Apocalypse Redux

Chapter 11: The Grind

“So, is everyone clear on what we’re going to do?” Bailey asked. He’d gathered everyone, Karl and Wechsler included, in the conference room and was presenting the experiment he’d drawn up. It wasn’t particularly complex or outstandingly creative, but it would easily do the job and the results would be useful beyond compare.

“I’m going to check the circle didn’t get damage, charge it, leave, close the door behind me, then stand in the designated spot, moving to another when you tell me, I got it.” Amy replied, doing what Isaac thought was an admirable job of keeping the irritation he was sure she was feeling out of her voice.

It really wasn’t that complicated. Someone other than Isaac would summon a creature and then they’d see who it went after. They’d check how quickly it tracked them, if there was any change in that based on distance, and so on. Basically, anything Bailey had been able to come up with.

“Exactly.” Bailey said.

While she went off and did that, everyone else gathered in front of the monitors, observing everything. Isaac could see that the walls which had been damaged by the last summoning had been repaired so thoroughly that he couldn’t even tell where the damage had been.

“Alright, summoning.” Amy called out from the room opposite theirs, the storage room.

“Holy shit.” Karl whispered “This is what you do all day?”

“Literally only the second time we’ve done this.” Raul replied “But we’re going to keep on doing this for quite a while.”

What followed was a rather long and boring process involving Amy running all over the place while they watched the Golem’s movements. Nothing to write home about, but this was what it took to conduct a proper and scientific experiment. Exhaustive trials and repetition to weed out any results that had occurred purely by coincidence.

In reality, it wasn’t even that long, having taken only ten minutes according to the clock on the wall. But since Isaac didn’t have anything to do in that time, it felt so much longer.

“Alright, that’s it. Isaac, if you would?” Bailey said and Isaac nodded, simply getting up and walking over to the door.

A mere thought was enough to phase through completely, stepping into the room. He strode past the Golem and even as it tried to turn, he drove a [Piercing Strike] into its back, aiming to miss the core. It didn’t even seem to react to the damage, except by shifting its walk slightly to account for the damage. Beyond that, it seemed unbothered.

“No observable sign of pain, no change in behavior, targeting switched from summoner to attacker, all good so far. Keep the distance open.” Bailey’s voice came out over the intercom.

“Any issues?” Isaac asked.

“Nope, all good.” the loudspeaker crackled back to life and after a few seconds added “Kill it.”

The yellow glow of [Piercing Strike] flowed over the knife in Isaac’s hand and sank into the Slate Golem’s body up to the hilt. It stiffened, keeled over and went still.

Slate Golem (Lv. 1) has been slain. 2 XP gained, 1 XP given to summoner.

Upon seeing this, he left, not even bothering to wait for the doors to open. He just walked straight through it using [Spectral Shift].

“… did I get XP for that?” Isaac heard the tail end of a conversation between Amy and the others. They’d have just found out about the fact that the person who summoned a creature got a five percent share of the XP, but always 1 XP at a minimum.

“Yeah, the kill notification said 1 XP got given to you.” Isaac commented from the doorway.

“Alright, we’re going to check up on that later, though. We’re going to focus on understanding the other mechanics first.” Bailey said.

“Doesn’t that mean someone could just summon a random creature in the middle of a crowded area and leg it, then reap the XP when someone else kills it?” Karl asked “Seems like that’s something we should be concerned about.”

“Except it would go after the summoner first. Unless we’re dealing with something super slow like these golems, it would take a hell of a lot more work than is really justified by the reward. It would be a hell of a lot easier to just kill a bunch of weaker creatures.” Patrick pointed out.

“Oh, I’m sure someone will delude themselves into thinking that they’re being smart by not having to kill the creatures while still gaining some rewards.” Amy pointed out “One of those idiot savant situations. Smart enough to create a system that forces others to kill their summoned creatures, too stupid to realize how inefficient it is or how much danger it puts other people in.”

“Unfortunately, you’re probably right.” Karl said “I’ve seen it a bunch of times. People try to make something more efficient, all the while missing that the parts they’re stripping out serve a goal that isn’t entirely apparent.”

“Besides, what would you do with that XP if you can’t also level your [Skills]? Levels and Stats count for a lot, but upgrading one’s [Skills] is a relatively fast way that one can also get stronger.” Isaac added, earning himself uncomprehending glances from the others.

Right, the power boost every [Skill] got at Level 10 wouldn’t be publicly known yet, if anyone had even discovered it at all.

“I think we should shelve that discussion for a bit and keep going on with the current experiment.” Bailey suggested, to the agreement of everyone else.

So that’s what happened. Karl summoned a Golem, walked around a bit to see how it responded and then Isaac stabbed it through the door.

“Ok, am I the only one who thinks this is a little bit of an exploit?” Karl asked “Just summon the creature inside a locked room, stab it through the wall, automatic victory? Everything else in the [System] seems to require effort, this seems a little too easy.”

“I think it’s more of a hard counter type of situation.” Raul said “Isaac’s [Skills] are perfectly suited to this kind of situation and it would be weird if someone got punished for having a situationally powerful build.”

“Yeah, I’m also actually fighting them, it’s just that Slate Golems are really weak. They’re tough for 10 mana summons, but weaker in other aspects. Speed, for example. I just make it look easy.” Isaac added “I don’t think that strategy would work against something stronger. If nothing else, a proper foe would just tear itself free of the room.”

“Well, that’s a pleasant image.” Bailey said, looking a little green at the thought of being trapped in the bowels of the building with something that strong.

“But getting back on the topic of what would happen if one summoned a creature into a situation where it would just die outright, what do you think would happen? If we put a barrel of aqua regia over the summoning circle, do we get any XP?” Amy asked.

“I think you’re all very smart people, I think you can come up with something more humane than dunking what might be a living being in a vat of acid.” Wechsler spoke up for the first time.

“Might be a living being?” Karl frowned.

“We don’t really know how these things work, if they are able to feel pain. Until it can be definitively determined whether we’re killing animals or smashing robots, things like a barrel of the world’s strongest acid are off the table.” Wechsler explained.

With that little conversation out of the way, they continued with the experimentation.

Someone summons the creature and then moves around while the others observe how it tracks the summoner.

One person charges the circle, then passes control on to another.

Someone starts walking away from a charged circle until the monster gets summoned without the summoner’s input.

All very interesting, all very important, all very boring if one knew the outcomes ahead of time.

The creatures would focus on the summoner until they found a helpless target or were attacked.

And creatures would automatically get summoned if one went too far away from a summoning circle. In most cases, the creature would be able to catch up to the summoner eventually, but that obviously didn’t apply to creatures as slow as these Slate Golems.

As countless dead Slate Golems began to pile up, Isaac was very glad that they were using these kinds of elemental summons to try this with. Otherwise, they’d already be ankle deep in blood. Also, that kind of bloodshed would have been hard on even him, let alone everyone else. Most of the people here were biologist of some stripe, likely having dissected more than a few animals in their time, but that didn’t meant that they’d be comfortable with watching that many flesh and blood creatures die.

As for the bodies, they were all getting piled up in the spare room. Using the [Piercing Strike], pickle and sledgehammer method, they broke open a part of the body and then carefully used the cutting [Skill] to extract a perfect specimen of the particular part they were aiming for, this time around.

They also determined that the core was in the same location in every Slate Golem.

Getting all that gravel out of there would be a huge project later on, though Bailey had promised them all some help for that.

Time seemed to stretch into infinity yet also loop as they did the same thing over and over … and over andoverandoverandover again.

At some point, Bailey had left to his office to do some important paperwork while his Research Assistants conducted the experiment in his stead.

Even later still, Isaac slumped down in his seat and bonked his head on the table “What time is it? How long have we been doing this?”

“Uh …” Raul said uncertainly, then said “7 pm. And I have no idea how long it’s been. A decade, maybe?”

“Certainly feels like it.” Patrick added, even the normally dour man having finally been worn down by the constant and repetitive work.

“Yep, but we are done, I didn’t dream that?” Isaac asked.

“Yep.”

“I want to go home or get something to eat or something … but I just can’t seem to gather the energy for it.”

“Yep.”

Isaac forced himself back up onto his feet and ambled out of the room to knock on Bailey’s door.

“Come in.” the answer came a mere moment later.

“Hey, Adam, we’re done over here.” Isaac said after opening the door.

“What, already? That was fast. I hope you didn’t push yourselves to hard.” Bailey said, looking up from what looked like a literal mountain of paperwork.

“I actually think we forgot … it was interesting at first and before we knew it, we were almost done and pushed through.” Isaac said tiredly.

“Yikes. Did everyone else already leave?”

“Nope, they’re just resting in the meeting room.” Isaac said.

“Well, I think it might seriously be time for a break, for all of us. You want a beer? It’s from the microbrewery up the road and it’s excellent.” Bailey offered.

“No thank you.” Isaac said, though he really would have loved one. It was just that he still had some rather important things to do today and, well, fighting monsters while intoxicated was a level of stupid that earned you a Darwin award. Not that he expected to get drunk of a single beer, but better safe than sorry.

“Maybe the others would?” Bailey asked, getting up and heading into the meeting room with Isaac.

“Thank you for the good work, everyone. Next time, please take a break, though.”

“We were afraid we wouldn’t find our way back if we left.” Isaac commented.

“I’d laugh, but I’m too tired.” Amy added, voice incredibly tired.

“That being said, you seem to have done a wonderful job and you are all very much done for the day. Really, you did more than I expected. If you want, go grab yourself a beer from the mini fridge in the breakroom, then enjoy your evening. Goodnight, everyone.” Bailey said, an encouraging smile on his face.

Everyone just tiredly stumbled out of the room.

“Isaac, come join me in my office for a minute, would you?” Bailey asked.

“Yes?”

Isaac sat down in the guest chair across from Bailey, the desk between them far more cluttered than it should have been after a mere couple of days of use.

“So, what did you want to talk to me about?” Isaac asked.

“Well, you’ve been here for a day, what do you think? Would you like to stay here and become a permanent Research Assistant in this faculty?” Bailey asked.

“Like you said, it’s a little slower than just fighting monsters on my own, but we already found out so much. I really do want to stay.” Isaac replied, a tired grin creeping onto his face.

“In that case, here’s the paperwork. Contract, employee information, proper insurance paperwork, questionnaire about constitutional loyalty.” Bailey dumped an entire pile on the desk in front of Isaac.

“Come again? Questionnaire about what?” Isaac said, incredulous.

“This thing right here.” Bailey pulled out a particular set of stapled together pages and flipped them open “Read this part.”

“Are you a member of Al-Qaida? Seriously?” Isaac read it out loud.

“Seriously. The whole thing is like that. It also asks you to confirm that you were never a member of the East German secret police or any one of several dozen different Neo-Nazi and other right wing extremist groups. Why anyone like that would tell the truth on a government form, I have no idea, though. But you are taking a job at a state funded university, by extension working for the state, so you have to fill out that thing.” Bailey said.

“At least it’s worth a laugh.” Isaac sighed, shaking his head and proceeded to start filling out the forms. All the forms.

Eventually, he noticed that Bailey was still sitting there, but had stopped working at some point.

“Are you sure you want to stay here for this? This’ll take a bit.” he cautioned.

“I want to file this as soon as possible so you can start getting paid, I can wait a few minutes.” Bailey replied.

Eventually, the paperwork was done and the two of them walked out together.

“So, what are you going to do now?” Bailey asked.

“Bed.”

Now, that had been a lie. Isaac had absolutely no intention of going to bed just yet. He really wanted to go gain the last few XP points he needed to slot the Aspect of the Hydra. This would give him another five points in Fortitude, a stat which reduced the need for sleep. To be more specific, every ten points gained cut the amount of sleep someone needed in half, so getting it up to seventeen should seriously help him have the time to grind for more power.

“Yeah, sorry for not noticing you guys weren’t taking a break, I was so busy with the paperwork.” Bailey apologized.

“Don’t worry about it, we’re adults, we should have taken one on our own.” Isaac told him “It’s fine.”

A few minutes later, Isaac was walking outside, breathing the cool evening air. Now that that was out of the way, it was time for an actual fight.

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