Apocrypha 1: Ziz

Apocrypha 1: Ziz

There were a lot of [World Bosses] that could be summoned in the [System]. A lot of resources that could be harvested.

But ultimately, the cost to get those resources was astronomical, so humanity hadnt really farmed them actively.

Three times these things had been summoned, three times they had been killed at horrendous cost, three times thered been furious debate over if the next battle would be on purpose.

The Leviathan had cleaned the oceans.

Ymirs essence was terraforming Mars.

And when the Earlking had been killed, hed granted them inner-system fast travel capability via the fae realm.

That last one had been especially annoying to fight, summoning the legions of the fae, phasing in and out of reality until they were eventually killed.

At least that particular mess had taken place in Alpha Centauri, at a nice long distance from anything they needed to protect, and for the first time, the sentence for summoning a [World Boss] without permission had been carried out by someone other than the boss itself.

It didnt matter if someone had had a secret technique or a surefire way to win, if someone else had to step in and clean up and there had been any possibility of innocents getting caught in the crossfire, summoning a [World Boss] was a capital crime.

Anyway, when humanity had tried to expand the fast travel system to the asteroid belt, theyd realized that [World Bosses] could only be summoned once a decade.

But humanity had still whipped itself up into a frenzy and that energy had to go somewhere.

Getting World Items always cost lives, but the mentality towards them had begun to shift during the planning phase for the Earlking battle. It was no longer about how the world would desperately fight a powerful beast, but about a potential sacrifice for the good of humanity.

Anyone who dared step up was guaranteed a massive payday, support for their loved ones in case of disaster and whatever honored status their home nation provided, be that knighthood, a medal, or something else.

Germany in particular didnt have anything like that, it was a very young country and most of the historical knightly orders and other organizations had been tarred by association with the Nazis. Those fuckers had pulled on every even remotely interesting historical achievement for propaganda purposes, and anything involving them was dicey, to say the least.

Some people had even pushed for Isaac to found a new knightly order of some kind, using his knowledge and position as [Hildebrands Heir], but hed declined. That was not only extremely self-congratulatory, it also sounded like a fuckton of paperwork.

All in all, the I love me wall in Isaacs office currently looked like a glitter nuke had gone off in front of it.

And, of course truth-telling [Skills] would make sure that all those who fought the [World Boss] were volunteers, without being pressured or even just capitulating to general peer pressure.

Another thing that had been utterly vital to properly hammer out had been a proper chain of command, which would begin with the military but have people like Isaac on hand and able to throw in their own opinions. Not override the person in charge, that would cause all sorts of issues, but give strong advice, leaving it up to the boss which advice was to be followed.

Of course, the leader would be picked on two important traits: not being Ardouin and actually being the opposite of the man. In other words, willing to listen to advice and compromise.

Obviously, this still left the issue of certain people being listened to despite not being in charge, their advice being taken as orders, but the situation was messy, no two ways about it. Steps were being taken to make it less messy, but theyd never have a completely smooth run. It just wasnt in the cards.

These battles would almost certainly not end humanity as a whole, and the spoils of war were incredible, however, they could be expensive. Ruinously so.

But twenty-five years after the [System] had arrived, humanity summoned the first [World Boss] with the specific intention of killing it for its World Item.

Ziz, the Primordial Beast of the Air, King of the Skies, He who blocks the Sun with his Wings.

Should be fun.

***

This battle once again took place on Pluto, so that even should something go really wrong, theyd have plenty of time to figure out a solution.

Most of the people present without ships were S-Rankers, with the vast majority of those being Generation Zero like Isaac.

Not Gen One, Gen Zero, because someone in the UN had gone very much overboard with the classifications.

Gen Zero was anyone whod been an S-Ranker during the Leviathan incident.

Gen One was anyone whod gained the [System] upon Initialization, but became an S-Ranker after the Leviathan had reared its ugly head. People who hadnt rushed towards the peak at quite such an insane pace as Isaac had, and those whod taken a longer path to power.

For example, one Cameron Smith, nowadays known as Cameron the Calamity, the [Chimera] of Austin. That investment hadnt paid off in time for the Leviathan battle, but he had reached the heights Isaac had expected him to.

In fact, he was currently floating in space a few kilometers from him, Void Dragon wings flapping gently as softly glowing blue eyes raked the surface of the planet. And Isaac knew that beneath his normal-looking skin, monstrous muscles coiled like starsteel cables, and the skin itself was almost as tough as Isaacs armor.

Another example was Wyatt Reyes, whom Isaac hadnt personally encountered since Singapore. Instead of purely focusing on information gathering as he had in the first timeline, hed headed down to Rlyeh and poked a whole lot of stuff that really shouldnt be poked and gained some kind of truly insane eldritch [Class].

Two Grimoires floated before him while some kind of beast floated in and out of reality around him, a constantly varying number of beaks, tentacles, and slavering mouths barely perceptible, only really becoming real when Isaac wasnt really paying attention to them.

But there were many, many people here with interesting and terrifying powers here.

After Gen One, you obviously had Gen Two, which was comprised of people whod been alive during Initialization but not unlocked the [System], which was what the twins would hopefully become, in time.

Gen Three was anyone born after the initization and in a sane world, that would have been the end of it, but there was more.

The fourth Generation was comprised of people whod been born with bloodlines and gained boosts from their parents, while the fifth was basically the same as the fourth, except it was descended from other S-Rankers. Really, calling the S-ranked descendants of S-Rankers the second Generation would have made more sense, but in the end bureaucracy.

Speaking of bureaucracy, Isaac had gotten a fuckton of requests, orders, bribes, and more besides, from people asking him to keep specific people safe or, as it were, not safe.

For example, both of New Zeelands S-Rankers would be here, and some people in its government were very concerned about the situation. With a population of five million, they were well ahead of the standard curve of one S-Ranker per 10 million inhabitants, something they were, understandably, very proud of. But with the nature of [World Boss] battles, that sort of thing could change in a single moment of tragedy.

But that particular nation didnt really have to worry. Especially about the Undying Flame, the first of the pair to reach S-Rank.

Rashid Boateng had started out as some type of spell blade based on the phoenix, before shifting his path into something involving celestial bodies and eventually, space itself. Even if Isaac hadnt known the man to be smart enough to not put himself in an unescapable situation, his build prevented him from falling victim to the trap of drawing aggro you couldnt survive.

Isaac continued to look around the area, taking note of some of the interesting new faces, until things finally kicked off.

Seriously, this wasnt going to be as bloodless as the usual resource-gathering battles. But it was going to happen, and Isaac was damn certain that things were going to be less bloody with him there.

***

Humanity beware, a World Boss has been summoned! Bear witness to his name and tremble:

Ziz, Primordial Beast of the Air, King of the Skies, He who blocks the Sun with his Wings

This is a monster meant to be an opponent for your entire species, and in your own words, hang together or hang separately.

Good luck!

The warning was the exact same as the last three times, just with a different set of titles. At least this time around, they were a little less dicey than Living Hellgate.

Beneath the summoning circle, the ground shattered and for a brief moment that was all that happened. Scary message, broken ice, and nada on the monster appearing.

But then, the ice was vaporized into steam and something began happening to the surrounding space, but it took Isaac an embarrassing amount of time to figure it out. In fact, he wasnt even the one to first get what was happening.

Its pulling in every stray bits of gas it can find to form an atmosphere, one of the ship captains warned.

Ah, that made a disturbing amount of sense. [World Bosses] could normally only be summoned in areas with a compatible environment, yet they hadnt had one lick of trouble summoning an air beast in an airless void.

The process took around five minutes, during which everyone was forced to tensely wait and take the occasional potshot at the active summoning circle that wasnt actually, you know, summoning.

And when it actually completed, it was so sudden that even Isaac jumped a little.

Ziz surged out of the circle like water spewing from a Geysir, manifesting within the bounds of the runic drawing and expanding to its true size as he got further from the circle

In hindsight, the first line of defenders had been way too close, and that damn bird was way too fast, wrapped in a bubble of gathered atmosphere almost ten kilometers across, barely able to contain the titanic eagle-thing with its eight-kilometer wingspan. Not to mention that the air bubble was a whirl of power and fury, making it almost as deadly as the ocean around Leviathan had been.

A wall of lasers, railguns, particle beams and artillery spells washed out from the line of battleships and S-Rankers that had been sitting pretty at a mere hundred kilometers above the surface.

Isaac scanned the monster, mentally revising his plan. As expected, Ziz was a massive bird, but hed thought it would fly in a similar way to the Void Dragon, where it could flap its wings and just go. Instead, it was moving through space by riding on its personal bubble of rending wind, tearing into anything and everything that got just a little too close.

The real issue was that having a purely magical means of conveyance meant that the only way to immobilize that fucker was to kill it, there were no real weak points like the joints of the wings that could be targetted to slow it.

Phantasmal bark manifested briefly as he slipped into a separate world, specifically, the world tree, before he stepped back into the real world right in the monsters face, with a thick branch appearing underfoot.

With a titanic burst of power, the world warped as more and more of Yggdrasil itself came into being, burning with power. Literally, in four spots.

One which howled with a freezing wind, the other feeling like a grave, filled with despair and death, a third that rang like steel on steel and the impression of bloodshed, and a fourth that overflowed with life.

Spectral armor rapidly flowed over Larsen as the energy began to be condensed into his body. He stood still for a long moment, before striking.

Back on Earth, before the [System], ordinary humans had been able to breach the sound barrier on muscle power alone, using a whip.

And Larsen was hardly ordinary.

His whipsword tore through space almost faster than Isaac could follow, tearing a massive gash across Zizs chest while the energy of the world tree followed into the wound, which had already been steaming with freezing and deathly energy before the full might of the attack landed.

Ziz went flying, the air-bubble that kept the monster able to maneuver not yet reassembled, through countless slashes that Boateng had carved into space, which tore up the monsters back.

But the real goal was getting the monster into the void space, whose entrance slammed shut behind it. Well, almost. Enough space remained for them to add insult to injury by throwing in a few more attacks.

Elena grasped as much water as she could and hurled it away to ensure that Ziz couldnt gather the vapor again before unleashing [Moonbeam] after [Moonbeam] into the pocket dimension.

And Arthur just hurled Excalibur into the hole, repeatedly, carving chunk after chunk out of the monster.

After another two minutes, the Scientia Quaesitor came back, with every magic user on the team in the four frontmost casting circles, Karl on the bow circle next to the railguns muzzle.

Isaac could see the intricate spellwork of Patricks, Rauls [Natures Wrath] empowering it, Karl fusing the energy into the weapon and Amys ability holding the whole thing together.

And then, the ship fired, the entire vessel being flung backwards as a dart made from the single densest alloy currently in existence was hurled at the [World Boss]. Magic crackled across the projectiles for a long moment, until the moment of impact, where they detonated in a burst of tremendous energy.

They got more three shots off before the mages were spent, and at that point, everyone was already aboard the Scientia. A damn good thing too, since that was the point when Ziz cracked open the pocket dimension, looking utterly furious.

But before the [World Boss] was able to do anything, the ship warped away.

***

And now weve got a fucking [World Boss] loose in the solar system!

As far as we knew, our preparations should have worked, and we still have time to kill it.

But

That was basically how the last three hours had gone, on repeat.

Accusation, reasonable response, whiny counterattack.

They really should have done this in Alpha Centauri, but as tricky as intra-system FTL travel was, inter-system movement was a million times more difficult. After all, the whole thing was still fully [System]-dependent.

There were currently three grades of technology.

[System]-dependent, which was where most new developments began, things fully linked to [Skills] and the like. It worked, but was hard to improve upon and the underlying principles werent always known.

Magitech, which still drew upon mana and enchantments to work, but could theoretically be worked by anyone with a mana pool and the necessary expertise.

And finally, the pinnacle of technology, the Null-tech, which functioned entirely on pre-[System] physics because ironically, that was where the magic lay.

Because once you could achieve something entirely without magic and arcane materials, you could improve it however you wanted, replacing materials with magical equivalents, layering on enchantments, slapping on [Skills], and everything else one could imagine.

In other words, humanitys FTL capability was currently in the technically, it works stage, making an extra-solar [World Boss] battle a logistical nightmare.

The argument continued, but they did have time. The solar system was vast, Ziz was stuck well below light and if humanity had actually had the chance to plan ahead, they could outmaneuver the beast.

***

Attack after attack tore up the [World Boss], particle beams ripping large furrows into its skin while nuclear missiles detonated in the air bubble, sadly inflicting not very much damage.

And then, the ships jumped away once more, leaving behind the shattered wrecks of a battleship and two cruisers, which the monster had managed to take out with pre-charged air bombs.

There went the last of their expendable munitions.

Isaac sighed. Theyd done quite a bit of damage, but even so, theyd taken massive damage and were in desperate need of repair and resupply.

Modern warships, be they ocean- or space-going, were damn powerful, capable of things well beyond what any ordinary person was capable of. In fact, they could replace anyone below the fourth Evolution when it came to fighting.

But they were also expensive, ruinously so, and required fuel, munitions, and countless other supplies that individual fighters did not. Humanitys mighty spacegoing warfleets were out of this fight. Not destroyed, but still useless.

While almost a decades worth of space-based development was being systematically trashed, theyd tried to lock up the [World Boss] three more times.

It had worked twice, but the last time, Ziz had gone straight for Boateng. Thankfully, the man had had the good sense to not keep going with an already ruined plan, instead chopping up the monster to the fullest degree his powers allowed before skedaddling.

***

One light hour. That was how far Ziz had travelled, how long a trail of debris the [World Boss] had drawn through the solar system.

And at the end of that trail hung the shredded beast, both eyes finally destoyed for good, looking like a plucked thanksgiving turkey that had been killed by an extraordiarily incompetent butcher.

Except this turkey was very much still alive. Alive and angry.

However, it was only targeting the ships, anyone able to survive in space on their own was seemingly immune to attack.

Do you think it might be sensing the air pockets? Elena asked after a long moment, causing Isaac to facepalm. That should have been obvious.

Leviathan hadnt been limited too much by loosing his eyesight, but hed been submerged in his element, capable of sensing disturbances within.

Ziz was currently fighting in a hard vacuum and therefore, well, screwed.

So they wound up venting the Scientia after securing all technical components and began playing submarine warfare. Shoot the monster, dodge, then shoot it again.

Theyd hit the monster hard, and it had counterattacked even harder, but now, they had its number. It couldnt see and, if proper precautions were taken, sense anyone. At least anyone smart enough to stay out of the [World Boss] air envelope.

The few remaining warships joined in, steel platforms were created for mages to use as a base, vacuum-breathing Aspects were handed out, and in time, Ziz would be dead.

***

Isaac gazed into the smooth glass marble, its interior glowing blue and filled with clouds. It had been awarded to Amy, but shed handed it to him so he could inspect it.

Breath of the Sky (World Item)

The Boon given to the slayer of Ziz is the gratitude of the sky itself, allowing its holder to reshape the atmosphere of an entire planet, restoring it from its damaged shape.

The holder may choose what the atmosphere is restored to, how quickly this change occurs, what parts of the world are restored (up to and including all of them), and what, if any, is excluded from the effect.

This is a single-use item, the user will need to set all parameters prior to activation, at which point the item will be destroyed.

As a World Item, the Breath of the Sky cannot be stored in any manner of spatial device.

The moment she used this thing, all the crap humanity had managed to blast into the atmosphere would be scrubbed, and the argument about how restoring the planet was worth any cost, even though the kinds of people who made those arguments were nowhere close the amount of power needed to meaningfully contribute to the fight.

This fight had arguably been worth it, but the next one might not be.

He sighed. Chances were that the political battles would be worse than the fight that had just been won.

But no matter what other decisions were made, no more flying fuckwads in the solar system!