Outrage of the Ancients

Arthur

Another monster fell beneath his blade, and after briefly checking to make sure it didn’t magically return to life, Arthur marched off.

There were other places to me, more monsters to fight, more things to do.

“Sir, there are reports of a giant monster in the New Forest National Park.”

Arthur turned to see a man in a green uniform giving a gesture he recognized as one of respect by now, his hand open and flat, held above one eye at an angle.

“Sir”. It was an unfamiliar form of address for him, one that was very different from the “your majesty” he was used to, but then again, he wasn’t entirely sure he still deserved to be called by his former title. It felt like just as much of a joke as his so-called “Class”. [King of Unity].

He’d forged Camelot from nothing and then … he’d thought it had returned to nothing as that boat drifted out onto the lake of Avalon. That the only people who’d survived had been himself, and two of his knights, Sir Lucan, and Sir Bedivere. Everyone else, including the traitor Mordred, had fallen. Every remaining member of the round table, every footsoldier, everyone. All killed in a single terrible battle in this civil war against his own son.

The fact that he was still remembered as the father of the nation that existed today did little to soothe that pain. Those deaths had still occurred, and the fact that they were now hundreds of years in the past, if not thousands, he wasn’t entirely clear on the timeline, that didn’t change the situation.

But despite the strangeness and downright bizzarity of this new world, it did have something good. Targets. Monsters that he could take his anger out on.

He’d liked his expeditions and monster hunts before, during his reign, but the demands of court and leadership had always pulled him back to Camelot after seeing just one or even none of the beasts he’d gone after.

The Questing Beast, Twrch Twryth, Cath Palug, and more besides. Some of his greatest triumphs and fondest memories had been won during such expeditions, but the concerns of the “larger picture” had limited what he’d been able to do.

It had just been him and some of the Round Table’s knights, no gossiping nobles to interrupt them, or commoners he needed to act dignified in front of. He could be himself, his comrades could make fun of him when he screwed up dinner when it was his turn to cook, and they could all act as they wanted to, not as they had to.

Now, however, there was nothing do to but fight. Fight, and lose himself to the flow of combat, the feeling of Excalibur’s blade slicing flesh, the impact of an enemy’s titanic fist crunching into his shield … it was the only thing keeping him sane right now.

“Thank you, Second Lieutenant,” Arthur said.

“You don’t say the full rank, it’s just lieutenant, Sir,” the man gently corrected.

“I see,” Arthur replied. He really didn’t, but he’d try to apply the corrections he received and if he made a mistake, well, he’d keep trying until he got it right.

The man led the way towards the infernally noisy means of conveyance that had ferried him all over the country. “He-li-cop-ter.”

If these had existed in his age, he’d have probably had to ban them altogether, they’d have driven the horses insane. Hell, they were well on their way to driving him insane.

However, in a roundabout way, it was also what was saving his mind. Because thanks to it, he didn’t have long to wait for the next fight.

The so-called “New Forest” was a large area that contained wild horses, or he’d been told, and soon, he was able to see some of those out of the window. However, soon afterward, he could see his actual target, and it was definitely his target. Not only was it quite a bit bigger than any normal horse, but there was also a man’s twisted torso growing from its back. Oh, and also, the whole thing had no skin.

Nucklavee (evolved hybrid), Level 15 Field Boss

The monster likely weighed more than the helicopter, was tall enough to look over most castles’ walls with its human head and its entire being glistened wetly with exposed muscle. Its entire body save the tips of its arms, which were so long that they almost dragged across the ground.

There lay a three-fingered hand covered in black rot, tipped with long talons that Arthur decidedly did not like the look of. This was the kind of monster he’d have had to go up against with the entire Round Table in his first life. Today, however …

“It’s noticed us, we’ll have to land far away,” the pilot announced.

“Never mind that, just open the door, I’ll jump,” Arthur ordered.

He was met with a shocked look from the lieutenant, but the man nevertheless opened the door, causing the screaming of the helicopter’s motor to become all the louder, and Arthur hurled himself out into the open air.

A lethal drop, previously, but right now, perfectly fine.

Excalibur flew out of its sheath and a [Grand Slash] flashed out, a tremendous sword of light and power hammering into the nucklavee’s shoulder. The horse-body’s shoulder.

Black, stinking blood flew and the crunch of breaking bone rang out, causing the creature to rear onto its back legs, splattering more of the vile substance around the place. Anywhere the blood touched, plants died and Arthur sincerely doubted he’d be in much better shape if it hit him.

One of the monster’s arms elongated as it lashed out at him and he intercepted it with Excalibur, lopping off the arm above the wrist. A mistake on his part, sadly, as the resulting spray of blood hit Arthur square in the face.

It burned, and the stench seemed to actively crawl up his and try to smother him, and yet … he was fine, one of his new abilities flaring to live, burning with the fury of the sun. He didn’t even have to check to realize it was [Royal Constitution], which apparently also served to protect its bearer from poison.

The blood continued to hurt, and tears streamed from his eyes, but Arthur pressed on.

[Grand Slash] was in the process of recovering, but yet another of his powers was growing in strength until it would be burning at full strength, turning him into a single man with the strength of an entire army. Fittingly, it was named [Army of One].

The nucklavee’s remaining hand raked across Arthur’s chainmail, splitting the rings and rusting the metal while the leader underneath began to rot, but he was past it in a flash and hacked off the monster’s back right leg, combined with him already having broken its front left leg, that was a death sentence.

The monster collapsed to the ground, and Excalibur decapitated the monstrous horse. And yet, the monster continued to move, continued to thrash, blood and even more disgusting fluids spraying across the previously pristine meadow.

So, he needed to remove both heads, was that how it worked?

Arthur did just that, and at that point, the helicopter had already landed outside the defiled zone.

[Royal Ears] was helping him pick up what they were saying even with the distance and infernal racket the machine was still making.

Much of what they were saying was familiar, exclamations of gratitude or surprise, but there was also plenty that he didn’t understand.

And then there was the phrase “decontamination procedures.” He had no idea what that was, but somehow, he was certain that he would absolutely hate it.

***

Joseph

It seemed like the Jewish people were no longer repressed, nor locked in ghettos, even if they’d gotten rare. Extremely so.

That was an unfortunate combination. Instead of being able to guard a single location, he had to march through this city, finding those he was tasked with protecting, but that didn’t exactly work either. After all, he could find Jews, but would he necessarily find them when they actually needed him?

In fact, he was far more often coming across monsters on their own, and it was pretty easy to draw their ire with his very presence alone. His presence and these … whatever they were. This magic known as “Skills” that had coalesced around the scrap of parchment that functioned as his core, empowering him in ways that he never could have thought possible.

As he crushed yet another dog beast under one foot, the voice of this strange System rang out.

[Champion of the People, Artificial Paragon Lv. 42 -> Champion of the People, Artificial Paragon Lv. 43]

[Spell gained: Invisibility]

So, he had that ability again. It had been attached to an amulet when he’d first walked this Earth, but it had broken when Rabbi Loew had had to stop him.

This System was clearly a mighty magic beyond anything that kabbalistic magic was capable of. And it was empowering him, allowing him to step beyond the limits of his previous limitations, allowing him to keep pace with a world that had become home to literal monsters, not just humans that, by all rights, deserved to be called monstrous.

But first, he needed to find some more paper. Perhaps even a book of some sort. What little he’d had when first waking up was already covered in enough scribbles that it showed more ink than paper.

Something for later. For now, he was just doing his job.

With every step, the Prague of today became more and more familiar, his mind connecting it to the Prague of five hundred years ago. Some buildings were old, others even older, to the point where he recognized them, but most were new. Very new. Disgustingly so.

Still, it was his task to protect the Jews in this city, and when that wasn’t needed, guard the city itself.

Step by step, mile by mile, he drew his circles, crushing anything he came across, and directing people into the areas he’d already cleared.

Put one step in front of the other, on and on, until there was nothing left to do. That was what he had been created to do, and that was what he’d do.

***

Temujin

Once upon a time, proper organization had been a difficult thing. Illiterate soldiers had made him compose his orders in rhyme, since they were easier to memorize, and communications delays over vast distances meant that there was very little he could do to control a force he wasn’t right next to.

That last one had largely been compensated for by capable commanders such as Jebe, Subutai, Kublia, and Jelme, but even so, it had been a big issue.

Today’s world, on the other hand, had the exact opposite problem. Too much information, too much connectivity, an overload of the senses and mind that made it utterly impossible to take in everything one could learn.

However, this magic known as “Skills” could compensate for all of that for the most part.

He was currently holed up in Ulaanbaatar’s university, getting himself caught up on the world’s developments, but at the same time, his Skills were spreading out, affecting the world in ways he never could have thought possible.

[Remote Recruitment] was blaring his presence out into the world, as if someone were endlessly blowing on a trumpet, somehow managing to convey the full breadth of his message despite merely being an ephemeral feeling for those who received it. And when someone accepted that offer, he also knew about it, including how much they meant it. Some only joined out of fear of the monsters at the proverbial gates, others were afraid of him, and yet, a staggering number chose to follow because they wanted to, because they wanted him.

That last part was something of a double-edged sword, however. As far as he knew, history hadn’t overly exaggerated him and what he was capable of, but if his descendants and the scribes they employed had somehow made proclamations he was not capable of living up to … the people would turn on him.

Once again, he’d made sure to find out about the past and the lay of the land once he’d gotten his hands on people who could share that information, so it seemed like things were alright, but relying on your intelligence being absolutely and unchangingly true was a recipe for disaster.

That meant trying to understand the basics of modern life. The history he’d slept through, yes, but also concepts like mass production, globalization, automation and the capability of modern machinery in general, modern weaponry, communications technology, and many more besides.

Including something called “social media”, which appeared to be the distilled essence of modern communication, framed in an exceedingly strange way.

At first, this “social media” had seemed like a grand waste of time. Something for the rich to do to show just how much time they had on their hands. That was what it would have been in his time. Nowadays, that was only half right. Plenty of rich idiots doing idiotic things that they, through a process he wasn’t entirely clear on yet, got even richer with. But also plenty of normal people created “content”, and it was mostly normal people who consumed said “content”.

And then there were people who used social media to share information or warnings. He was told that a lot of that information, especially when it pertained to health, was nonsense, but there were some hidden gems as well. And one could get that information mere seconds after its originator had made it available.

That was particularly relevant right now, where he was watching a so-called “YouTube short” of a young European scholar who’d been investigating the System.

“Basically, all you have to do is ask for descriptions …”

So, it really was that simple, wasn’t it? Know there were descriptions to be had, and ask for them?

“System, can I …” Temujin had begun, but apparently, all it took to get a visible description was to think the request, it didn’t require speaking.

…

Instantaneous Training: Mangudai

Instantly trains a given group of people in everything needed to become a Mangudai

Strength of the Horde

The strength of your people grows logarithmically with their number, the tipping point is at 1 million people.

Moment of Glory

Activate this Skill to temporarily boost your physical capabilities for a single action and draw the eye of any allies or enemies to whom this distraction would not prove problematic. Terrify enemies and embolden allies when you succeed at that action

I Claim This Weapon

Transform any object you hold into a weapon suitable for you

Inevitable Conclusion

Skip the progress of a battle as long as a specific outcome is obvious. This Skill cannot kill or destroy, but it will make devastating changes to enemy formations

Remote Recruitment

Announce your presence to anyone who might be amenable to joining your cause (this effect can be toggled), they will know what your cause and requirements are, and once they accept, you will know of their loyalty automatically

Remote Administration

Remotely control your lands, unless focusing on a given area, amount of information gained will be uniform.

…

It was a lengthy list, so big that he had to “scroll” to see it fully, but at least he’d managed to figure out how that worked already.

Also, now he knew how [Strength of the Horde] truly worked.

Its strength flowed through him and those who’d decided to bow down to him. It strengthened everyone on a “logarithmic curve”, which he had to have explained to him but it made sense once that had happened and he knew what it was. The power gain was rapid up to a million, then it slowed down until it eventually reached an absolute crawl, but even then, every new addition would strengthen them as a whole.

This list also explained why had so much trouble using [Remote Administration]. Unless he was heavily focussing on a specific area and interrogating the Skill about it, he’d get the exact same level of information from everything that was “his”. Which made it exceedingly easy to accidentally drown himself in a sea of information.

It likely wouldn’t be long before he’d have to almost entirely disable the effect, to the point where the only things he could tell was whether or not a given area under his control was currently a disaster zone. Or in the process of becoming one, he’d probably notice that too.

Now that bit of information on the System had been useful. Was social media something akin to a crucible? Something that flooded its users with information, allowing only those who were able to find the gems amidst the dross to rise?

Temujin was busy talking, listening, and simultaneously testing the limits of [Remote Administration] when a woman burst in through the door, whom he recognized as Sarangerel after a long moment, who’d brought him here, to this university. But of the various people who’d ducked in and out of this area, she was the only one he could reliably identify.

This was getting embarrassing. Of course, he hadn’t known every single person in the old horde by name, but he’d known those he dealt with directly so well that he’d even been able to recognize them even based on the sound of their footsteps outside his tent.

“Genghis Khan, there is another large monster closing in on the university from the southwest, one kilometer away.”

Nowadays, for now, at least, that title always caused a twinge of annoyance in him. Because apparently, much of the world had entirely forgotten that that wasn’t his name. In fact, when he’d been walking across the grounds of this university, a terrified-looking Westerner had looked rather put out by hearing him being addressed as that.

Because unlike Mongolians, who only had their personal names, Westerners seemed obsessed with making sure that everyone had a family name, but also using either their personal or family name to refer to someone, not both.

Point was, Westerners were weird, and their historians were fools.

“I’ll deal with it,” he announced as he rose in a flash, striding towards the wall, which was currently covered in multiple objects that weighed around a single kilogram, perfect for being turned into a javelin by the influence of his Skills.

Normally, he’d have stepped outside the door for something like this, but he had a well-placed window facing the direction his new aide had indicated, so he just used that.

He felt that [Indirect Fire] was meant to work with siege equipment and the like, allowing him to first calculate and then execute attacks at targets he could not see but whose location was known. But there had been nothing that indicated that he was not able to use it with a simple javelin.

Sarangerel had told him the rough direction and distance, and though it had taken him quite a bit to get a handle on modern measurements, he’d managed it.

With that information, he could focus on the relevant area with [Remote Administration], excluding everything else so that he may gain every scrap of information possible. He found there were enough people who’d chosen to follow him in the area that he could locate the monster based on what they were seeing and hearing.

That information immediately went to [Indirect Fire], which instantly returned a complex calculation of forces and angles that might have made sense to modern scholars, but not him. Yet he could still follow these directions perfectly.

His arm whipped through the air and the javelin tore through the sky, hammering into its target in an instant. He stayed focused on the area for a few moments more, until he knew that the monster was indeed dead, then sat back down.

“Continue,” he asked the history scholar who’d been giving him a brief overview of world history since his supposed “death”.

The man obeyed instantly. It hadn’t been an order, but it might as well have been, so that was how it had been interpreted.

It was a sweeping story, of a war that had made Temudjin’s many conquests seem like a squabble between children, at least when compared on a basis of length.

“… And that was the end of the Third Reich, which was split up into East and West Germany.”

Wow. That Adolf Hitler … was an idiot. A complete and utter moron. He’d managed to forge an empire from the shards of an old nation, but built it on the basis of lies and propaganda. It would have failed anyway, even if he hadn’t lost the war, which he had done. Soundly.

But there was so much more utterly wrong with everything. Instead of pointing at one of the countless actual foes the German people had had, he’d singled out the Jewish people as scapegoats and deported them en masse … including all the doctors, engineers, and other vital professions that his empire was in desperate need of.

Instead of integrating them properly, he’d alienated them, and anyone else he could declare as “other”.

And then, he’d attacked his strongest ally over racism of all things. Not internal conflicts, not desperation, just because he’d declared them a part of the “other” in his ideology, and essentially doomed his war over literally nothing. Not to mention that all of his actions had been beyond perfect at painting himself the villain he was in the eyes of the international community.

That would have been a great time to return. An enemy force built upon shaky ideals rather than conviction, and one that was downright evil.

The rallying cries practically invented themselves.

“Come join Mongolia! Gain a position based on your capabilities and efforts, and kick the bigots in the teeth!”

It was a fantastic offer, and Hitler had created fertile ground for such offers to be received perfectly.

Or maybe it wouldn’t have gone that smoothly. It didn’t seem like there would have been any Skills to gain back then, and Mongolia was too far from Europe to be able to engage properly. No, it was probably a good thing he’d returned now, instead of seventy years ago.

Sarangerel entered while he was still musing over what he’d just learned. He hadn’t had to ask her to be his aide, she’d just begun to do so on his own, and he was beyond glad things had worked out that way. A strong right hand was invaluable in almost all circumstances.

“Ghengis Khan, there are envoys from the government here,” she reported.

That could either be a good sign or end exceedingly badly.

Temujin straightened from a regular sitting position into a more regal pose, then belatedly activated [Striking Figure] once he remembered he had that particular power.

Whether his visitors were here to make a deal with him or start a fight, he’d deal with it. He’d risen from nothing to Khan of his own horde, then become the ruler of all Mongols, the Genghis Khan, the universal ruler. He’d unite Mongolia once more and do whatever he had to to win against these monsters.

Temudjin, Level 63 [Legendary Khan of Duality], was a force unlike anything this world had ever seen … even if he doubted he’d be able to say that with a straight face anytime soon. These “Skills” and “Classes” were just too strange.