Fionn

  Luck. It could fell the greatest warrior, or allow the most untalented dunce to rise to glory. And it was a fickle force one could never rely on. Yet in this battle, and this battle only, it seemed to be entirely on their side.

  Soldiers tripping out of the way of attacks, the phantoms unleashed by the Nation Boss stumbling straight into bullets, the not quite 100% controllable lightning bolts from Tristan’s storm suddenly and obviously a lot more accurate, far more abruptly than simply practice would have explained. And the same effect seemed to extend to every other situation that came down to fortune, rather than skill.

  Though was it really luck when an intelligence was guiding it?

  Either way, the battle was currently in something of a holding pattern. The Nation Boss’ earthen limbs were lashing out in a never-ending staccato of blows that caused the ground to tremble. Yet many were blocked, Ogier and Conán were mostly responsible for that, though Ossian’s magic likewise helped.

  Though at the same time, they weren’t making much headway either. Gae Bolg might have pinned the monster in place, like a butterfly in a collection case, but killing the beast was a whole other issue.

  And there were still buildings collapsing from the shockwaves of the never-ending impacts of the boss’ attacks.

  Dietrich threatening to cut the monster in half was unlikely to work again, considering how it could repair injuries, which meant he’d have to strike a core directly to make it stick.

  The only one who was managing to do more than disrupt the monster’s form was Arthur, obviously. A [Grand Slash] with Excalibur had left behind a crater that remained even minutes later, but other than that … they were fighting dirt. They needed to … they needed to stop it from moving. Dirt could freely flow around and reform, but a solid block could not.

  Melt it?

  No, it was raining, and even if it weren’t raining, they’d have a dust storm to deal with, and using fire to turn the ground into volcanic glass would result in a titanic explosion.

  Hm … how about a little alchemy?

  He hung there in the air for a long moment, mana pool spiraling slowly but steadily down to fuel the winds keeping him aloft, Gae Dearg clutched in his left hand, ready to be hurled at any target that presented itself, while he’d stuck his right thumb into the corner of his mouth.

  Could he turn the dirt into concrete and then rapidly harden it using fire magic?

  Apparently not.

  So, what did modern people use to harden the earth?

  Polyurethane foam stuck together rocks in some places, quicklime or fly ash could stabilize the ground in places … there were options. Not ones that would be quick or easy, and far from all would be useable here, but they existed.

  “Tristan, use all the lightning left in the storm, then cut off the rain,” Fionn ordered, knowing the message would get passed along, then let himself fall down to the ground to search for what he needed. Nothing he’d found out about would normally work in conditions like this, but then again, he had magic. And he’d heard its dominance of the laws of physics and logic, in general, be described rather creatively.

  ***

  Dietrich

  Mimung ripped through another spectral soldier with ease, as though it provided less resistance than even air, vanishing as though it were a mere mirage. It could have been the dozenth, or the hundredth, he genuinely no longer knew.

  Nor did he really know how long he had been here. His entire world had shrunken down into a narrow field of false ghosts and churning earth, an endless force to hack and slash into pieces, and the ground he was making his stand on.

  [Endless Cut] allowed his blade to flash from target to target even when they did provide a measure of resistance. Mimung had never rested for even a second in … in … a long time. A very long time.

  Dietrich took a brief second to check the list of Skills on cooldown.

  An hour.

  He’d been at this for almost an hour, judging by the fact that his [Sword Art] was almost off cooldown.

  [A Brush With Death] had triggered a little over three minutes ago and therefore remained unavailable, he was likewise unable to draw upon [Grand Slash] for now, and despite its minuscule cooldown, even [Titan Strike] was on cooldown.

  However, none of that mattered at the moment, because his strongest [Skill] was almost off cooldown.

  “So, where are those cores …” he asked, the fact that he said that out loud likely not being the best of signs, and was rewarded with the information he sought a moment later as [Slayer of Legends] activated.

  As always, the Skill that told him how to kill his foes was the only one of his analysis abilities worth a damn, monsters could not be subdued, could not be conquered, could not be stripped of their abilities by anything short of death.

  The Nation Boss had five cores left. One immobile underneath the obelisk, a second trapped on the far side of its body by Gae Bolg, and three freely mobile ones. Two were easy targets that could be reached by others, the others would be harder to reach but more easily by him than by the others … no, he couldn’t risk missing this shot and no one was anywhere close to reaching the more difficult targets.

  Dietrich leaped back to avoid a tree-trunk-sized earthen limb that slammed into the ground with enough force that if there had still been any building standing in a hundred meters, well, it wouldn’t have been standing anymore.

  As he flew through the air, he set both hands on the hilt of Mimung, focussed on his target, and the instant his boots hit the floor, swung. His [Sword Art] unleashed a ray of light that provided no illumination, a cutting force without a blade, a strike without an impact.

  The Nation Boss’ body simply slopped back together behind its passage, but even this monster could take wounds. And when it was injured, that fact was impossible to miss.

  For a brief moment, the Rebellion’s Legacy stiffened, freezing, almost long enough for anyone who could not see its cores or the flow of its magic to imagine that it had truly died … and then it went berserk.

  Dietrich ran, but before he’d managed to get more than a couple of steps away, the ground beneath bucked and launched him skywards with such force that the ground underneath seemed to vanish in a heartbeat.

  He went spinning through the air, sky, and ground alternating in his vision a dozen times in the span of a few seconds until he eventually managed to stabilize his fall.

  Oh … he was high. As high as he’d been the last time he’d flown in one of those damn “helicopters.” At least he would not be injured by the impact.

  In the distance, he could see Ogier angling his fall to land atop the monster, clearly aiming to take full advantage of his momentum and Skills to turn this situation back on the beast.

  Ossian Mac Cumail was collecting Arthur and the Fianna atop a cushion of wind that slowed their descent into something much more survivable.

  Which just left Mia … she might only be the weakest of those who had met the monster in melee combat by a small margin, but she was still the weakest. And he knew enough of her abilities to be aware of the fact that she was in real danger from the fall.

  But what he really hoped was that she wasn’t somewhere among the debris that had been hurled much further away than the fighters, set to come down kilometers distant, devastating areas that had, thus far, survived entirely unharmed.

  ***

  Mia

  Okay, okay, okay, she was falling through the sky at speeds that were probably below terminal velocity, but in all likelihood more than high enough to be lethal, or at least crippling.

  Fuck.

  Okay, think, Mia, think. There’s got to be a way out of this, a trick, any trick, that can solve this … people have survived falling out of planes without parachutes before, and you’re literally superhuman by now …

  It was strange how much time she had to think. It almost felt as though she had all the time in the world, yet she knew that she only had several seconds at most. Not to mention that the longer she fell, the higher she was, the harder the impact would be … unless she was high enough to hit actual terminal velocity, aka the point where air resistance was equal to the pull of gravity, but one needed to jump from truly ridiculous heights to reach that point.

  Also, it was entirely beside the point.

  People had survived high falls before, including the record holder, who’d passed out prior to “landing,” allowing her to absorb the impact far more easily than she would have had she been awake and tensed up. The same thing also allowed drunk people to walk off quite a lot, their reflexes were so slow that they never tensed up prior to getting hit, and in that relaxed state, they suffered only negligible injuries.

  So, use [Mastery of the Self] to relax as much as possible and pray that was enough?

  Well, yes, and then …

  Her next realization came when she remembered one of her earlier serious engineering experiments, a tiny little cardboard rocket launched skywards by what was functionally just a more specialized firecracker, then would pop the top when it started falling again so that a ribbon could unfurl and slow the rocket as it fell. One did not need a full parachute to slow one’s descent.

  Internally cursing herself for not remembering that little trick earlier, Mia shimmied out of her gambeson and held it behind herself, the reinforced jacket that had started life as a bulletproof vest before the Untersberg’s handful of magical crafters had gotten their hands on it.

  Then, she just held it behind herself and immediately, she could feel the rush of wind past her face slacken. Not by much, but a little. Enough that she could tell it was working.

  Now just wait and pray …

  Mia had already resigned herself to that outcome when she saw Ogier, only [Preternatural Pericognition] alerting her to his presence, the steel-clad titan of a man seemingly angling himself to come down with as much momentum as humanly possible, he was, in fact, diving headfirst like some lunatic skydiver attempting to set an airspeed record.

  Right, he had that Skill that cut his momentum to zero to create a massive shockwave. And a shockwave coming from below, assuming it didn’t kill her outright, would also slow her.

  Granted, the Mythbusters hadn’t been able to prove the myth that claimed a bomb’s shockwave had saved a pilot falling without a parachute in WW2, but the logic was at least slightly, well, logical.

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

  So she angled herself in his direction, trusting that the blast caused by his Skill wouldn’t be too great … hoo boy, she turned out to be wrong about that. She’d also clearly been unaware of the fact that he had something to prevent friendly fire, because if he hadn’t, Mia would be dead.

  Ogier Danske struck the ground like a literal meteor, yet another shockwave not only toppling over further buildings in the distance, but also shattering buildings all over the city.

  For a brief instant, Mia only saw the impact, then the shockwave reached her position and struck like the fist of an angry god, sending her tumbling once again, except this time, her ears were ringing, and her face was feeling like that time she’d decided to bodycheck a wave twice as tall as she was, at eight years old. Not her brightest decision, then. Though now, her position was far more … fortunate.

  Because once she was falling straight again, she could not only see Ogier climbing off the shattered remains of a third core, but also a fully intact and exposed fourth core. Less than a hundred meters beneath her.

  [Sword Art: Crows Peck the Eagle].

  One second, Mia Vogt was falling to, if not her death, then a long hospital stay.

  The next, she was in front of the core, having flashed down to the one singular exposed weak point she could reach, guided by her power, Balmung cleaving the beast’s vital organ in twain.

  And then, she was back in her original spot, falling, heading straight into the lethargically thrashing dirt beneath.

  Logically, Mia knew she only had a second or two left to go, yet those seconds stretched off into infinity, an involuntary blink seeming to transform into her closing her eyes for so long it was more akin to a meditation session, yet when they opened again, she had barely move …

  The impact itself was over in a flash. She slammed into the monster’s body, [Mastery of the Self] allowing her to relax as much as possible, [Impact Absorbtion] to further reduce the damage while [Physical Boost’s] general enhancement of her body allowed her to take harder hits, all contributed and together, somehow, they saved her.

  It still knocked the wind out of her, leaving her struggling to breathe even before the monster’s body beneath her bucked, flinging her off into the ruins of the city.

  She then lay there for a bit, could have been a second, could have been an hour, she honestly could not tell at that point, just staring into the sky, gasping like a fish in an attempt to suck in air, trying to will her body to move again, praying that it could, in fact, move.

  When Mia did finally manage to sit up again, and was about to stand, she saw a sight that was both entirely unexpected yet entirely in line with what she knew of the man. Fionn was back, and pouring something onto the monster.

  ***

  Fionn

  Three more cores destroyed. One using the tried and true method of Dietrich’s Sword Art, but two more using something more creative. If not to say “lucky break.”

  But he had a plan to deal with the rest. One core was trapped, isolated in the smaller section of the boss’ body by Gae Bolg, the other freely moving around in the main part.

  He decided to go for the weaker target, with less wiggle-room, began dumping the sacks of material he’d have to later compensate that hardware for onto the monster, and then started casting his spells.

  [Catalyze] was one of those spells that sounded like it did one thing, but could really do hundreds of things, one just needed the right knowledge. Though in his case, the real issue had come in the form of needing to have figured out that he needed to look for said knowledge.

  It really would have been so much easier to build the academy if he’d used that instead of manually drying the concrete with fire magic. Instead, they’d spent hours putting that thing together, back together in a couple of spots.

  Now though, now he’d looked even deeper into the endless void of raw information he’d eaten all those centuries, nearly two millennia, ago, and found a better way.

  The ground was still more than wet enough, the combination of Tristan’s [Century Storm] and the Boss’ endless churning of the earth had turned the former park into a mud pit of tremendous proportions, and hurling in bags of concrete and ripping them open just before impact using a simple application of telekinesis. The grey dust vanished in an instant, sucked away into the hungry maelstrom that was the monster attempting to reform itself. Only to emerge barely thirty seconds later as a huge slab of brown-grew “stone” several times the size of a car.

  But it was already breaking back apart.

  “Conan, Goll, grab that, then take it as far away as you can,” Fionn ordered, not needing Charlemagne to pass orders along to his own men.

  The monster had too much mass to solidify and rip out bit by bit, not possible even if he’d actually brought enough material. Which he’d decidedly not.

  Alright, next try. Two huge gallons of chemicals that, when mixed would start bubbling and frothing and expanding into a huge mass of rapidly solidifying foam that was used to hold together some dikes in the Netherlands.

  The foam expanded, swallowed up earth … only to be promptly ejected by the monster who simply lacked the information to know that the foam wasn’t some voracious, all-consuming, all-destroying malevolent force that could rip it apart completely.

  Granted, it was doing some real work, expanding at a visible pace without ever needing the [Catalyst] spell, a truly impressive creation of modern chemistry, but it wasn’t anywhere near enough to stop a monster like that.

  Not unless it panicked and started ejecting massive slabs of itself as it was now doing, until it finally flashed him its core. And now that it was exposed to the open air, it was vulnerable. Not for long, because Caoilte was there in a flash, hacking it apart with a single strike.

  Caoilte mac Rónáin hadn’t had many chances to shine thus far, raw speed was vulnerable to mobs of enemies, nor had it helped him reach the deep-seated cores of the previous Nation Boss, but when it came to exploiting clear weaknesses, nothing beat him.

  The core shattered in an instant, and the monster started thrashing. Again.

  Though this time around, it was nothing particularly impressive, not anymore. They’d ripped apart five out of its six cores, its power had been whittled down to nearly nothing. And it wasn’t like there was anything left to destroy because, well, anything that could be broken had broken, hours ago.

  They might not have won yet, but they were close, a lot closer than a mere sixth of the way left to go because the monster they’d have to fight through was so much weaker than it had been in the beginning.

  And then the final core pulled itself free from Gae Bolg along with a generous helping of regular dirt. As it turned out, when the spear wasn’t between two cores, teh beast could and would just sacrifice a massive chunk of its body to regain its mobility … wonderful.

  ***

  Mia

  The Nation Boss was loose. Not just rampaging, but rampaging and moving.

  Aw, come on …

  Mia groaned as she pulled herself to her feet by grabbing a large chunk of nearby rubble.

  Everything hurt. Only one of her ribs felt broken, everything else seemed more bruised than anything else and in general, she felt bad enough that it was unlikely there was shock preventing her from noticing outright fatal wounds, near as she could tell, she didn’t have a concussion either, but Mia knew she was also damn far from okay.

  Balmung swept through the air as she activated her big ranged attack, [Sword Art: A Blade Across Time and Space], an ethereal projection slashing into the monster’s body, entirely bypassing its “armor”. If she hit the core, it’d be the end of the line for the boss.

  … she didn’t hit.

  Would have been too much of a coincidence if it had worked, though, even with how luck seemed to have been on their side so far. Or maybe they’d used it all up already. Between how effective Ogier’s human bomb technique had been and the fact that she’d survived the fall as well as she had, as a group, they’d likely blown through several lifetimes’ worth of good fortune.

  So she started lazily tossing fireballs in the monster’s direction, the grand culmination of everything she had left in the tank. Well, it wasn’t “lazy,” it just looked that way because moving her arm too abruptly hurt something fierce.

  “Ma’am, are you alright?”

  The voice had come from behind her, but with [Preternatural Pericognition], she should have seen the man anyway. The fact that she hadn’t … it was hardly surprising anymore. Yet another sign of her being in bad shape, she guessed.

  “I’ll live, but I’m out of this fight … mostly,” Mia replied, glancing at the cooldown for her [Sword Art]. Nine minutes, twenty-three seconds left.

  She actually had a Skill called [Martial Artisan] that shortened her cooldowns based on any active Skills that weren’t currently on cooldown, but she had a grand total of abilities that could, in fact, be on cooldown and she’d used them both.

  “Do you need a ride?” the soldier asked.

  “When it’s over,” she replied, glaring across the crater the monster’s body had left behind.

  The battle had shifted more into a traditional Raid Boss fight, with seven Ancients fighting the monster, ripping it to pieces … except the final core was apparently rather squirrely.

  And then, a massive bolt of lightning struck the monster and wiped it from existence. Completely, entirely, and utterly.

  It was only when the System’s voice informed her of her power gains that she realized it was over.

  Wha …

  “What in the blue blazes just happened? Why didn’t they do that before?” the soldier next to her asked, voicing exactly what she’d been thinking … until she saw the old man striding across the battlefield, looking far cleaner than he had any right to, considering the state of his surroundings.

  Mia shrugged. “Merlin being Merlin. Gotta ask him.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yep,” she nodded. “So, could you drive me to wherever my brother is? He should be in the main command center, and he’s playing taxi.”

  “This way,” the soldier gestured at a jeep, or at least a military vehicle that looked like one, a hundred meters or so distant. Then, he frowned at her. “Taxi?”

  “He can teleport,” Mia said as she picked her way across the debris field until she finally managed to reach and sit down in the jeep.

  Now, she could finally look at her gains.

  And just what gains they were. Six levels in her new Class, which was as powerful as its name was ominous.

  [Unforgiving Blade Lv. 38 -> Unforgiving Blade Lv. 44]

  [Skill gained: Undying Fortitude]

  [Skill Boost gained]

  [Skill gained: Sword Art: Foebreaker]

  [Skill Boost gained]

  [Skill gained: Memento Mori]

  [Skill Boost gained]

  Skimming the Skill descriptions let her know these Skills were as powerful as their names indicate. [Undying Fortitude] let her go well beyond human limits in matters of both endurance and surviving with injuries, her new [Sword Art] could outright break parts of her enemy when she struck, not just their physical bodies but also their magic and techniques, temporarily sealing them if her attack broke through mystical defenses or bashed aside arcane attacks.

  And finally, [Memento Mori], or, in English, “remember you must die.” Though it was usually translated as something more poetic such as “remember that you, too, are mortal,” or something else along those lines. It was a Skill that essentially boiled down to being a much, much weaker version of Excalibur.

  Basically, it let her hurt things not made of flesh and blood, such as elementals, and it could disrupt the regeneration of more classical monsters.

  In other words, it was the exact kind of thing she’d needed to bring down the Nation Boss.

  As it was so often the case with the System, the rewards it gave out after a battle were the exact things you really could have used before the fight.

  ***

  Tristan

  [Courtmage of Neutrality Lv. 36 -> Courtmage of Neutrality Lv. 41]

  [Skill gained: Oath of Neutrality]

  [Skill Boost gained]

  [Skill gained: Courtly Omniscience]

  [Skill Boost gained]

  [Skill gained: Magister’s Mind]

  Well, I certainly couldn’t say that hadn’t been profitable. I guess finally helping myself had improved things.

  So, [Oath of Neutrality] was cool, though I dreaded having to use it. I could already imagine how it would feel to have that Skill looking over my shoulder, an unceasing reminder to remain impartial. While I felt I could stay neutral between Fionn, Dietrich, and Charlemagne, that was simply a part of how my current “position” worked, however, this Skill seemed like the kind of thing that would also work when I was acting as a mediator between them and someone else.

  Meanwhile, [Courtly Omniscience] was an extremely powerful knowledge and logistics Skill … which was also made entirely redundant by Charlemagne’s existence. I could have thrown every single Skill Boost I’d ever earned at this Skill and still not matched up to him.

  Which left me with the final Skill. It combined nicely with [Courtly Omniscience], it would let me more easily use my other knowledge- and thought-heavy Skills like [Shifting Point of View], [Legal Grounding] and [Walking Encyclopedia]. But it was also the first power that, even if only slightly, strengthened my spell casting.

  A better-working mind meant I could more easily hold spell patterns, and it would be far easier to do so when something seriously distracting was going on.

  Seeing as it was the most generally useful, that was where my first Skill Boost went.

  I grinned once I was done reading through the description. Not only would I become a much more powerful spellcaster, but enhanced timing in combat meant better, well, everything.

  Perfectly timed parries, enemy attacks disrupted at just the right moment, a tiny telekinetic nudge at the precisely right moment … it would take a lot of combat experience to pull it off, but whereas I hadn’t had the time to acquire too much muscle memory via [Knowledge Trade], memories of fights were not something I was short of.

  As for the second Skill boost, I threw that into [Restoration of the Old]. Not only could it earn us some serious brownie points here and now, but further down the line, it would let me restore fortifications or vital infrastructure at the drop of a hat. A boring utility power, yes, but nowadays, most of my direct combat power came from spells.

  Yeah, a solid upgrade. Now just to find a civilian authority and ask what they’d like fixed first …