Outrage of the Ancients

Arthur

This was the grand Second Challenge, the countless monsters that were supposed to be able to crush the strongest this modern world had to offer?

A few thousand simple undead that the company of soldiers he’d been assigned would have been able to mow them down with ease. All on their own.

The whole thing was less a story of “one mythical warrior against the horde” and more akin to a child kicking over an anthill.

A single [Grand Slash] had cratered the center of the enemy horde, and he’d leaped into said crater, standing there, waiting, watching the zombies and skeletons try to rush him and wind up falling down the surprisingly steep sides of the hole. Also, with him being at the bottom of a crater, the soldiers on the “surface” had had clear lines of fire, and their bullets had ripped clean through the monsters up there. Like a reaper’s scythe through wheat.

Of course, he’d annihilated twice as many undead all on his own, and was now reduced to a position he absolutely hated. Specifically, that of someone waiting for news, for more to happen. In his mind, it was part of what had led to the civil war that had ruined Camelot. He couldn’t stand sitting on his throne, waiting for news about how a situation resolved itself, he had to fix it himself.

That was a damn good thing when it came to monsters, be they titanic boars or malicious witches, few people other than him could have beaten them. But being away had nevertheless weakened his position as king.

And the current situation was the worst of both worlds. He was away from the action, wherever it might be taking place, left to do little but await word on the goings on. But he was also not in charge, able to direct matters and win through tactics rather than personal power.

He was truly useless in the fight against the Second Challenge, without him having done anything to deserve it, and it was driving him up the wall.

***

Fionn

Just how large an area had they summoned the monsters from? There were five of them, five warriors of ancient times present, and apparently, they’d drawn the ire of what felt like half the beasts in Europe to square off against the five members of the Fianna in their little fortress of mud and sticks.

It would have taken a single second to draw on the Thumb of Wisdom, and a handful more to lock down the location of system monsters he couldn’t find or search for directly but was able to see indirectly.

Yet even that seemingly infinitesimal amount of time hadn’t been available. He literally had not been able to stop using his dominant right hand to fight long enough that he could scry the surrounding world.

The very instant the clock had hit zero, an army had appeared around them, surrounding the heavily reinforced and enchanted encampment at a steady distance of five hundred meters. And then, they’d charged.

Conán, Goll, and Ossian had opened fire with their bows, Caoilte had started hurling javelins at superhuman speeds, and Fionn had started to cast spells. Grand workings that had been beyond even the Tuatha de Dannan in his first lifetime, his magic boosted by the System and his Levels, yet also shaped by the strangely invisible construct, forced into molds with specific real-world expressions. A name, a tier, a set effect.

[Flame Walls] erupted around their camp, incinerating countless monsters, but they were soon overwhelmed, quite literally smothered beneath the press of bodies.

Fionn triggered [Flight] and rose a few meters above the ground, then began to use whatever spells that might be useful. He’d tried them all out before, of course, but there was something very different about using them in combat.

[Chain Lightning] tore through the ranks of the undead, striking the primary target and obliterating that one’s skull only to jump from monster to monster, igniting flesh and superheating whatever liquids were still present to instantly flash into steam and spray barely-intact body parts across the battlefield. But it didn’t do much otherwise. Wrong spell for this particular enemy, then.

Half a dozen [Fireballs] manifested around him and shot away in different directions, a circle of explosions surrounding the camp for a brief instant, adding to the already nauseating stench of burnt pork.

That simply wouldn’t work. Spells were fantastic at annihilating countless foes at once, but his magic wouldn’t be enough to beat even a small fraction of the enemies assembled here.

So he cast [Earthen Spire] over and over again. Nothing tripped up armies better than forcing them to march through a forest, and this was as close as he could make with his current restrictions. Dozens of meter-thick stone pillars burst from the ground, shredding several undead in the process, but raw damage hadn’t been the point, slowing them had.

The dead might not shove and tussle as the living might as they were forced through the artificially narrowed passages.

Fionn canceled [Flight] and dropped down onto the ground, and a javelin flew into his hand all on his own, [Eternal Amrament] ensuring that he always had a weapon to hand if he wanted it.

A single moment to zero in on the biggest foe and he hurled the weapon, a shockwave rending the air as it flashed through the intervening space and hammered into the Field Boss’ head, and it exploded like a rotten apple after a boot stomped on it.

That worked, but not good enough, and the undead were already within ten meters of the encampment. Too close.

[Fire Boon] made his next javelin glow orange before Fionn hurled it, causing it to punch through half a dozen before igniting, flames lighting up the impaled monsters from the inside. He turned, and repeated the action, a slight nudge with [Push] causing the spear and its “cargo” to wedge itself between two [Earthen Spires], functioning as a cheaper and more effective [Fire Wall] … on about ten percent of the perimeter.

A skeleton lunged at him, and his fist caught it under the chin, shattering the skull in a single smooth skull before he opened his hand to manifest his sword and spun, decapitating everything within his sword’s reach, but they were filled in for in an instant.

The rest were doing better, thankfully. Ossian had wrapped himself in a sphere of flame out of which a burning spear flicked out repeatedly, punching through skulls or igniting bodies. Conán was too large and physically massive to bring down just yet, and Goll had managed to clamber up a spire and was shooting arrows from there, triggering every active Skill he had as soon as they came off cooldown.

This was a disgrace. The Fianna had been overwhelmed in a matter of minutes. The overwhelming enemy force barely mattered, they’d still been pushed into a corner.

Wait, where was … Caoilte mac Rónáin suddenly blasted through the swarm at ridiculous speeds, twin blades flashing out and extending into shimmering bars of light that cut undead flesh just like the weapons themselves, clearing out the entirety of the fortification in an instant.

Fionn recognized that particular power as his [Limitbreaking Speed] Skill which, as the name implied, let Caoilte briefly surpass his limits and shred the undead that had overrun them but also took him out for the next few minutes.

Breathing room. Not much, but enough for Fionn to pull out his final trump card. A Spell at the 7th Tier. Out of 9.

[Lightning Cataclysm]

It’d cost him his ability to cast magic likely for the rest of the fight, but it really did seem like the best option.

Unlike the previous spells, including most of those he’d seen in his first life, this one was not instantly cast but slowly built up, starting with piercing blue orbs of energy crackling in each palm. Arcs of energy arced between them, rapidly bending skywards into a massive “u” shape that extended higher and higher with each discharge, until the top end vanished into the clouds that had suddenly appeared overhead.

Then, the energy winked out. That … whatever derisive comment Fionn had been about to make in his mind was blanked out by more simultaneous flashes of lighting than he’d ever seen at once, in fact, more than he’d ever seen in his life, combined, turning the entire field white, followed by a wave of thunder that promptly bled into the next, which had originated from the lighting bolts that had struck just slightly further out. And the next, and the next, until all Fionn could hear was the incessant roar of air displaced by one of nature’s most mesmerizing spectacles, stemming from a decidedly unnatural origin.

And yet, it was only a drop in the bucket, and a waste of magic to boot.

Damnit. He’d been overconfident, he could see that now. He simply wasn’t used to acting on this scale, for fuck’s sake! Ireland was a tiny nation in the grand scheme of things, and it was all he’d really had to focus on in his first life.

But now that he was taking advantage of the brief pause in enemy operations to scry the area around him, and find that they had, in fact, attracted every monster within five hundred kilometers. Slightly more than that, in fact. All of Ireland, most of Great Britain, and a large chunk of the ocean around them.

They should have run. Used their presence to concentrate the enemy, then left the area and attacked together with the army, using modern explosive weaponry to lay corpses back to rest by the thousands.

He’d decided that they could handle it, though. He’d wanted to give the army a chance to bring itself up to full war footing. And now, he might wind up having to eat those words. Because, quite frankly, as badly as they’d handled themselves so far, they were still not quite at the point where they were in real danger.

“We’re staying for another ten minutes and retreating unless something changes,” Fionn decided, barely managing to use [Warband Awareness] to make himself heard over the incessant thundering.

In fact, he was the weakest of the Fianna right now. Simply put, where the others hand dozens of Skills that either fundamentally strengthened them or could be triggered to cause overwhelmingly powerful effects.

Fionn had ten … and a list of Spells that would fill several dictionaries if written out, but unlike with Skills, which ran on a cooldown basis, Spell usage was limited by magical reserves, and deep as they were, they were very far from infinite.

All around him, the [Lightning Cataclysm] was dying down, having ripped apart the undead by the hundreds of thousands, though considering how tightly they’d been packed, that wasn’t quite as big of an achievement as it sounded.

Out of the corner of his eye, Fionn saw something rapidly close the distance, a giant grey cloud that somehow conveyed the impression of being utterly furious approaching.

Ashborn Wraith (raised humans) Lv. 35 Raid Boss

Yeah, that thing would have to go before they fell back. The military would have the devil’s time killing that thing.

That thing had to have a weak point, didn’t it? Because he’d just burned through the magic, he’d otherwise need to take it down.

A cloud of ash formed into a tendril that was tipped with a lethal-looking spike on the end and tried to impale him but bounced off his shield while Fionn’s retaliatory spear strike whiffed straight through it. Oh, this was going to be just as annoying as he’d expected.

In the distance, the horde was starting to gather again, but they still had time. Plenty of it.

The Ashborn Wraith began to swirl around into a new form, gathering into a multi-limbed ball of spikes and razor-sharp clouds, but there was no way in hell they’d let it get that far. In fact, they barely even needed to communicate the plan beyond tiny shifts in posture and weight distribution to indicate their intentions.

A flick of Ossian’s wrist unleashed a blast of wind that disrupted the enemy’s form, and Caoilte blasted through the gap, further blasting apart its form while his swords flashed through empty air, not striking any physical object, merely sending eddies of ash swirling through the air.

Conán leaped into the air and came down onto the monster’s central mass, triggering another one of his Skills to increase the force of the impact. But more and more of the monster swirled skywards to catch the bulky man … and succeeded. An immense shield of condensed ash formed under him, and while it did sag, it stayed aloft. Seemingly, Conán’s efforts had been thwarted, but he’d achieved something very different. He’d managed to get the monster to focus most of its mass to stop him. And the only solid object in that monster had been revealed.

A skull, human, having long since lost its lower jaw along with any trace of muscles, skin, and all other tissues, instead being coated in several layers of soot, sat there, blue flames glowing in its eyesockets as it glared skywards.

A chance. A small, tiny, window of opportunity for him to attack in. And that was all he needed.

Fionn lunged, triggering [Final Strike]. It made him faster, stronger, more accurate, and overall deadlier … for one attack. If it landed, and the enemy died, well, he’d have to wait six hours before he could use it again. If it didn’t, well, it might not kill him, but it would leave him in a bad enough state that his foe would have no trouble finishing the job.

Like a bolt of lightning, he flashed through the intervening space and blasted through the narrow curtain of ash that was still present. and barely felt himself slow, but the effect was present and growing the deeper her penetrated, more and more ash spiraling back down to block him … and then he thrust the spear forward, its head glowing with golden light. The weapon flashed onwards, seemingly about to fall short, but then the very tip of it brushed against the monster’s bony heart. And the ancient skull exploded.

A curtain of ash fell around Fionn, and he barely managed to take a step back to catch Conán instead of having the man outright fall onto him. Fionn sneezed as he set his comrade down.

“Let’s go!” he announced from the crook of his elbow, as he was only now covering his mouth to avoid inhaling any more of the bone dust swirling through the air.

They ran, smashing through the weakest point of the undead ranks, where some had already been distracted and drawn away by the military, then reached the army soon enough.

The Fianna stopped their retreat just in front of the firing lines, and Fionn expanded [Warband Awareness] to include the army. It didn’t just make him aware of what the others were doing if he focussed on it; also excelled in warning everyone touched when an ally was about to wind up in the line of fire. Like when a member of the Fianna dove into the fray to take down a Boss before it hit the military’s lines.

From then on, things went fairly well, all things considered. Barely a hundred casualties in the military, and none in the Fianna. Any deaths were bad, of course, but practically unavoidable considering the circumstances.

Next time, they’d have a much better idea of what they’d be facing, and a hell of a lot more time to prepare.

Which just left one more question: how many monsters would they be drawing in the next time?

So he began to scry.

Because it had actually been slightly more than five hundred kilometers. Simple enough, a one-hundred-kilometer radius increase per ancient on one spot, right?

But that wasn’t how it had worked in the German enclave. He’d checked. Their radius was a little under three hundred kilometers. Two hundred and seventy-five kilometers, to be precise.

That indicated an … what was it called again? Right, exponential increase. What was the rate of increase, though? Where was the nearest mathematician? Or did the modern times have an easier method of doing high-order maths … something called a pocket calculator. Where was one … on a phone, any phone, and he’d made sure to get his hands on one.

Fionn’s hand went to the pocket he kept it in, only to find said pocket torn open and empty. He didn’t bother to go look for it, though, since scrying revealed that it was currently not exactly in working order, having been crushed under the feet of the undead at some point during the battle.

So he borrowed a phone and figured out that for every single ancient in one spot, the radius at which they drew in monsters increased by little less than half again the previous range. The five of them had almost gotten themselves killed by staying in one place at the beginning of a challenge, how bad would it be if every single European was in one spot when the next one started?

Or maybe, how much of an opportunity was it?

***

Joseph

The knowledge of how his presence attracted his foes had been helpful. Very helpful.

But the Second Challenge the supposedly apocalyptic System had thrown at him had been rather … lacking. Empty. A handful of regular undead, a couple of larger Field Bosses, that was it. He’d been ready for the fight of his life, he’d walked five kilometers south of the city and triggered his [Fortress of the Six-Pointed Star], then layered [Armageddon Ward] over the city itself to further ensure that anything that showed up thirsty for blood would find him instead of helpless civilians.

However, that hadn’t happened, not really. A handful of creatures had appeared; he’d stopped them, and that had largely been the extent of it.

Though he could tell there were monsters out there, in fact, he’d been able to sense a massive concentration to the southwest, though it had rapidly dwindled away into almost nothing. That was where the fortress of the other “Ancients” had been, right? Apparently, they had succeeded in attracting almost all the monsters.

So if that fortress summons all monsters in the area, including the ones that might have otherwise gone after him and his city, didn’t that mean that he could do more there? Indirectly protecting the city?

It sounded idiotic, but honestly, it seemed like the right thing to do. Because if that mountain fell to the next Challenge, there’d be an immense horde of monsters spreading out from it, and Prague was far too close to it.

So yes, that was how it would work.

Joseph marched into the city center, waited until people were pointing those “cell phones” of theirs at him, and announced that he would be fighting for them elsewhere going forward. In the location the young man who’d given him his voice had called “Europe’s Lightning Rod.”