Apocalypse Redux

Chapter 289: Return to the Nightmare City

As per usual, Isaac relegated himself to the corner of the room when magical items were being experimented on. He couldn’t meaningfully contribute, so he made sure to stay out of everyone’s way.

The phlebotinum had come in very handy in the next few iterations of the summoning disruptor, allowing it to stay up for minutes at a time, but even when pitted against the weakest monsters possible, it still failed after a bit.

While Isaac worked on some random paperwork, made plans, and schemed, he also kept one ear on the goings on in the lab. It was very informative. His grasp on Korean profanity had almost doubled in just a handful of hours.

But all jokes aside, this could come in incredibly handy even in its current state. All one had to do was install a few of these plates everywhere you didn’t want a monster appearing and there’d be an advanced warning of nearby summoning when the plate started breaking.

Sure, the current plates cost as much as a couple of houses in the suburbs, each, and would only be useable in a handful of places. Just protecting the aboveground portion of the university would have cost the equivalent of Bailey’s yearly budget if they actually had to pay for materials. But it should still be helpful.

Eventually, Raul showed up, looking like he usually did. Comfortable clothes, prehistoric raptor on his shoulder, tiny dragon in his breast pocket. Back home, people had eventually stopped staring and/or trying to pet his familiars. But, for obvious reasons, the locals didn’t have the same degree of familiarity.

Isaac watched the whole thing through his [Aura]. The only thing funnier than people’s reactions to the tiny dragon was the faces they made when the lazy lizard got off his ass, grew to the size of a house and tore a Tier 9 monster to shreds.

Hak headed out to make sure Raul got in without issue.

“Good afternoon. Dr. Han, Professor Kim,” Raul greeted the pair in charge and then went to try and empty his storage, only to realize that there wasn’t anything close to enough space available.

After flinging almost half a dozen ruined plates into storage for later autopsy/material reclamation, Kim happily accepted the materials Raul brought. The bounty wasn’t anything she couldn’t have gotten her hands on without help, but not something she could have afforded to use freely any more than Bailey could have.

At the end of the day, be it in Germany or South Korea, publicly funded researchers could not afford to throw money at problems in the same way that companies could, and Isaac had the full resources of one of the most successful [System]-based startups at his fingertips.

But more important than the materials was Raul’s presence. It didn’t just mean that Isaac now felt a lot more comfortable with going back to R’lyeh, it also meant they could get a hell of a lot more in-depth studying the place.

His [Nature’s True Guardian] [Class] allowed him to do a lot more than merely telling an ancient city of horrors to fuck off. If the anti-summoning project was based on how that city affected its surroundings, his ability to manipulate that would come in very handy.

Kim had also spent some time arranging for proper precautions to be made so the city could be safely explored. A series of people with mental health-monitoring and mind-control detecting [Skills], at a staggered distance from both the city and the people inside it.

Even if the monitors in or near the city were compromised, unable to detect it if the research team was negatively affected, that would be noticed by the people monitoring them. And if the eventual corruption reached them, then the next group would notice. And so on, and so forth, to the point where a good third of the monitors were outside even the worst-case estimate of the city’s range.

Unlike before, they didn’t have to swim several kilometers straight down or rely on fancy spells to create air bubbles. A floating platform had been anchored above the city one and a half years ago, acting as a base for all expeditions downwards.

It was basically a more modern oil rig-lookalike. A large platform of glass and chrome rose out of the water, six pillars disappearing into the arctic water below.

And almost one year earlier on the dot, an elevator had been added in. Teleportation might have been possible, but no one wanted to risk that kind of spatial manipulation around something as disruptive as R’lyeh. And even successful teleports would have always have left the teleported with the nagging feeling that maybe, just maybe, was there a possibility they’d been affected by the nightmarish powers of the city.

So instead, they were treated to a wonderful sight of the deep ocean abyss as the glass bubble sank along the anchor chain. Whoever had decided that this thing had to have clear walls obviously didn’t suffer from thalassophobia. Or had had to use this thing more than once or twice.

Thankfully, no one seemed to have any problem with the descent.

Every few hundred meters, the elevator came to a stop to let one of the monitors off at the stations placed there for just this purpose, and after ten minutes, they were let off at the edge of the city, the air envelope having been extended to cover the entirety of the outside.

“So this is R’lyeh,” Kim shivered, “Creepy.”

“It was worse before,” Raul said. He’d wrapped himself in a blanket of “normal” that managed to not only completely shove away the corrupting energy but also avoid disturbing the area outside the effect in the slightest, ensuring it wouldn’t mess with the research.

Even with the black ocean hanging overhead, sparse lighting throwing shadows that would have been creepy in any place, let alone R’lyeh and literally only five people in view, it was still an improvement over the original state of the place.

Isaac spent most of his time pacing, while Hak, Kim, and Han took their readings, did minor experiments, and finally, asked Raul to start normalizing the field of strangeness.

Then they moved ten meters in any direction and tried again.

If this had happened literally anywhere else, Isaac would have wandered off at this point, exploring the surroundings and made sure there was nothing dangerous in the area.

But he couldn’t do that here. The path he left on might not take him back to where he’d started out from, he might somehow find himself in the bowels of the city, and quite frankly, the idea of ending up in the city alone was one of the most terrifying thoughts he’d had this month.

They kept experimenting, walked a few steps, and experimented again. Over and over until suddenly, they came to a realization that no one had expected.

“I think I know what’s going on with the city,” Kim suddenly exclaimed, “It’s not …”

She stopped when she saw Isaac’s look, “What’s wrong?”

“Can we please do the debrief on the surface?” Isaac asked. He wasn’t a big fan of staying down here any longer than strictly necessary, and that wasn’t even getting into the worry that the city might be feeding the answers to her. Sure, the risk was remote, but he really wanted to ensure that he was getting objective information.

Sure, the monitoring system was as good as it could possibly be, but it was still pants-shittingly terrifying down here.

If Kim had asked, he’d have told her all this, but once he’d started looking uncomfortable, she’d immediately agreed and they all went back up to the surface.

Even if six hours might have been an acceptable exposure time from an info hazard point of view, it was still too long for Isaac’s taste. When you were surprised the floor hadn’t changed in the two seconds you’d spent looking at something different, you knew you’d spent too long in the ever-changing city. Or maybe being on guard all the time had led him to go all-in on guarding against the city’s weirdness and now he was still on guard against that mess even though it was currently two kilometers below the capsule.

The dumbest part was that the city was safe from that point of view, the only monsters who’d ever ended up in it had been summoned by human hands. But some distant part of his mind insisted that a place that freaky had to contain more threats than just strangeness.

And then that realization left him questioning his own sanity for a while, at least until he’d managed to satisfactorily convince himself that the assumption of freaky places having monsters was a standard human thing.

Isaac shivered. The instant they were at the surface, Kim would hopefully be able to explain everything.

They headed straight into the conference room from the elevator, but even then, Kim looked like she might explode from excitement, appearing like a woman half her age.

Her power flowed over the table the instant the door was shut, forming a small copy of the city that shifted as she talked, while Isaac slammed an anti-eavesdropping [Skill] into place.

“It’s all about probabilities,” she grinned, “There isn’t one city, there are dozens, maybe even hundreds. Or maybe they’re configurations of the same city, we’ll have to figure that out later. But the point is, at any given point in time, there is a given probability for each configuration to be in place, leading to the city to constantly shift and change.

“If, however, there is something foreign and sapient in the location, the city doesn’t shift in their line of sight, that might be a safety mechanism, that might be a natural function of how the alteration works, we’d need to check that.

“But the point is that the city is in some sort of natural flux that keeps shifting and shifting it around in ways that’s rough to look at and avoid the attentions of sensory [Auras]. It isn’t an innately hostile force manipulating the city to mess with people, it’s just changing in a way that’s incredibly annoying.”

“What about the effect it has on the human mind?” Han asked, “It only shifts behind your back and that is irritating, but that doesn’t account for the full deleterious impact it has on the psyche.”

“The fluctuating mana field is likely the cause. Magic as we understand it might not be behind the alterations, but we know that the local mana is affected,” Raul said, “I keep the world around me ‘natural’ and I didn’t feel anything weird at all.”

“How about the weird plants, the colors, and all the other fluctuating messes?” Isaac asked.

“We know the world keeps shifting and those phenomena might be extensions of the constant architectural restructuring,” Kim suggested.

“So it’s not a trap meant to ensnare the minds of all those who enter?” Isaac asked. It made sense, in some twisted way, for the whole affair to just be a cosmic accident, but he found it hard to imagine.

“What about the cultists who worshipped the city last time?” Hak asked. He’d mostly stayed quiet, but chose that moment to speak up, “If this was just an accident, how do you explain them?”

Han chuckled sadly at that, “People worship all sorts of things if they’re just given the faintest whiff of a reason. The slightest bit of good fortune might be seen as a divine gift, bad fortune as divine punishment, and anything out of the ordinary as a divine message. Someone already driven insane by the city deciding that anything that happens within was caused by divine providence is perfectly normal, as is the idea that the city’s corruption is actually a gift.”

Isaac winced. That was absolutely true, though. People could zero in on the weirdest shit and turn it into a religion. The members of the nihilistic cult might have been given very specific divine instructions, but there were several groups who’d decided that the mere existence of the [System] was some kind of message.

“So, we’re not dealing with a corrupting artifact at the bottom of the ocean, we’re dealing with a constantly shifting city that people can’t look at because it’s not good for them,” Raul said, “Now, I have just one question: where the fuck did it come from?”

“We’ll have to figure out how long it’s been down there first, we might be able to get further from there,” Kim suggested, “After we figure out how it works and how we can interact with it without going insane.”

“Just because its intended function wasn’t to become an object of obsession doesn’t mean it becoming accessible to humans wasn’t an attack,” Han said darkly.

“And the fact that it’s bad for people doesn’t mean that it was an attack,” Isaac sighed. The city’s weirdness might have been at least somewhat explainable now, but the questions behind its existence only grew with each new discovery.

After a couple of minutes, Kim sent her assistant out of the room for some coffee and food and revealed her second theory.

“I think it might have been some kind of weird gift. Something to read mana patterns and spatial manipulation out of, all wrapped up in a mind-destroying field that made it ‘cheaper’ to hand out,” Kim suggested.

“A divine gift?” Isaac asked rhetorically. It would have explained the magic-less, well, magic. Something to pick apart and reverse engineer for spatial magic and the like. But then again … on one hand, a gift with a sting in the tail to reduce the overall benefit was a possibility, on the other, it might also be a curse that provided some small benefits so it had been cheaper to add.

Or maybe the whole mess was actually “natural”, for lack of a better word, and the human mind just interpreted a slab of continuously changing rock as being a city.

When Hak came back with food and coffee a minute later, the conversation had already turned back towards the standard “we know more, what do we do with that information” topic.

Isaac granted each of the other four another [Blessing of Innovation] and then “made some time for himself”.

What that really meant was that he went for a flight that took him well out of the platform’s observation range. Eventually, he found a small iceberg to land on, and from there, it wasn’t exactly much trouble to melt a small cave into it.

And in case someone was somehow close enough to overhear, Isaac’s fully upgraded anti-eavesdropping capabilities would ensure they didn’t catch anything.

“Hey Loki, I promise that, if you give us a satisfactory explanation about the origin of the city we were just exploring, as per the current, common sense, definition of the words ‘satisfactory’ and ‘explanation’, I’ll pull a public prank on someone who I feel deserves it and that I genuinely believe you’ll find funny based on my current picture of your personality,” Isaac said into the empty air, “If you are unable to grant a satisfactory explanation due to external limitations, we may renegotiate, but the fee cannot be increased after you’ve already answered.”

He wasn’t a particularly big fan of relying on divine help on anything, but as aggravating as this particular deity was, he could be useful.

Being ostensibly neutral, he couldn’t strongly work against either faction, but even just an indication as to which side was responsible for creating the world’s biggest shithole could be immeasurably useful.

For a long moment, nothing happened. That made sense, it would make sense that Loki wouldn’t be in a position to drop everything to visit him, or willing to come running like an eager puppy.

But after an hour, Isaac was still sitting in the freezing cavern, all by himself. He’d pulled out his phone by minute ten, and he’d finished literally everything productive he could do from here by minute forty.

“Oh, so you finally gave in and asked me for help?” Loki asked, appearing right behind Isaac and well inside his personal space. Typical.

Isaac decided not to comment on how long it had taken for him to arrive either, as it really wouldn’t have been worth the fight. And considering how long it had taken, the delay might have just been a tactic to see if Isaac would offer more.

“So, I can answer, this isn’t a particularly difficult or politically dicey question, but you’re being a bit cheap, don’t you think?” Loki grinned, leaning back into the wall, ice reforming to give him a comfortable seat.

“Two pranks,” Isaac said. When Loki didn’t answer, Isaac just raised an eyebrow and met his eyes. For a full minute.

“Are you seriously only going to just leave it at that?” Loki asked.

“I want answers, but there are limits as to how far I’m willing to debase myself,” Isaac shrugged.

“And all of a sudden, there are limits on what you’re willing to do for the sake of the world?” Loki asked.

“That city has been down there for gods only know how long and hasn’t caused any trouble for people who didn’t bother it. If the city is guaranteed to end the world within, say, the next century, you can tell me that for free and we can make negotiations based on that,” Isaac said, “Hell, if there is information that will makes this information more valuable, then tell me that, and we can talk about adjusting the price.”

“Well, there is a chance …”

“Small words only, short sentences,” Isaac interrupted, stone-faced. That would make any messing around and double meanings far easier to spot.

“You’re not fun,” Loki grumbled, then stayed quiet.

So, no big danger emanated from the city. Or at the very least, no danger that the god was willing to talk about.

“I can be fun,” Isaac shrugged, “Just give me a reason.”

“Okay, here’s the deal: you do two pranks as outlined in your original offer, and I give you an explanation about the city you call R’lyeh right now,” Loki offered.

“I’m willing to accept that offer under the stipulation that the city you talk about is the real city at Earth’s pole of inaccessibility, not the fictional city from H.P. Lovecraft’s works,” Isaac countered.

“Three pranks,” Loki countered.

Isaac sighed and hung his head. Close one.

They kept talking, and after a full thirty minutes, they basically settled right back on the original deal of two pranks, made by Isaac personally, in the near future in exchange for satisfactory answers given right now.

“What you call R’lyeh is a big mess accidentally created by a neutral deity who doesn’t really care for sapient life all that much, and no one could be arsed cleaning it up afterwards. Not malicious, just an accident. It’ll negatively affect those who spend more than a few days within 1.87 kilometers of it, but fixing the damage is within humanity’s current capabilities as long as the total exposure time isn’t greater than a month. There is not a single person negatively affected by the city who has not been identified as such.

“You can learn a lot from the city, including tricks with spatial manipulation,” Loki said. And then, he vanished.

How was that a satisfactory ans- … Isaac swore softly under his breath. It would have been satisfactory under standard circumstances, knowing where the hard limits lay, and that there weren’t any walking time bombs running around was beyond helpful. All of the important facts he needed to know had been hit by that explanation.

… Buuuuut Isaac had been hoping for something more, considering he’d been getting information from a god. Just a little bit extra.

Still, he had the answer he needed, he just could never really share it. For one, he didn’t want to explain to the world about how he’d been dealing with deities, and he also didn’t want to encourage others to try their luck.

Loki could be dealt with reasonably well, and his requests weren’t all that destructive.

Now Isaac just had to find a public figure to prank in a way that he thought Loki would find funny, without getting caught.

After spending a few more minutes gathering himself and making plans, then returned to the platform, told Raul, Kim, and Han about the safe exposure limits, and then readied himself for a few more days of boredom.