Apocalypse Redux

That wasn’t good, Derek decided. Any “force majeure” capable of making Isaac postpone his wedding was liable to be a massive problem for everyone in the crosshairs.

He took a couple of minutes to type up an email to Isaac, a general “sorry to hear that, do you need anything,” not expecting anything beyond that.

But a second before he could send it, he received another email, this one sent only to him.

Hi Derek,

Something might be coming. You’ll probably want to cut your holiday short and get your shakedown cruise finished as quickly as possible. And get your Dragonfly stocked up for anything and everything. Especially repairing combat damage.

Beyond that … this is probably something that needs to be dealt with at a high Level. I know you’re going to involve yourself in anything that looks even remotely survivable anyway, so I’m not going to talk you out of it, but please, be careful.

Yours sincerely,

Isaac Thoma

Derek snorted at the sign-off. Drama queen.

Big. Fucking. Problem.

He put his phone away, paid his bill, and hurried towards the artificial beach near where the others were playing water polo.

Summoning a small orb of light against his palm to make it more noticeable, he waved, immediately drawing their attention.

“We should probably head back to the ship,” he said when they dragged themselves out of the ocean. And that was all he said.

With everyone around undoubtedly having a degree of superhuman hearing, people were going to hear everything he said, even through his sound-dampening [Skill]. It wouldn’t even take someone actually trying to eavesdrop for enough information to leak out to cause a panic.

Derek’s brother had a bit of a reputation in connection to apocalyptic threats, and Derek looked enough like him that someone did not necessarily need to recognize him to put two and two together.

“Still planning on walking?” Ye-in teased.

Derek groaned. He’d forgotten about the damn glass-bottom subway.

“Honestly? I would if I could.”

He accompanied that with a look, trying to communicate that there was a damn reason he couldn’t.

Ye’in gave him a brief nod, while Atticus shrugged and began toweling himself off a little more quickly.

Mimi hadn’t been looking at Derek, but she was already back to wearing her regular clothes and waiting.

One more thalassophobia-inducing subway ride later, they were back in the spaceport and hurrying towards the Dragonfly.

Once back on the bridge, Derek immediately dove into the logistics side of things, deciding to take Isaac’s warning about supplies as “prepare to be stuck at the ass-end of the galaxy with nothing but what you can carry with you.”

And Atticus was arguing with traffic control.

“Yes, we were planning on staying long- … no, we are not fleeing the scene of a crime. Why is that your first thought?”

Derek didn’t hear the response to that because it was coming over a private channel, but Atticus’ reaction told him all he needed to know.

“Are you kidding me? Is there an actual crime with perpetrators at large? … Family emergency, I think. … Look, I was told to head back to Sol, I don- … Just bloody check, would you? ‘Instinct’ is not an acceptable reason for any of this. You either have proof, or a [Skill] detecting something. You not liking my face is not actionable! I …”

Ah hell. Sounded like they had a real peach of a traffic controller over there.

Derek put his tablet aside, sticking it in its holster by the side of his chair, then walked over to stand next to the pilot.

“Have they looked at our file yet?” he asked.

Atticus repeated the question, then tapped a couple of buttons to let Derek listen in on the response, which mostly consisted of incredulous spluttering.

“So let me get this straight, the guy on the other end of that line decided to go full obstructionist without doing any background research?” he sighed.

It wasn’t like Admiral Miyazaki’s commendation wouldn’t be easy to find. In the admiral’s own words, it wasn’t a get-out-of-jail-free card, but it would serve as an easily accessible character reference.

A new voice suddenly spoke from the console.

“Dragonfly, permission to depart granted; flight instructions coming … now. As for you …”

The transmission cut off at that point, but it seemed like the incompetent ass they’d been dealing with had somehow drawn the attention of a supervisor.

And not even five minutes later, the launch procedure began.

A pulse of energy from the platform below pushed the ship upwards, opening a small gap between the landing gear and the metal it had been resting upon. This was swiftly followed by a burst of spatial magic, widening that gap into a massive chasm of nearly two hundred meters, more than enough clearance for Atticus to trigger the main engines and start burning them at full blast. Or at least as close to full blast as one could get inside an atmosphere.

The darkening blue slowly creeping towards the red of the dusk sky swiftly gave way to the black of outer space before the blinking lights of the countless artificial constructions orbiting Water became obvious, and the computer started throwing the corresponding icons up on the main viewscreen.

And there was the catapult that could launch them back to Sol in an instant.

Derek took a moment to confirm they were on the correct vector, more of a passing thing he didn’t even think about as he went back to dealing with the logistics.

Fresh food for eight months, rations for two years past that. Fuel for running the reactors at full power for five years. Top up the water storage, slot in new filters on everything, then get enough replacements for each of those to last those same five years.

The eight missiles already in the tubes, enough components for another thirty-two. Five hundred rounds for the primary railgun, two thousand for each of the secondaries.

Spare sensors, focusing lenses for the lasers, magnets for the particle beams, more varieties of computer parts than he’d care to think about, plus the raw materials to construct all those things if worst came to worst. Oh, and there were a couple of extra spare disassembled fabricators that they’d need to safely stash away, just in case all the existing ones were somehow destroyed without the whole ship getting wrecked.

Derek barely even noticed the brief moment of unreality as the catapult kicked them several light-years across space, so engrossed was he in the twin banes of his existence that were paperwork and logistics.

***

“That should be everything.” Derek declared when the final box slid into place in the storage room. He wished he could have said that with more certainty, but after twelve hours of this, his ability to be certain on just about any topic was … lacking, to say the least.

His head felt like it was stuffed full of cotton wool, his stomach felt like it was on the verge of eating itself, and, somehow, his feet hurt. A hundred and sixty points in Fortitude might not be anywhere near what was needed to reach the levels of-near invulnerability many of the high-level people had, but it should have inured him to most of the regular inconveniences of everyday life.

Hopefully, the near-endless checking and re-checking of everything they’d been packing aboard would make up for the waning focus.

“I see you took my warning seriously.”

Derek raised a tired head to stare at his brother, who’d been watching from the door for God only knew how long.

“Are you stalking me now?” he asked with a sigh.

“No,” Isaac chuckled. “But I’m about to be incredibly busy, and I figured this was a chance for a face-to-face conversation when I saw you docked at this station.”

“Does that mean you’re going to tell me what’s actually going on?”

“Something’s coming; it’s nasty enough to set off my apocalypse detector, and they’re using starships,” Isaac replied.

Derek raised an eyebrow. “I see we’re already in full information lockdown mode.”

“Actually, I’m not,” Isaac replied flatly.

“That’s going to be a problem.”

“Yup,” Isaac sighed as he pushed himself off the doorframe he’d been leaning against. “This isn’t just going to be another clusterfuck. It’s going to be the kind of crucible that kills way too many people and turns the ones who survive into legends.”

Derek’s reply came out as a whisper, him only realizing after the fact that he’d spoken out loud.

“Can you help?”

“Sorry?” Isaac asked. There was no way someone like him hadn’t heard, so he was trying to … do something. Ask for clarification, give Derek a chance to retract, maybe even try and get … ah, fuck it.

Derek swallowed, then spoke up.

“The other Raid Boss rewards that provide permanent upgrades. The higher Tier variants of the Salmon of Wisdom. All the help I wouldn’t accept because I wanted to earn them myself. Is there any chance I could still get them? My crew too?”

There. This was what had finally broken him.

Not over a decade of grinding to barely any progress so he might start out with a legendary [Class].

Not an alien genocide machine.

Not even an eldritch horror that was an alien race’s equivalent to Satan.

But this was a near-guaranteed apocalypse that took the form of a hostile armada, with obviously genocidal intent, was far too big a threat. And fundamentally horrifying. What kind of absolute monster would want to commit those kinds of atrocities in today’s day and age? It wasn’t like there was a big contest over resources, especially with access to outer space, which these guys obviously did.

He’d learned about that … and folded in moments.

Isaac took a long moment before responding.

“Yeah, I can make that happen. You’ll get the delivery as soon as I can

“And if the situation’s gone to hell in a handbasket, and you’re trying to control the storm, legendary advancement typically happens as long as you don’t die. This shouldn’t limit you.”

“God, I hope so …”

***

“Hey, this was outside the ship, addressed to you.”

Derek glanced up from his tablet to see Atticus standing there in the doorway, carrying a box.

“It’s also warded to the nines. Anyone trying to steal this would probably wish it only killed them.”

“And you know that … how exactly?” Derek asked with a raised eyebrow.

Atticus gave an exaggerated shrug that made the box bounce slightly.

“I’m my father’s son. I mean, it’s not like anyone ever explained to me what he actually does, but he made sure his [Bloodline] told me what not to steal before I could even think to try.”

Derek raised his eyebrow again.

“Haven’t you ever heard the saying ‘opportunity makes the thief?’ Taking the five-finger discount before they can ever realize they shouldn’t kills a shocking number of people nowadays.” Atticus shrugged, then chuckled wryly. “And it’s not like either of my parents knew how I’d turn out when they were figuring out what gifts to pass along.

“So, anyway, you know what this is?”

Derek nodded. “Goodie bag from my brother. Can you take that to the mess and unpack it? I’ll get the others.”

Two minutes later, he strode into the room in question, seeing the box already unpacked, leaving four mason jars of beige something lined up next to a set of four bento boxes containing exclusively salmon, along with an incredibly slim blade in a sheath that felt heavy to his senses, swallowing whatever supernatural properties the blade might have had.

No, did have, actually. Because there was a specific, famous sword with that kind of blade profile that Derek knew Isaac had easy access to.

Mimung, from ancient Germanic myth, the greatest work of the legendary blacksmith Weyland, and something his older brother could summon at will. Not the original, obviously, but one of the things that had catapulted Stagmer to prominence was trying to copy said blade, which then led to quite a few near-perfect copies in the family’s possession.

“Well, that’s obviously for you,” he said, grabbing the sword and passing it onto Ye-in. “Everything else … take one each, then figure out what they are?”

Part of him was a little disappointed that Ye-in was the only one with an extra-special gift, but he ruthlessly squashed that.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

His “gift” was the starship they were aboard. Mimi’s too, from a certain point of view, namely “it’s actually the engineer’s ship, no matter what the captain thinks.”

And Atticus … honestly, he had a sufficiently weird build that Isaac likely didn’t know what best to give him that wasn’t already freely available aboard the Dragonfly.

Derek grabbed one box and one jar, labeled as “Salmon of Wisdom” and “Concentrated Dragonscale,” respectively.

Should’ve figured.

“Bon appetite,” he declared, then turned to grab a pair of chopsticks from the kitchen drawer and dug in. The sushi inside wasn’t labeled, nor did it seem to be sorted in any way, but after a few bites, a pulse of energy and a [System] window demonstrated it was working, though he didn’t look at it until the box was empty and the boon was complete.

Well of Wisdom’s Blessing (unranked)

Nine Hazelnuts once fell into a well, the Well of Wisdom. A Salmon ate these hazelnuts, gaining all the knowledge in the world.

And then, humans hunted down this Salmon for its power, devouring it like the monsters they are.

The holders of this Skill gain 75% faster Mana Regeneration.

This Skill has been fully upgraded.

Perfection. Largely unearned perfection, but perfection all the same.

He’d still go ahead and kill the rest of the high-Tier Salmon of Wisdoms, but it wouldn’t be the same. And the line would have been crossed all the same; that was for certain.

But he knew with equal, if not greater, certainty that he’d never be able to live with himself if one of his friends died for a lack of the power he was presently obtaining.

Then he pulled over the jar.

Dragonscales. Torn off a Raid Boss, melted, alchemically concentrated, and then preserved in their molten state, ready to bestow their boon upon any skin they bonded with.

The big drawback of the concentrated version was that it wasn’t possible to cover one’s whole body without the whole thing destabilizing, but this version was far tougher and could be infinitely more effective if used correctly.

Legend had it Isaac had drawn a web of heavily reinforced skin across his body to render himself functionally immune to dismemberment, but for once, Derek was planning on going with the standard option for his build, rather than trying to get clever.

He raised the jar.

“I’ll go to the shower and apply this.”

Armor the head, protect the brain, ensure that practically no matter what, you’ll still be able to react to an attack, even if all you were doing was throwing one final “fuck you” at the guy who killed you.

Although … there was a problem. A small, tiny, infinitesimal one, really, but still a problem … Derek had hair. Hair he actually liked. And no ability to regrow it directly, because hair wasn’t directly affected by healing [Skills].

As for removing it, that was actually pretty easy.

Derek shifted the skin at the top of his head into the flame-retardant leather of a demon, closed his eyes, and ran a very low-power [Flame Stream] across his hair.

That part went fine. What he hadn’t considered was the smell.

Cursing himself, he cast an air-purification spell and began lathering on the liquid dragon scales, trusting that the amount in the jar was safe to use on a single person in its entirety.

Eventually, it showed up as a [Skill] … of sorts.

Condensed Dragonscale Cranial Protection (unranked)

You have received the scales of a slain dragon and used them to protect yourself. Or, more specifically, your brain and the bone shell that protects it, rendering it almost indestructible to just about anything that would have to go through the skin.

You are by no means indestructible, but you are also unlikely to die without being able to unleash one last spell.

Though he supposed it wasn’t too bad that it showed up on his status screen. Just not the way he’d have set things up.

Name: Derek Ambrosius Thoma

Class: Cosmic Magus

Species: High Human

Level: 63 -> 70

XP: 17,011/35,500

Health Status: Healthy

Mana: 4,800/4,800

Fortitude 160

Perception 150

Strength 150

Agility 190

Magic Power 410 -> 480

Magic Regeneration 360

Free Points: 0 Stat, 1 Skill

Central Skills

Aspect Hunter 11

Aspect Integration 11

Call of Adventure 10

Vessel of Legend 8

Cosmic Awareness 6

Cosmic Event 1 -> 2

Skills

Lightspeed Learning 12 -> 15

Skill Fusion 16

Knowledge Conversion 11 -> 3

Branching Capabilities 6 -> 8

Anima Bolt 10

Lifesurge 7

Predator’s Force 2

Phantom Limb 2

Flash Forward 15

Fractal Beams 2

Danger Radar 3

Energy Screen 4 -> 5

Smuggler’s Pocket 1 -> 3

Starship Aspect 1

General Skills

Bloodline of the Hellborne Survivor

Stellar Processing 13

Spellcasting 3 -> 7 (189 spells known)

Variable Weapon Empowerment 6

Phantom Armor 4

Scholarly Admiral 1

Starship Upkeep 15

Enchanting 13

Alcubierre Bubble 14

Eye of the Predator 13

Shapeshifter’s Acrobatics 6

Superior Eldritch Spatial Manipulation 15

Well of Wisdom’s Blessing (unranked)

Condensed Dragonscale Cranial Protection (unranked)

Aspect

Aspect Skills

Hydra

Regeneration, Redundant Organs

Poltergeist

Ephemeral Form, Spectral Flight

Least Demon Lord

Grand Hellflame, Moment of Immortality

Lord of Time and Space

True Spatial Warp, Cosmos Soul, True Spatial Affinity, And I Shall Not Be Moved

Caladrius

Healing Light, Inner Light

Fata Morgana

Hologram, Perception Block

Cosmic Leviathan

Charging to Infinity, Cosmic Gaze, Stellar Travel, Omnidimensional Maneuvering

Void Dragon

Wings of the Void, Scales of the Void, Star’s Heart, Infinite Mind

Magebreaker Specter

Internal Grimoire, Spellbreaker

The Error

Moment of Immortality, Energy Reflection, Eldritch Manifestation, Telefrag

[Empty Slot]

It was looking quite impressive compared to where he’d been when he’d had to fight The Error, but relative to what he knew was coming … it was nothing. Less than nothing, even.

Now all there was left to do was run the ship itself through its paces.

***

The black abyss of space stretched infinitely in every direction, the darkness deeper than it had ever been since Derek had gotten [Cosmic Awareness], yet simultaneously more star-speckled than the brightest night sky he had ever seen.

Most people found this kind of deep space well, deeply disturbing. Too far from any star to have an easy reference point, too far from any planet to have some idea of “stable ground” within reach … just an infinite drop on every side, if you somehow lost your ship.

But by those very same metrics, you also had effectively infinite sightlines, able to marvel at the universe’s true glory, nothing outshone by the local star.

Derek could see everything literally… as long as it wasn’t on the opposite side of the starship on whose hull he was lying, gazing “up” at the “sky” that surrounded him on all sides.

His phone vibrated. He didn’t even need to look at it to know that it held a message reading some variety of “get your ass back in here.”

Things were likely quite time-sensitive, but those ten minutes in the void between stars … he’d had to take them. If only because there was every chance he’d never get them again.

He hauled himself off the bare metal he’d been resting on, quickly made his way over to the nearest airlock, and entered, this time managing to find the quickest way to the bridge without needing to think about it. The new layout was finally becoming familiar. Incidentally, that was another thing they were focusing on learning: getting sufficiently adept at navigation for swift damage control.

He dropped heavily into his chair, buckled in, and grinned.

“Alright, time to put her through her paces,” Derek declared, patting one of the armrests affectionately. “Up first, stress testing.”

This part was mostly on Mimi, though she gave him a look like he’d asked her to go kick some puppies. Which, from her perspective, he might as well have, considering how she cared for the Dragonfly’s machinery.

She did it anyway.

At first, the process of redlining the reactors was entirely silent, its existence only proven by the status bars displayed on their screens.

Then, [Cosmic Awareness] began to pick up traces of magic needed to contain the violent power of the artificial stars that lay within each of the Dragonfly’s fusion reactors.

And only a couple of seconds afterwards, the ship’s frame began to very slightly but still audibly hum, the sheer power coursing throuhg her conduits reaching a zenith … and then it cut out. Along with the reactors.

For barely half a second, every system on the ship was being fed from the capacitors alone, then the reactors roared back to life, albeit at a more reasonable intensity.

Clearly, drawing more power in an emergency, the emergency shutdown, and the emergency restart all worked.

That was one thing tested. One thing of … a hell of a lot of things.

Derek groaned internally, but he knew better than to voice it out loud, especially since Mimi was still giving him the stink-eye. She would have to check over all those things. He’d help, but she’d still have to do the majority of the work.

Over the next three hours, they ran through a whole battery of further tests. Surging reactors individually. Altering the power output of one in case one of the others failed.

Redlining the engines. Redlining the thrusters. Redlining some of each, to compensate for simulated outages.

And so on, and so forth, stress-testing pretty much every component that could be.

Eventually, though, somehow, they ran out of things to do, at which point they took a break.

Well, Atticus and Ye-in took breaks; Derek and Mimi had to go ahead and check over everything.

So once that was done, the break stretched on while they also spent some time relaxing and getting ready for the fun part. Aka blowing shit up.

***

It wasn’t hard to find a few rocks to shoot, even out here in the middle of nowhere. They’d been running passive scans looking for them during all the other tests; at that point, all it took was a short FTL jump to get into position, line up the bow, and fire the first of their primary weapons.

A massive wave of energy surged through the Dragonfly’s systems, roaring into the bank of magnets surrounding the vacuum channel that lay at the center of the ship’s spine, and electrons began to accelerate down the length of the vessel until they erupted out the bow at a velocity so incredibly close to the speed of light that relativistic distortion literally warped time to keep the beam coherent long after the stream of same-charge particles should have already come apart.

But there was one specific reason why they used electrons in their heaviest beam, and that wasn’t that their light weight made them easy to accelerate.

No, that was because, once in motion, electrons hated having their trajectory changed, and made their displeasure known by throwing out rather nasty radiation. Almost exclusively gamma rays, at the velocities the Dragonfly’s primary accelerated them to.

Rock instantly flashed into plasma and erupted outwards, the shock of the detonation tearing apart the entire asteroid in a flash of fire and harsh radiation, irradiating the debris to a degree that would have made many an electrical system up and quit, had they struck a ship instead.

However, the chunks flying in every direction weren’t left lonely long, as the ship’s secondaries were spun up, neatly nailing each of the debris chunks, shattering them each into even smaller chunks that were swiftly reduced to nothing but plasma as the point defenses engaged.

“Alright, that’s how you do it!” Atticus cheered, starting a miniature celebration with all of them.

When Ye-in fired their other primary, the massive railgun running down the Dragonfly’s spine alongside the particle beam, they almost missed it … though the sight of another rock detonating on the main screen certainly made an impression.

“So, that’s our heavy weaponry,” Derek began. “Anyone who gets hit by that is going to feel it.”

He grinned wolfishly. “Now, how about we see what our other railguns can do?”

There was a distant hum as they rotated into position and fired as one, unleashing the enchanted rounds they’d been specially loaded for just this test.

These rounds were something Derek was particularly proud of. [Spatial Detonation] taken to, no, past, what should have been its limits. Simply put, upon impact, the enchantment used the standard variant of the spell, deleting most of the space between atoms within the projectiles, collapsing them into an incredibly tiny space, and then, instead of letting physics take over and having the whole thing detonate, it held the projectile like that.

Mass, unchanged.

Speed, unchanged.

But the density? That could only be described as absurd, unsurpassed by anything short of neutronium.

The effect would only last for an instant, but in that instant, it went through the asteroid as though it were made of styrofoam and cardboard, rather than rock and metal.

And after the kind of sledgehammer blow delivered by the railgun rounds, the explosive portion of the enchantment was barely even needed. All it really did was take the loose collection of gravel the rock had been reduced to and spread it around a little.

The cloud was still far too dense for the Dragonfly to safely fly through, which made it perfect for testing one of Atticus’ new [Skills].

[Void Shift] triggered, turning the light cruiser into a dark fog that flowed through the gaps in the rocky expanse, re-solidifying on the other end … with one crew member no longer aboard.

Ye-in was now standing out there in space, waving briefly to the ship before vanishing in a sparkling cloud of stardust, reappearing back in her chair.

[Unrestricted Deployment] let her teleport off the ship at any time, then return at any time within the next minute, always perfectly matching the speed and vector of whatever she was teleporting to.

That particular trick was going to need a solid opening to be effective, at least in its current iteration.

Once she was strong enough to punch out starships, on the other hand … it was a literal free punch against any target within range. Perhaps even the kind of free, effectively unpreventable capital ship kill that prevented anyone from building truly massive warships.

And as it stood right now? Lots of people had [Skills] that let them save specific pieces of vital machinery from attacks that should have destroyed them. Which would invariably end with said machinery exposed, as everything on the path to it would have already been destroyed at that point.

As big of a clusterfuck as everything around The Error had been, everyone on the ship had come out of that with a legendary [Class] Evolution. It wouldn’t have been worth it if any of them had died, but seeing as that hadn’t happened, and the navy would have had to engage the rampaging World Boss heading for Sol anyway … it was hard to regret what had happened. Still a clusterfuck for the ages, though.

“Anybody mind if I practice some maneuvers, seeing as we’re already stressing everything?” Atticus asked.

“Sure,” Derek replied … after double-checking his seatbelt. And making sure Mimi and Ye-in were also in positions that wouldn’t see them get tossed around like loose change when the pilot did whatever he was going to pull.

He then took that as a chance to pull out his gun and examine it once again. Every time he saw it, he got another idea for an interesting way to use it.

For starters, when he got a moment, he’d also get himself a good, enchanted jacket to draw the revolver out from under. And it’d only be partially a matter of vanity.

Sure, the act of throwing a jacket open and drawing the absolute monster of a gun that was Voidheart out from under it in a single fluid motion before blasting his foes to pieces had a certain appeal, but it was also about having easy access to the weapon. It might be possible to draw it from anywhere, but pulling it out from under a jacket was far easier than trying to grab something from a pocket in panic, or even out from under his shirt.

And it did look pretty damn cool, in his mind, at least.

“I need a new spell for you,” he declared as he once again studied the markings on the colt’s side. It would let him fire off the equivalent of his entire mana pool six times in a row without ever spending a drop of mana … not counting when he’d actually charged it.

But his big, direct mana-to-damage conversion attack was [Anima Bolt], which wasn’t a spell. In some ways, it was the boon its description had declared it to be, as it couldn’t be counterspelled … but not using Voidheart to the greatest possible degree of efficiency hurt.

The harsh buzz of an alert washed through the bridge like an explosion, a deep, bassy thrum that Derek felt in his chest, impossible to ignore no matter what you were doing and nearly making him drop the gun.

It was also decidedly not the ship’s native alarm.

No, this was the sound attached to emergency broadcasts, the kind that were impossible to block or opt out of. The ones Derek had completely forgotten even existed, for they had never been triggered in his lifetime. Nor had they been used for several decades prior to his birth, as far as he knew.

The thing that had set it off now, however, was as good a reason to use it as there ever was.

For Sol was under attack.