Apocalypse Redux

Chapter 165: A Less Unpleasant Job Interview

2023’s Berlin was a surprisingly filthy city, especially compared to the other German cities Isaac had seen. This wasn’t his first time here, but in the other timeline, he’d only gotten here much later, at a point where the [System] was fully integrated into society.

At that point, the streets were being cleaned by people using magic and [Skills], and as such, any city that put even the slightest amount of effort into staying clean, well, stayed clean. People’s ability to remove rubbish had increased by several orders of magnitude without the amount of rubbish in need of removal experiencing a similar increase.

But he wasn’t here to sightsee or complain about the city, he was here to talk to a man about a job. It had taken a good long while to get here, to this point, but the trial was over and now, he was being officially offered a job by Germany’s supernatural law enforcement agency, the BAU. He probably wouldn’t take it, but showing up would allow him to make quite a few points to the right people.

Isaac had actually walked here, striding through empty fields in the early March sun. He’d finally unlocked [Continent Strider] and was now going everywhere on foot to level it as quickly as possible. Only moving comparatively short distances in Germany wasn’t doing very much, but when he had time, he’d pop by Seoul for a weekend. That should give it the much-needed shot in the arm.

Continent Strider (legendary)

In olden times, it could take months or years to go from city to city, from country to country. Modern technology has shrunken the world somewhat, but it still takes quite a while to move significant distances.

This Skill not only removes the need for modern technology to travel vast distances in a reasonable timeframe but further boosts the travel speed while moving on foot. Your movement speed on foot or horseback will increase exponentially with this Skill active.

Continent Strider cannot be activated in combat or while fleeing combat, it is purely a utility Skill.

This Skill can be applied to all party members so long as said party members are within 100 meters of the user and the user is the party leader.

Cost: 500 mana per hour, plus 100 per party member

It was a mana hog and the fact that it wasn’t useable in combat sucked, but the benefits could not be denied. His journey to Berlin had taken barely thirty minutes, half the time it would have otherwise. That reduction in travel time increased exponentially, so the roughly day and a half walk to Seoul should be reduced not to sixteen hours, but something even lower. Coupled with the fact that the power could be extended to his party members, so entire military formations could be moved great distances in very little time.

Hopefully, the power to use this [Skill] in combat would appear when it hit one of its milestones, but Isaac doubted it. If his guess was correct, the [Skill] erected a subtle field of manipulated space and time that reduced travel time around the user, at a staggeringly low price no less, but this would make it extremely fragile. As such, any kind of hostile magic, [Aura] or just mana being projected outwards with hostile intent would tear it to pieces.

More likely was that it would evolve a portal-style ability that allowed him to bypass the “walking” part of “walking to your destination”.

Either way, the [Skill] was already very good, though it had only reached Level 2 so far.

Isaac continued through the streets of Berlin, entering the area that held the governmental buildings, nearly all of which were still in the process of being upgraded and reinforced. With every new discovery, new security flaws were discovered and needed to be patched, which, in turn, meant the state had to bleed even more money, right in the middle of a major recession.

The [System] might have brought countless opportunities and those were currently being explored and soon, the economy would enter a historic upswing, but right now, faith in old certainties had been too badly shaken for things to continue as they had. And as such, investments had stopped, funds had dried up as certain industries had become nearly obsolete overnight, and so on. In any other situation, this would have been a much bigger deal, but right now, everyone had other issues to focus on.

As things stabilized and the economy started fully taking advantage of the [System], well, things would go pretty well … at least if the world didn’t end. In the other timeline, that was what had ended the economic boom, after all.

But economic numbers hadn’t told the whole story back then. As individuals became more capable, fewer were needed to do a given job, which had vastly shrunk the available number of jobs. End result? Mass joblessness that could and would have ended very badly if it hadn’t for the fact that the government had started supporting those who the [System] had put out of work.

Not with universal basic income and social reform, that could have actually fixed the situation instead of merely tiding the recipient over, but food, housing and other necessities that had become so much easier to provide under the [System].

Among all the constantly renovated buildings though, new construction was also taking place. High security high-rises built from the ground and the like, several of which would soon belong to the BAU, but also a couple of smaller halls that could not be mistaken for anything other than training centers. They were also the furthest along as they were something that was far harder to substitute old construction for.

After all, unless it was used by people with an unhealthy door-slamming habit, it didn’t matter whether an old office building was used by people with a Strength Stat of ten or one hundred. The same could not be said of buildings meant for training, anything pre-[System] would have ended up in pieces after a couple of hours of use.

His current destination was one of the intact buildings. It was tall but also wide enough to give it a somewhat squat look despite its height. The outside was mostly concrete with only a bare handful of windows, creating a depressing monument of Soviet Brutalism architecture. But as dark as the exterior rooms undoubtedly were, Isaac knew there had to be countless more inside, windowless cubes that crushed the souls of those who worked in them. It was very much a terrible look for a government agency, let alone a law enforcement one, very “1984”, but there had been practical reasons this one had been picked.

Its design meant that it had a very high useable volume while having a comparatively small amount of external surface that needed to be enchanted, guarded and enhanced with [Skills]. It also sat right next to what used to be a large open space, which was now being transformed into a training center for not just the elite of GSG-13, but also the regular street-level personnel the BAU would need.

All in all, this was a utilitarian building down to its very foundations and being used as such, it was just that when there was an inevitable scandal, be it deserved or not, this look would not help matters.

Heading inside through the main entrance, Isaac was immediately stopped by a security check.

The guard manning the station was looking very uncomfortable as Isaac summoned Old Reliable in its Kabar form and, with deliberate slowness, placed it in a basket very reminiscent of those that were always next the metal detectors at an airport.

Neither the weapon or its wielder could be seen as anything other than infinite darkness which revealed absolutely nothing and to a person who was meant to be guarding the building, that had to be terrifying.

However, Isaac had been expected and any good [Security Guard] would be able to detect disguise [Skills]. This detection was by no means perfect and hardly guaranteed to pierce said disguises, but it was enough of a reassurance to not prompt further inquiry.

The soulbound weapon stayed in the basket, though. There were sensors inside that would raise an alarm if it was summoned to its wielder, ensuring that there was some kind of warning if an intruder armed themselves. Said warning might only arrive less than a second before the intruder did whatever they were here to do, but it was a warning nonetheless. And after the initial strike, everyone else would be warned.

“Actually, I have more weapons, you’re going to need more baskets.” Isaac pointed out as the security guard was about to let him in and proceeded to pile a literal mountain of blades onto the front desk, every single weapon ever absorbed by Old Reliable, five times over as the number of summonable copies had increased when he’d upgraded his blade Aspect.

The guard stared at him, bug eyed, but declined to comment as he packed up the implements of death and destruction.

“Please wait here, someone will arrive to take you to your meeting shortly.”

As it turned out, the secretary of the guy he was here to see had already been waiting nearby, and showed up less than thirty seconds after Isaac was done with the security check. It was nice to not have to deal with the whole “I’ll make you wait a bit to make it seem like I wasn’t waiting for you” schtick, for once.

“Dr. Thoma, if you will follow me please?” the young man said, Isaac nodded and walked after him.

His guide was young, maybe seven years older than Isaac on the outside, and did not at all look like a secretary. A very small pistol was tucked into the back of his suit jacket, not visible from the outside. It wouldn’t have a lot of power, but its wielder had the [Skills] to make up for it. Sure, the gun likely wouldn’t be intact by the time the first magazine had been emptied, being barely more durable than a pre-[System] version and therefore not capable of withstanding the force the [Skills] of a third Evolution human would impart.

But merely being armed wasn’t that unusual, not for the secretary of a high ranking member of law enforcement, especially one who was likewise a member of law enforcement. The weird part was the second pistol in the ankle holster, two knives, ones Isaac could tell had been made by Stagmer, up his sleeves, the potion bottles in the lining of his suit and the fact that said suit had been sown for the same level of protection that Isaac’s did.

All of that wasn’t even getting into what Isaac could read with [Hunter’s Gaze].

There were the usual information gathering, retention and use [Skills], self- and boss protection [Skills], analysis [Skills], but far more abilities for combat than Isaac had expected to see. And mind you, those were just the [Skills] he could read as they’d been used recently, not the whole list.

The secretary’s [Class] was, well, a variation of [Secretary] or [Assistant], but with quite a few other abilities thrown in as well. A hatchetman. Someone who could do things on the down-low, out of the public eye, unofficially. And he was at an absurdly high Level, somewhere north of 60.

If Vice Director Lauterbach, the person Isaac was here to meet had put anything close to the same degree of effort into self-improvement, then this agency was in good hands.

In fact, Lauterbach was in charge of the whole place because … people were still fighting about who was going to be in charge. A lot. So the person who was currently the highest ranking member of the BAU had ended up being the temporary boss. The way Isaac had heard it, there was no way in hell Lauterbach would end up permanently in charge because he was too young, so he was a safe choice. After all, if there was no chance of promotion in the near future, there was nothing encouraging him to do something stupid to impress his bosses. Just preventing the whole affair from imploding was enough.

Lauterbach’s office, meanwhile, was as far from the entrance as was physically possible, and the elevator situation wasn’t too good either. If the ground hadn’t been marked to create “running lanes” where people could move at their full, [System]-granted speed without fear of running anyone over, people would have had to spend half their working days just getting from place to place.

The coffee machine had also been made [System] grade and able to affect even the people using it by someone’s [Skill], and someone had gone through and ensured that all doors could stand up to at least some level of slamming.

The agency meant to deal with the [System’s] crazy was adapting to it. That was a great sign, wasn’t it?

The pair of them reached the only even remotely spacious area since the reception hall, the secretary made his way behind a stupidly armored and enchanted desk, then gestured towards the wooden door next to him.

It was a nice door, made from [Druid]-grown hardwood, strengthened to the point where Isaac would be hard-pressed to break it in a single strike without resorting to [I Am The Sword], [Legendary Blow] or [True Cut]. An additional enchantment would dissipate magical attacks while a third ensured that the person within could tell who was outside while also preventing those outside from looking in. Whoever had made that was a world-class enchanter, literally one of the best craftspeople in the world without exaggeration and hyperbole. They were taking this very seriously. Good.

The door opened on its own, without input from Isaac or the secretary, making it clear that the person in the office had been the cause.

“Come in, Dr. Thoma.” A voice called from within and Isaac followed suit.

Kasper Lauterbach was in his mid-thirties, yet already losing his hair with his hairline receding at the temples in a style that was apparently called “Geheimratsecken”, which roughly translated to “secret council corners”, a decidedly ridiculous name.

He was almost Level 70, a ridiculous height for a desk jockey to have reached. [Class]-wise, he was a relatively normal bureaucrat, evidently, the secretary was going to do most of the fighting, but he’d almost certainly been training with the troops to get to this point. Throw in a few elemental Aspects to take advantage of his prodigious mana capacity and he’d be a solid A-Ranker despite not being at all specced in combat.

“Take a seat, please.”

Isaac sat down in a large and exceedingly comfortable chair with, feeling it adjust under his back. It really was a very nice place to sit down, much nicer than the basic metal seat over in the nearby closet. That one was probably for when someone came in here because they were in trouble.

“Thank you for coming, Dr. Thoma.” Lauterbach said, flipping open a folder and sliding it across the table “This is what we’re offering, including pay and benefits, should you decide to come work for us.”

“It’s … a lot.” Isaac observed, “But I can’t help but notice that it doesn’t say what you’d be hiring me for.”

“That’s on purpose. We want you to work for us, to be able to call on your expertise, whether that means having you as a researcher, trainer, or just another boot on the ground. We know what you’re worth, and what we’re willing to do to get you.”

“Thank you.” Isaac nodded “All cards on the table, I can appreciate that, so I’m going to do the same. This, our cooperation, is like an arranged marriage, we’re going to end up together, the only thing in question is the precise terms.”

“That’s an interesting way to put it.” Lauterbach commented.

“Fitting, though.” Isaac responded “But here’s the thing: I plan on going where I can do the most good, for the greatest number of people. And right now, that’s with Professor Bailey and his team. The world is in a perilous place, and I’m afraid that if we don’t do everything in our power to prevent it, the world will become a far worse place.”

He leaned forward in his chair, one elbow on his knee and chin resting on his palm, then winked “But I’m just being selfish, after all, I have to live here too.”

That joke had had to be made, simply because otherwise, Isaac might easily seem fake. Perfect paragon heroes could exist, they probably did, but that didn’t change how people saw things that were too good to be true. “I want to save the planet I live on” was a perfectly understandable raison d'être. “I want to be a hero and do the rightest thing possible” would have people go “what’s your game here”.

By turning the whole affair into a joke, especially a self-deprecating one, he’d removed much of that uncertainty. Sure, he now also seemed like a bit of a pessimist, but that wasn’t nearly as bad as potentially being seen as a huckster.

“Ah yes, protecting everyone you love and cherish. Horrifically selfish, you terrible, terrible person.” Lauterbach added.

Isaac laughed “Yeah. Like I said, while the world is still in flux, I’d like to make sure it turns out better than before, not worse. If that requires me to join the BAU, I’ll do so in a heartbeat.”

“And now it’s up to me to prove that. What specifically are you worried about?” Lauterbach asked “Agency focus, funding, policy, or time invested here? Incidentally, I’d like to mention that it is possible to work for the police part-time.”

“My biggest worry is leadership.” Isaac said “You’re a perfect candidate. Experienced in working for law enforcement, flexible enough to use the [System] to the fullest extent possible, and you know how to play politics. The person who ends up in charge of this agency needs to be the same. I’m worried about being stuck under a career politician, I believe we can both think of a few people who ended up in charge of things they don’t understand.”

“Are you worried about not being able to do your own thing, being bogged down by the orders of a superior, then?” Lauterbach asked.

“I follow rules and procedures if possible. And if there’s a question about it, I ask if at all possible. When that incident with the serial killer happened, I didn’t have the time to ask. You came here by way of the military, didn’t you? If I recall correctly, Germany trains its soldiers to be able to think and act without needing input from the higher-ups in case of emergency? Yes, if this place gets saddled with a fool or a person who’s terrified of the [System], I’ll be badly hampered precisely because I follow the rules.” Isaac said, “But when snap judgments are required, I make those judgments and live with the consequences, though one would hope that doesn’t have to happen too often.”

“You’re used to basically having a blank check from the university,” Lauterbach said. It wasn’t a question.

“Isn’t that basically what you offered me earlier?” Isaac asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Yes, of course, it’s just that, well, we have more rules here than at a … how did we end up talking about this again?” Lauterbach sighed and shook his head “So, it’s important to you that you don’t end with a jerk for a boss. Isn’t it too all of us? What else do you need? An office? A lab? A training center?”

“Time to research at the university, time to run my company, unless you can offer me the ability to do all those things here,” Isaac said.

“Like I said, part-time work is possible. You’d need a lot of formal training, but we can arrange it so that it occurs on your schedule, in between your other responsibilities.” Lauterbach said.

“And that’s much appreciated, but there’s a different problem.” Isaac replied “My [Class]. The [System] is becoming an ever more important part of people’s lives, and that includes law enforcement. I don’t have any of the restraining [Skills] that your people do, nor do I have the ones meant for uncovering the truth or locking down hostile preternatural abilities. It’s a new paradigm that, well, doesn’t quite work with career changers. It would take a hell of a lot for me to switch over my [Class], whenever the next Evolution will be, so I probably won’t and therefore won’t be nearly as good at a law enforcement job as I could be.

“As such, a new strategy might be required. I’ve already got a consulting contract with the BAU, that could be expanded upon. Even without one, so long as I can help without getting arrested, I will.”

“Why would you get arrested?” Lauterbach asked.

“I don’t exactly know what degree of ‘help’ constitutes vigilantism or interfering with a law enforcement action. I’m a careful person, if I can cover my ass before jumping headlong into danger, I will.”

“I see.” Lauterbach nodded slowly “That’ll require some conversations with lawyers, some discussions with my bosses in the government, but I think I might be able to find something suitable.”

“Thank you.” Isaac said, “And another thing: I need to be able to quit, to have the option of resigning in lieu of doing something that’s against my morals or common sense.”

“You really think it’ll come to that?” Lauterbach’s question was met with a blank stare, so he cautiously continued “I believe you might have been told about this in school, but being able to refuse orders over morals is an important part of both our military and police forces. Sure, the Nürnberg trials decided that ‘I was just following orders’ wasn’t an excuse, but now that excuse is even less worthwhile. That won’t be a problem.”

“Thank you.” Isaac said “All we have to do now is talk hours, salary, and [Skill] training. My offer is five training slots per week as my [Skill] defines it, each slot can give either an epic [Skill] to one person or a rare one to five, as per how you decide to use those. As for my swordsmanship, if that’s what you want me to do while you got me, that’s your choice.

The big issue for me is that right now, I’m very busy with my company, and in a week, we’re summoning the first [Field Bosses] and testing the area meant to be used for [Raid Bosses] later. In addition to my continuous responsibilities at both the university and my company, there are a lot of things that just ‘come up’ that are also a draw on my time. This will need to be a very carefully worded contract, and one that has a great deal of flexibility.”

“That … that can be arranged, of course.”

“Excellent.” Isaac grinned “Also, I just so happen to have cleared my whole day for this and fifteen open training slots that I’d be happy to donate to the BAU. So if we can finish this in a timely manner, I’d be happy to get started on training, both giving and receiving.”

“The contract won’t be ready by then,” Lauterbach warned.

“I know.” Isaac said “But here’s the thing, I’m perfectly willing to accept a verbal agreement right now and put in some hours. I know you, I looked into you, I met you. You, I trust. But my contract will need to work not just when I’m dealing directly with the boss, but also when I’m caught in the wheels of bureaucracy or when the boss is someone other than you.”

“I’m flattered, but …” Lauterbach didn’t seem quite willing to put into words that he thought Isaac was being a hair naïve right now.

“Mr. Lauterbach, I might only be twenty-one, barely old enough to drink in some countries, but as a colleague of mine once told me, I have an old soul. I have literal decades of experience dealing with and reading people thanks to my [Class]. In a very real sense, I’m actually older than you.” Isaac said, then nearly burst out laughing at the perplexed expression on Lauterbach’s face. Nearly.

In the end, Isaac left the meeting with ludicrously flexible hours, the ability to make up any of the ten hours he was required to put in each month up to three months late if necessary, and with a good quarter of the necessary classes to join law enforcement in a more active role already done.

At least how it was designed right now. Right now, Lauterbach was working on punching through a change in regulations that would allow for the easy hiring of outside personnel in combat positions and as such, the list of needed classes wasn’t actually set yet, but he’d still had a pretty good idea of what was necessary.

Skill with firearms, or the [System] equivalent, was already something Isaac had. He’d also have a very different way of investigation, which would render most of the classes related to that unnecessary. The really important parts were ethics, restraint in the face of danger and combat, and how to arrest someone in such a way that wouldn’t see them walk on a technicality a few minutes later.

Throw in the sheer volume of information a [Trainer] could impart, and learning was a very quick process.