Apocalypse Redux - Chapter 320: What Now?

“… And the recipient of the World Item should have been decided via committee, taking and immediately wasting it was irresponsible in the extreme, and disrespectful to those who died, I …”

This particular speech had been going on for close to ten minutes already, and Isaac’s patience was running thin.

“How about someone just explains to me what I should have done with that item, instead of making vague suggestions?” he suggested, making sure to keep it out of the general conversation loop, where the speech was currently being held. The “respectful” variant of an interruption, only possible in party-based communications.

Which they were doing because the various armchair generals that had come out of the woodwork were terrified of being in the same room as the high-Level individuals they were criticizing.

“For one, you didn’t clean up the atmosphere. Do you have any idea about how much dust and pollutants have been released into the atmosphere by all those nuclear detonations?”

Of course, his little comment had been immediately passed along, if the speaker hadn’t been listening in on the other speech channels with one ear anyway.

Isaac paused for a long moment, letting the whole thing hang awkwardly in the air until he eventually asked, “What was the name of that World Item?”

“I believe it was ‘Soul of the Ocean’. Why?”

“Because it is the ’Soul of the Ocean’, capable of affecting the ocean, not the air, not the ground, not anything else,” Isaac pointed out, “Can we please either move on from this, or start with concrete criticisms? Because this is getting us nowhere.”

“Well, I …”

“Oh, put a sock in it, you’re in no position to criticize the use of the World Item, you’d have done a billion times worse!”

The voice was generic, without a clearly defined accent or other identifying characteristics. If Isaac hadn’t known Jason was still zonked out in a safe house somewhere, he’d have thought he’d snuck in here. But he did know it likely wasn’t him, so most likely, someone here had grabbed a [Skill] for anonymous heckling.

“Excuse me?”

“Let me put it this way, if stupidity were a weapon, you’d be considered a WMD.”

Oh, for the love of … Isaac sighed and put his head down as the arguing somehow managed to become even less productive than it had been before. At least then, there’d been some distant attempts at an actual discussion, right now though, it was just a combination of insults and witch-hunting.

In general, politicians could be petty, dumb, rude, crude, and a whole host of other negative things, but ultimately, when in public, anyone even remotely successful would attempt to be polite.

The various high-Level people dragged in here, or were attending just to make sure they weren’t screwed in the after-action report, they were more than happy to stir the pot given half a chance. Well, most were mature enough to not do so immediately, but some weren’t, and after two hours of this, even a saint’s patience would have snapped.

And there were so many topics to cover …

“Ultimately, we have an issue of rewards being automatically given by the [System], which does not grant any compensation for those who died in battle. And those who received rewards that can be passed on to others, meaning materials or even Aspects, are generally unwilling to give up what they earned. Someone would need to compensate the families of the dead, and I would suggest that …”

Once again, what could have been summed up in a couple of sentences was dragged out to over ten minutes, though it basically boiled down to “we normally distribute loot after the battle and include the dead, that doesn’t work this time”.

The situation largely got reduced to “nations pay for members of their military”, and into a fund for everyone else, let’s hammer out the particulars later. Good fucking luck with that.

Isaac had already resolved to later auction off one of each Leviathan material type donate the proceeds to various funds dedicated to fixing up the mess. And then he’d try to make it a tradition from now on.

If the rewards for future [World Bosses] were anything like they’d been for Leviathan, the person with the “Decisive” reward rank had more than enough materials available for a great weapon, full set of armor, potentially potions too, and barely even scratch the surface of the twenty-five monster pieces rewarded.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

So giving up five would not be too great a sacrifice, especially since there was no guarantee the next “Decisive” ranker would have made as much of a difference as Isaac did.

They were able to give up a part of their material reward to help cleanup without actually giving up much at all. They’d be out the materials’ monetary worth, obviously, and maybe the social cred they might be able to get by using the materials as gifts, but overall, there’d still be more than enough left for anything and everything one might want to make from [World Boss] materials.

But if he opened the door for giving up materials amidst this pack of hyenas … no one knew where this would end.

Overall though, he’d have to be a bit more careful of how he wielded his influence, moving forward. The fight with the Leviathan hadn’t been live-streamed, exactly, but it had been really freakin public. Basically everyone who cared to look knew what had happened, what Isaac had done, and could then imagine what else he might be able to do.

No one knew what [Skill] he’d whipped out to kick the Leviathan around like a football, no one knew its limitations, and very few people really knew him at all.

That was a combination that made him dangerous.

In the short term, that would let him push around anyone who didn’t feel like they were in a position to stand up to him, and doing something like using the wrong tone of voice might make him come across as threatening regardless.

And in the long term, preparations would be made, specifically to counter him in case he went off the rails. He wouldn’t blame anyone for taking precautions, but h also knew how easily taking precautions could turn into taking pre-emptive action.

Keeping his proper working relationship with as many people as possible, that was the key. That, and continuing to keep backing any of his suggestions with evidence and rational arguments, to make them look less arbitrary.

And this was something he need to keep doing, for the rest of his life.

“I hate to drag everyone away from this rivetting discussion, but we do have to make some plans about handling the refugee crisis. Even discounting those who were only displaced within their own nation, we’ve got close to four hundred and fifty million people stuck in camps, mostly in China, and Australia. The conditions are borderline inhumane already, and they’re only getting worse.”

… At least someone was aware of the real issues.

“Their islands are back, let’s just send ‘em there with building supplies.”

Isaac took note of who’d spoken and decided to put him on his list of “people not worth listening to”.

“You do realize those are barren rocks, right? An S-Ranker who isn’t a builder or green mage would struggle there, let alone refugees.”

And once again, a discussion on an actually important topic spiraled completely out of control.

First, it was a question of who’d pay for the relocation of so many people, even though the same methods that had allowed for the evacuation of so many people in the first place were largely still available.

Then, it became a problem of who’d pay for the materials needed to build houses and prepare the rocky ground for agriculture once again. It was a genuinely important topic, sure, but it got derailed so thoroughly that it didn’t get anywhere for close to half an hour. The end result was once again “deferred judgment, but we’ll largely be focussing on the usual disaster relief funds”. Isaac had some plans, but once again, those were there to be employed later.

And finally, things got really crazy when the environmental impact topic came up.

Normally, that would have been important. In fact, one might even go so far as to say that in general, the environment was the most important topic of them all as if planet Earth ever became a lifeless husk, no other issue would really matter. But sometimes, even people fighting the important fights suffered from extreme tone deafness.

Specifically, it was an issue of the flora and fauna on the islands, which had been obliterated by the battle, and some people wanted grab whatever plants would combine into a proper ecosystem in the local climate. Effective, reasonable, and doable.

The problem was that there was a faction who felt that everything should have been a perfect replica of the previous ecosystem. From a preservation aspect, that would have been the optimal route, but from a real-world one … half a billion people were waiting to return to those islands.

And even if it were possible to get their hands on all the orignal plants and animals, it would likely take years.

Isaac had already reached out to every German university and botanical garden to see what samples they had of the various needed flora, and Bailey had begun creating plans for recreating the fauna out of DNA harvested from stuffed museum pieces, but creating an entirely new species with all the necessary genetic diversity and everything else would be difficult.

But the “idiot of the decade” award went to an Australian minister who had the bright idea of restoring various land-based natural resources by killing the Behemoth. After all, if the biblical sea beast could fix the sea, then the biblical land beast should be able to fix the land, right?

“So, like I said, we’ve already proven that killing a [World Boss] is within our capability, and we can fix the damage caused by the fighting using the World Item.”

Isaac facepalmed, other people yelled, death threats were hurled about. After about five seconds, Gibbs fixed the shouting and yelling by just muting the entire party.

Then Isaac asked to speak and was given the “mike”.

“I have a question, which [World Boss] holds the item which will fix the land?”

“The Behemoth, I just said that …”

“But there are multiple options in the summoning list, including two whose bodies were literally became the Earth in their respective home mythologies. Also, I hereby propose a new law: whosoever proposes the summoning of a [World Boss] has to fight on the front lines. All in favor?”

Other than a few laughs, and more insults directed at the minister, things were quiet.

How much more of this shit would Isaac have to shovel before he could head back to the university? Because there, an actual celebration was happening, not the stuffy receptions Isaac and the others had been invited to by the hundreds.