Apocalypse Redux - Chapter 315: Round 1

The snake surged forward, jaws wide open, its head having been raised so high out of the air allowing it to reach incredible speeds as it lunged, crossing the fifty kilometers that separated it from the battleships in seconds. As it passed, the ocean beneath it began to boil, becoming a roiling maelstrom that would literally shred anyone who fell in. And the effect was only spreading.

Going overboard had just become a death sentence for most of the fighters.

The snake continued to come closer, ever closer … and then its head was smacked into the water with such force that it was pushed almost a hundred meters under as the first nuclear missile struck.

Isaac had told everyone that he might have an ace up his sleeve, but they couldn’t delay long enough to find out, as it would take a while for nuclear missiles to reach their target.

And there was a damn good reason the ships were this far out. They were all enchanted to protect their crew from radiation, and to a degree, the explosion, but that was hardly enough for a point-blank duel while the most destructive weapons in the world fell like hail.

This was the plan, always had been. An opening salvo of nuclear weaponry to get in a few solid strikes and to get some information on the monster’s durability, then have people start unleashing their big attacks, and finally transition into a fighting degree for however long it took to kill that thing.

So he’d have to wait out that initial barrage, all the while vacuuming up every scrap of information.

The first strike had hit the top of the monster’s head, flash-boiling every drop of water on it and knocking the incredibly long snake for a loop, but most of the energy practically splashed off its scales.

Missile after missile impacted, every strike forcing the monster to shift and contort, locally pushing it around, but barely scratching its scales. And if the shockwaves were affecting its insides, it wasn’t showing it.

In ten seconds, the number of nuclear weapons deployed in anger throughout all of history quintupled, and it barely did much. Except for one.

One missile did, through luck or operator skill, smack the monster squarely in one of its house-sized eyes, and that did pop the organ like a muck-filled balloon once it detonated, having already created a meter-thick divot in the membrane, but it repaired itself in under ten seconds.

Isaac stared at the monster for a long moment as it drew its head back, [Wisdom of the Simurgh] and [Hunter’s Gaze] active at full blast.

There was something different about the new eye, though. It seemed … duller, somehow, but he got the feeling that the monster would be a lot harder to hurt there.

So, the eyes got less effective but more durable when destroyed. How would that work with other body parts? Would scales just regrow tougher and tougher until the monster could no longer move? Were there any limits to that? He’d been warned that this thing was tough, but it couldn’t be invulnerable, right? There had to be a limit … and he’d find it.

The very instant the final missile had gone off, Isaac had spent the briefest of instants checking to make sure that there wasn’t another warhead still in flight, and then, he charged.

His Stats had all increased massively, the altered numbers displayed on his status sheet unlike normal, but Magic Regeneration was labeled as “n/a”, since it didn’t really exist for him anymore. Any mana he spent would be replaced almost instantly from [Final Defiance’s] pool.

And the same went for [Aspects of the End], anything he spent would be replaced before the pool could dip even in the slightest.

His movements left behind white trails, his muscles burned with red light beneath his armor and behind the visor, his eyes glowed with rainbow light.

Opposite him, the Leviathan had risen to almost its old height, but upon seeing him charge, somehow, it selected him as a target, surging forward with flames building up at the back of its throat once again.

As he closed in, a titanic burning [Aura] pushed against him, attempting to keep him back, but Isaac’s [Aura] had been boosted just like everything else had been.

A tidal wave of fire flooded towards him, but between his astronomical Agility and [Speed of Hati], he dodged the main wave easily but briefly dipped into the corona to assimilate this particular variation. He’d absorbed enough hellfire variants to be almost completely immune to it, but that had been upgraded to absolute immunity now.

And then, he began to assimilate the attack, taking over the hostile attack with [Divine Fire’s] Level 20 effect.

The Leviathan fought it, of course, and under normal circumstances, Isaac never would have been to try anything, but he had almost five million points of mana to play with. He couldn’t freely use it for anything he wanted, but it nonetheless made him ludicrously powerful in many ways, including breaking past certain limits.

It was a strange flame, really, one that acted just like regular fire in every respect save one. It could literally not interact with water, which meant it could not only be freely used underwater, but it would also ignore the water in living beings, making it capable of causing utterly devastating damage.

Enough fire to wipe out a good-sized island was sucked into his hand, compressing into a sphere the size of a basketball, leaving hundreds of imps colored the same as the Leviathan’s scales suddenly exposed as they flew through the air. Suddenly visible, they were blasted apart in seconds.

Huh. He hadn’t even been able to spot those before, but still, it did make sense that a [World Boss] had minions, and it had had “The Living Hellgate” among its titles.

And what to do with this fireball? The polite thing would be to return it to sender, but the monster would likely be immune to its own fire. On the other hand, the fire was already struggling to decompress, and he was forced to cannibalize some of it to keep the rest stable. The flames might not do anything, but the shockwave sure as shit would.

Isaac grinned as the monster’s jaws snapped shut next to him, its head so huge he could barely perceive it as a living being, it seeming more like an angry asteroid of falling rock than anything else.

He sprinted across the air straight to the previously damaged eye, and with all his might, pushed the fireball past it and into the ocular cavity. Where it exploded. Gorily. Messily. In a way he’d never unsee. Unnameable fluids gushed down the side of the monster’s face as it roared in pain and fury, unleashing another breath attack, this one just consisting of the same imps it had previously used.

Once again, the eye began to regenerate, but more slowly than the last time, and Isaac could tell it was even worse than the first replacement. So they would be able to blind this thing, but it would take a long time. Probably better to destroy all eyes one by one, instead of focusing on a single one until it was gone for good.

He’d shot past the monster and was now above it, the sky already darkening as the atmosphere thinned, then flipped around and began “running” earthward, a combination of gravity and kicking at the empty space above him to accelerate pushing him well past normal terminal velocity.

Four massive swords manifested, one held in each hand and glued to the bottom of each shoe with the traction enchantment, and then, activated [I Am The Sword Activated] in its “optimal penetration” setting, making him fall like a meteor, just in the right moment when the Leviathan was lined up ju-u-ust right, its spine crossing the trajectory of his unstoppable movement not once, not twice, but seven times.

Isaac crashed through the top of the Leviathan’s skull, into its brain, out the bottom of its jaw, into the front of its throat, through the spine, and out the back, falling back in the empty air for a bit longer, and finally, right back into the massive coil in the ocean.

With two eight-meter blades and both arms fully extended, he left behind a cut almost eighteen meters long that fully severed the spinal cord in seven places, with the blades on his feet having been largely superfluous.

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Being a boss, the monster had ways around that, nerve signals jumping across the gap or simply being redirected through the surrounding musculature being only the start of it, but every gap would slow down its movement a little bit, all the way until the very end of its body, beyond the seventh cut, which should be severely hampered.

And the best part was that his cooldowns had been reduced by 99%, which meant that that [Skill] would be available again in just 36 seconds.

Of course, he’d overshot a little and was now buried a couple of kilometers underground, but he’d already phased the very second his [Skill] had ended and erupted straight back out of the ground, holding a freshly manifested fireball.

It splashed across the monster’s scales, burning into it and the skin beneath. It should have, considering he’d thrown the entirety of his mana pool at it, and it’d been enhanced to 20,000 points.

The nukes might have had more raw power, but Isaac’s flames were magical, bent for destruction, focused in ways that nukes could not be. They were chaos incarnate, natural forces unleashed by conventional explosives kicking some enriched uranium or plutonium in the ass until it blew a gasket. Good fucking luck structuring that into anything.

Apparently, the pain had made Leviathan forget what had happened the last time it had breathed fire on Isaac, and tried roasting him again.

He met its aggression head-on, flying up through the stream, gathering it and pulling it behind him, then slammed it right behind the twice broken eye, almost obliterating it.

Compressed fire could cause some serious damage, couldn’t it? Why hadn’t he done that before?

Right, because compressing flames like that was normally a pain in the ass. But then, something had just occurred to him. He could register any flames he wanted, including …

Isaac manifested [Prometheus’ Wrath], compressed it, registered the compressed version, and thrust it behind the next eye.

[Prometheus’ Nova] detonated the organ, and the monster focussed its full attention on him, its head chasing after him while its body sped through the water.

Only its front fifty or so kilometers were directly moved towards whatever target it had chosen to delete from existence, but every movement rippled down the entire length of its body, a two-hundred-meter wide mass of scales and muscles unleashing record-breaking tsunamis with even the tiniest shift.

It wasn’t that bad yet, with it still largely being coiled up in one spot, but every time it moved, shifted, stretched, it spread out more and more.

Still, he’d largely gotten its number now. The outer layer of scales was tough as fuck, the skin underneath, a little less so. It had anger issues and had trouble learning lessons, something that would hopefully last for the entirety of the fight.

Destroying sensory organs would make its senses worse, and while they’d grow tougher and regenerate, the recovery also slowed. Just keep hitting those.

And it had all the usual boss-durability bullshit.

Isaac drew on the [Round Table] before going in for his next attack run.

Japinder’s [Exemplar Action] could teach everyone who watched it a little something something about what he did, but it could also perfectly bring across the meaning behind his actions. Such as warning his allies where he was going to be even more effective than merely coordinating via the party.

In fact, Isaac’s connection to the table had deepened as well, allowing him to reshuffle [Skills] on his own, and use multiple, just like Arthur. Of course, Arthur could still override him, but he’d never do that.

The first air strike was about to strike, able to work around him perfectly, but before they hit, he cleared the way for them.

He could repeatedly discharge the entirety of his mana pool with barely any pause in between, and that was exactly what he did.

[Prometheus Nova] spam was not something even someone entirely focused on their mana pool could pull off, but “normal” was a label that applied to Isaac even less than it did most of the time.

Small fireballs slipped under scales, [Champion of Mankind: The Thinker] allowing him to direct every single one.

Once emplaced, the flames burned into the skin a little and went as deeply as possible until holding them together was prohibitively expensive, then promptly detonated, shredding flesh and ejecting the scales above.

It was then that [I Am The Sword] came off cooldown and he burst through the monster again, unleashing an immense blast of [Prometheus’ Wrath] in the very instant he passed through the spinal cord, [Star’s Heart] draining his physical stamina but leaving behind a massive hole. And his physical exhaustion was wiped from existence as well.

Of course, the monster wasn’t happy with any of that, but the thing was that it really couldn’t do much to hurt him, specifically. He was too fast, but unlike the normal “all speed, all the time” builds, Isaac could inflict damage. Serious damage.

By the time the fighter jets came into missile range, the Leviathan’s raised body portion was practically naked.

And a split-second before impact, one Jean Ardouin finally acted.

His fifth Evolution [Sage-General of Magic and Warfare] was exactly the same as his [Arcane Warsage], just stronger and with a less snappy name. His [Gates of Hell] had become a hell of a lot stronger, able to redirect fire from a lot further away, and there’d been a similar boost to his other capabilities, but the real gain had been the two central [Skills].

Isaac could picture the man shrink in on himself as he named them.

“[Cry Havoc], [Let Slip the Dogs of War].”

[Cry Havoc] was a formation killer, metaphorically speaking. It utterly trashed any attempt at making a proper formation and holding to a strategy when used against a group of enemies, but apparently, it could be used against individuals as well.

Like a yo-yo being reeled back in, the giant snake was pulled back together into a single spot, and tied into a knot. Yes, it literally turned the world boss into a knot.

In the meanwhile, [Let Slip the Dogs of War] was “just” the mother of all boosting [Skills].

As an extra fuck you, Isaac threw both [Death’s Embrace] and [Titanic Presence] into his own [Aura] and pushed away the Leviathan’s flaming [Aura] away from the missiles, ensuring that the monster’s first reaction to the attack failed utterly.

And, then he threw in another salvo of novae for good measure … something was off. That impact had looked weird.

Before he could zero in on what had happened, the missiles hit, supported by countless more heavy projectiles fired through portals manifested by Ardouin, hitting the monster in the split second Dr. Han had struck the tied-down monster with [Tyrants Die], which weakened its stupendous defenses.

For a brief instant, the monster was cloaked in flames, screaming in pain and fury.

But once the damage became clear, so did the problem.

“Its body grows tougher the more it’s damaged,” Isaac stated almost in a daze, before quickly hurrying to explain the entirety of the issue.

The more a body part became damaged/destroyed, the tougher the remaining bits would become. At least the boost wasn’t as overpowered as the ocular regeneration, and the spine also seemed to just become more durable, as opposed to recovering.

The monster’s skin had already grown tougher by thirty or so percent, which meant they’d have to focus on carving big holes into its defenses and shooting through those, else, they might be stuck firing through countless pinpricks.

So, time to kick ass.

Isaac dumped the entirety of the power remaining in [The Thinker] into novae, blew apart two eyes, and finally triggered [Form of Horror]. He’d shifted things around a bit, creating new forms specifically for this occasion.

[Form of Horror: Blender] was literally just every blade Aspect he’d ever slotted, combined into a single package that he ran at the monster with until he started sliding down its body and triggered [I Am The Sword] for the third time, tearing along it like the world’s largest cheese grater, tearing a massive gash in its defenses.

He supposed he could have used [Form of Horror] more, but there was one small issue with it: he might have had enough mana at his fingertips that it was seemingly infinite, but it did have its limits. And the cooldown reductions were expensive.

Attack after attack landed, with Isaac switching to dual-wielding his giant swords, digging them under scales to flick them off, shallow cuts effectively flaying off the monster’s skin in a way that didn’t make it significantly tougher.

Anything and everything he could do to ruin this fucker’s day.

On occasion, he opened up the distance, granting the others the chance to slip in a nuke or cooldown [Skill], but all in all, for half an hour, he led the [World Boss] on a merry chase across Oceania, and carved it apart to the point where it looked more like a modern art exhibit than a living being.

During that time, the waves alone had wiped out most of Papua New Guinea, Sulawesi, Timor, and most of Borneo had been utterly trashed. The islands were still there, mostly, but between the waves and the occasional earthquake, massive chunks had been washed away.

Australia and the Philipines had been badly hit as well, but still existed.

And his mana was bottoming out.

So he ran. Straight up.

The Leviathan surged after him, going straight up as quickly as possible.

Then, a form blurred past Isaac, and he knew he was safe.

Convincing Sun Wukong to sit out the first phase had been an achievement worthy of legend and Isaac did not want to know how much the food had cost, but somehow, he’d stayed put in orbit until now.

Until someone needed to tag Isaac out and tank a [World Boss].

For his 5th Evolution, he’d become the [Great Sage Equalling Heaven], with two of the most absurd cooldown [Skills] ever at his disposal.

One that granted him the legend’s ability to transform his hairs into clones of himself, and a second that gave him the form that had kicked the ass of celestial generals.

One hundred and fifty meters tall, three faces, six arms, in full regalia, with three identical staves that looked like they should have been bridges. Crimson eyes burned as the Monkey King, fivefold, dropped into the face of the biblical beast, the immense weight knocking it straight back down.

Oh, and the Kaiju Form was a hell of a lot denser than Sun’s regular stone form.

The Leviathan’s head fell, even its muscles unable to resist what effectively amounted to stone statues dropping from orbit, and right where it would impact, a massive ice spike was growing and being enchanted, perfectly situated to run the monster through.

That should do a nice bit of damage, but right now, it was Isaac’s job to recover.

Unfortunately, the monster would still be there when he was all better again.