself.
Self-powered carriages, machines to conquer the skies, weapons that rivaled the powers of some of the deadliest monsters he’d ever faced but were built by the hands of men.
Not to mention that the average person had access to almost as much information as he did, being able to access it from a small handheld device that most Europeans were never without.
In fact, the biggest barrier to finding a given piece of knowledge wasn’t the search, but the fact that there was so much information available that one practically needed to know that particular piece of knowledge existed in the first place.
And yet, they were losing, being pushed back on virtually every front.
As mighty as humanity had grown, it wasn’t prepared for the appearance of beasts in any place where animals had once existed, behind walls, inside fortifications, and everywhere else.
But he wasn’t the only one who’d risen to combat this cataclysm. There were others whose lives had not ended but rather been suspended until the time was right. He’d just never known before now because he’d been the first.
He rose to his feet and turned, the motion sending his cloak swinging around behind him.
“This world is in danger, and without help, either monsters will destroy it, or humanity will do it out of sheer spite. One more fight, legendary beyond anything we’ve done before. And then … we’ll have more options than ever before!”
It was an extraordinarily grand speech to be held in front of just two people, but he wasn’t one to seek a large audience for his own ego.
The plan really was quite simple. As much as the world had changed, humans were still the same. The exact same. Stories and legends, larger-than-life existences to look up to, imagine oneself being, or aspire to become, that was what people loved.
And that was what he’d leverage. They’d go out there as themselves, fight monsters, and be noticed. From then, he’d choose the most influential individual from amongst those who’d contact them, and with that, well, just keep going.
Contact the others.
Fight the waves that came next.
And beat this “System” once and for all.
Yet he could still hear the voice of the arcane interloper ringing in his ears.
[Trait Registered: Thumb of Wisdom]
[Class gained: Warlord of Magic and Legend]
[Warlord of Magic and Legend Lv. 1]
[Warlord of Magic and Legend Lv. 1 -> Warlord of Magic and Legend Lv. 57]
[Skill gained: Warband Awareness]
[Skill gained: Final Strike]
[Spell Awarded: Shock]
[Spell Awarded: Lightning Bolt]
[Spell Awarded: Lightning Storm]
[Spell Awarded: Lightning Cataclysm]
[Skill gained: Eternal Arnament]
[Skill gained: …
It didn’t just give him countless small improvements to his body and mind that he’d have taken a while to even notice without his thumb, oh no.
He knew where every one of his people was, and what their status was, and if they needed help, and he could even cast countless spells without drawing on his gift.
In fact, it even gave him knowledge of the four most commonly spoken modern languages, as well as granting him the ability to speak his native tongue as it was used nowadays, removing the issues over a millennium of linguistic drift would have doubtlessly caused.
[Skill gained: Language Modernization]
[Skill gained: Modern Langage Packet]
He could have bypassed this using the Thumb of Wisdom, of course, but speaking with his thumb in his hand wasn’t particularly conducive to making himself understood.
So now that he had a decent overview of the current situation, it was time to act.
Fionn Mac Cumail, national hero of Ireland, strode out into the twenty-first century amidst a storm of fire and blades to fight the monsters that were destroying the modern world.
He, and six others who’d risen from the past just like him, would duel the end of days, the very Apocalypse itself. And they’d win.
***
Glastonbury Tor, England
Dirt exploded away from the blond man as he climbed the stairs that dug themselves through the dirt, flickering ethereal flames lighting his way forward.
He’d woken up completely healthy, despite his last memories before that having him mortally injured.
Not to mention that his sword had been back at his side, despite it having wound up in the lake as to his latest recollection. Damn, convincing Bedivere to throw it in while on his deathbed had been a nightmare.
But now, it was back. Back alongside an entirely new type of magic, which seemed all but designed to become a massive problem in the shortest possible amount of time.
In other words, he could scarcely imagine a situation that needed intervention more.
Nimue had said she’d only release him in England’s greatest hour of need, so even if the voice hadn’t been whispering in his ear, he’d have known things were bad.
[Class gained: King of Unity]
[King of Unity Lv. 1]
That had to be a joke, right? Unity?
He’d fought against the warlords splitting up the England of his youth and created a grand kingdom, true, but then, he’d lost it all. Lancelot and Guinevere, his throne, his men, the Knights of the Round Table and eventually, even his life.
[King of Unity Lv. 1 -> King of Unity Lv. 43]
[Skill gained: Swordbound]
[Trait Registered: Soublbound Blade: Excalibur]
[Trait Registered: Soublbound Dagger: Carnwennan]
[Skill gained: Royal Proclamation]
[Skill gained: Royal Constitution]
[Skill gained: Grand Slash]
[Skill gained: Army of One]
[Skill gained: …
And on the voice went, describing his abilities as he received them. He’d have doubted his sanity normally or assumed some manner of magical creature was playing a prank on him, but he could feel the power he gained with every new line uttered.
It was all phrased strangely, but the meaning was quite clear.
A “Class” was something between a description and an outright title.
A “Trait” was something about him already present and now received further explanation, and these “Skills” were spells of sorts that were cast upon him. Or could be cast by him.
In some distant corner of his mind, part of him worried that using the power of this “System” to fight that very entity was a terrible idea, yet it had already affected him.
His body was far stronger than it had ever been, and even should he refrain from casting any of these “Skills” himself, he’d been changed.
Arthur Pendragon took one final step before the wall in front of him outright disintegrated, leaving him blinking against the bright light of the sun.
He’d emerged onto a low hill, looking out across a sea of grass, though it had several roads cut across it and there were quite a few people wearing strangely colorful clothing around.
And there were monsters. Lots and lots of monsters. And no one seemed to be able to do anything about them.
Dog-sized hares that seemed to be under the impression that they were mules based on how they spun around on their front legs and kicked out with their powerful hindlegs, the blows impacting with enough force to shatter bone.
Birds of prey large enough to take down and carry off entire sheep were clawing at people’s faces and necks. The former was bad, but the latter … the latter was lethal.
The biggest issue seemed to be some kind of demon sheep, he didn’t really have a better word for it. A body that was probably the size of a bear, but he couldn’t really see anything beyond the creature’s head amidst a literal sea of wool that trapped anyone unlucky enough to be nearby.
What was worse, however, was the fact that the wool was like steel, tightening and carving apart anyone it caught.
Arthur was already moving before he was truly aware of it, Excalibur leaping from its sheath. His first slash would free the sole person who still looked to be alive, and the second would take the beast’s head!
Steelwool Strangler (evolved sheep), Level 11 Field Boss
… And then some kind of floating, glowing page above the sheep, startling him so much that he royally messed up the first strike, barely managing to shear off a few hairs.
That cost him.
The Strangler turned on him, a sea of steely fur surging upwards and at him in a towering wave, forcing Arthur to dive backwards, sword slashing back and forth, cutting short countless attacks. He shouldn’t have even been aware of the attacks coming from behind him, his blindspot, and no mortal man should have been able to keep up with this barrage.
But he did. Somehow.
In fact, it seemed to be growing easier, almost.
As if he were a … a single man with the force of an army.
Nothing about the situation made sense, from the monster to his powers, and yet, somehow, he knew what he could do, what these “Skills” did.
And some were closer to spells than anything else, oddly enough.
The world was a nonsensical combination of magic and demonic influence, of horseless carriages and humans in oddly colorful clothing.
But he didn’t need to understand the world, he didn’t need to understand his opponent, he didn’t need to understand the people.
He knew what the current situation was.
The creature in front of him was a monster, it needed to go, and he’d be the one to bring it down.
Arthur retreated up the hill slightly, with the Strangler creeping after him slowly, demonic wool spreading out and strangling all life from the ground.
“Come on, come on, come on you bastard,” Arthur muttered, and the beast continued to comply, creeping after him, making sure to keep controlling the battlefield.
And then, it was finally close enough.
Arthur took two quick steps backward, jumped onto a rock beside him, and then, used it as a springboard to leap straight at the Strangler’s head, well above the carpet of death.
But the mess surged skywards, sharpening into needles that looked like they’d be able to go clean through him.
Would this already be the end of his second life?
[Grand Slash].
[Grand Slash] was what he needed.
He just knew.
Excalibur thrummed with power as he swung it downwards with inexorable power, and halfway through the slash, the energy erupted into a long projected blade almost a dozen meters long, carving clean through the woolen shield and the monster itself before continuing into the ground, invisible force cratering the entire area around the blade, flattening both halves of the body, the spiky carpet, and the dirt itself.
All around him, countless demon birds took flight, fleeing his attack.
That … that’d do.
A massive crow, the last bird still present, hopped off a corpse it had been tearing at, but Arthur waved Excalibur in its direction with a flick of his wrist.
[Grand Slash]!
And … it did nothing. To be entirely honest, now that he was truly trying to use that particular ability, he actually did know that he could only use it every few minutes.
But did it matter? He’d fought without these powers before, and he’d do so again.
The crow leaped at his face and he sidestepped, bringing Excalibur down on the neck of the bird as it flashed past.
“Who … who are you?” a man on the ground stammered, staring up at him with wide eyes.
Arthur could tell the man was speaking English, but it was a very different English than he’d spoken in his day, however long ago that had been. Yet he could understand it clearly, as though he’d been speaking it for his entire life. More magic, clearly.
“My name is Arthur Pendragon, and I was the King of Albion. Now … now I’m its savior.”
He likely technically still was the king, considering that he’d never really died but … he just didn’t feel it anymore. His throne had been usurped, he’d killed his son who’d, in turn, mortally wounded him, and the men of Camelot had died on the battlefield to a one. Even if the world decided the crown was his by right, he didn’t give himself the right.
“You’re King Arthur,” someone suddenly burst out, looking up at him with shining eyes.
“I’m not the King anymore, but yes,” Arthur nodded, feeling his heart clench at the adoring look in the woman’s eyes.
More whispering followed, whispering he could hear unnaturally clearly.
Whispering of stories, of myths and legends about him. Of he’d return in England’s greatest hour of need.
People deciding that things would be alright now that he was here, people worrying that his presence meant that things must be truly dire.
Arthur just kept his back straight and watched the landscape below as he began to make his plans. He would not return to the throne unless forced, but he would save Albion even without being its king.
***
Untersberg, Germany
The ruins of the ancient library weren’t how he’d remembered his surroundings.
Granted, he hadn’t been particularly attentive during the last few centuries, having slept most of them away, only occasionally waking up to check up on the world’s current situation.
Then again, those checkups had been entirely limited to glancing up at the sky, checking if the ravens were still flying around the mountain’s top.
He never truly knew what had possessed him in the last few months of his old life, just that it had allowed him to build this place, and survive for … a long time. Long enough for his beard to grow around this table three times, long enough that he’d barely even been able to get up without carefully disentangling it.
How strange was being tied to the presence of ravens when compared to everything else?
Certainly, it seemed like the process worked.
After all, the first time he hadn’t seen a single raven after waking was the day that some kind of magic had descended, announcing that Judgement Day had come, scaring off the Mandln that had been watching over him while he slept in the process. Before he did anything, he’d have to first find them and get this whole complex back into a useable shape.
Oh, and there was this voice informing him of his achievements. No, that wasn’t what was going on, it was informing him of things … powers … that might have been useful?
[Class gained: Emperor of Order]
[Emperor of Order Lv. 1]
[Emperor of Order Lv. 1 -> Emperor of Order Lv. 49]
[Skill gained: Manifold Mind]
[Skill gained: Empire Sense]
[Skill gained: Instant Training: Missus Dominicus]
[Skill gained: Pristine Documentation]
[Skill gained: Loyalty Check]
[Skill gained: Christian Legions]
[Skill gained: Bestowment: Legacy of the Twelve Paladins]
[Skill gained: Might of the Feather]
[Skill gained: Instant Improvement]
[Trait registered: Mandl Staff]
[Skill gained: …
So. Magic powers. Lots of them. That was new. New, but not unwelcome, even if things weren’t necessarily good for him.
[Empire Sense] was supposed to give him the status of his empire, but all he could sense was the room he was currently in.
Well, that stunk.
But he’d forged an empire from nothing before, and he could do so again. Not to mention that if the world was as disrupted as it seemed, there were bound to be opportunities. Opportunities for him, and for people who distinguished themselves on the field of battle whom he could take as his subordinates.
Karl der Große had returned, and whatever chaos had been wrought during his sleep would be ground into dust along with anyone who dared stand in his way.
***
Swabia, Germany
Honestly, he should have learned his lesson by now. Actually, the fact that he hadn’t done so several adventures ago was almost appalling. That incident with the dragon especially should have taught him to avoid this mistake.
He could already hear Hildebrand’s comments. The man who’d once been his master had become a good friend and comrade in time, and while he might have passed on since, his lessons remained.
It would have probably gone something like this:
“Oh, so Dietrich von Bern does not hunt boars with a magical sword, now does he? Well, so now, Dietrich von Bern is stuck in the middle of an unfamiliar forest, sitting on a horse he does not own. Because he decided to hop on the obviously magical horse. Because he was too impatient and wanted to chase the obviously magical stag. And now, Dietrich von Bern, legendary king, dragonslayer, conqueror of the dwarven halls, has no bloody idea where he is, now does he?”
Honestly, Dietrich knew he deserved all the criticism anyone decided to lob at him, he really should have brought the mystical blade Eckesacks, but now wasn’t the time for any of that.
He was somewhere entirely different than where he’d started from, the forest was far lighter than any he knew of, many of the plants were unfamiliar and he didn’t even have the faintest idea of how long he’d been riding on this horse.
It felt like it had been minutes when it had been happening, but now … it felt like it could just as easily have been hours.
Or days.
Or weeks.
The flow of time had been … weird.
But either way, Dietrich von Bern had made decisions as though he were still a young man in his twenties, and now, he was in an unfamiliar place without any allies, his magical sword, or any idea where he was.
And to top it all off, he was hearing voices. One voice, to be specific, whispering strange things in his ear, accompanied by strength surging through his limbs that he’d almost never felt before.
He was familiar with arcane empowerments, of course, though they’d usually been used against him.
[Class gained: King of Adventure]
[King of Adventure Lv. 1]
[King of Adventure Lv. 1 -> King of Adventure Lv. 51]
[Trait Registered: Supernatural Horse Companion]
[Skill gained: Dangersense]
[Skill gained: Nose for Treasure]
[Skill gained: Slayer of Myths]
[Skill gained: Conqueror of Legends]
[Skill gained: Equalizer]
[Skill gained: A Blade Borrowed]
[Skill gained: A Brush with Death]
…
On and on it went, lumping on more and more magic. Some seemed clearly based on his life and work while others had no clear source, but all were going to come in handy sometime.
This world had utterly lost its mind, but he’d tamed chaos before.
Chaos was where he’d always managed to shine, while peace was where he pulled idiotic stunts like … going hunting without Eckesacks and winding up in this current situation. Or almost getting eaten by a dragon, also after going hunting with merely mundane gear.
Was it all part of one big magical artifact that had wreaked havoc, a threat, an invasion, or something else entirely?
A gift with a sting in the tail, and attack that gave out boons as a matter of “fairness”, what?
Either way, it was obvious what this “System” was. A challenge. One he’d accept, beat back whatever was responsible for the mess, and then, look for the next adventure.
And perhaps, he’d see if this new world had people of the caliber of his old companions.
The horse under Dietrich wasn’t wearing any gear he’d ever owned, having appeared out of nowhere fully prepared for him, just in time for him to use it to chase after a clearly magical stag.
It was clearly a magical steed, letting itself be steered with extreme ease, with him never even having to pick up the reins. All he had to do was slightly guide it with his legs and it did the rest.
Oh, and it was ludicrously fast.
It shot off like an arrow loosened from the string, once more carrying him across the landscape until it stopped seemingly on its own, well before he’d had a chance to pull it to a halt himself.
Two young people were facing off against some kind of massive wolf pack with a pair of surprisingly blunt swords and it wasn’t going well for them, but judging by the corpses lying at their feet, they weren’t doing too badly.
Now was as good as any a time to get started on his return, and get the lay of the land.
And he really did find their spunk impressive, even if they might be a bit lacking in skill, currently.
***
Prague, Czech Republic
All around Joseph, dust gathered. Not like the dust he’d been reduced to, dry earth and small stones, but the floating specks of dead skin cells, cloth fibers and pollen that shimmered in the light that fell in through a small window.
How long had it been? How long had he been in this dusty basement? Had he been forgotten, or simply never needed?
He’d felt desperate calls for help around eighty years ago, yet he hadn’t been able to bring himself to wake fully back then.
Whatever happened now … it was far worse than what had happened back then, even if, thus far, fewer souls were crying out in desperate fear.
With an incredible force of will, he reached out towards the piece of parchment that had been resting before him for centuries, attached to the roof of the urn that had preserved him.
An aleph.
The sacred word of creation, penned upon paper in masterful script, ready to empower him if only he could touch it.
Every time he’d woken, he’d tried to reach for it, but he’d never had the energy.
Today, however, he did.
Dust formed a craggy arm and moved through the air at a pace that made a snail look like a striking falcon, but move it did. And move. Until finally, his finger touched upon the piece of paper and it was sucked in in an instant.
That little scrap of parchment was what had taken him from being mud-shaped into a humanoid figure to, well, him. A living creature, one formed of mud and magic rather than flesh and blood, but living nonetheless. One that could do anything a regular person could do. Almost. Merely the gift of speech eluded him.
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The very first time he’d woken, he’d not quite been ready, he’d gone too far, reacted to too many things, retaliated too much, and Rabbi Loew had stopped him. He’d done his job, but it wouldn’t be the last time that someone like him was needed.
In this room, he’d waited for centuries, waiting for that surge of power that heralded another catastrophe he needed to stop.
Around him the urn shattered into fragments that were instantly caught by tendrils of dust as they expanded outwards, then they were sucked into his dispersed form, leaving him a hollow shell, but it was a humanoid shell.
For the first time in centuries, Joseph rose from his kneeling position and began to march forward, the outer layers of his body morphing to take the shape of clothing while his face became a true face, a reflection of humanity’s ability to show their inner feelings to the world.
All the while, motes of dirt and powdered stone flowed through the cracks in the stone floor, filling out his form, giving him back much of his old power and durability.
From the last time he’d been truly alive, he’d grown considerably, his power to think and feel no different from that of a natural-born human.
The door before him was locked, and there was no key, but that only stopped him for the brief amount of time needed to decide that the door was, in fact, immaterial in the face of potential armageddon.
And if that strange ephemeral paper was anything to go by, it was armageddon.
So he broke it with a gentle push, feeling the doorframe splinter as the lock’s bolt tore through it.
He emerged into a dark room, filled with terrified-looking people. His sudden appearance certainly didn’t help.
Joseph raised a single finger to his lips, grabbed the nearest piece of paper, some manner of form, as far as he could tell, and some kind of astoundingly uniform pencil.
“I AM HERE TO SAVE YOU”, he rapidly scribbled down and handed over the paper.
While the paper was passed around with hushed whispers, Joseph began to move in the direction of the strange sounds he’d been distantly hearing since he’d woken.
Heavy footsteps, scratching, deep barking.
The next door was also locked, but this time, one of the people who’d been hiding hurried over with the key. The woman also handed over another sheath of paper and a strange implement that looked like it was meant to be used to write.
“Please, be careful,” she whispered.
“Lock the door behind me,” he wrote back.
“Good luck,” she whispered.
The door clicked open, and he slipped out … only to have a truly massive dog leap at him, large enough to almost be mistaken for a horse in poor lighting, slamming into him with enough force to send him to the ground.
… He was partially made of rock and far heavier than any living being his size had any right to be, and this thing could toss him around so easily?
Now more than ever, it was obvious why today was the day he’d truly woken.
Joseph rolled to his feet and met the beast’s next charge, ducking under its slavering jaws to land a solid punch on its chest.
The massive dog might be unnaturally heavy and hard to throw back, but that just meant that more energy was expanded on cracking the beast’s bones.
It sailed past, whirled around, and charged again, this time, keeping closer to the ground so he couldn’t duck under it.
Joseph’s fist slammed into the beast’s nose with a loud crunch but it ignored the damage as it latched onto his shoulder and bore him to the ground, gnawing on him like a bone. Even when Joesph’s left hand clamped onto the back of its neck and held it there, it continued to chew on him.
Ultimately, while that dog might be heavy and tough, he was functionally indestructible, having only a single point of vulnerability on his entire body.
So a monster trying to hurt him and failing miserably was actually the best position … for him. Even if it had gone for his head or throat, it wouldn’t have done anything more than superficial damage that would heal in seconds once it stopped attacking.
And then, for the first time, Joseph’s right fist smashed into the dog’s throat. And again. And again.
The dog had ignored the first blow, but after the second one, it had started struggling, desperately trying to get away, to open up the range, but he’d been holding it down since well before any attempts had been made.
Joseph didn’t have the power to take this thing down easily, but he was functionally indestructible and had endless stamina. If the first blow didn’t net him victory, the tenth would. And if the tenth didn’t, the hundredth would. And if the hundredth failed, he’d hold this beast down until it died of starvation, punching it all the way.
But as it turned out, that wasn’t necessary, and eventually, around punch twenty-seven or so, something in the dog’s throat cracked under his knuckles.
And he continued to punch, punch, punch until the monster finally stopped moving.
A voice rang out at that, whispering into his mind while power flooded his body.
[Trait Registered: Sapience]
[Class gained: Living Golem]
[Trait Registered: Body of Gaia]
[Trait Registered: Adamant Mind]
[Trait Registered: Eternal Mana Engine]
[Living Golem Lv. 1]
[Living Golem Lv. 1 -> Living Golem Lv. 37]
[Skill gained: Earthen Armor]
[Skill gained: Instant Fortification]
[Skill gained: Mountain’s Fist]
[Skill gained: Defender’s Mind]
[Skill gained: Nose for Trouble]
[Skill gained: Innate Defense]
[Skill gained: Roots of the Mountain]
[Skill gained: …
The list went on and on, more and more new abilities flowing into him even though he was unable to understand the things he’d already been told about.
[Class Evolution: Living Golem Lv. 37 -> Champion of the People, Artificial Paragon Lv. 42]
[Skill Evolution: Earthen Armor -> Armory of Gaia]
[Skill Evolution: Instant Fortification -> Fortress of the Six-Pointed Star]
[Skill Evolution: Mountain’s Fist -> Titan’s Fist]
[Skill gained: Armageddon Ward]
[Skill gained: Soul of the Sentinel]
… And then, the voice slapped him with another flood of notifications.
A normal human would be hyperventilating on the ground right now, and while Joseph wasn’t human, he still rested there, mentally worn out.
There wasn’t a single monster around, not yet, and if one showed up, well, he was more than able to rise back to his feet.
A few minutes later, that was exactly what happened, barking and growling echoing across the room as four more monsters entered.
Thankfully, the humans were still in the room behind him, so all he needed to do was make sure to win. And with all this power flowing through him, he could.
He knew where the monsters were, and would continue to know even after they left his field of view, he could tell what they were after, and it took a mere thought for heavy plates of rocky-and-metal armor that went by the title of [Armory of Gaia] to manifest around him.
The first of the dogs leaped straight for him, seemingly having decided his show power wasn’t a threat to it, and was promptly met with a [Titan’s Fist] right to the face. Even with an instinctual grasp of what the ability could do, Joseph was still shocked to see the beast’s head explode under the impact, which he promptly followed up by snatching the body out of the air and hurling it at the closest still-living enemy.
That just left two more dogs. One went for his leg, chomping down and attempting to yank it out from under him, yet his new, so-called “Skill”, [Roots of the Mountain], solidly glued him to the ground, immovable against almost any external force.
And the last monster once again went straight for his throat.
[Titan’s Fist] didn’t seem to be useable, not for the next few minutes, but even so, he was still incredibly powerful.
[Armageddon Ward] was something to defend an area, and he designated the area as a narrow pane of energy in front of his face … which the dog promptly slammed into, falling onto the monster gnawing at his leg.
Several swift, well-aimed punches finished off those two, while the last creature made a valiant attempt to go after the room full of the humans, but it was knocked off course when Joseph hurled one of the benches at it.
It survived that impact, but not his follow-up attack as he lunged at it and crushed its head into paste under his boot.
“Holy …”
Joseph turned his head to look towards the young man staring at him from the door.
He clomped over towards him, picking up the paper and writing implement he’d left there, and wrote down “It’s safe now. Have you been hearing voices too?”
“Yeah, some kind of video game shit, isn’t it?” the young man shrugged.
“Explain?” Joseph asked.
The explanation that followed was complicated beyond belief, and spanned countless decades of history, but in time, Joseph began to understand the situation. Somewhat.
But ultimately, this meant that as he fought, he’d grow stronger, more able to protect the Jewish people, and anyone else who happened to be nearby and wasn’t an antisemitic bastard.
***
HMS Defiant, Sea just off Portabello, Panama
“What is the progress on the radio repairs? Did you get anything on the satellite uplink?”
Captain Theodore Smith knew he’d already asked these questions before, but that had been ten minutes ago and things were still just as buggered as they’d been then.
As far as anyone on the crew could tell, technology still worked, it just couldn’t actually do anything. They were cut off from everyone else, unable to reach any satellite, ship, naval base, no one.
He’d have suspected some kind of software issue or even computer virus … if it hadn’t been for all the other shit that was happening.
The floating screen proclaiming the apocalypse had come, the voice whispering to everyone about new, albeit minor, superpowers most of them were getting, and above all, the drumbeat.
That damn drumbeat.
There wasn’t a single drum on the ship, or at least, there shouldn’t be, and even if there had been, the sound should not have been audible on the entire bleeding ship!
And of course they’d bloody checked if the sound was coming from the Defiant’s PA system.
It wasn’t.
Just a drum beating the tune of “Rule Britania” on a loop, echoing from somewhere off the starboard bow, audible even to people standing on the deck of the ship.
He’d even sent someone out on a speedboat to check if the effect was limited to the ship. It wasn’t.
But there was also no speaker or similar out there, because a speaker wouldn’t be equally audible within and without the ship.
“Radar contact, two clicks out, ten o’clock,” the radar operator warned.
That was the third “contact” they’d had since the world had stopped making sense.
“Identify it,” Smith ordered.
After a few seconds, it was pulled up on a screen. It was a seagull, quite a bit larger than even an albatross, with a decidedly evil glint in its eyes and claws that could tear through a warship’s hull. They’d already seen what those things could do, when one of the random seabirds that had settled on the ship’s deck had suddenly turned into a rabid beast.
“Shoot it down,” he ordered, “Bow gun, three-round burst.”
The bird on the ship had gone down to handheld weaponry, but it had nonetheless taken an ungodly number of bullets before it had died. He wasn’t taking any chances.
But a destroyer’s 4-inch bow gun was an order of magnitude more powerful than anything handheld and easily reduced the interloper to bloody mist.
By now, it had become abundantly clear that reality had clearly gone off the deep end, and now, the crew of the Defiant were stuck dealing with the fallout.
Smith sighed.
Either nothing existed anymore beyond his ship, or they were cut off somehow. It didn’t matter. Either way, the situation had gone thoroughly tits up, and he was the man on the ground, without anyone way to reach his superiors or receive new orders.
The captain is the master of his ship and next to God.
That phrase had never felt so heavy.
“Follow those drums, find the origin,” Smith ordered. There was a distinct possibility that he was sailing straight into a trap, one laid by some kind of siren or the like, and yet … something was telling him this was the correct course of action.
Something about a drum being beaten in England’s darkest day, lauding the return of … something.
There was a supernatural drum beating “Rule Britannia” on the day the world went down the drain. He had to believe there was a reason behind it.
“Uh … Sir? What course should I take?” the helmsman asked.
“Play it by ear,” Smith ordered. “Just head in whatever way the song seems to be the loudest.”
The ship jerked under his feet several times in the next few minutes as the helmsman made course corrections, but in due time, they reached the source of the unnatural song.
It had a clear origin, you could turn your head and hear it louder in the ear pointed towards the source, yet after having traveled towards the source at the Defiant’s top speed for several minutes, its volume should have been deafening. After all, if the song was that loud when they’d started moving, it should be much louder almost three miles closer to the source.
And then, he saw him. The man in the old-fashioned naval uniform, covered in medals.
He was sopping wet, true, but he was standing on the ocean.
The radio crackled to life.
“To the captain of the naval vessel. This Vice Admiral Sir Francis Drake, Royal British Navy, requesting permission to come aboard.”
Crikey. That was … something.
“Drake’s drum.”
Smith wasn’t entirely certain who’d spoken, the quiet whisper hadn’t been conducive to recognizing the speaker’s voice, but the statement almost made him facepalm. Almost.
“Drake’s Drum” was an old song, but also an actual drum, one deeply interwoven with the history of the British Royal Navy. An instrument that the man had carried on his vessel during his trips around the world, one he’d had returned to England after his death, swearing to return if England were in trouble, and all someone would have to do was beat on this drum.
However, what had happened was really the opposite, with the British hearing the beat of a non-existent drum during historically significant events.
The launch of the Mayflower.
The start of World War 1.
The evacuation of Dunkirk.
And now, its latest beat, this very day. The date on which reality itself had lost its marbles.
“Did anyone else hear that?”
Another whisper, a different speaker this time.
On one hand, on any other day, this would have been a reason to declare oneself unfit for duty on psychological grounds and make sure nothing nasty had wound up in the food.
On the other hand, he’d shot down a demonic seagull barely five minutes ago.
“Send the speedboat out, fetch him, get him a fresh outfit, and bring him to the bridge with a Marine escort,” Smith ordered.
Was it potentially a bad idea to bring someone with clear supernatural powers onto the ship? Possibly.
Then again … in for a penny, in for a pound. And things were so far beyond anything he’d been prepared to handle that the old certainties really no longer held much sway.
Francis Drake coming back from the dead made just as much sense as anything else did.
Now, all that was left to do was wait until the man reached the bridge, all the while trying to reach someone, anyone, and taking down any supernatural creatures that showed their ugly faces.
Smith heard Drake before he saw the man, a loud, metallic, “thunk” being followed by a bitten-off curse.
It seemed that the old Admiral wasn’t used to the knee-knockers on modern warships.
The tiny doors in the bulkheads were meant to contain water in case of a hull breach, but they were narrow enough that people not used to them tended to alternatively bang their heads or shins into the top or bottom portion, respectively.
And then the man himself appeared in the doorway, dressed in a modern uniform with the decorations of his old one haphazardly tacked on. Drake had, supposedly, come up from the bottom of the ocean, something his sopping-wet uniform certainly supported.
Having someone go around dripping all over the place was a safety issue even when pneumonia wasn’t a concern. Not to mention that sensitive electronics did not enjoy contact with salt water in the slightest.
So Smith had had them give the Vice Admiral a new outfit.
“Vice Admiral Sir Francis Drake of the Royal Navy of the British Empire,” Drake introduced himself. “
“I’m Captain Theodore Smith, commanding officer of the Royal Navy destroyer Defiant,” Smith responded.
“A destroyer? I’m not familiar with that class of vessel,” Drake said.
“It’s short for ’torpedo boat destroyer’, these vessels serve as escorts and were originally conceived off to prevent a new weapon known as a ‘torpedo’ from easily bringing down capital ships,” the helmsman informed him.
“Tor-pe-do,” Drake said the word slowly, carefully enunciating every syllable, rolling the unfamiliar word around on his tongue. “It seems I have a lot to learn. Captain, I’ve been hearing voices that informed me of new abilities since I woke. Is that normal?”
So it hadn’t been entirely in Smith’s head. Somehow, that was less comforting. Paradoxically, things would have been easier if he had been crazy. Then he could have either removed himself from command or would have been declared unfit by the ship’s doctor. Either way, even at the cost of his career, the situation would have been resolved.
But no, the world really was going insane, and either the Defiant had the last working radio on the planet, or there was something effing with them.
“What range does your communication device have?” Drake asked, “My ability allows me to use it to contact you, but does not tell me anything about it.”
“Technically, global,” Smith informed him. “But that’s using satellites for relay, and we can’t reach any of them.”
“Is there anyone capable of receiving your signals in your regular range?”
“Yes, but they aren’t responding,” Smith said.
“And this pattern of interference doesn’t match any documented issue?” Drake rubbed his chin.
Smith just nodded.
“If you hadn’t come to pick me up, what would the plan have been?” Drake asked off-handedly, studying a monitor as though it were an exotic animal.
Smith shrugged. “Head back to shore, see if there are still people there, drop off a group of marines to find a landline. If that doesn’t work the ship proceeds to the naval base at Bermuda, they’re fully equipped to refuel and rearm the ship. And if the base isn’t there either …”
“Before you try any of that, something tells me there’s a specific enemy disrupting communications.”
Drake casually dropped that bomb without so much as batting an eye.
Smith heroically resisted the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose.
Don’t swear at the vice admiral, don’t swear at the vice admiral, don’t swear at the vice admiral who also happens to be a national hero …
“Can I ask why you neglected to share that information?” he finally asked.
“Skills are as new to you as they are to me,” Drake said simply but elaborated almost immediately afterward. “As near as I can tell, I, a man out of time, am almost as lost as you are. We have a choice to make here. Do we blindly attempt to continue on as though the old certainties were still in place, following modern protocols for extraordinary situations, or do we take a chance? Do we use this new weapon that is ‘Skills’, trusting in them despite knowing nothing about them?”
The man then shrugged and walked a few steps into the center of the bridge, as though everyone hadn’t been staring at him from since before the beginning of his speech.
“Well, I say that today has already been a day for the supernatural. I did mean what I said when I swore to return in Britannia’s greatest hour of need, but I never expected to be able to fulfill that oath. And then, I rose from the very bottom of the ocean amidst a world beset by monsters, a world in which people gain powers.
“I say that we are the denizens of a new world, one filled with danger and opportunity.
“I say that we find whatever is causing this interference, that we go after whatever is creating these monsters, that we conquer it all!”
Drake paused briefly, before practically shouting “For King and country!”
Smith could feel himself shiver. So this was the man who’d smashed the Spanish Armada, cut a bloody swathe through the Caribbean, and become the very model of a patriotic sailor.
But as much as he wanted to let himself get swept up in it all, he had to remain aware of himself. So he thought about it. Drake was right, the nearest naval base was far from here, and by the time they reached it, an already chaotic situation could easily have become far worse. If they had to wait until then to gain knowledge of the global situation …
And if all else failed, Francis Drake was a bleeding Vice Admiral, “Admiral’s orders” was a very nice shield to hide behind if things went terribly wrong.
Of course, no one expected a centuries-old admiral to show up and start barking orders, but the royal navy of today was a direct continuation of the one Drake had served. Technically, there was nothing preventing his rank from holding weight even today.
Practically, was an entirely different matter, of course.
Smith marched over to one of the marines and gave her an order.
“Go find the Midshipman Fletcher from the radio room and get him here, he’s to give the good vice admiral a crash course in proper weapons systems.”
And while they waited for that to happen, Smith asked the admiral about his “Skills”. It was likely the most surreal conversation he’d ever have in his life, but it was informative.
The next thirty minutes were extraordinarily tense, with Drake quietly talking to Fletcher in the corner and occasionally barking a course correction, while Smith kept making, discarding, and remaking plans for what they might face.
***
Deep Sea Kraken (evolved Giant Squid), Lv. 14 Field Boss
Isolation Kraken (evolved Giant Squid), Lv. 14 Field Boss
Kraken of the Primordial Ocean (evolved Giant Squid), Lv. 15 Raid Boss
So apparently, monsters got nameplates if they were powerful enough. And what were field and raid bosses? Smith knew that in video games, bosses were the strongest enemies, but that was the absolute extent of his knowledge.
And these things did look damn tough, and to make things even worse, they were almost invisible to radar.
Not to mention that the so-called “Isolation Kraken” was likely what had caused their inability to contact anyone. It was a massive squid, equalling the Defiant in size, though most of that stemmed from its tentacles, its main body barely made up a quarter of its imposing build. White streaks tore across its body in jagged scratches, with the rest of its body covered in a pattern that was a strange mixture of TV static, the blue screen of death, and, somehow, it looked like what radio static sounded like.
Even without the utterly batshit concept of visible bleeding nameplates, Smith would have likely decided that one was the one responsible for the radio disruption.
By contrast, the Deep Sea Kraken was a very simple squid monster from legend, barely larger than the Isolation Kraken. Big, strong, scary.
And then, there was the big one, the Kraken of the primordial ocean. A monster with tentacles that could fully wrap around an aircraft carrier, a main body just as large as the Defiant, and eyes that gleamed with hate and vicious intent.
One of the Marines walked over to Smith while returning his radio to his holster.
“Corporal Lannis says that in video games, Field Bosses are powerful roaming enemies, and Raid Bosses are really powerful enemies that you can only fight in a huge group.”
That was … a hell of a lot more useful than Smith had ever expected video game trivia to be.
So, these things were powerful, then? And they now knew that they were being affected by some kind of radio disruption ability, which meant that the world was still there. They could run.
But that would leave these incredibly dangerous enemies at their back.
“How easily will we be able to find these creatures should we retreat?” Drake asked, clearly having come to the same crossroads.
“I don’t know. It’ll be almost impossible, I think,” Smith admitted. The Isolation Krakne wasn’t like any kind of interference he’d ever encountered, everything still worked, no disruptive signals were detected, no nothing. It was just as if they were … the only thing in existence, isolated from everything else. It was more than likely that that interference also hid the goings on within its area of effect from outside detection.
“But if we were to go after the Isolation Kraken, we’d be able to return with a vast force,” Drake suggested.
Oh, that was a good point. Damnit!
If they left those things there, they could easily become a nigh-undetectable threat that roamed the ocean, trackable only by the mysterious disappearance of the ships they destroyed.
So now that there was an option for doing something genuinely valuable and constructive without risking having to fight all those monsters, they basically had to take it, didn’t they?
“Moore, keep us at a distance while we make final preparations,” Smith ordered the helmsman, while the familiar call of “all hands, go to battle stations” blared out on the PA system. If anyone hadn’t been at battle stations already, they wouldn’t have been doing their job, but the announcement was still a part of the process.
The Defiant had eight ship-to-ship missiles already in their launchers on the deck, though reloading them under combat operations would be difficult. Hopefully, using them as an overwhelming initial strike would finish the fight before it even started.
It also had forty-eight vertical launch cells for anti-air missiles that could be retooled to strike at surface targets, should the Krakens be polite enough to stay on the surface.
Should those things decide to dip, though, then the Defiant would be in trouble. She had two helicopters that could deploy anit-submarine torpedoes, but the Type 45 destroyer wasn’t designed to directly go toe-to-toe with submarines. And none of their anti-submarine capabilities were designed to target non-metallic monsters.
Hopefully, the missiles would do the trick, because the last thing Smith wanted was to do was have to duel one of these monsters with the 4.5-inch popgun he had for a gun turret. And if they didn’t, maybe these Skills would do the trick. Honestly, they’d have to, since the Defiant’s strength lay literally anywhere other than a direct gun battle.
Keeping the distance open would be key, but they couldn’t use anything close to the full range of their weaponry either, seeing as they were relying on the Mark One Eyeball to track these things.
Careful modification of targetting protocols, ways to work around the limitations of their weapons, all of these things would hopefully let them kill their enemies, but those took time to perfect. Would these monsters give them that time?
Under Smith’s orders, the Defiant was slowly retreating, opening up the range. It didn’t seem like any of the Krakens would be charging after them just yet.
… Spoke too soon. Well, thought, but the principle was still the same.
The Isolation Kraken began to retreat, the Deep Sea Kraken submerged itself and Raid Boss started swimming straight towards Smith’s destroyer.
Even as the ship’s captain began to bark orders, the Vice Admiral of a bygone age began to speak, announcing his arcane actions for the bridge crew to hear.
“[Chain of Command], [Sling of David], [Numbers Don’t Matter].”
It should have been nonsense, meaningless phrases that might be somewhat related to Drake’s life, and yet, they held power. Immense power.
The first “command” he invoked some manner of power that linked him to his ship, granting them understanding of every subsequent power activation, and how to make the most of it.
In this case, the Defiant’s guns gained offensive capabilities as the power gap between the ship and her opponents grew, and they’d be able to face their first foe one-on-one even though there were three krakens. It was simple, yet so incredibly insane.
Once every ten or so minutes, Sir Francis Drake could declare a one-on-one fight with a given foe and as long as he worked towards finishing that fight, no one would be able to interfere.
Smith had gotten several abilities of his own, these mystical “Skills”, but his were practically nonexistent by comparison.
Preternatural, albeit limited, knowledge of the health of the crew and the ship’s logistics without needing to check was useful, sure, but even both skills combined didn’t add up to even a fraction of one of Drake’s abilities. And he had three … that he’d shown so far.
“Evasive Maneuvers, keep as far from the Raid Boss as possible. Launch all anti-ship missiles, target the Isolation Kraken,” Smith ordered.
The deck beneath his feet trembled slightly as all eight of their missile tubes were flushed, unleashing enough firepower to obliterate a carrier. At least if all of them hit.
A giant tentacle cracked through the air like a massive whip as the Kraken of the Primordial Ocean struck, losing the appendage in the process, but that was the full extent of its contribution.
And then, the missiles hammered home like meteors, blasting apart the Isolation Kraken that hadn’t been quite smart enough to hide underwater. Or being submerged disrupted its abilities, either one was possible. Point was, the attack seemed to have been a success.
“Still not getting through,” the radio operator warned while Drake announced, “My Skill is still active, we are currently still locked into a duel with the Isolation Kraken.”
As if to punctuate that statement, the Defiant jumped, rising at least half a meter before dropping back to its previous position with jarring force.
“Damage report. What the hell just hit us?” Smith snapped. “Launch the Wildcats the moment they’ve been armed, tell them to hit whatever’s under the keel the instant they can.”
The Defiant’s two Wildcat helicopters could each deploy two anti-submarine torpedoes, they had just been loaded with anti-air missiles before the Krakens had come into view.
Reports began to flood in, speaking of stuff getting tossed off shelves and people being thrown into ceilings or walls or landing baldy when they came back down, but ultimately, the ship itself was fine.
“I think that was the Deep Sea Kraken, I saw an unidentifiable shadow on the radar, but I lost track of it again,” the radar operator reported.
Ok, that made sense. But why the hell had they survived a knock like that? Enough force to literally send the ship flying should have snapped the Defiant’s keel like a toothpick and the hull at the point of impact couldn’t possibly have survived the impact.
And yet, they were golden. Mostly.
“So that’s how [Numbers Don’t Matter] works,” Drake commented under his breath, though still somewhat audible, before loudly adding “We won’t be protected from too many more hits like that?”
“How many?” Smith demanded, deciding to ignore the fact that he was speaking to an admiral.
Drake just shrugged.
“I can guarantee one, I have no idea beyond that. These Skills are decidedly new to me. And attempting to target a different enemy will disrupt the effect.”
Ok, that was fair.
“Found the Isolation Kraken!”
Smith immediately zeroed in on the report, the image on the screen showing a ragged mass of pulped flesh amidst water darkened by the monster’s blood.
“Target it with the main gun, draw up a targeting solu …” Smith began to order when the ship jerked again. It wasn’t as bad as it had been the first time, but still utterly terrifying. A warship a hundred and fifty meters in length, weighing several thousand tons, should not be able to be tossed around like that.
“One more hit,” Drake warned.
“Prepare to launch half of all available missiles at the Deep Sea Kraken, the instant the Isolation Kraken is dead,” Smith repeated himself while the bow gun roared to life, spitting a four-point-five-inch round towards their enemy with a little over two seconds between each shot.
And suddenly, the bridge was flooded with reports while the roar of twenty-four vertical launch cells being used in as rapid a fashion as was possible and Drake warned that his Skill had broken now that they’d killed their main enemy.
“Mayday, mayday, mayday, this is the HMS Defiant …”
Smith half listened as their distress call was sent out, including their current coordinates. It wasn’t something he’d ever expected to say, at least not in a situation like this, but judging by what he was hearing, this crap was happening all over the globe.
“… We are currently engaged with two Krakens, one of which is the size of an aircraft carrier. We have a visual of their location, they will not be locatable via radar once we go down …”
Yeah, that was about the long and short of it.
Once again, the Defiant trembled, though this time, it was only the shockwaves from countless missiles detonating against the surface of the water reaching the hull.
“Wouldn’t those munitions be more effective if they detonated underwater?” Drake asked.
“They’re anti-air missiles, not designed to survive the impact,” Smith answered while barely paying any attention.
“I can help with that. [Enhanced Munitions],” Drake intoned, and suddenly, Smith just knew that they’d at least survive the initial contact with the ocean surface. And out of the corner of his eye, he could tell how the firing solution was being adjusted for the next for the next salvo.
More blue blood stained the water below the Defiant, the powerful shockwaves unleashed into the water by the missiles having damaged something in the second Field Boss.
And then, the Defiant rang like a bell from the impact of a gigantic tentacle as the Kraken of the Primordial Ocean finally got too close, having literally whipped the ship’s stern.
That was immediately followed up by a loud screeching noise, like nails on a chalkboard but more metallic and infinitely louder as the Defiant strained against the tentacle holding it fast.
Giant squids had hooks in their suction cups, Smith suddenly recalled. Between those and the cups themselves, that thing had actually latched onto their stern.
“Split the remaining missiles between both targets, fire as soon as you are able,” Smith ordered. Reloading the missile tubes was an involved process, a full reload would take longer than they had, in all likelihood.
“[Adapt Armor],” Drake ordered, the meaning of the Skill once again being perfectly conveyed by the name being spoken aloud. And while Smith couldn’t see the outer hull of the Defiant, obviously, he could feel the changes taking place, armor plates shifting to be nigh-impossible to cling to while taking on an almost springy property that made it actually impossible for the claws to sink in.
Another bout of hair-raising noise later and the Defiant was free, leaving the Raid Boss behind.
Twelve more missiles were launched as they fled, plunging through the surface of the ocean even though at their speeds, the water should have been hard as concrete.
“Deep Sea Kraken’s dead.”
Which just left the big sucker, which had somehow escaped radar tracking while the first creature had died.
Smith sighed.
“Appraise anyone who replied to the mayday of the new situation, make sure people know there’s a big Kraken around. Continue moving at full speed ahead, we can’t afford to have that thing pop up on us,” Smith ordered.
The ocean around the Defiant was silent, still, only disturbed by the vessel’s wake, without a Kraken in sight. Somehow, that was all the more terrifying.
Soon after, the radio operator reported that several nearby countries were preparing to send out what bombers they had, armed with depth charges, ready to carpet bomb the area. In addition, the helicopters had finally been rearmed with anti-submarine weaponry.
Eventually, the Defiant had to slow down due to fuel concerns, though, and that was utterly nerve-wracking.
“Venezuelan bomber wings are five minutes out, and they’re requesting any targeting data we have.”
“Give them what we got,” Smith advised. It wasn’t much, but it wasn’t nothing either.
Minutes passed without anything happening other than the occasional plane passing overhead. But otherwise, they were just waiting, slowly traveling in the direction of England, to deliver the hero of a bygone age.
And then, from one moment to the next, everything went to pot in an instant. Again.
“Incom-” the warning came way too late. Radar had clearly picked something up, but not soon enough as the Kraken surged up from beneath the ship, wrapping its tentacles around the Defiant in a crushing death grip.
“[Escape], [Flank Speed]!” Drake snapped and suddenly, the destroyer slipped from the monster’s grasp like a greased egg. A moment later, he turned to the radar operator. “Inform those airplanes that we found the Kraken.”
And as the Defiant practically blurred across the waves, the first Raid Boss of the new world was torn apart by countless bombs and torpedoes.
It was well past midnight that Smith was finally able to lie down in his bunk, his head swimming. Well, the XO’s bunk, as his room had gone to the Vice Admiral. It was always a mess when higher-ups traveled on vessels without spare rooms for them, resulting in a domino effect of officers kicking someone underneath them out of the room, who would in turn kick out someone else, and so on, and so forth.
This world … the world he was going to sleep in was not the same one that he’d woken up in this morning. It had magic, monsters, and people returning from the dead. As far as he knew, only Francis Drake was confirmed to have returned, but there were countless rumors that had already been reached even an area as isolated as a warship in international waters.
King Arthur, a couple of German kings, some kind of artificial creature in Czechia, and, of course, the dear Admiral … this world was going to be eternally changed even if those were the only ancients who’d come back.
***
Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia
I’m getting too old for all this. Far too old.
Temujin sighed, cast away the stick he’d been swinging for the last twenty minutes, and picked up a metal rod that held some kind of sign on its end.
He wasn’t an idiot, he’d grabbed both a sword and a bow the moment he’d woken up, but the sword was buried beneath some kind of elephant beast several miles behind him, and even if he’d had any arrows left, his bow had been snapped by that very same monster.
In his hands, the metal rod began to morph and shift, his new magic by the name of [I Claim This Weapon] transforming it into a long glaive, but possessing a crossguard more typically found in boar spears.
And this was magic, real magic, not a science he did not yet understand.
When he’d first seen black powder, it had startled him far more than he’d ever admit. But then he’d understood it, begun to use it, and it had taken him far.
This, on the other hand, was a magical voice that had listed his titles and told him of magical powers called “Skills”, which he’d apparently gained.
He’d have assumed he’d gone insane normally, but considering that he could feel new strength flowing through his aging body, there was clearly something going on.
And what that floating page had said about monsters, well, if the creatures he’d been fighting for hours weren’t monsters, he didn’t know what was.
At first, he’d thought that maybe, now, the prophecies about him had come to pass. He obviously didn’t remember his birth, he couldn’t tell anyone whether or not he’d come out of the womb clutching a clot of blood, but he was fully aware of all the stories that had sprouted.
So when he’d woken up with a magical voice telling him what magic he was in the process of receiving, well, his first thought had been that maybe, just maybe, the omen had struck true, it just hadn’t come into effect during his first lifetime.
But the real world had soon disabused him of that notion, as it had done to so many other dreams, belonging to so many people.
Other people had magic too. Nothing as strong as what he had, but those he witnessed fighting were far younger than he was, practically infants in his eyes, and none of them were anything like the hardened warriors he normally surrounded himself with.
How long had it been since the people of Mongolia had last needed to go to war? And for that matter, how long had it been since his “death”? The world looked utterly different, with immense buildings made of materials he could barely identify, gunpowder weapons that were stronger than anything short of a cannon yet could be held and used in a single hand, capable of being fired over a dozen times before needing to be reloaded.
At least he thought those were gunpowder weapons, the noise level certainly spoke to that idea, but they lacked any of the characteristic smoke he normally associated with that kind of armament.
Oh, and they had carriages powered by some kind of device hidden below a layer of surprisingly fragile metal armor, which made an odd growling sound.
And yet, for all the fancy machinery these people were able to use, they were losing.
Wherever Temujin appeared, that changed, but he was more than aware of the fact that a single powerful fighter could only do so much, so he used any and all appropriate magic whenever possible.
[Instantaneous Training: Mangudai] and [Strength of the Horde] would have to do.
The former imparted the full training regimen of one of his most powerful units in a matter of seconds, for all the good it would do, since he hadn’t seen either horses or bows. That being said, though, a little military discipline wouldn’t go amiss here.
And the latter increased combat power based on the number of allies nearby. Temujin didn’t know how that power worked, or even if it did, but honestly, if it didn’t work, he hadn’t lost anything.
But even those efforts would fall short in the face of such a monstrous horde. Thankfully, things seemed to be calming down somewhat, so he could have a conversation without needing to stop and chop up monsters every other word.
There was a young woman nearby doing an admirable job turning an overgrown lizard into a smear on the pavement using a frying pan. That was … she had moxie. He’d ask her.
So he slowly approached her while dropping his sign-turned-weapon to grab her attention once the creature was done.
She jumped a foot in the air at the clatter with a startled oath, only for her to look him up and down and grow confused.
“My name is Temujin,” he introduced himself, deciding to leave out his title. “Do you know where I can find a scholar, perhaps one with a focus on history?”
Until he knew the lay of the land, he wouldn’t know whether or not it might prove … inflammatory.
“A scholar?” she asked, sounding confused.
“A house of learning, a library with an adequate selection of tomes, something like that,” he clarified.
“There’s an elementary school two blocks that way,” she said gesturing, still eyeing him curiously.
“What is an ‘elementary school’?” Temujin asked. He was perfectly capable of telling that she was speaking a variation of the Mongolian he’d known back during his reign, and he could also understand her as though she were, in fact, speaking that version of the language, but the concept simply failed to translate. At all. There simply was no word for it to be translated into.
“A school for very young children,” she said.
So not what he was looking for.
“Where could I find information about history?” he wondered out loud, only to whirl around when he heard something behind him, slip his boot under his glaive, flip it into his hand, and bisect the gigantic praying mantis with a brutal horizontal slash. A simple flick of the wrist removed most of the blood from the blade before he rested it on his shoulder.
He just hoped he hadn’t scared his conversation partner. Terrifying others had a time and a place, but it made people truly awful conversationalists.
It was almost as awful as torture in that way. You’d hear what you wanted, not what you needed. The proper way of employing torture was simple. You tortured someone else, and then, used them as an example to the person you actually wanted information from.
“What do you want to know specifically?” she asked, pulling out a rectangular device made of glass and a strange material that appeared like … it might be leather, but he really couldn’t tell. It was weird.
“How long has it been since the reign of Ghengis Khan, and what is the current size of the Mongolian Empire?” he asked.
She tapped away on the device for a few moments while she said “The Mongolian Empire doesn’t exist anymore, I can show you a map in a second.”
Then, she added, “Ghengis Khan died almost 800 years ago.”
And finally, she showed him a map that he took a very long time to recognize as a map of … everything. The whole world, drawn in excruciating detail. With just this map, what he could have done …
“What other information is on there?” Temujin asked, curious.
“Everything, I can pull up anything I want,” the woman said.
“All the knowledge in the world?” he asked.
“Basically?”
That was … Temujin had a lot of questions about how that could possibly work, but the biggest one was how they could possibly find any given piece of information. There had been immense libraries in his time, and it had taken trained and experienced librarians to find anything.
He was about to ask that question when the woman’s eyes sparked with sudden realization and she dropped the frying pan, staring at him with her mouth hanging open.
“Yes?” he asked.
“You … I’m sorry I didn’t realize … I …”
Temujin had seen that particular song and dance before. The mixture of respect and fear fuelling the embarrassment of not knowing the proper protocol for talking to him and turning it into utter terror.
“Enough!” he said, forcefully. “My name is Temujin, once upon I time, I held the title of Genghis Khan. I have returned to fight this monster horde. And I need you to answer my questions. What do I need to know about this world, who else is fighting the monsters, and am I the only one who returned? Talk!”
And talk she did while leading him to the local university.
What he learned was … illuminating.
Apparently, the world was far larger than he ever could have imagined, both in terms of size and when it came to technology.
Flight! Humans could fly!
Weaponry that could sweep cities clear in under a second, automated scouting that could show him an image of a building on the opposite side of the world if he so wished ... machines that could talk, answering his questions, news that shot around the planet mere minutes after it happened.
And yet, they were losing. All of humanity was losing. And with every person who died, every nation that was snuffed out, there was less to stand between Mongolia and the horde.