Apocalypse Redux - Chapter 258: Construction Chaos

Sometimes, there wasn’t much of a difference between a warzone and an area under construction.

And Etzel looked like a bomb had torn it to pieces. The bones remained, but everything else was, once again, being rebuilt from the ground up. Isaac could see several [Combat Engineers] tear apart the walls and store them out of the way as the entire island was being altered.

The first and biggest problem was, of course, that the island was too small for a Tier 8 [Raid Boss] so it had to be enlarged. A difficult proposition when the whole place was surrounded by walls built to stand up to, well, [Raid Bosses]. And on top of everything else, the wall really was too valuable to just break.

Which meant that first, [Skills] designed for moving impromptu fortifications in the field were used to tear huge chunks out of the walls, then, a new wall had to be errected in the water around the island to create a moat, then that moat had to be drained, filled with concrete, reinforced, the walls replaced and then, finally, the gaps where there hadn’t been enough of the original wall would be filled in.

Considering the quality the building would need to have in the end, this would take a few months to finish even for someone of Karl’s caliber.

Isaac hadn’t expected to be back here until then, but then he’d gotten a request for a meeting and decided to go. But why the hell would someone still be here?

If his [Aura] weren’t penetrating everything here, if he hadn’t been expected by the various engineers here, he might have suspected a hit. Construction sites were generally fantastic places to kill someone, between the convenient disposal methods and countless nooks and crannies someone could hide in.

He’d been invited here by Brigadengeneral Horn, who’d been in charge of upgrading the Bundeswehr’s training and regulations to be compatible with the [System] and had taken operative command of the mess at Hamburg. Someone who really shouldn’t be on a construction site.

But in the end, Isaac had decided that the invitation had been legit and that there had to be some reason for the meeting location, no matter how strange said reason might be.

Locating the general was simple enough, he just asked the nearest construction worker for directions. Though, now that he paid attention, he noticed that the sheer number of actual military personnel was unusually high. Sure, this was a military base, but construction was usually done by licensed civilian contractors. Combat engineers were trained for, well, combat. Moving fortifications, generating minefields and trenches, demolitions, building roads, bunkers, and bridges, all in hostile conditions, that was what they were good at, and what their [Skills] did. Not … this.

In the end, he found the general in a warehouse-sized cavern buried deep in the guts of the construct, not just in the concrete base but tunneled into the ocean floor which the whole affair sat upon.

And he wasn’t in a proper office either, just a large dark hole inhabited by the general, as well as a pair of aides and ten soldiers who he was ordering about. Judging by the varying division insignia, the latter had likely been a random group of individuals who’d been unfortunate enough to be in the area when the general had asked for “volunteers”.

Office supplies were strewn everywhere, the fittings for doors, wallpaper, an actual door covered in enough enchantments to block several artillery shells, and so on. The mess practically screamed “first-ever DIY project”, but considering that Isaac knew Horn to be competent, there was probably a reason behind it.

“Dr. Thoma, thank you for coming,” Horn greeted him as he carefully stalked through the debris field that was the center of the area, “I’m sorry about calling you down here, but I’m afraid all this was a little last-minute.”

“This is about yesterday, then?” Isaac asked rhetorically.

“I’m afraid so. Tier 10 monster possibly on the loose, no one knew what to do, really, and everything was based on just speculation. It made crystal clear where we’re lacking. I know you were in the Bundestag, did you get a chance to see the military side of things while you were there?”

“No, I was mostly in the background in the situation room, answering questions when I was asked,” Isaac said.

“Well, it was a bit of a mess,” Horn sighed after he’d cast an anti-eavesdropping [Skill], “We’ve got exactly one S-Ranked military commander in all of the NATO and European Union, which would be bad enough on its own …”

He trailed off, so Isaac finished for him, “But General Ardouin has problems. I get why he’s got problems with civilians who can level cities, and he might even have a reason to be the way he is, but his attitude could easily cause serious trouble.”

“We need more military commanders at a high Level, preferably ones with more esotheric, spell-like [Skills]. And we especially need some that are less likely to cause trouble. Who better to teach them than someone who’s trained a legendary king? In memory, at least,” Horn summarized as he went looking for somewhere to sit.

“Can I ask what’s up with this place?” Isaac asked as he pulled a pair of picnic chairs from his storage rings.

“That was a very nice way of saying ‘gigantic mess’,” Horn replied, “I have a [Skill] that turns my office into a fortress and grants all sorts of other boons, but I have to basically set it up myself.”

Isaac raised an eyebrow as he glanced around at the legion of helpers.

“It is a [General’s] [Skill], I can have help, I just need to be there and involved,” Horn explained as he sat down.

“I know a few [Skills] like that,” Isaac responded, “Here’s the thing: Ardouin is an S-Ranker, with [Class] that has to be legendary, and based on everything I know, legendary [Classes] are functionally impossible to get in a classroom setting.”

“I wasn’t going to ask you to be just a teacher,” Horn responded.

“Or via training, no matter how rigorous,” Isaac added, “And they’d have to start out at low Levels if I you want them to have a full series of good Evolutions. Considering the [System] has been around for a while, that means I’d be teaching people who just unlocked it, and they’d be young. Freshly minted officers can’t be that highly ranked.”

“While I’d love to have legendary [Generals of Guaranteed Victory] running around, I’ll settle for a series of epic officers who can act as force multipliers under experienced generals,” Horn said, passing a folder across to Isaac, “Those are some of the finest graduates, or soon to be graduates, of our officer training programs. They’ve kept their Level at 10 throughout their studies, and while they have several advancement options along the lines of [Elite Officer], [Well-Trained Officer], or some other variation of someone who’s been training a long time before advancing.”

“But you’re hoping I can get something more out of them?” Isaac asked as he flipped through the folder. The people within might be within a couple of years of him in terms of biological age, but they looked so incredibly young to his eyes. Babyfaced, even, despite the fact that they’d been through some fairly rigorous training.

“I’ve seen the [Skills] you can teach just by fighting alongside someone for a few days. Your two assistants became portal mages after a month of working for you, but you’ve surrounded yourself with so many powerful individuals that they barely even register by comparison. I think my superiors will be happy with anything you can do,” Horn said.

“In theory, I don’t have a problem with training military officers,” Isaac announced, “In practice … we’ve got a bit of an issue. I don’t want to focus on just the Bundeswehr, I don’t want to become the driving force behind Germany’s military might, I don’t want to choose sides like that.”

“You want to deal with the [System], but the [System] is neither a purely German problem nor one we can solve by ourselves,” Horn surmised and then laughed at Isaac’s expression, “It was worth asking, though.”

“How about we expand it to the NATO, and select major non-NATO allies?” Isaac suggested, “Offer them a chance to send some promising, low-Level candidates to train under me for a while in between everything else I do.”

Horn made a wheezing sound that could barely be identified as a suppressed laugh as he presented Isaac with a second folder, “I managed to get some candidates sent over by proposing a joint training program without mentioning you.”

“I feel like we should have been working together more,” Isaac observed, “I think we could achieve quite a bit with a little coordination.”

He tossed the folder onto a nearby desk that had just been finished, “I’d need to see them in person, though. I can see a fighter’s drive for greater heights, not just their current achievements. And I’m not too hot on the idea of some of these nations. They might have gotten the status of ‘major ally’ due to natural resources or maybe a favorable location, human rights issues are a problem now more than ever.”

“I can make sure that you’ll get your candidates,” Horn promised, “How about we have some kind of initial meeting of the standard candidates, then you can pick your candidates, give me the list and I’ll find a way to make it out like the candidates were chosen by a committee or something.”

“That would be great,” Isaac nodded. Ardouin wasn’t the only military officer rubbed the wrong way by the existence of and interference by incredibly powerful civilians. We’ll also need somewhere to hold training because Etzel is currently not in a position to be used. How long are the renovations supposed to take, anyway?”

“A while. We’re planning on expanding the island as much as possible before finishing renovations so we have less work at Tier 9 and maybe even Tier 10. And as you can see, we’re establishing this place as a tertiary command center.”

Isaac raised an eyebrow and sent a questioning look skywards, “Is that safe? From the sound of things, you aren’t planning on stopping the [Raid Boss] fights.”

“Safer than you’d think,” Horn said in a tone that clearly conveyed that he believed it, “Everything is reinforced to the nines, there is almost a kilometer of solid rock between this place and the surface, and once we get around to it, every pound of it is going to be enchanted.”

Isaac nodded. He’d suggested something like that in his designs for the island, to prevent potential issues with geokinetic, telekinetic, hydrokinetic, or vibration-based monsters from damaging the point where the artificial island connected to the vastly weaker seafloor. From the sounds of it, the suggested enchantments would be vastly increased in power, to the point where they’d provide a sufficient degree of protection.

Yes, having an important military base located right under the [Raid Boss] summoning ground was still a big risk, but they were being as safe as possible when summoning.

“Not to mention the fact that we’re continuing to expand the island. Eventually, the arena will be quite a bit further away than it is now. And if all precautions fail, well, that’s what the [General’s Sanctum] is for.”

Ah, now things really made more sense. Isaac hadn’t had enough information about the [Skill] to recognize it from context clues, but now that he had the name, everything was clear. It allowed the bearer to set up a sanctuary, and in case of emergency, that sanctuary could be pulled into a pocket dimension where it would be functionally untouchable for up to an hour, once a year.

If something bad enough to trigger the sanctum showed up, well, then it would be bad enough to threaten not only this bunker but also the mainland. At that point, shit would have truly hit the fan whether the sanctum was here or not.

“So, until the renovations are done, where would I be training my trainees?” Isaac asked, “I’m guessing the other participating nations are going to have something? I’d suggest Korea or Singapore, I’ve got a few contacts in both places, but they aren’t exactly central. The Americans probably have a few great places too, but once again, logistics would be a bloody nightmare. We’d need a European arena. Which one would you suggest?”

“You don’t know the other European arenas?” Horn asked, surprised.

“I do, the French have a trio of bunkers, Italy has a hollow mountain in the Alps, Luxemburg’s [Sky Lord] formed one out of clouds and if a fight goes badly, it dissolves and dumps the offending monster into the magical minefield below. And so on,” Isaac stated, “I know the various arenas, but I haven’t used any of them yet. I thought you might have.”

“Passing familiarity,” Horn shrugged, “The people who are in charge of the summoning programs are so busy they barely have time to inspect their own arenas, let alone look at anything else. Even when this place is finished, Oberst Gram will still be doing all the work here.

“But arranging for workspaces is my job. The question now is how much time you can offer to spend teaching.”

“Depends.”

“On?”

“How much leeway I get, how many trainees I have, and where said trainees will be deployed. I’ve said it countless times, but I’ll say it again: the [System] has the potential to royally fuck over all of humanity. I can see a potentially huge benefit in training officers to become capable of fixing [System]-based issues. If …”

“You want me to make it worth your while,” Horn interrupted, “You want enough leeway that the time you spend training is worth more than your other projects.”

“It’d have to be very worth it,” Isaac said, “I’m extremely busy already. I create tactics against monsters, coordinate with contacts overseas, there’s a blacksmith and an alchemist I work together with to come up with new weapons, tools, and uses for both. Not to mention my own advancement, the monsters I hunt to hand over the materials, and so on. And I’m running my own company. It might mostly work on its own, but I still have to spend time dealing with certain things.

“Throw in that I’m training with the fellas over at the Federal Agency for the Supernatural twice a week, the time I spend teaching [Skills] to select military officers, and the fact that I can’t work every single hour of every single day and I really don’t have that much time to spare.”

Then there was the stuff he did for the Round Table and quite a few other things he didn’t want to talk about to Horn.

“Fundamentally, I’d need complete freedom designing the training regimen, real authority over the trainees, and a metric ton of resources. And eight months. Give me that, and you’ll have half my time. Twelve hours a day, eighty-four hours a week. And by the end of those eight months, you’ll have people on the path to reaching the top, with epic [Classes] at the bare minimum, and as much experience in [System]-based combat as any Dungeon delver. That’s my offer. I understand if that’s more than you can guarantee, but I’m willing to wait as long as is necessary.”

On the inside, Isaac was cheering at the possibility of getting to properly train officers, he hadn’t expected to get to do this until much later. The sheer amount of pull he’d need was ridiculous.

But now was the perfect time to do this. Most of his other projects were going smoothly and running without his direct management.

The research was going perfectly, and so many powerhouses had been raised in the process that his watching over everything was no longer needed.

His company was working just as well as it had on day one.

The [Round Table] wasn’t even his project, but it was also going smoothly, with each of its members doing their part.

And now, hopefully, this military project would be his next challenge.