Drake

  It had been by pure happenstance that the Royal Navy had been able to intercept the Water Nation Boss before it attacked any shipping, let alone the coast, but could the privilege of fighting a monster this potent quite literally in its own element really be considered “fortunate?”

  A giant mass of ice shards, connected by limbs of water, rose above the waves, ready to crush them all with its bulk.

  Even just the part of it that was above the water was easily the size of the Tower Bridge, but there had to be much more below as well otherwise, the beast would have lost its balance in an instant, it was simply too top-heavy for that, a humanoid, headless, torso that was all one chunk, with three softly glowing cores embedded in it, as well as two more in each of its three arms, one at the “elbow” and the other in the “hand,” though this thing had no hands as such, but rather massive wrecking balls of compact ice that was likely harder than steel, if the other Nation Bosses were anything to go by.

  As for the response, it was both immediate and obvious.

  The entire Royal Navy detachment had been traveling as a unit, keeping the Wisconsin close to the two carriers, the Queen Elizabeth and Prince of Wales, since they had absolutely no business being on the frontlines, or anywhere near any fighting at all. Only something like five percent of all carriers that had ever sunk had been destroyed by other surface ships, all others had gone down to airplanes or submarines, but when a carrier did let itself get engaged directly, that carrier usually died.

  If a monster showed up on radar or was detected by any other method, the battleship needed to be able to swiftly interpose itself between them and the enemy.

  But when their foe was more distant, the carriers fell back while their battleship escort moved ahead, ensuring that even when an enemy managed to move past it, they’d have a long way to go before they reached the carriers, being under the Wisconsin’s guns the entire time. Unless the battleship got sunk first, of course.

  Also, they’d called for help because of course they had. They were discovering ways to at least partially get around Nation Boss’s anti-technology defenses, but help from more ancients would definitely be needed, which was why the request for help had already been sent out.

  Behind him, the first fighter jets were already being launched, but it was the goings-on of his flagship that truly made his heart beat faster. The old girl’s guns were about to speak in anger for the first time since her revival, turrets grinding to life and leveling straight at the towering monstrosity ahead of them.

  Then, the world outside the flag bridge’s windows seemed to go white for an instant, as fire and smoke burst from each of her guns’ barrels, hurling one-ton high explosive shells at the distant monster … which connected. A clean hit, one that did shockingly little damage. Sizeable the craters might be, but they were nothing compared to the sheer bulk of the boss.

  Now it made sense why there was no ability interdicting modern weaponry, these things had reached the point where either they or the System, didn’t bother.

  Also, perhaps high explosive shells had been the wrong choice against this particular enemy, armor-piercing munitions might not have vulnerable internals to target in the current configuration?

  [Shared Intelligence] passed that suggestion onto Captain Smith, who was technically in charge of this ship, not Drake, but this ship was ninety percent of Drake’s command and his Skills were too thoroughly enmeshed with it, necessitating some degree of overstepping on his part when you considered that certain actions would have to be taken to get the most out of his abilities.

  At the same time, he passed along the information his [Current Sense] was giving him, making it easier for efficient courses to be plotted.

  The Wisconsin banked slightly to starboard at that point, allowing the rear turret to finally be brought to bear on the beast, blowing another chunk out of its chest. Just a hundred or so more salvos, just like that one, and they’d have won this … assuming they lived long enough to do so.

  Which was looking less and less likely by the second.

  The Nation manifested watery fingers around one of its hands, then slapped it against the roiling surface of the ocean and swept it towards the Wisconsin, like a child bathing in a lake splashing a friend as the opening salvo of a water fight.

  Sadly, their foe was considerably bigger than a mere “child.”

  A tidal wave of water was blasted towards the battleship, with several large “droplets” that likely weighed more than many a car flying overhead. Should he dodge? Could the ship dodge without using the upgraded [Instantaneous Relocation] on the very first attack that was thrown their way?

  The answers were yes and no, respectively.

  In the ship’s bridge above, Smith had clearly come to the same realization and was taking the attack bow-on, the reinforcements there having been meant to work with Drake’s [Ramming Speed] also being perfect for enduring such an impact. Before the windows, the turrets were rotating to face backwards at all possible speed, clearly boosted by one of the Captain’s Skills, and they made it, Barely.

  The seawater did not strike the turrets head-on and blast down the barrels, or side-on and bent said barrels, but washed over the solid, heavy, armor plates on the back of the Wisconsin’s heaviest guns.

  However, the wave was not the only threat, as several titanic blobs of water smashed into the battleship’s superstructure, breaking off a radar dish and shattering a CWIS unit, from what Drake could see, but the worst was yet to come, as another “drop” was on-course to smash into the bridge’s windows.

  “Breace!” he snapped, throwing up his arms to cover his face before closing his eyes to protect them.

  Then, the world was drowned out by a thunderous crash, followed by a loud splash and water soaking into his boots and trousers.

  Drake lowered his arms, only to see a metal shard the size of his lower arm sticking out of his chair, half a centimeter from his head. That, his luck applied to, but not the ruin his bridge had become?

  All the front windows had been smashed, obliterated despite having been made of some very tough stuff, post-refit, but they’d taken the brunt of the impact, the bridge itself was mostly fine, just flooded. In fact, the fragment that had nearly impaled Drake had been the biggest “hit.”

  “[Batten Down The Hatches],” Drake sighed the name of the Skill, causing the windows to be sealed up once more, with the same “glass” that had failed so miserably mere seconds ago, but that was the full extent of what the Skill could do. Close up all the holes and little breaches that attack had rent to the exact same standards they’d been orignially built to.

  “And someone get a bucket,” he belatedly added. As far as he could see, all the electronics were still intact and no one had been or was about to be electrocuted, but there were still nearly five centimeters of water on the ground throughout the bridge. That couldn’t be good long-term.

  Outside the windows, however, the turrets were simply rotated back to face the monster, and fired the next salvo. And the next. And the one after that.

  A steady metronome of one-ton shells began to hammer into the monster, punching several meters into its body before detonating, causing large sheets of ice to break loose and cascade down into the ocean, further adding to the shaking of the deck.

  Drake had his [Sea Legs], and as far as he knew, everyone else had their own variant, allowing them to not only avoid seasickness, assuming anyone still suffered from it, but also compensate near-perfectly for any reasonable and most unreasonable tilts of the deck.

  But for the guns … they had a big target, but even this monster wasn’t so big that hits were guaranteed.

  He triggered [Stabilize Platform], which allowed the aiming and firing of guns as though the sea were far calmer, though it did very little otherwise. Including preventing someone’s coffee cup from going flying, dumping hot liquid all over the floor.

  Normally, that might have even been a small issue, but with the “presently flooded” state of the bridge, it just made things look rather dirty.

  Fighter jets screamed overhead, followed shortly by heavier bombers, unleashing streams of heavy projectiles and missiles at the beast while it attempted to swat them like mosquitoes.

  As it turned out, they were too high for its hands … until one of the beast’s massive limbs dipped beneath the waves. Drake felt his heart sink. What came next … it would be as inevitable as it was predictable.

  The pilots, of course, had come to the same conclusion, scattering like a startled swarm of mosquitoes, but it was too late. No one could have expected the sheer range of the Boss’ counterattack.

  Rather than simply emerging with a few watery fingers, this arm seemed to pull up the entire surface of the ocean, a sheet of water weighing hundreds of tons being hurled skywards as though it were nothing, rapidly coming apart into thousands of individual droplets that flashed through the air.

  Now, modern planes had been designed to handle a little rough weather, some rain, some wind, a not-insignificant amount of turbulence … all of that was fine.

  What was about to hit the planes launched by the Royal Navy’s twin carriers was decidedly not, going well beyond what they’d been designed to handle. Even when they weren’t outright smashed out of the sky, there was practically half an ocean flying through the air, and that was simply too much water. Radar went fuzzy, and targetting disruptions became commonplace though that didn’t exactly matter considering that most munitions had already been expended.

  But the largest issue was how it affected the engines. That much water sucked into one … that was that.

  Whether the engines gave up the ghost or the aircraft were outright smashed out of the sky, the airwing of their task force suffered greatly, losing a third of its numbers. Many parachutes unfolding overhead gave hope for recovery, but even so … the first exchange likely went to the monster.

  The screen displaying the radar’s findings suddenly lit up as hundreds of new icons appeared, manifesting around the carrier fleet and flashing towards their shared foe with suicidal abandon.

  Missiles. Lots of them. Potentially even every single one that had been able to be fired, right at that moment.

  Which meant that next …

  A screen appeared in midair before him, directly passing along the will and orders of the woman in charge of this entire affair.

  … That would happen.

  “Vice Admiral Drake, use of experimental munitions is authorized. You are hereby in command of this task force for the next fifteen seconds,” Admiral Porter ordered. She’d been promoted last week, most likely to clear up any confusion regarding the fact that she was his superior in all practical respects despite him having literal centuries of seniority on her.

  The two of them, at the same rank, on deployment together … it was a recipe for chaos.

  Now, while Drake did buck off the chain of command on occasion, he only did so to exploit opportunities, not outright overthrow his superiors, he’d been on the receiving end of that kind of nonsense too often to start something himself.

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  However, that wasn’t something that the Admiralty as a whole had been willing to trust in, so they’d promoted Porter slightly earlier than scheduled, though she’d more than proven herself worthy of her new rank.

  A good solution.

  And so was the workaround of briefly passing along command to allow for the use of command-level Skills by people other than the regular commanding Admiral.

  Drake triggered [Instantaneous Reload].

  It was the sole reason he’d been “promoted” for the short period of time. A Skill that could instantly reload everything under his command, planes included, saving them an entire rearming cycle.

  Now, the impact of something like that varied greatly depending on what was affected. The Wisconsin’s guns had been able to fire once every thirty seconds initially, that time had been cut down to twenty-five after the overhaul, then further reduced to just a hair under twenty. Not that being able to “double tap” a target with nine one-ton shells couldn’t come in handy in certain circumstances, but to be entirely honest, the battleship was the most inefficient target for that Skill in the fleet.

  Hell, flushing the rocket batteries of a modern destroyer might make for one hell of an opening salvo, but reloading was a complete bitch, and a time-consuming one at that.

  So he made sure that even as the overwhelming force of missiles bearing down on their foe shot through the sky, they’d be able to follow it up with an identical attack, right now.

  And as for the planes, he loaded them up with a mixture of armor-piercing missiles and for their guns, magnesium rounds. Burning hot enough to melt most metals on touch, unable to be extinguished by water, and most importantly, embedded within the body of their foe. Assuming they hit.

  It took a few seconds for the regular rounds to be fired off, then the sky lit up as though every single shot fired had become a tracer round as the freshly loaded incendiary projectiles ignited mid-flight, punched deep into the ice, and continued to burn while missiles peppered the surface, blowing off even more chunks.

  Yet the monster was still there, still kicking, still in posession of almost eighty percent of its mass and all its cores after having taken their strongest attacks on the nose.

  Even forced by arcane providence or its own lack of intelligence to keep its torso and vitals above the waterline, this thing was a menace the likes of which he’d never seen before.

  The monster began to chase after the retreating planes, giving Drake and his [All Eyes On Me] the cold shoulder, so he triggered [Numbers don’t Matter], forcing a solo duel between him and his foe … at least until someone else managed to hit the damn thing. Meaning it’d be free by the time the planes returned with fresh armaments.

  As for how the Wisconsin was supposed to survive until then …. The answer to that question had just marched through a portal at the back end of the battleship’s flag bridge.

  Fionn Mac Cumail, lord of magic and foresight, strode straight into the still-flooded compartment, a wave of his left hand lifting the water and depositing it in the buckets that had been brought but were yet to be used.

  As for his right hand, it was at his head, thumb clamped into the corner of his mouth in a pose that might have provoked ridicule, had the explanation for this action not been widely known and available. He was drawing on all the knowledge of this world, using it to appraise the situation and come up with some manner of plan he apparently had no intention of sharing.

  His actions, however, were clear as day.

  A fresh wind, one that could not have gone unnoticed save for the fact that it had been born of sorcery rather than meteorology, blew through the sky and began to carry the parachutes of the downed pilots to safety while the man took up position next to Drake’s command chair.

  And behind him, well, behind him, Merlin stepped out onto the bridge of the Wisconsin.

  Merlin.

  King Arthur had already been a lot, and Drake had met both his fellow British ancients before, but Merlin. It was still a surreal experience to meet the man even now.

  “How will we need to adjust our plans?” Drake asked after a long moment, having had to work surprisingly hard to find a way to phrase that which did not come across as annoyed or accusatory.

  “You won’t,” Fionn replied. “I’ll inform you in a timely matter, should that change. For now, we’ll be adding our firepower to yours from the deck of this ship.”

  And just like that, the Irishman spun on his heels and marched out, easily navigating his way in the direction of the nearest door leading outside before vanishing around a corner.

  Merlin, meanwhile, took one look around the bridge, waved his hand towards the now-full buckets, and made to follow the other mage, only to turn around at the last second.

  “Vice Admiral Drake, if you require any specific manner of help, do not hesitate to ask.”

  And with that, he, too, vanished around the corner.

  As that happened, the Wisconsin finally crossed the invisible boundary that finally put her close enough to unleash her weakest and shortest-ranged weaponry. Every single point defense weapon opened up, painting the air with shimmering trails of tracer rounds, every hit chipping away a handful of shards of frozen water, gouging long lines into the crystalline body of their foe.

  Beginning to build faultlines. Preparing the beast’s fall. And …

  Drake’s next thought was cut off as a beam of pure heat flashed from the deck right outside the bridge, hammering into the monster’s chest and melting a hole large enough to place a car inside.

  Oh.

  He had an idea …

  “Do we have speakers on the deck, near the casters?” Drake asked.

  “Yes, Sir …”

  No, he did not like that tone. Especially aimed at him. If there was a problem, he expected to be informed of it directly, the only news-related punishments he doled out were those regarding him not receiving important information.

  “And do they work?”

  “Maybe, they’re meant to be waterproof but we did get doused pretty good earlier.”

  “Try them, ask Merlin and Lord Mac Cumail to focus on melting a hole deep into the monster’s center, if they don’t respond, send someone out there to tell them in person. Also, use the CWIS to create a faultline right down the center, perpendicular to the ocean,” Drake rattled off his orders. “And …”

  He paused as he saw the monster hurl another sheet of water at them, fingers digging into the ocean and ripping skywards, as though the beast were attempting to rug pull them.

  Drake sighed.

  [Instantaneous Relocation] carried them out of the path, but left them far too close to the monster itself, which promptly attempted to grab the Wisconsin.

  Imediately triggering [Escape] allowed them to slip from the watery tentacle like a greased egg while [Flank Speed] drove them forward beyond its reach, but somehow, that “cowardly escape” wound up breaking [Numbers Don’t Matter], freeing the monster up to go after the carriers.

  Drat!

  The Wisconsin immediately skewed to the side as she turned hard to port, beginning to, in fact, chase after the titan, whose two forward-facing limbs began hurling water balls at planes overhead and anything else that caught its attention, while its third arm began sending massive waves at the battleship.

  Thankfully, however, it seemed as though the massive waves were restricted in one manner or other, and unable to be “spammed,” as the modern man would say.

  As for the lesser waves … they just took it on the nose.

  The battleship normally followed at a bit of an angle to allow her rearmost turret to be used, which was situated behind the bridge and could therefore not target anything directly in front of the ship. But whenever a wave came, Captain Smith turned the old girl and faced the wrath of the ocean head-on, smashing through amidst a spray of water and a trembling of the decks, though Drake wound up being forced to use [Ramming Speed] to blast through a particularly violent one.

  Bit by bit, they wore each other down. The monster was losing more and more mass, the ship’s systems began to take damage from what effectively amounted minor but endlessly repeated collisions while water flooded the decks, finding cracks or making new ones, windows breaking, seals bursting, bit by bit, the ship was losing its edge.

  And the comparatively helpless carriers were all too close already, cruisers and destroyers desperately maneuvering to draw the monster’s attention away from the largest vessels in the fleet.

  But before the titan could do anything with its new position, the hole in its chest had been finished, melted to a size that Drake regarded as sufficient, and he barked an order.

  A single gun fired.

  A single shell flashed into the hole melted by the arcane forces of ancient humans wielding the power of magic.

  And the world. Went. White.

  Drake was busy blinking spots out of his eyes while the next set of reports came in.

  They’d cracked the monster clean down the middle, the two halves further breaking apart as they slammed into the surface of the ocean for several hundred meters up, leaving hundreds of tiny pieces bobbing around amidst a misshapen but reforming body as the beast attempted to pull itself back together.

  So that was a nuke, then?

  The handful of nuclear shells, designated W25s, he’d added to the ship’s armaments had been meant as a weapon of last resort. In fact, they’d been a redesigned version of the W23s the ship used to carry before nuclear weaponry had started to be curtailed, and their yield had been stepped down from somewhere between fifteen to twenty kilotons to just under five, also massively reducing the amount of radioactive material that would wind up in the ocean upon use.

  Yet even this weapon, deployed on the inside, had been enough. Now all there was to do was clean up this mess.

  Porter was faster than him, giving the order to target anyhting that held one of the Nation Boss’ cores. Those that hadn’t already been obliterated by the previous bombardments.

  The Wisconsin’s guns continued to thunder, planes continued to fly overhead, bombs continued to fall.

  And eventually, the nameplate vanished, and the System spoke.

  [Reckless Admiral of Fortune Lv. 73 -> Reckless Admiral of Fortune Lv. 75]

  [Skill Boost gained]

  [Capstone Skill gained: Grand Fleet, Fortuna’s Favored]

  Drake grinned.

  A Skill to empower the Royal Navy’s ships, blessing them with luck while also allowing them to benefit from his command-level Skills without him needing to actually be in command, he merely needed to mark them.

  Handy, that.

  But that should have been the last Nation Boss. So, what had everyone else gotten?

  ***

  Mia

  Holy. Shit.

  She’d likely been staring at the System window for … well, it couldn’t possibly have been days, Tristan or Dietrich would have long since checked in on her if she’d been here for that long, but it had been a long time.

  Because it was almost as unbelievable as the fact that she was now Level 50.

  An Ascendant Capstone. The true separation of a powerhouse from a normal human.

  Yes, the ancients had long since shot past this point, but she’d still reached it, likely before any other member of today’s humanity.

  Anyone who tried to kill her would have to fight her face to face, or be one of the very best in whatever methods they used to attack her. As far as she could tell, unless the person pressing the button to launch a nuke at her was called Einstein or Oppenheimer, she’d survive even that.

  Sniper rifle … maybe. Simo Heya could obviously kill her, as could anyone of his legendary skill, but the sheer ease with which guns could be bought in many parts of the world would no longer bother her. At all.

  Guns were easy to use, but at the same time, that same ease of use meant that they were likely mostly or even completely useless against her … unless she was facing off against Wyatt Earp or Doc Holiday. Or someone like that.

  She sure as shit wouldn’t let someone shoot her without a response, that was for certain.

  Now, how to best rub this in Tristan’s face … because she just knew he hadn’t gotten here yet. If he had, he would be the one teasing her about falling behind.

  ***

  Tristan

  Six Nation Bosses, all in one day, all dead. Eventually.

  Wood had been reduced to a smoking, acid-scarred crater in the landscape by concentrated fire, something I had at least cleaned up afterwards.

  Water had been largely pointless, an immense golem made from ocean water and drift ice manifesting in the center of the Atlantic, where it encountered the Royal Navy and soundly trounced. Eventually. With Help.

  Metal, meanwhile, had blighted a stretch of landscape so vast and wide we’d never be able to fix it in a reasonable amount of time, not unless it became the focus of most of the world’s disaster relief capability tomorrow. Though magic obviously changed that paradigm.

  Earth had thankfully run straight into General Patton’s reincarnation and been soundly spanked one the reinforcements arrived.

  Fire … fire had been bad, from what I’d heard, though thankfully, its damage was the easiest to mitigate once it had been brought down via a judicious application of water magic while Joseph played tank.

  Regrowing the rainforest, on the other hand, had been left to those present. There’d already been quite a few people down in the rainforest attempting to grow it back while using their floral manipulation Skills to create defenses. Combined with the fertility of the ash-covered ground, I’d be surprised if there wasn’t regular “restored rainforest” everywhere the Boss had been in a month, and it’d be completely indistinguishable from everything else in half a year. Despite what alarmists’ claimed, in the madhouse of a world we currently lived in, our oxygen supply was safe.

  Air … Air had been allowed to run rampant for far too long, resembling a normal hurricane for far too long. By the time Katrina 2.0 had been correctly identified, all the manpower that should have met it had already been sent to face the others. To the point where pulling them would have cost countless lives while the tactics were adjusted to compensate for the sudden loss. However, having to face a Nation Boss without heavy magical support or the ability to prepare ahead of time … it had gotten ugly. Very ugly.

  Thankfully, out of all the bosses in this wave, the air one had been the most vulnerable to modern weaponry, with free-floating cores easily targettable using guided or proximity-detonated munitions.

  Oh, because apparently, we were reaching the point where the Nation Bosses no longer automatically blocked large-scale modern weaponry. Or maybe, it was simply that they’d grown so strong that humanity’s best tools were now beneath their notice. Either way, I doubted that was a good thing.

  But even though it had been brought down without ancient help, before it had fallen, the Nation Boss had wiped New Orleans off the map. Completely.

  And we hadn’t even seen the World Boss yet.