Apocalypse Redux

Chapter 255: The Predicable Bloodbath, or “The Reason Raid Bosses Get Nuked”

The show ended up being simply titled “[Raid Boss]”, complete with brackets. And its premise was just as simple as its name. People get slaughtered by the monster while others commented.

Unsurprisingly, Herbert hadn’t managed to find any S-Rankers willing to fight in full view of the public. Most of them weren’t the kind of people who liked to play circus monkey, not to mention the issues that came with fighting with all you had on live television. Keeping at least some trump cards hidden was all the more important for public figures.

Even so, there were a grand total of three S-Rankers involved in non-combat roles.

Stein’s camera drone would be used to live-stream the fight, as without it, the show would basically have just been the commentators talking about recordings taken within the [Grave of Swords].

Isaac was, of course, needed to power the whole thing.

And Arthur had decided to take a role as a guest commentator at the last minute. Apparently, one of the participants had been relentlessly bugging him about not being allowed to fight any [Raid Bosses], calling him every name under the sun in the process. And now, he could comment on that man’s utter failure to beat the enemy he’d wanted a crack at for so many months.

Isaac had retreated to the far corner of the production room with his laptop, working while Arthur and Herbert did the pre-fight overview of the situation.

“So they can’t hear this, right?” Arthur asked.

“Are you worried you might accidentally give them tips?” Herbert asked.

“Nah, that’s no problem. As far as I know, there is no secret trick to killing a Crystaline Monarch and I couldn’t give them any tips they couldn’t have found online.

“But I’m going to talk really badly about Mr. Johnson, his group and their chances. If they listen in and then lose the fight, I’m going to be hearing about how I ‘got in their heads and threw them off their game’ for the rest of eternity. So, are they listening in?”

“No,” Herbert said, “So, what do you think their chances are?”

“They’re going to be facing a Crystalline Sage as a group of one hundred people, with Levels ranging from 75 to 110. The monster should be somewhere between Level 80 and 90. In theory, working together, they should be able to win. In practice, they’re fucked. Camelot could win at those odds. SAS could win at those odds, though they’d probably struggle a little more than most people would expect because they’re specialized in fighting people, not monsters. And GSG-13 could also win at those odds, considering that they’re specialized monster hunters.

“Mr. Johnson gathered a group of friends, coworkers, and adrenaline junkies, and worked together with them to summon monsters, growing through Levels. It’s a workable strategy for fighting regular enemies, but the amount of planning and coordination [Raid Bosses] require if you don’t have a third again their Levels is absolutely bloody insane. I mean, you’d have a better chance of living if you went into a Manchester Pub wearing an Arsenal shirt than going up against a [Raid Boss] with what Johnson has prepared.”

“And you’re just here to gloat, then?” Herbert asked innocently.

“Of course not,” Arthur shook his head, “I’m here to point out exactly why you can’t compare regular groups of people who get together to get Levels with raid groups. Johnson spent more than a year begging, threatening, and insulting me, all for the chance to get himself killed. Hopefully, he’ll learn his lesson after this.”

Arthur could be a good liar, Isaac noted. He was absolutely doing this just to gloat, he just knew better than to say that out loud.

The conversation continued for a bit, typical reality television nonsense.

Isaac just waited until he got the go-ahead on creating the [Grave of Swords]. It came after an excruciating amount of time, but he did get it. At that point, he did turn and pay attention to what was happening.

The Crystalline Sage was a monster unlike any other, a [Raid Boss] unlike any other. It was a mere ten meters tall, tiny compared to other [Raid Bosses], and comprised entirely of a pale blue crystal, though its physique made it look a little chubby. Of course, that phrase couldn’t be applied to a being made entirely of rock, but still, it looked slightly silly.

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What was decidedly not silly was the monster’s staff, a spire of glass-clear crystal with metal threading through it, just as tall as the monster.

And even as the humans scrambled to get into a proper formation, the wires within had rearranged themselves to form a line of script, flowing from the top of the staff to the bottom. Said script was nothing like anything that had existed prior to the [System], and somehow couldn’t be subsumed into the [Omniglot] [Skill].

But once it had been written out, anyone, even children who didn’t even have access to the [System] yet, could grasp its meaning.

A [Lance of Annihilation] was definitely not something that anyone wanted to have pointed them.

Johnson, whose build was basically a typical paladin, tanked the attack, his shield interposed and enhanced by a cooldown [Skill].

Behind him, his allies spread out, mages to the back, groups forming for spells that required cooperation, others throwing up barriers to supplement the tanks.

A grand total of fifteen people made up the latter group, with plate armor, tower shields combined with either spears or short swords marking this particular kind of fighter.

Archers, skirmishers, traditional warriors, and healers filled the space between the groups.

Ranged attacks were fired back at the monster, spells pinging off the crystalline shell with a sound like hail as it charged.

“Oh, phalanx formation, bad choice,” Arthur commented, “With most [Raid Bosses], when they charge, you need a damn good tank to block them, and even then it’ll probably cost you a cooldown [Skill]. The problem is that when a monster charges and you have to dodge, being in a phalanx means that almost everyone has to dodge and they’re standing close enough to each other that getting enough space is going to be a stone-cold bitch.”

Three people “died” to that charge, simply smushed into the ground like a frog that had found its way onto a highway.

Once in the center of the formation, the Sage spun, staff flying through the air in wide arcs, sending three more people out of the [Grave of Swords] with a new trauma.

The [Thousand Ton Weight] hammered into anything in range with nigh-unblockable force.

Tanks scrambled through the crowd, throwing up new barriers to buy time for their squishier allies. Swords broke under the impact of the staff, but oftentimes, they did manage to slow down the staff enough for someone to dive out of the way.

In the center of the new circular formation, a chubby crystal golem literally danced, feet sliding across the ground in a strange pattern.

“Watch out! It’s drawing a ru-…”

“You know, if they were better coordinated, someone would have been watching out for a stunt like that, and the warning could have been better communicated than by yelling,” Arthur commented, heroically resisting the urge to make the declaration in a lazy drawl while hanging over the side of the chair. Thankfully, only people who knew him well would be able to tell, otherwise, that would have looked really bad.

Half the tanks were wiped out in a flash, the other half flung backwards by the [Resonant Shockwave].

The Sage dove into the biggest gap in the formation and spun like a top, its staff now in a configuration called [Font of the Inferno], flames spewing from the tip.

“Changing formation by people running away from the monster does not work terribly well,” Arthur commented.

As flames swept out from the weapon clutched in the monster’s right hand, its left was tracing patterns across its chest, scratching runes into the crystal.

Sitting amidst a burgeoning wildfire, the monster boosted itself with yet another rune every fifteen or so seconds.

Johnson took that as a golden opportunity to heal the injured and get into a proper formation.

They might have lost a third of their number and blown through half their big attacks, but they were getting into the groove. They knew the tricks, they’d managed to work out the kinks in their formation, and they’d had the time to set up big combined attacks.

Those thoughts and more were clear to read in their faces.

Yet the instant they attacked, the inferno swept towards them while transforming into a wave of electricity. Some people managed to block the attack, but too many tanks had died and the wave was far stronger than the fire had ever been.

As half the group fell down in twitching heaps, the intricate sequence of runes the Sage’s feet had carved into the ground under the cover of the flames was revealed.

The end of the fight would probably have been largely skipped over if this wasn’t a live show. Too many people were down, all but one of the tanks gone, and a good chunk of the ground was covered in electrified metal.

Throw on the fact that the runes carved into the monster’s body had made it quite a bit faster and tougher and the humans stood no chance. None at all.

In the end, the Sage had quite a few cracks on its body, but it looked fine. In fact, the damage was so small that it could have been explained away as a naturally occurring pattern. In fact, without knowing what it was supposed to look like, most people probably would have dismissed the damage as having been there the whole time.

“HEY, I want another shot!” Johnson roared from the large room that served as a staging area.

“I’m afraid we have other contestants waiting,” Herbert announced, “But we’re always open to having returning contestants.”

Johnson stomped off in a huff, seemingly unbothered by his “death”, but many of his people were looking more than a little shell-shocked.

The subsequent fighters weren’t any more successful.

A dragon that wasn’t grounded swiftly enough charbroiled the support contingent before snacking on the armored warriors, crunching down on them as though they were nuts.

A Sanguine Monarch that had killed half the group while in its disassociated form, then torn through the rest so thoroughly it looked like they’d fallen into a woodchipper before they were healed and tossed out.

Thankfully, not everyone made obvious mistakes, losing despite doing basically everything right. Arthur made it very clear where the fault for those losses lay, and it basically boiled down to “not SAS/Seal Team 6 level training and coordination”.

***

Once everything was said and done, Herbert received several messages from various channels. Some were dropping the show due to how bloody it was, others were looking to pick it up.

And there were also various people who hadn’t quite put together that it was Isaac who decided what would be done with the [Grave of Swords] and proposed other fun ideas that could be done with a deathless place.

Incidentally, the [Skill] had ranked up to the max Level. It had jumped up by a Level when Isaac had arranged for a Tier 8 [Raid Boss] to be locked inside and the creative use on the show had pushed it all the way to the top.

Grave of Swords (legendary, Level max)

A vast field, countless blades thrust into the dirt, each one representing a warrior who fell in battle within this space

This is the Grave of Swords, each one containing the power and knowledge of a specific foe, so the user may fight them over and over again, or be used as fuel to enhance this space.

Upon activation of this ability, both the user and one target will be transported to another plane (current size: circle with a 50 meter diameter) for a one minute per Level in this Skill. The target must be either in contact with user or the user’s soulbound weapon when this Skill is activated for it to take effect, though.

The Skill ends if one combatant dies, it hits its time limit, or is deactivated by the user, any leftover mana will be refunded and placed in the Skill’s pool.

When an enemy dies within this Skill, a new blade is thrust into these hallowed grounds, containing a record of the fight, the fallen, and a measure of its power. With it, the user may choose to fight against the old foe once more for training purposes, experimenting with new tactics and moves without danger.

However, the weapons store the remnant life force of the monster, which can be used as additional fuel for this Skill as its cost increases with the strength of the other participant (+5 mana per opponent Level over the user’s, +50 for each Tier barrier between the user’s Level and the monster’s, overall cost doubled for Bosses, tripled for Raid Bosses and quintupled for World Bosses)

This Skill can only be activated every 5 hours in combat, cost requires 1,500 mana to use, which it either siphons off from the user’s mana regeneration so long as the user’s mana pool is full or draws from the swords themselves. Cooldown can be bypassed by paying double the normal activation cost from the stored blades.

After countless fights where the user has sealed powerful foes within to protect his allies, this Skill has evolved to further enhance the isolating power of Grave of Swords. It can now be used to seal off a part of the battlefield, creating an incredibly durable spherical barrier around the user, with a radius of 50 meters (it increases automatically for larger, singular foes, according to the same rules as the regular use of this Skill). The user may choose to banish any person in their Party from this zone to protect them, but enemies cannot be forcibly removed.

(Note: inanimate objects overlapping the barrier will not be damaged, living beings will either be pushed into or out of the Grave of Swords if they overlap the barrier during its creation, depending on where the majority of their body is)

Furthermore, this Skill has gained an additional effect due to a high degree of synergy with the Class Hildebrand’s Heir. When using the Grave of Swords to train against enemies trapped within, the user may choose to take along up to five other people.

And now, it has reached the pinnacle of its power, becoming a tool to control the battlefield itself.

Firstly, the user may now control the opacity of the Grave, allowing people to see inside, allowing those within to see outside, or both. In addition, they may control whether anyone can take advantage of this sight, or if it is limited to just their party members or even just them alone.

Secondly, the Grave’s location is no longer visible from the outside.

Thirdly, when the Grave is closed by the user’s victory, the user may decide to exit into any safe spot within a kilometer of where it was opened.

And fourthly, the Grave can now be recharged or sustained with mana donated by others.

Cost: 1,500 banked mana base cost for combat purposes, cost increases with target’s power, increase must be paid from stored blades or the user’s mana pool

The utility of the Grave had taken a dramatic spike upwards, allowing him to use it in a way that wouldn’t leave him in a potentially hazardous position when it ended.

And while the controllable opacity would be beyond useful not just when it came to making filming more convenient. Knowing what was going on outside or letting allies see inside would be useful as hell, especially when he could ensure that his enemies didn’t get any of the information.

Now all there was to do was wait until Etzel was properly upgraded to the point where he could farm Tier 8 [Raid Bosses].

***

As it turned out, Isaac hadn’t been quite correct when predicting how people would react to the show. There was the expected horror and pearl-clutching, but also a ludicrous about of daredevils who wanted to throw themselves against powerful enemies just because they knew death wasn’t permanent.

And people started offering ludicrous rewards for anyone willing to leak his phone number. Thankfully, he’d made it abundantly clear that ahead of time that anyone whose organization leaked his number would not get his new one, no matter how vital it might be that they be able to contact him in an emergency.

That, in turn, was passed along to anyone within these organizations who had access to his number. Sure, they might be able to make a quick buck, but they’d get subsequently sued into the ground.

After a couple of leaks and subsequent retaliation, the message finally landed.