Apocalypse Redux - Chapter 304: Ultima Ratio
Mmh, Salmon of Wisdom sushi. Isaac smiled as he took another piece of sashimi, with chopsticks, of course, dragged it through the soy sauce, and chomped down on it, the already massive grin widening to the point where his face looked like it was about to crack in half.
With Salmon from Tiers 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 already devoured, Isaac was currently sitting at a cool +50% Mana Regeneration.
Oh, things were looking … why was his phone ringing with “Amok” as the ringtone? That was Jason’s ringtone because when Jason needed to contact him urgently enough that the [Rount Table] was too slow, that meant things had seriously hit the fan.
The connection was secure, of course, and when he picked up, an anti-eavesdropping field would kick in, but it was still a risk.
Isaac swiftly headed towards an isolated spot and picked up.
“What’s wrong?”
“I …” Jason sounded uncharacteristically upset when he answered, “I have a problem. There’s … how … I accidentally caught a serial killer who’s been conducting ‘research’ on people.”
“Is there a reason you can’t arrest or kill him?” Isaac asked.
“Here’s the problem …” Jason explained.
***
“Ah fuck,” Isaac muttered once the story was over, “You’ve got the situation in hand, though, nothing is going to go wrong if I take a bit to do anything?”
“Should be fine for another hour at the very least,” Jason said, “But please don’t wait too long.”
“And this guy’s main deal is that he wants to be famous, right?” Isaac said, “Immortality through infamy?”
“Uh-hu?”
Isaac already had a good idea that should work, but honestly, he’d recently gotten to the point of buying the last sub-[Skill] he wanted for [Aspects of the End].
Wisdom of the Simurgh (Subskill of Aspects of the End)
An ancient being in possession of impossible wisdom, so old it has seen the destruction of the universe three times over.
When using this Skill, that wisdom passes onto its bearer, granting them an amount of knowledge no human could ever hope to amass, even given a million lifetimes.
The pen is mightier than the sword, and knowledge is what is needed to get the most from one’s pen. Therefore, while this Skill is active, its bearer is the most powerful person in the universe. At least in theory.
It was a fantastic [Skill], allowing him to see the beginnings of all new paths of research that Menton’s work would open up while also showing all the potential pitfalls of using information of such horrific providence.
In essence, the problem was that they didn’t want to encourage anyone to follow in that asshole’s footsteps, but there were uses to be found for it and lives to be saved. When and how to share this information was a difficult question, but not one that had to be answered right the hell now.
But as for Menton’s eventual fate, it turned out that Isaac was plenty good at coming up with plans on his own. His previous idea would work just fine.
“I’ve got an idea. One he really won’t enjoy,” he grinned evilly, “Wait a bit, I’ll send Arthur your way.”
***
Arthur marched through the portal in full battle rattle, taking full advantage of the fact that the [Royal Wanderer] [Skill] he’d gotten at the 5th Evolution didn’t just allow him to remotely keep his “kingdom” running, but also synergized with the [Round Table] to let him drop on any of the members. And, of course, he was borrowing Isaac’s physical trace destroying [Skill].
What a mess.
He shivered as he gazed around the room, feeling his gorge rise as he took in more and more of the horrors that surrounded them. Isaac had explained part of it, but only a fraction of the truly terrible things that had happened here.
Everything else … it just melded together into a tapestry of awful, blood, dead bodies, and other things whose sight alone would normally result in lost sleep and nightmares for years to come yet somehow were mere background noise in this place.
If he’d had to go searching for Jason in this mess, he might not have come out the other side with his sanity intact, but thankfully, the portal had dropped him off right in front of his comrade. Unfortunately, Jason had decided to plant himself right next to the biggest mess in the place, the one still ongoing.
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
If you ignored the creepily cheery scientist trussed up like a Christmas turkey and covered in stab wounds lying at Jason’s feet.
“So, you’re the guy behind ‘the ghost’, then?” Menton asked, twisting his neck to stare at Arthur, then turned back to Jason, “You could have told me you were waiting for your boss to make your decision.”
Arthur’s jaw hit the floor at that. What was up with that knob?
He decided to ignore Menton for the moment, established a party with Jason, and used that to communicate while he made a show of looking around while trying to actually see as little as he possibly could.
“Did you hit him in the head?”
“Nope,” Jason replied
“Ok, what did he take, what was on your blades?”
“Nothing,” Jason said innocently, “I’d be able to tell if he were on something, and the poison I used wouldn’t affect him like that. It distracts with jolts of pain when he tries to concentrate enough to cast a spell, it shouldn’t, you know, make him do that.”
It wasn’t the regular, “kid with hand still in cookie jar” kind of innocence in his voice, but an actual, sincere, statement of non-action.
Arthur briefly drew on another [Round Table] [Skill], Dr. Han’s ability to see the truth of people, ranging from their job to how they related to their fellow man. It was a [Skill] that could be shared, meant to draw back the curtain on a tyrannical ruler and expose them to the populous.
Here, the scope of the [Skill] was far smaller, only focussed on him and Jason, but it didn’t need to do any more. It was the final nail in the coffin for one Ian Menton.
He was rotten to the core. What he’d told Jason had been the full, complete, unadulterated, truth. Menton was utterly convinced of his “mission” to become immortal by researching topics that hadn’t been touched for ethical reasons, be it that it could not be ethically researched, or that the reasonable research path really hadn’t been worth it.
Self-obsessed to the point where he quite literally could not comprehend that neither Jason nor Arthur were here to cooperate with him, to look into his research and spread it far and wide.
They didn’t even speak to each other, they just looked at each other, nodded, and went on with the exceedingly fitting plan Isaac had come up with. It was truly terrifying what that man could come up with given the smallest bit of information.
Jason grabbed Menton and dragged him onto his feet while Arthur just dispassionately observed the scientist’s face.
“Have you ever heard of something called ‘Damnatio Memoriae’?” he asked, “You’re a scientist, you probably know a bit of Latin, but on the off chance you haven’t, let me translate: it means ‘condemnation of memory’. It was a punishment the Romans came up with, it involved destroying everything about the sentenced criminal, the removal of their name from records, the destruction of their pictures, the annihilation of any writing proving they ever existed.
“And I can make that happen.
“First, all of this research will be sanitized, your name stricken, all relevant identifying information removed in its entirety.
“Second, you’ll begin to vanish from your regular records. University graduation records, honor rolls, papers you’ve written … whenever people are no longer paying attention to your existence, it’ll be erased. Even perfect memory [Skills] will eventually fail with regards to you.
“And finally, all that will remain is the research from an anonymous source that might be picked up once or twice, but will never have much of an impact.
“You might think that becoming a mystery will elevate you above the masses, but you’d be wrong. Because this is going to be released by Insight, all properly sanitized.
“But even if we were to release your information as-is, you aren’t the first person who came up with the idea to gain immortality through infamy, and you sure as shit won’t be the last. Give it a few decades, and you’ll just be a tiny part of a sea of idiots, everything about them stricken from history save for the fact that they did exist, and the crimes they committed.”
With every sentence, Menton grew paler and paler, but other than the occasional splutter of “no”, and “you can’t”, nothing happened.
Until the end of the speech, that was, when Menton managed to stand as straight as his injuries allowed and glared at Arthur, “You’re mentally unstable, you know. What the fuck gives you the right to do any of that? You …”
“The fact that I can do it gives me the right,” Arthur stated
Jason immediately added, “The world’s lost its mind, but it doesn’t have to lose its soul, too. My job is to find people like you, our friend figures out what to do, and then, he does that thing. You got the power to evade the law, we got the power to make sure consequences catch up anyway.”
They were running out of time very, very quickly. Once Arthur’s borrowed evidence erasure ran out, that would be a huge problem.
And they didn’t want to drag this out any more than necessary.
Arthur’s fifth Evolution [Class] was [Myth’s Sovereign], which mixed administration with raw power in a way that allowed him to galivant about the place like a king out of the old stories without things going to shit the instant he wasn’t paying attention to his kingdom.
One central [Skill] was [Royal Wanderer], which was your bog standard traveling and making sure things worked out in the meantime ability.
And the other was [Mythical Action], a powerful [Skill] with a variable cooldown depending on which subskill was used.
In this case, it was [Royal Decree], which, in turn, could have a wide variety of effects.
“[Mythical Action: Royal Decree: Damnatio Memoriae],” Arthur intoned as Excalibur manifested in his right hand, already taking effect even before he’d started to attack. All around them, documentation began to change, the letters that spelled out the author physically peeling themselves off the pages before disintegrating into nothingness.
“Oh, and one more thing,” Arthur said as he raised his sword, “All the things you came up, all that research you gave up your humanity for, we know all that already. We’ve known for years, and we didn’t even have to compromise our morals to do so. You’ve wasted your life, potential, and everything else.”
Menton began to say something, it started out as some kind of complaint, bled into an attempt to bargain, and finally devolved into a cry of inarticulate rage, but Arthur cleaved him in half before he could do anything else.
Even as he fell, Menton’s body began to disintegrate, one of Jason’s [Skills] erasing the evidence on top of everything else. It barely lay on the ground for a few seconds before there was nothing left except a slight stain, but even that was rapidly vanishing until finally, it was just Arthur and Jason standing alone in the middle of the warehouse of horrors.
“So, what now?” Jason asked.
“I go back before I start shedding DNA everywhere, and then, we get someone else to figure out what to do,” Arthur decided. This wasn’t a decision he wanted to make on his own.
