Outrage of the Ancients

Tristan

Bones of the Forgotten (raised ossuary), Level 35 Nation Boss

Well, that was gonna be a problem. I shivered as I slowly pulled my nose back

It was “just” Level 35, which seemed to be the limit for the second Challenge, but it wasn’t weak. Definitely not.

This beast that had risen from the famous catacombs of Paris, no, it was them, the innumerable bones of quite literally millions of people risen from the grounds to form that monstrosity.

It was massive. Not just big, like an undead giant or one of the “lesser” bone golems we’d faced back at the mountain. As in, Godzilla huge. A quadripedal monster that generally resembled a large, knuckle-walking ape, with a long tail that had a hefty-looking spiked club on the end, and a massive grinning skull for a head.

Not just the usual blank skull that appeared to be smiling due to the curve of the jaw being exposed but a warped facsimile that displayed cruel mirth while streaks of black … something trailing like tears from eyesockets that were not merely empty but black voids that seemed to draw in more than just light.

I glanced at them for just a moment before I forced myself to tear my gaze away.

It was also surrounded by a halo of explosions that I was pretty sure should have been far closer to it, as in, striking it, not detonating uselessly dozens of meters away.

And finally, it wasn’t visible, but I knew it had an even nastier ability up its proverbial sleeve. It fucked with communications, but only certain kinds. Calling for reinforcements, as the French military had done, was a-okay. As was telling the people inside that reinforcements were coming. And controlling stuff outside the “bubble” from the inside.

But coordinating from afar, in any way, that wouldn’t fly.

Anyone outside of maybe fifty kilometers trying to direct troop movements, let alone guide in smart weaponry, would have more luck beaming messages into outer space to convince omnipotent aliens to solve all problems for us than they would affecting even the slightest change in the battle. That included Charlemagne’s Skills, which was why he was coming as well, leaving the mountain for the first time. I’d be joining him in the command post that had been set up nearby while the others went at that thing directly.

Though I doubted there was a single safe spot on the entire battlefield, even on the back lines.

***

Dietrich

Helicopters were unbearable. The sound, the shaking, the inability to even hear oneself think … they felt like someone had been trying to invent a machine to break a man’s sanity and wound up switching to making a transportation machine halfway through.

And yet they were also, apparently, a vital part of short- and mid-range military transportation.

“Can these doors be opened while in flight?” Dietrich asked as the monster came into view, an immense accumulation of bones that surpassed every boss he’d fought so far combined in terms of power. And on top of that, it came close to equalling the force that had attacked the Untersberg in volume. It was larger than anything he’d ever seen, short of immovable natural objects such as mountains or entire forests.

“You want to jump?” the pilot asked, utterly shocked.

“Do you want to land in front of that thing?” Dietrich replied.

The pilot paused to think for a couple of seconds before she simply responded with a “Where, and how high?”

Dietrich directed her to head above the monster while he pressed his nose to the window, activating all three analysis Skills.

[Conquerer of Legends], unsurprisingly, did absolutely nothing, this pure engine of destruction being beyond anyone’s ability to subdue.

[Equalizer] was equally useless, informing him of the fact that the only thing to stop that thing was to kill it. As long as it was alive, it had the power to annihilate nations.

But [Slayer of Myths] told him exactly how to put an end to this beast. Skulls were the weak points, as with all undead, but not in the usual way. This monster had six nexi of power made up of hundreds of individual skulls, several meters in diameter, that controlled it from the depths of its body.

One in each shoulder, one at the base of the neck, one in its center, and a final one in the tail club, with numerous regular skulls spread throughout the body to conduct animating energy and instructions from the nexi to anything that needed them. Break the individual skulls to slightly weaken the area around them, break one nexus to weaken the related body part, and break all nexi to kill the bastard.

So he pulled out the radio he’d been given and passed on the information … after a couple of false starts. And once that was done, they were already in position.

Mia and Ogier were sharing a helicopter that would land in front of the monster and try to attack it from there, Ogier acting as Dietrich’s apprentice’s shield, while Dietrich himself would be going for the kill directly.

“Here’s fine,” he announced, and the demonic flying machine held its position while he unbuckled himself and stumbled over to the door that was being opened for him by a man strapped in next to it.

“Keep your head down, fall straight to the ground, do not jump up in any way unless you want to get minced by the blades,” the man warned.

Actually, Dietrich was pretty sure that the blades would come off for the worse if they came into contact with his magical helmet Hildegrim, but destroying them would kill everyone in the helicopter, so he’d be avoiding that regardless.

So he leaned forward, out of the flying deathtrap, and simply … let go of the railing. The wind whistled past him, and the distant sound of explosions was rapidly coming closer, but he only had eyes for one thing. The Forgotten.

Mimung slid from its sheath with nary a whisper, and he brought it over and stretched it behind himself, to allow him to put the greatest amount of momentum into the swing as it came back down as he swung his arm in a great arc until his sword arm was resting against his chest and the blade pointing behind him on the other side of his body. The mere passage of the blade had been enough to cause a shockwave to erupt, but the real damage was being done by the wave of silver light that had been projected from its tip and was now washing over the monster.

[Sword Art: Giantsplitter]

The Sword Art gifted in recognition of his ability to cleave giant monsters in twain with a single strike. A feat crystalized into a Skill that he could use at any time, capable of cleaving any titanic foe, logic be damned.

A giant wedge of energy cleaved clean through the monster’s “flesh,” the line of silver energy carving through bone with ease until, from one moment to the next, it simply … winked out. Gone. Poof. Kaput.

The Forgotten seemed to stutter at that moment, right front leg buckling as Dietrich fell past, landing amidst an explosion of dirt as [Master of the Wilderness] prevented any part of the natural world from hurting him.

It straightened again, ambling onwards at a slightly slower pace while he rose to his feet. Huh? What the hell? What had he hit? A nexus?

For a brief moment, all Dietrich could do was stare after it, craning his head to stare at the shallow cut.

He hadn’t aimed anywhere near any of the nexi, that was for sure, it had been rather apparent that the loss of one nexus would be less crippling than literally being cut in two.

Dietrich frowned at the monster, once more triggering [Slayer of Myths] and focussing on its weak points. A nexus was gone, specifically the one at the right front leg, the one that had buckled. The closest one to the strike, but still over a hundred meters away from the location of the cut. It should have been completely undamaged.

That was when the information that Skill, as well as [Equalizer], were feeding him seemed to “update,” as a modern human would put it.

If a single attack was on the verge of utterly crippling the Forgotten, it would be able to negate the attack at the cost of one of those nexi, which would be sacrificed.

Now, that changed things. He didn’t even need to land enough solid strikes anymore; he just needed to use this Skill six more times, and if the attack was destructive enough, such as an attempted bisection, the beast would be forced to sacrifice one of the orbs of power that kept it alive.

Suddenly, the entire paradigm of the battle had shifted, they didn’t need to destroy the thing with raw power anymore, the new win condition was surviving for sixty minutes, enough for him to use his Skill six more tim- …

An expected feeling of dread suddenly rose from the depths of his gut, and not the kind caused by the sixth sense all seasoned warriors inevitably developed. No, this was the System-given instinct, the one that let him learn about its workings without having to look at the windows.

Instead of charging at the monster’s leg to start carving into it with Mimung, he pulled up the “cooldown” tab Tristan had told him about.

Skills on Cooldown

Sword Art: Giantsplitter 59:41 (forcefully extended)

Somehow, things had managed to get even worse, but a dire outlook had never stopped him before, and it sure as hell wouldn’t stop him this time.

Dietrich picked up Mimung, having dropped the sword a moment before impact to avoid impaling himself, and charged at the leg that had lost its nexus.

The sword whistled through the air as he swung it, hacking at the monster as though it were a tree. This monster might be huge, but that also worked against it in some small ways, it was simply not in a position to directly target a single human, or maybe it was ignoring him, focusing on whatever was ahead of it instead.

He didn’t even need to be fancy.

Just a simple, almost horizontal, slash at a slight angle to the ground so that he could keep taking out chunks, removing large wedges rather than merely leaving behind shallow cuts.

Almost a dozen strikes landed before the monster lifted its leg to take another step, forcing Dietrich to start to run after it … until he realized the ground around him was moving.

Everywhere, the chunks of bone that had come loose under his strikes had begun reforming into individually mobile forms, each with a boxy body, four legs, and a tail that curved over their backs like a scorpion’s and ended in a series of long, sharp, spikes.

Of the closest three, one stank like a poorly dug mass grave, black rot dripped from its stingers, the second caught fire the instant it had finished assembling itself, and the third simply looked like it had been bathed in blood.

He briefly took a glance at their nameplates.

Bones of the Diseased (fragment), Level 30 Minion

Bones of the Burned (fragment), Level 30 Minion

Bones of the Murdered (fragment), Level 30 Minion

What did that … damnit!

He threw himself to the side to avoid the burning spike that the monster hurled his way with a simple flick of its tail.

Somehow, Dietrich was certain that however bad he thought things could get, this thing would manage to prove him wrong.

***

Mia

Normally, she’d have preferred to go into battle with Dietrich, but this monster was capable of turning her into a grease stain without even noticing. Having Ogier to hide behind had been a seriously good idea on her teacher’s part.

She craned her neck, staring up into the face of the enemy, dizzyingly high overhead. This monster’s head stood higher than practically all buildings she’d ever seen, well beyond anything she could reach.

It didn’t even look at them as it advanced, though it did shift its massive paw around as it returned to the ground to land on their position instead of right in front of where it had been lifted off from.

Shit! Mia was already sprinting away from the danger zone when Ogier’s booming voice rang out behind her.

“I’ll block, then we start hacking away at it. I focus on ripping it open, and you kill the minions that spawn!”

Every fiber of her body screamed at her to run, that no mortal man could stop the indomitable force of the incoming attack, her mind recalling every rule of force translation she’d ever learned, Newton’s laws and reminding her of the simple fact that even if Ogier could withstand the blow, all that force would just then get applied to the ground at his feet and he’d get planted like a tent pole.

And yet, she stopped, turned, and ran over to where he was standing, Cortain glittering in his right hand while a humble little buckler sat strapped to his left forearm, defiantly thrust towards the sky.

The bony palm impacted with a deafening crash that made thunder sound like the detonation of a wet firecracker, and dust was flung everywhere, briefly blinding her, but once the wave of debris had passed and she could open her eyes again, Mia was treated to an awe-inspiring sight.

A single man, clad in heavy armor, standing beneath a palm that could cover a main battle tank in its entirety, barely straining as he held up the beast with one arm while he rammed his blade home with the other.

Ogier twisted his weapon, forcing it to cause countless shards of bone to splinter away before he withdrew the sword and attacked again.

Could she do any less, especially with him having taken over the task of “holding up the sky?”

Balmung hit the bone above her as she stepped up to the plate, taking out a decently large chunk. She raised the sword again for another attack, but saw something moving behind Ogier, a dripping-red scorpion thing formed from the bone fragments that littered the ground, ready to strike.

Mia acted.

[Sword Art: A Blade Across Time and Space]

The wave of energy washed harmlessly over Ogier, but the monster simply fell apart, not even split in twain, the Skill having only affected the core of the monster.

Ogier gave her a nod in acknowledgment, then went back to attacking the monster until the foot was raised again.

Had he just stood there, supporting the beast’s entire weight, as it had walked over him, putting its full weight on his still very human body … holy … whatever … fuck.

Now that was power!

She could also see Dietrich running in their direction from where he’d left a massive crater in the ground.

“Use this sword with your new art!” he yelled as he closed and threw … something in her direction, but past her in an obviously deliberate motion.

Mia ran over and saw his sword lying there, sunken into the ground up to the hilt. Mimung, the legendary blade, the one he was supposed to be wielding. But when she glanced up, he was still armed, and even at this distance, she could tell it couldn’t be his backup sword, the seax was unmistakeably distinctive.

He could “borrow” any blade he’d ever held for a single attack, she’d known that, he just never used it anymore since the strongest blade he knew was the one he wielded.

But copying it for her to attack with … Mia grinned. That was a cool trick.

She grasped the hilt of the weapon and tried to pull it out, but wound up carving through the ground without even meaning to, its supernatural sharpness rendering the ground incapable of holding it. Though she was just glad that this didn’t count as “using” the weapon.

This sword, even if Dietrich hadn’t told her what he wanted her to do, she’d have known what to do.

So Mia activated her new favorite Skill, and the world split up into a shattered mirror of possibilities.

[Sword Art: Crows Peck the Eagle] showed her everything she could do, attacking every single weak point she could see and/or imagine, even when she had to lunge at the monster or even have Ogier fling her skywards in an attack that might harm the torso but also cost her life in exchange for whatever damage she managed to dish out.

But that didn’t matter, not now, and especially not after she’d boosted the Skill. Twice.

It hadn’t just expanded to include a vastly greater range of “possible strikes”, it would also strike even harder the greater the power difference was between her and her foe.

The world split apart into countless possibilities, potential attacks that she could approve as they were or modify, which she did. This thing might not be animated by the various individual skulls, but breaking them should do something, so she shifted her targetting to include those whenever possible.

And then, the infinite sea of potential collapsed back down into a singular point, the real world, with Mia’s arms and legs burning from exertion and her hand empty from where the summoned sword had vanished, but the monster was looking like it had lost a fight with an alley cat, with hundreds of bones raining down from the various cuts like macabre raindrops.

Amazing result, but more exhausting than she’d expected?

“Can you run?” Dietrich asked, and when she didn’t immediately answer, he just slung her over his shoulder and started sprinting in the direction the monster had been walking, leaving her facing backwards, watching the area they were abandoning. And the reason they were abandoning it.

She’d destroyed dozens of skulls, but clearly, there’d been enough of them in the chunks she’d cut free to animate a ludicrous number of those scorpion things that were now chasing them.

Though based on how quickly they were collapsing back into piles of bones, it felt like the soldiers all around were ecstatic to have targets they could actually bring down with handheld weaponry.

Even so, clearing the area was a damn good idea.

“Grab your radio and pass along the following message: the monster can sacrifice its nexi to block attacks that threaten it, and it can forcefully put Skills on a longer cooldown. Also …”

***

Tristan

I’d been fearing having to try and muddle through communications with English and German, but as it turned out, Charlemagne spoke fluent French. It made sense in hindsight, after all, Dietrich had not only gained mastery of the English language as it was so widespread, but his German had also been updated into something a modern person could understand. Of course Charlemagne’s fluent Latin had been turned into knowledge of French, he almost certainly spoke Spanish and Italian too.

Which left me in the somewhat frustrating position of having to imagine what was being said, rather than being able to follow along. [Burgeoning Omniglot] was helping me catch up, though, at the moment, it just served to make me feel even more confused. Now, instead of being able to fully guess what was happening, I was having to mold those guesses to the maybe one in twenty words the Skill had already taught me.

Damn, I should have let him teach me that instead of a single “charge” of strategy and logistics. Knowing the languages of two of Germany’s neighbors (that didn’t have German as their own national language, or one of them, in Switzerland’s case), would have been so much more useful for me as a diplomat.

We walked into the tent set up to allow for coordination ahead of the monster but off to the side of its expected path, to keep the distance under 50 kilometers for as long as possible. That was the real issue with this monster. It looked slow, but that was purely down to its size. Every step the forgotten took covered a hundred meters, easy, allowing it to move at a good clip even when it wasn’t sprinting to crush tanks or stomp flat defensive positions before their inhabitants fled.

“Over here,” a young lieutenant guided Charlemagne into a spot right behind General Renard, the woman in charge of this whole affair. At least I thought our guide was a lieutenant; I’d studied the rank insignia of the various militaries I expected to be here on the way over but was in no way certain of my ability to make accurate identifications.

Charlemagne wasn’t in charge, obviously, but he was here, and as I saw it, that was a major victory on my part. Civilian leaders had no place on the battlefield in the modern day, and Charlemagne’s exact status was very much up in the air. and part of the reason he was here was that France had asked for help, and Germany had agreed, sending over not just military assets but also passing the call to me, thereby having put the wheels in motion before I’d ever even heard of the incident …

But still, I’d helped.

And now, we were here, sitting in the command center of this part of the battle, coordinating efforts between France, Germany, and, based on the languages I was hearing, Belgium and England too?

At least I was hearing enough English that I could follow along.

[Global Ambassador of Myth Lv. 19 -> Global Ambassador of Myth Lv. 20]

[Capstone Skill gained: Ambassador’s Instinct]

I immediately pulled up the Skill description.

Ambassador’s Instinct (Global Ambassador of Myth Capstone)

You automatically gain an understanding of where you are needed, how you can get there the fastest, and what you need to do when you get there. Efforts to reach the area will be faster and easier, costing half as much fuel/mana/other resource. Ambassador’s Instinct can be used to target portals, teleportation abilities, and scrying spells.

Your range starts out at 100 km and doubles with every 10 Levels gained (current range: 200 km)

So, that was why every fiber of my body had suddenly started screaming at me that I needed to get to the position at the center of a political shitstorm, the one which I was already occupying … something the Skill was apparently unable to acknowledge until I told it to shut its proverbial pie hole.

Cool Skill otherwise, though. I could tell where something was going wrong; it made portals cheaper if I needed to respond to something, and it largely negated any issues involving me having to go somewhere I hadn’t been before.

Which reminded me, now that I was Level 20, [Guide’s Shortcut] would have gained a second daily portal.

Though both those things did very little to help me with the current situation.

“Is the Boss still moving towards Brussels, and is the arrival still estimated at 16:45?” I asked our “guide.” Those were the numbers I’d been told in the beginning, but over two hours had passed since then, and I hadn’t heard anything else during that time.

“Correct.”

“And it’s not changed direction at all, not towards the command center or the people behind it?” I pressed.

“No.”

Damnit.

I spent a couple of seconds considering diplomatic ways to voice how annoying that was before deciding against saying anything. The people here were professionals, they knew the issue. But Charlemagne had no such compunctions.

“So this monster is unwilling to target Ancients,” he surmised. “That makes things more difficult, but it means its path won’t be shifted by anything.”

Exactly. Being able to lead the Forgotten around by the nose simply by dangling Dietrich and Ogier in front of it as tempting targets would have been great, but knowing where it would go had some value too.

But Brussels, why? What was it about that city that drew it in? Was it the population? Because Paris had been pretty much trashed during and after the monster’s emergence, and there weren’t many other big targets available nearby. According to Google, the Lille region of France actually had more people, but not by much.

So, was it the city’s political importance as the capital of the European Union? Did that somehow rank above Ancients in the list of priority targets? No, that wasn’t right, otherwise, Brussel would have been overrun.

The way I saw it, there were two options.

First, the priority lists for spawning and targetting could be different ones, with Ancients being high enough on the list to shift spawn locations but not to alter targetting over a major political center.

Or, second, Nation Bosses had different priorities. It was probably the second one; it was right there in the name. Nation Boss. If FIeld Bosses were meant to dominate a given area or “field,” and Raid Bosses existed to challenge Raid parties, then Nation Bosses existed to fight nations. And what was more important to a nation than its very own nexus of political and economic power?

France’s was pretty much gone, so it was time to go after Belgium’s. I pulled out my phone and found a map.

Luxemburg would be next, then, Amsterdam in the Netherlands, Berlin, Prague … past that, it wouldn’t really matter. If we didn’t manage to bring the monster down before that, we’d likely never bring it down.

Well, I said “we,” but as per usual, I was largely useless when the chips were down.

“I think Nation Bosses might be prioritizing tra- … destroying capital cities over everything else,” I cautiously suggested. “Luxembourg City and Amsterdam should probably be evacuated once Brussels’ population has been saved.”

“The Brussels evacuation has barely started,” Renard replied, clearly having heard me, her voice carrying despite her speaking at a normal volume in a rather noisy environment.

“Would you like me to take care of that?” Charlemagne offered. “If you’ll allow it, I can have that done in the two hours we have remaining.”

He’d spent most of the time here sitting and staring, though I knew that mind of his had been churning the entire time, taking full advantage of all the boosting skills he had, planning.

Renard hesitated briefly before nodding, “Go ahead.”

Not even a “good luck” or a polite equivalent of “don’t fuck up.” The current situation had to be truly dire for her to give a command like that. And for her to be able to give it. Normally, an international monster fight would have likely involved a lot more dick-measuring contests, but apparently, the appearance of the big monster had concentrated a few minds.

The emperor didn’t even hesitate for a single second, he grabbed a nearby laptop that hadn’t seemed to have been claimed by anyone, started sending our “guide” all over the tent, and began to activate Skills.

[Automatic Logistics], [Information Osmosis], and [Optimized Transportation] were ones I recognized, but there were a hell of a lot more besides.

I stopped really listening, as I wouldn’t be able to do anything to help. Instead, I focussed on my surroundings, trying to figure out whether there were any other things I could maybe use to uncover any big “secrets.” I doubted it, though. Sometimes, there was no silver bullet, no big glowing weak spot, no “kryptonite.” Sometimes, the big scary motherfucker was just a big scary motherfucker that needed to be punched in the face until he stopped moving.

I watched, I waited, and I learned. Cusswords, mostly. No one was swearing particularly loudly or openly, and most people limited themselves to a simple “merde,” but since the most common language used for actual communications was English, the new phrases [Burgeoning Omniglot] translated for me tended to be on the “unacceptable in polite society” side.

Also, it turned out that the thing preventing artillery or missiles from landing true was the monster directly destroying them, the uppermost layers of bone automatically exploding outwards like some bizarrely overeager reactive armor, sending thin needles of bone out to meet the projectiles and then, well, the projectiles blew up. Somehow.

Modern weapons should not be blowing up like that, though destructively intercepting enemy attacks was a suitable power for a boss monster like that to have. Something to rob humanity of its best technological tools, or rather, the advantage they gave. I didn’t even want to know what would happen if someone tried to nuke it.

Maybe something like a Casaba Howitzer would work? A nuclear “shaped charge,” a weapon that could detonate at a distance and send out a lance of plasma and radiation?

… No, those were designed for use in space. Besides, who the hell would have one? That concept had last been visited in the 1980s and discarded due to a lack of viability, based on what I knew. France and Britain both had nuclear arsenals, but I doubted they had random experimental warheads lying around at all, let alone in a deployable form.

Airburst detonation of regular explosives? Nope. Not only had that definitely been tried before, but it was also unlikely to be very effective. Shrapnel was an anti-infantry weapon, not the anti-armor weapon that was needed to take down what was essentially an overgrown tank.

And regular explosives lost most of their force when they blew out in the open. Armor-piercing shells that could get through the uppermost layers and then blow would likely dismantle that thing in short order, but, once again, nothing like that could touch the monster.

Thermobaric weaponry? The explosive vapor could be spread from a safe distance … maybe.

I suggested it, and the message was sent up the chain of command. They didn’t have any thermobaric explosives on hand, but apparently, they were being sent along with some future reinforcements. Though I had a feeling that was me being humored as part of a “kitchen sink” approach.

And then I went right back to watching and waiting. Mia, Dietrich, and Ogier were ripping into the monster’s legs, regular soldiers tore apart the smaller monsters that spawned from any skulls that got knocked loose, and whenever they fell behind, a chopper would let the trio leapfrog ahead once more.

Not even ninety minutes left until the monster reached the outskirts of Brussels.

Dietrich would be able to force it to sacrifice one nexus, maybe two, but that was all. Mia was periodically shredding the monster’s surface using her Sword Art whenever it came off cooldown. And Ogier hit the monster like a runaway train whenever he could. But it wasn’t enough.

Then, I overheard a radio transmission that was very interesting to me. King Arthur was being flown in from the UK.

“Does he have a radio?” I asked. “I have a question I need to ask him!”

Apparently, either my or Charlemagne’s pull was enough to earn me the privilege of contacting King Arthur directly.

“Your majesty, can I ask if Excalibur has any special abilities that could be useful here?” I asked.

It might be crossing some kind of personal line he had, but [Innate Etiquette] at least assured me that I wasn’t shoving my foot in my mouth under the circumstances in a situation where I had a chance to know better.

But knowing could make a huge difference because Excalibur was magical, I just didn’t know in what way. Its sheath made it impossible for its bearer to die in battle, but he didn’t have it anymore. It had either been stolen by or at the behest of Morgan la Fay in the story, and the sheath he now kept his sword in was clearly mundane.

So, what could the sword do? The original myths didn’t have much to say, and modern media had filled my head with all kinds of ideas. I’d seen it be everything from a magical sword that shot lasers to a blade burnished in the fire of a dragon that caused wounds that were almost impossible to heal and could kill even the undead. It’d also been a crystal wand that could beat back eldritch beings from before the beginning of the universe, and a flying sword that could fight autonomously, break magical artifacts as well and, once again, cause wounds that were almost impossible to fix.

And those were just the ones I could think of off the top of my head.

Point was, I was hoping for something good.

The radio was silent for a long moment, long enough that I feared he’d thrown his radio across the cabin or otherwise broken it in anger, but after maybe ten seconds, a reply came forth.

“You may,” a gravely voice said. “Excalibur is a sword made to let a mortal man bridge the gap between him and the supernatural.”

I glared at the radio, mentally screaming at it to continue.

It did, after an uncomfortably long pause, which only served to give me enough time to formulate plenty of my own ideas. For example, did it deactivate superpowers on contact? Or did it strengthen the wearer based on the power difference between them and their foe? But both of those turned out to be wrong.

“It does not allow for situations with no way out. Immortality ceases to exist when I slay a being that has it using Excalibur, absolute barriers fold like parchment when struck, and even spells that can be cut apart with ease.”

That last one was likely because he couldn’t normally affect raw magic, thereby rendering the situation a “no way out” issue, therefore, Excalibur could strike and destroy incoming spells. At least as long as he could strike the spell itself, rather than the effect. Kinda hard, not to mention pointless, to destroy a fireball after it had already set the house on fire. Or so I assumed. But asking the specifics of what spells he could intercept might also tread into the territory of asking how to kill him, which I didn’t even need [Innate Etiquette] to tell me was rude. Therefore, I didn’t mention it.

“So if that thing has overpowered trump cards, that actually makes it more vulnerable to you,” I observed and nodded, even though he couldn’t see that. “Thank you.”

And with that, I returned to my previous position next to Charlemagne, staring at the banks of monitors and radios, waiting.

Then, my phone rang and I picked up.

“Frau Kittel, I hope this is good news,” I greeted the Untersberg’s castellan.

“There is a gentleman here at the door, made out of rock, and apparently, he’s asking to speak to you using sign language?” the elderly woman told me.

“Put me on speaker,” I asked.

“You’re on,” she said.

“There’s a very dangerous monster here destroying cities, can you help?” I asked in my now-fluent Czech. “I’m afraid no one will be able to return to the mountain anytime soon.”

“I don’t know what you said, but he’s saying, ‘Where do I have to go?’,” Kittel translated.

“Please wait where you are right now,” I replied in Czech before switching to German. “Where are you?”

“Uh, throne room.”

“Good, I’ll open a portal in a sec,” I replied before repeating the same thing in Czech.

Then, I marched out of the tent and used [Guide’s Shortcut].

The portal wound up opening on the opposite side of the cavernous chamber, but that was no issue for Joseph, the Golem of Prague. I had no clue why he was here, well, there, but I was very glad he was.

Of course, the guards, who had already been a little alarmed by the portal, jumped at his sight, so I tried to reassure them.

“This is the Golem of Prague; he’s here to help.”

… I don’t think that worked. But at least they hadn’t opened fire.

“That thing is a monster meant to face a nation,” I said both with Czech and my hands. It just felt more comfortable to also use sign language when speaking to someone using it, even if it wasn’t strictly speaking necessary. “Can I ask what you wanted at the Untersberg?”

“You almost drew in all the monsters threatening Prague, and according to you, the more of us are in one spot, the more monsters get drawn there. So if I’m with you when the next challenge appears, then Prague will be completely safe.”

Oh, that was a good argument, one I’d have loved to have made … if I’d known exactly at what distance we stopped drawing monsters in from.

Having Joseph in the Untersberg would make things more dangerous in a few days, but if he was even half as strong as I thought he was, he’d be an absolute beast.

“Well, thank you for helping with this, too,” I told him.

Joseph nodded, gave me a thumbs up, and started running straight at the Forgotten. With every step he took, he grew, armor manifesting around him as motes of dust swirled up to meet him, adding more and more mass until he impacted the monster’s leg with an echoing “boom.”

Apparently, getting him here was sufficiently down to my effort that the System rewarded me for it. And this was a very important Level, apparently.

[Class Evolution: Global Ambassador of Myth Lv. 20 -> Myth(ical) Mediator Lv. 21]

[Skill gained: Objective Recordkeeping]

[Skill gained: Shifting Point of View]

So, that was my new Class. A pun of sorts. The “Myth” part was clear: a [Myth Mediator] would basically be a mediator for myths, while the “ical” in brackets turned the whole thing into “a mediator of mythical proportions,” as I understood things.

Therefore, the combination had to be, well, both. An “impressive” mediator … who would be in the middle of fights between the likes of my current “bosses.” Granted, they understood the principle of “if you shoot the messenger, all you’ll get is less mail,” so they were unlikely to come down on me like a ton of bricks if I upset them, but if I had to do this around the likes of Genghis Khan … I’d honestly be safer trying to fistfight the Forgotten out there than trying to mediate with him.

I shivered. Then again, my previous Class had put him on the list of people I needed to visit anyway, and this new one didn’t make things that much worse. Objectively speaking. Subjectively … it was a damn good thing I wasn’t required to do anything in this battle because I wasn’t sure I’d be able to do much of anything.

Of course, I also looked up what my Skills did.

Objective Recordkeeping

You gain a perfect memory from this point onwards and are able to display your objective recollection to others in whatever way is necessary. Unpleasant memories that would normally be forgotten/repressed can be excluded from this effect.

Shifting Point of View

You gain access to a mental construct that has the ability to see and consider anything you want from a second point of view, it can either take up the position of a different individual, or a purely neutral one. You are able to argue or debate with this construct to gain a better understanding of both your and the entity’s perspective.

So basically, the Skills I needed to do the job I feared the Class was designed for. Settle arguments over facts and easily see other points of view.

Which left just one question: could I get any other uses out of those Skills?

[Objective Recordkeeping] was obvious. A perfect memory that came without any of the issues that normally accompanied that kind of ability and hologram powers.

But could I make it more useful?

Not that I could think of at the moment.

As for [Shifting Point of View] … I could know what another person would do, sort of. Combat prediction? Glancing around, I tried predicting how random people in the tent would act by seeing their “point of view” and failed miserably. Maybe not.

How about seeing the world through the eyes of a really smart person? What were Einstein’s thoughts on general relativity? How did Charlemagne see the battlefield?

… Both, abysmal failures.

I could see what they did, but it was filtered through my own knowledge of the topics and my own intelligence, further limited by my imagination. Useless, mostly. Basically, it was a programmable version of my mind that I could bounce ideas off when I wasn’t trying to empathize with a specific person’s opinion.

It could think, right? So, what was, say, twenty-five times one hundred and twenty? More than possible to calculate in one’s mind, but it would take a while, and I wasn’t doing it. But a few seconds later, the “construct” created by the Skill spat out an answer.

3,000.

I pulled out my phone, opened the calculator app, and, well, it was correct. Cool. A neutral, unbiased mind that I could have crunch numbers for me. As long as I was smart enough to figure it out, I could automate the process.

As for how to use that to its greatest effect …

***

Joseph

Originally, he’d planned on fighting this thing as a matter of course. He’d heard of a monster that could tie-up “Ancients” like himself, and that meant that it was a huge threat. Huge threats destroyed cities, and while Jews were rare, any major cities likely had a few Jewish inhabitants. Therefore, fighting something that powerful fell under the umbrella of “protecting the Jewish people.”

But now that he’d lain eyes on the beast, he knew one thing for certain: it was more than capable of reaching and attacking Prague directly. It was a threat, a stain upon this world that needed to die!

[Armor of Gaia] flowed over him, [Might of the Earth] flowed through him, [Avalanche Charge] carried him forward with the inexorable, inevitable, unstoppable power of a mountain’s crushing might, and he was already activating [Titan’s Fist], energy flowing into his right arm and concentrating there, building ever higher.

By the time he reached the people who’d been ripping into the monster so far, he was so fast he flashed past in less than a second, and finally, he leaped.

Joseph’s fist crashed into the monster’s most intact leg, the back left one, aiming straight at its knee. This would be his greatest strike, and he didn’t want to waste its power on something that he could have been broken by a lesser attack.

He could feel bones crack under his fist, and the leg began to bend backwards as the monster came ever-closer to literally reversing the knee, utterly shattering the limb, ruining it beyond repair, when he suddenly slammed into a solid wall. A human being would have doubtlessly ruptured organs in his place, but he merely flattened against the leg like one of those pancakes some humans liked to eat.

However, despite its sudden resistance, the leg seemed to have taken much more fundamental damage than what he’d actually inflicted himself.

Slowly, gravity peeled him off the monster’s leg, and he plunged downwards until he hammered into the ground like a cannonball.

And the leg was once again moving. More slowly and more mechanically, but moving nonetheless. It was going to come down on him, wasn’t it? He’d probably survive, but …

A flash of silver, and the monster’s leg was knocked backwards, replaced by a human who was almost as large as Joseph himself. Then, two more showed up: a man whose impossibly sharp blade took chunks out of the beast and a younger woman who wasn’t doing quite as much, but had clearly earned her place on this battlefield.

If he’d had a voice, he’d have grunted as he straightened back into a sitting position, then rose to his feet and joined the attack, arms stretching to grapple the monster, legs fusing with the very ground itself. Good luck moving now, beast!