Chapter 177: Interlude Reaction

Chapter 177: Interlude Reaction

Habicht sighed, tapped the pen against his chin, and put it back onto the table. This was the fifth time he’d done so in the last hour, and there were several crumpled-up pieces of paper next to him, ready to be burned. He wasn’t even sure what he wanted to write, from detailing everything he knew now to entirely new protocols for the things he knew were coming, but he needed to be doing something.

Isaac Thoma was a time traveler. That explained ... everything, really. The confidence, the knowledge, how a regular twenty-year-old could move and fight like a seasoned veteran. The [Heir Class] he’d busted out when he’d stepped fully onto the public stage had been a good bit of misdirection, making everyone think he’d had one before and attributed all that oddness to that fact.

It was both reassuring and terrifying that that hadn’t been planned, just a fortuitous convergence of circumstances. Knowing that manipulating Events on such a grand scale in a way that didn’t come apart at the seams the instant it hit a stumbling block was impossible was reassuring. That the whole world couldn’t be played like a fiddle so easily.

But things would have been so much easier if they had been. Time traveler shows up, drops a few cryptic hints in all the right ears, and the Rube-Goldberg scheme fixes all that is wrong with the world.

Part of Habicht didn’t even want to know any of the things he’d learned, and it might have even chosen to never know if he’d had a choice, but it was a small part. He had a duty, both as a police officer and as a reasonable human being to help prevent his species’ extinction.

And to do that, he needed all the information he could get his hands on. Thing was, he’d gotten the information and now, he was feeling as if he’d looked a Great Old One straight in the face for days on end.

His latest attempt at “writing” had turned into a suggestion for an emergency ordinance with regard to world bosses and ended up utterly useless. It joined the rest of the pile, which was promptly incinerated by his Aspect of the Solar Heart, a seventh Tier fire elemental Aspect.

Annihilated, gone, burnt to nothingness, and not even a scorch mark on the table. Evidence that had been utterly atomized couldn’t be restored by anyone, even the people he worked with. And there were some people here who really shouldn’t have any of this information.

Habicht sighed and put the pen down. This wasn’t getting anywhere. Something was bothering him here, and it just wasn’t leaving him alone.

Just what was the true cost of Isaac Thoma saving the world?

They’d had a conversation about the limits of the law half a year ago, strolling through the woods at the Bodensee. Back then, he’d suspected Isaac had attacked the cult, but it hadn’t really made sense, given how fast that would have required him to have moved. He’d just felt it was necessary given the power dynamics at play and figured that was as good a time as many.

As far as the public knew, Isaac had killed one person, the living bioweapon who was one half of the duo that had nearly wrecked Hamburg.

But Habicht knew there more bodies buried elsewhere. As far as vigilantes went, Isaac was the most restrained one he’d ever met, using lethal force as only a measure of last resort. He had knowledge that no other vigilante had, and the sheer amount of information acquisition abilities he had only added to that.

One kill was official. But the real number ... Habicht feared that it might be high enough to make a serial killer blanch.

He’d been willing to forgive and ignore the incident at the Bodensee because their victims had been left alive and they’d just attacked his colleagues using means that one hundred percent qualified as terrorism.

Someone running around killing people to save something ... if the thing Isaac was trying to save hadn’t been the world, he’d taken real issue with it.

He wondered how high the real number was, but he really didn’t want to know.

What had seriously helped with the irritation was how Isaac had dropped all of those godawful infosec [Skills]. He’d been able to tell that every word out of the time traveler’s mouth had been the unvarnished truth, to see the great burden and how carefully Isaac acted.

If Habicht hadn’t been able to see those things, if he’d been faced with the same blank wall he’d always been talking to when dealing with Isaac ... he honestly wasn’t sure if he could have accepted matters.

He had accepted things, though, and agreed to put everything behind Isaac’s and Bailey’s efforts.

Habicht leaned back in his chair, sighed heavily, shook himself, and grabbed his laptop. The plan was to find acceptable politicians with a good spread across all parties currently in the parliament, bring them up to Level 25, and then have them choose the most “country boosting”-sounding [Class] they had available.

The problem was that some turd had leaked that to the exact wrong kind of politicians, ones that were in the pockets of lobbyists, ones whose closets were overflowing with skeletons, and even a few members of the neo-Nazi party, the NPD.

He sent suggestions to his superiors that highlighted that the people who were involved needed to be trustworthy, and no police officer would work together with literal idiots or people who had a track record of being too self-serving.

No one wanted to end up dead because the politician did something stupid, or deal with the fallout when one of the politicians ended up dead because of a stupid mistake.

He kept going, having to deal with this mess over and over again as more and more requests hailed in. Whoever was responsible for that ... Isaac might have been on the right track with the flaming bags of dog shit.

***

Another of the monster’s countless limbs froze and shattered like glass as Yoo-jin’s sword swept through it, but the destruction had merely been incidental as it continued onwards to chop off one of the monster’s countless heads.

The best itself was the final boss of a Level 90 Dungeon, a slavering mass of crab-like limbs and heads reminiscent of a moray eel’s jutting from an indescribably disgusting gelatinous mass that served as its main body, tendrils akin to the toxic tentacles of a jellyfish littering the ground, ready to poison and ensnare anyone who took even a single wrong step.

Normally, the Ocean’s Bastard would have to be fought by a party of five, at least half of which had to have a combat rating of A at the minimum, overridable only be the order of the Guildmaster or two S-Rankers who personally guaranteed for the outcome of the situation.

But he had overridden that rule so he could fight this thing on his own because he needed to get stronger.

Seon Yoo-jin had been an S-Ranker ever since the classification system had first been ratified, as it was needed for someone in charge of an organization like the Dungeon Guild. He had a [Class] mostly focused on combat with the bureaucratical [Skills] being either held by his subordinates or having been taught to him, but that was better than losing a Guildmaster because some high-Level Hunter lost their temper.

Ruling through force, even in part, wasn’t the ideal way to lead, but it was what the situation had called for. He’d had the [Skills] and Stats to be considered one of the strongest people in the country, but now that he knew what was coming down the line, that was nowhere near enough. So now, he was taking full advantage of what his position allowed him to do.

It was a plan that would cause one hell of an issue if it ever had to be implemented, but at that point, the issue would be the least of their problems.

So now she had the beginnings of a plan for how to deal with [World Bosses]. One issue “accounted for” a million more to go.

Issue two: how to stop people from dropping dead from the new training regimen Arthur had just implemented?

***

“Again.” Arthur barked, much to the displeasure of the people in front of him. Too bad, they were preparing for the apocalypse here, and Armageddon wouldn’t care if they were tired.

“Are you sure they can handle that?” Elena whispered into his ear using a spell “I mean, it’s not like they can help with anything if they’re dead on their feet. Or just plain dead.”

Arthur sighed. She had a point, one hand. On the other, there was an entirely different issue of how everyone still needed to be able to deal with issues even when utterly exhausted.

He’d had his hands clasped behind his back and used this to show her two fingers without letting the people being trained spot it. Two more attempts beating the kaiju being simulated by a [Trainer] while utterly exhausted, and if they were successful, that meant they were ready. At least as long as the monster didn’t outpower them by a huge margin.

That was the problem, wasn’t it? Level too quickly and recklessly and become a part of the problem, level too slowly and be unable to do anything about it.

Either way, Arthur he’d be ready, willing to take on all comers, no matter how strong they were or how weak he was compared to them. He was going to be fighting monsters, the idiots who’d summoned them, or the nihilistic bastards who’d wrecked Hamburg.

He’d keep fighting until he no longer could, no matter what it cost, no matter what situation he ended with in the end.

And while he didn’t expect the people around him to go quite that far, there was also no way he was going to let them be unprepared for what would happen.

Come hell or high water, Camelot would be here, ready and waiting for an enemy to beat.

The drill ended with the trainees’ loss, and he set it up once again. One person tripped over their own feet, a second dropped their weapon only to collapse when they tried to pick it up and a third simply glared at him instead of moving.

“[Royal Boon: Invigoration]! Come on, one last time guys!” Arthur roared, the [Skill] visibly impacting all of the exhausted individuals milling around and giving them the energy for one final round. If they kept going after that ... let’s just say that Camelot’s [Healer] was someone whom even Arthur feared and leave it at that.

The final round ended up with a human victory, and the trainees staggered off the field.

Arthur stayed long enough to see them all go, then turned and headed back to his quarters, only to be met with a stormy-faced Elena.

“Have you gone insane?” she said in that terrifyingly emotionless way that he so dreaded. That always meant a probably deserved but still very uncomfortable lecture was coming.

Arthur just sighed and hung his head “Probably.”

“Are you going to do this all over again tomorrow?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“What was that supposed to achieve?” she pressed further.

He shrugged and then it was her turn to sigh.

“No more torturous training sessions, ok? Actually, no more training sessions until you’ve calmed down, period.”

Arthur just nodded mutely and when she stepped to the side to allow him to pass, he headed right in and collapsed into his chair.

She was his best friend and she understood him in ways no one did. But even she couldn’t help here. No one could help, or even really understand what was weighing on him here, except maybe Isaac.

Before, he’d felt like there was another Arthur, the one from history, standing behind him and judging his every move. But then, Isaac had told him off the other timeline, and now, he had two specters looking over his shoulder. How could anything hold the candle to both history, and the man who’d kept the British isles safe almost to the bitter end?

Yet the insurmountable odds before him, the foes both out in the open and those sharpening their knives in the dark, that part didn’t faze him in the slightest because win or lose, he’d go down swinging.

He’d do everything he could to save everyone, whether they supported him or not, whether he knew them or not, and he’d never stop trying.

He’d ...

His train of thought was suddenly interrupted by a little ‘ding’ from the [System], announcing that he’d received another [Class] choice for his 4th Evolution. He’d been stuck at Level 100 for weeks now, unable to pick something, but now, that list had changed.

New Class choice available: Arthur Pendragon’s Hei