Outrage of the Ancients

The Second Challenge, [The Breaking of Graves], will begin today.

Time remaining: 0:0:1:01

Little over one minute to go, then all hell would break loose, potentially even in the literal sense. Because it could mean almost anything.

A gate to the underworld, anything that was once dead stirring back to life, or simply every burial ground since the dawn of time exploding, who knew what would happen?

Not to mention, well, the modern myths of the undead. Everything from liches, ancient magi who removed their very souls to live eternally, to highly infectious rotting abominations known as zombies that could kill with a bite or even a single scratch, dooming their victims to rise to join the horde.

It was that last part that was the most terrifying, even if it was the option that threatened him the least simply because a warship was built to repel borders.

The very idea behind it … the people who’d come up with those stories had some very twisted imaginations, and the sailors who’d thought that a “classic horror movie” was the best way to introduce a man out of time to modern media had come damn closer to a court martial. They were just lucky that Drake had a sense of humor.

Speaking of luck, Drake was just glad that they’d been warned that monsters liked to target ancients before the start of this new “challenge.” He’d have been on a warship at that point in time under almost all circumstances, but Arthur Pendragon, who’d also miraculously returned, would almost certainly have been in London, defending … something. Buckingham Palace, Houses of Parliament, 10 Downing Street, or maybe just a wealthy part of the city. Whichever it was, it would have backfired.

Now they knew, though.

The legendary king was stationed north of London, and every vessel the Royal Navy had was sitting a few miles east of the mouth of the Thames, close enough for the carriers to unleash their planes if something did appear in London, and certainly close enough that his presence would draw some of the monsters that would otherwise attack the capital.

Well, most of the ships. Their only ship of the line, the flagship, in fact, was a ceremonial vessel over two hundred years old, and minesweepers weren’t exactly built for dishing out damage either.

Also, they’d gotten reinforcements from Germany and Denmark, since they’d likely do more good here than guarding their own coasts. After all, the monsters were expected to appear on land when not attracted to his presence, or potentially even always, without exceptions.

The amassed ships were currently divided into two formations. The carriers along with three-quarters of the escorts, under the command of Admiral Chambers, who also held overall command, and the five frigates and four destroyers who were between the main fleet and London, under Drake’s own command.

They were using him as bait and Drake couldn’t help but grin. He hadn’t had to ask to be assigned here.

He glanced over at the system warning message and watched the clock tick down, simultaneously moving with painful slowness and rocketing towards disaster with inexorable speed.

Drake sighed. He’d finished doing what he needed to hours ago, and forced himself to go to sleep after that, and now, he was just sitting here in the admiral’s chair hastily added to the Defiant’s bridge, watching and waiting, trying to avoid wearing his patience thin.

7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, … 1. Showtime.

The System window flickered, but Drake only skimmed it to get the salient points. The Second Challenge raised the dead, and the third one wouldn’t be for twenty days. Right now, he had to focus on his enemies, of which there were many.

Undead sea creatures of countless stripes, huge skeletons, disgusting amalgamations of countless smaller bodies, and even a massive fusion of wooden planks and the corpses of drowned sailors … it was a horror show.

Zombie Whale (raised humpback whale), Level 16

Skeleton Whale (raised blue whale), Level 11

Union of Wood and Bone (raised sailing ship), Level 27 Raid Boss

School of Rot (raised fish swarn), Level 25 Raid Boss

Jaws of Undeath (raised great white), Level 15 Field Boss

Zombie Shark (raised mako), Level 2

Wherever he looked, nameplates were appearing, at least a hundred. All of them undead sea life of some stripe, even the ship counted as such to a certain degree. So, King Arthur was likely currently neck deep in the terrestrial risen corpses.

Drake grinned.

[Chain of Command] was already active, linking him to his fleet and automatically passing along the relevant information of his Skills to those who’d be taking advantage of them. Then, [Flank Speed] was making every vessel in the formation just that little bit more nimble.

And now, as the missiles rose into the morning sky and then … [Remote Retargetting] grabbed them, gave them new targeting parameters, and sent them straight to where they were needed. A simple trick, really. Programming the missiles ahead of time was hard without knowing what their enemies were, but [Remote Retargetting] could bypass all that.

It was mainly meant for making sure that all guns in an area were aiming at the same point, but when the projectiles themselves could retarget themselves, a whole new universe of possibilities opened up.

The missiles speared down into the water, detonating against the surface, while the various anti-submarine weapons that would be launched from helicopters and planes were going to be in the second wave. Assuming there was anything left worth using an expensive piece of tech on.

Because the bigger targets were obviously also primary ones, and the two Raid Bosses were right at the top of that list.

One didn’t really look too distinct from the rest of the boiling sea, a vast mass of half-rotten fish, connected by strings of silt and slime, with a cloud of sharp-looking fish bones floating in between.

The other was a massive ancient merchant vessel that looked like an old-fashioned sailing ship that was in the middle of being built, but being constructed of rotten wood with old bones and strands of decaying flesh acting as the hinges in the macabre setup, which had the appearance of a gigantic ribcage that doubled as a massive pair of jaws. Anything that got too close would be crushed into paste in seconds.

And both of them ate half a dozen anti-ship missiles each. It wasn’t enough. By a long shot.

A single one of those missiles would have been enough to sink a modern warship and should have reduced an older ship to kindling, and yet, against that thing, shockwaves were blunted and fireballs rolled across the surface of the wet wood relatively harmlessly, leaving some charring behind but not much beyond that.

As for the bloody fish, the collective was blasted apart half a dozen times over, but was already in the process of pulling itself back together by the time Drake was observing the results of the fire.

Admiral Porter was already ordering another salvo to be fired and the planes were getting their targeting directives. In less than a minute, most foes here would be gone, but so would the vast majority of the missiles, reducing the warships to their guns, which were an infinitesimal fraction of their armament.

That was the problem with modern warships, and potentially, warfare in general. It was built around “smart” weaponry, long-range missiles that could strike at and eliminate targets from long range, with only a limited quantity of munitions being required.

But these weapons were expensive, ill-suited to target anything other than the thing they’d been designed to destroy, and yes, there were only so many to go around.

Columns of water erupted from the surface of the ocean, painted odd colors by the mess of gore that was all that remained of the targets. A direct hit was capable of annihilating even the strongest regular monster, and that damn ship was rocked by explosion after explosion, bones breaking, wooden timbers splintering, anything even remotely flammable igniting. Until finally, the ship sank beneath the waves, in pieces.

Drake took stock of the mess in its entirety. Enemies mostly gone, munitions almost completely gone. And the living corpses seemed to be starting to swarm his ships.

He began to snap orders, moving back certain ships while sending one of the Defiant’s sister ships, straight at the only surviving Raid Boss, which was currently half-rising out of the ocean, a spiderweb of disgusting fluids holding up the component fishes as though to throw them onto the decks of the closest warships.

“Dauntless, full speed ahead, hold your heading, [Ramming Speed].”

Modern warships, or warships in his heyday, for that matter, were not designed to ram enemies, and probably wouldn’t survive it either. When the strongest available ship-based weaponry had been light ballistae, turning the vessel itself into a weapon was a viable prospect. But in an age of gunpowder, or even the modern age, a fraction of a salvo would easily match a ramming attack for damage.

Normally.

However, while this situation was a lot of things, “normal” was not one of them. Not by a long shot.

The Dauntless’ bow glowed white-hot, as though it had just been pulled out of a forge, and continued to do so even though the water of the ocean should have cooled it down in a heartbeat. And the seven-thousand-ton destroyer was hurled through the second Raid Boss as though it had been fired from a cannon.

There was a loud “bang” that was clearly audible even over the din of battle, and the loose cloud of rotten fish neatly split apart under the impact, its singular nameplate being replaced by hundreds of individual “Level 1 undead fish” descriptors. Apparently, that had finally been enough to break the previously seemingly indestructible collection of foes.

Yep, the big monster was cut down to size, though the poor bastards who’d be cleaning the deck of the Dauntless would probably have Drake’s picture up on their dartboard for the next century.

It was looking as though they were winning, and yet … damage was mounting. It was hard to quantify just how much metal had been gnawed off the surface of a ship you were currently on, but all of the vessels in Drake’s fleet were looking like hell, and [Current Sense] gave him a perfect view of the damage.

Oh, he knew what he had to do, though he’d have to wipe that damn grin off his face. Or, even better, prevent it from appearing on his face in the first place.

[All Eyes On Me] and [Batten Down The Hatches] as one while Drake directed the Defiant away from the rest of the formation.

The first Skill was a bit of an outlier in his Class, one that he suspected might have been intended to draw the eye in a ball or the like, but it worked just fine for attracting attention in combat. And these were dumb, literally brainless, monsters. If they saw something that looked attackable, they attacked.

And the second was a defensive skill that completely prevented external forces from entering the ship, to a point. Even if the monsters stripped off literal tons of external armor, they’d not be able get through the final layer and cause the ship to start sinking, because doing so would also wind up getting them inside the ship.

Of course, the Skill would eventually be overwhelmed, but by then, the Skill would no longer be needed.

Soon, the ship was utterly covered in undead monsters, piling over each other, to the point where some were getting flung onto the deck.

“The rest of the fleet can unleash a time-on-target salvo onto our position in thirty seconds,” the communications officer reported.

“Ye- …”

A large, mostly rotten tuna slapped against the bridge’s main window, though thankfully, the sound of that was loud enough to muffle the beginning of Drake’s startled exclamation, which he hadn’t been able to muffle.

He cleared his throat. “Warn me five seconds before impact.”

Everyone on the bridge threw him weird looks, and Drake studiously ignored them. They’d talked about this, no part of this crazy plan had come as a surprise to them, and yet, he could understand why they were being skeptical.

A dull “bang” sounded from the front of the ship and the sound of the main gun stopped. And now, with that particular source of noise gone, they could hear every single creak and groan of the vessel with crystal clarity. It was a terrifying sound.

Dangit. He liked this ship. He got along with Captain Smith and the bridge crew, and when this vessel got trashed, he’d have to try establishing this rapport with an entirely new set of people.

“Five seconds.”

And there was the warning.

“[Escape],” Drake announced, the deck lurched underfoot, and suddenly, they were no longer suffering underneath the wrath of countless undead sea creatures, rather being almost fifty meters next to them.

The swarm, no longer linked or fused to form something stronger than the sum of its parts but nevertheless incredibly dangerous, turned and began to move towards them … and blew up under a barrage of explosives, one greater than any single salvo the fleet was capable of unleashing.

“Time on target” wasn’t something Drake would have been able to pull off in his time, but it was such a cool concept. You fired all your guns at an angle that would delay the impact, then shift them so that the next salvo would spend less time in the air, and kept that up as long as you could, allowing countless projectiles to hit as one.

So, that was that. Victory … right?

But Drake didn’t feel like they’d won. And while the damage to his ships was annoying, that wasn’t what had put a damper on his mood. Something in the back of his mind was telling him there was more to this, nad

What was it …

“How deep is the ocean here, right underneath the ship?” he asked, knowing full well that that bit of information could be pulled up in a matter of seconds.

“Around fifty meters.”

“How deep is it according to the most recent survey? Do we have that data?” Drake asked.

The report came after a couple of minutes.

“The ocean is supposed to be fifty-three meters deep …”

“I guess all those depth charges the engineers didn’t manage to figure out how to deploy are going to come in handy after all,” Drake sighed and turned towards the radio operator. “Contact Admiral Chambers, tell him we have a horde of non-swimming undead covering the sea floor that need dealing with.”

And that was likely the final contribution he could make to this whole affair. His flagship was barely keeping afloat, and constant explosions on the sea floor might even be enough to sink the ship.

His fight was over.

[Daredevil of the Sea Lv. 47 -> Daredevil of the Sea Lv. 50]

[Class Evolution Daredevil of the Sea Lv. 50 -> Reckless Admiral of Fortune Lv. 51]

[Reckless Admiral of Fortune Lv. 51 -> Reckless Admiral of Fortune Lv. 52]

[Skill Boost gained]

[Skill gained: Shared Fortune]

[Ascendant Capstone gained: Storied Soul]

[Skill gained: Fortune Favors the Bold]

[Skill gained: Instantaneous Relocation]

[Skill Boost gained]

Oh, that was a rush. Only an immense force of will kept the grin from creeping onto his face. So that was why people liked playing these “video games” so much.

But what was an “Ascendant Capstone”?

Storied Soul (Ascendant Capstone)

The user cannot die casually (by accident) or indirectly/impersonally (nuclear blast, stray bullet, etc.), and even when utterly overwhelmed and/or outclassed, they will at the very least be able to make a good showing of themselves.

Drake took his leave and barely managed to reach the wardroom before he started cackling. Oh, that was a perfect power. The kind legends were made from. He’d died once, and as was the way of all living things, he’d die again once his second life came to an end, but now, he was guaranteed he’d give a good showing. His second death would not be to poison or disease, no, it would be a battle worthy of legend!