Apocalypse Redux

Chapter 97: … should have expected that

The moment Isaac got a good read on the screamer’s [Aura], he knew what had happened. The man quite literally burned with rage, and that wasn’t merely a metaphor.

Flames streamed off him as he ran at Isaac in a [Skill] boosted charge, glaring at the nameplate above his head.

Isaac hadn’t done anything wrong per se, but for a person so inclined to fly off the handle as to get an [Aura] based on just that, it still sufficed as a reason for this level of aggression.

Sure turning his behavior to date into ‘Foreigner walks right in, lacking the usual access cards Guild members had on their belts, proclaims himself a Sage and stands around as if waiting for someone to wait on them hand-and-foot’ took some mental gymnastics and should by no means result in this kind of aggression, but sometimes, someone just wanted a fight and picked the first fight that seemed even remotely justified.

Isaac had been well aware of the fact that calling himself ‘Sage’ might rub a few people the wrong way, but there were no universally praised titles that had been used in reference to him, so he hadn’t been able to choose them. It had just been poor luck to run into such a hothead without Yoo-jin next to him. Even this guy should have been smarter than to pick a fight with a man being escorted by the Guildmaster.

Isaac teleported a few meters to the back and side, dodging the rush, but he needn’t have bothered. ‘Screamer’, as he’d begun calling the man in his head, came to a stop right next to where Isaac had been. If he hadn’t moved, Screamer would have gotten right up in his face.

“You dare come in here, proclaiming to be one of great Sages and …”

Yeah, in hindsight, unequipping that title might have saved him a lot of trouble. Then again, most people wouldn’t fly off the handle like that at the mere sight of it. Of course, there was always the distinct possibility of the whole thing having been set up like this, with a hothead in place to pick a fight with him. The arrival of the ‘foreign experts’ had not only almost certainly been announced ahead of time, there were undoubtedly elements that had been rubbed the wrong way by that. And given that Screamer had been yelling in English, with the clear assumption that Isaac didn’t speak a lick of Korean.

Someone was cruising for a bruising, and normally, he’d have been willing to oblige, but that would have been the wrong way to handle this.

Reaching out with his [Aura], Isaac poked Yoo-jin a few times, hoping to get him out of the office and out here. Unfortunately, those offices were soundproofed, so no one within had been aware of the mess out here to date. Isaac supposed that this place could get rather noisy at times, so the soundproofing was a great idea for most of the time, but it was really fucking inconvenient at the time.

“… so kindly get the fuck out of here, and take that fucking title off your nameplate, you arrogant bastard!”

Right, while there were ways to see whether a Title had been given by the general populace or chosen by the bearer, but Isaac’s ludicrous level of information defense had made that impossible.

“First of all, I earned this Title, it was given to me by the [System].” Isaac said, poking Yoo-jin five times in under a second, hoping to properly convey the urgency of the situation.

“Your claims are worthless!” Screamer, well, screamed, glancing over at the blast of cold air that accompanied Yoo-jin storming out of the office “And now you’ve had to drag the Guildmaster into this, have you no shame?”

“Well, I wanted to make sure he knew that I didn’t pick a fight the instant he wasn’t next to me.” Isaac explained in fluent Korean “So, can we please not escalate this?”

“You!” Screamer snarled “Coward!”

A flaming fist flew towards Isaac’s face, accompanied by the same rush-[Skill] that might have seriously hurt … had it actually come anywhere near its intended target.

Isaac flowed to the side like water, Old Reliable appearing in his right hand, extending to its full form, and then he smashed the flat of the blade against the back of the man’s legs, sweeping his feet out from under him. From there, it came around before Screamer could even start to fall, hammered down from above, enhanced by a [Power Strike], spiking the jackass right into the ground.

In the split second before the impact, Isaac switched over to the [Aura of the Crimson Dawn], creating a large, flat platform beneath him. The ground here, while somewhat reinforced, couldn’t hold a candle to the sheer durability of places built to be fought in. And yes, he could have afforded to have it fixed after the fight, but shattering the floor like a frozen lake that had had an anvil dropped on it would not have made a good impression.

Screamer slammed into the ground with insane but still perfectly survivable force. Isaac had also slammed the blade into his gut, just below the ribs, thoroughly knocking the wind out of him.

Old Reliable vanished as he dismissed it, leaving him standing over the groaning form of the jackass. The moment a weapon had been drawn, everyone in the room had tensed and even, on occasion, drawn weapons of their own, but those were already being put away. Isaac hadn’t struck first, had finished the fight quickly and cleanly and even spared the building.

“What the hell is going on?” Yoo-jin growled, glaring at the man on the ground. He’d probably already figured out what had happened from context and what little he’d caught of the argument, but he wanted someone else to confirm it. Isaac kept mum, though. It would sound more sincere coming from someone else.

“The foreigner came in, Sehan flipped out because of the Title and you saw the rest.” One of the bystanders commented off-handedly, with a strong implication of ‘you know how he is’.

Yoo-jin’s eyes narrowed as he glanced over at Isaac, but upon seeing the same title as before, he sighed heavily and then glared at Screa-, no, Sehan “Was that really necessary? He’s earned the title of ‘Sage’, but even if he hadn’t, in what world would that have been an appropriate reaction?”

The man being scolded was still lying on the ground, slowly getting his wits back about him, but still nowhere near ok. He might have been uninjured, but that didn’t mean he was unhurt.

And yet, he was still a Hunter with a physical [Class] and a Level well into his thirties, he could recover incredibly quickly.

“That man?! How can he possible have earned that kind of title?” Sehan coughed, pushing himself into a sitting position.

“You’re the last person to comment on people having earned anything, Mr. …” Yoo-jin began to shoot back, but then the jackass surged to his feet, flaming [Aura] swelling into an inferno that wreathed the man in fire, but a burst of frigid cold quashed it a mere moment later.

The frigid grasp of winter held the man down, but it flashed erratically and expanded to trap Isaac as well, but disintegrated as a crimson burst pushed it back. Right before a major fight was absolutely the wrong time to fundamentally change one’s [Aura] use.

After all, using the extremely powerful [Aura of the Winter’s Child] as if it were a basic frost [Aura] might have cost it a decent chunk of its power, but it had also made an extraordinarily tricky [Aura] a cinch to control.

Even as Sehan and Yoo-jin were glaring at each other, [Auras] clashing erratically, Isaac intervened.

His fist, wreathed in his aurora of power, tore through the flames like they weren’t even there and then, he grasped the other man by the collar, yanking him up until mere centimeters separated their faces.

From that point of contact, Isaac’s [Aura] swept onwards, brushing aside the flames until Sehan was completely wrapped in the red field, utterly preventing any more fiery [Aura] from being generated.

And while, from the outside, the [Aura of the Crimson Dawn] felt just like it always had, a mixture of healing and bloodshed, but that the inside was a whole other story.

Around the idiotic, stupid, hotheaded jackass, the only thing that could be felt was the aspect of combat, of war, of the blood of the countless monsters that had fallen at Isaac’s hands since the initialization, all of it drenched in the rage and intense hatred that burned within his heart. Hatred for the gods, hatred for the people who’d worked with them like the Systemers had, and morons who didn’t know their own limits and created immense amounts of trouble that others would have to get them out of.

Oh, the things Isaac would have one if there hadn’t been a hundred people watching them … it would have been a sight to behold, a lesson even this asshole’s grandchildren would still feel. But they did have an audience, and that just pissed him off further, though he didn’t let any of that show on his face or in his body language.

“Look, how about we either stop this, or take it into one of the trai- …” Isaac jerked back, taking the headbutt to the sternum. As Sehan pulled back, Isaac returned the favor, the red glow of the enhancing [Power Strike] hidden by his [Aura], slamming his forehead into the other man’s face with enough force to almost give himself a concussion. The force of the impact was so great that even the ‘looted-from-a-Dungeon, tougher than anything made by mortal hands’ shirt whose collar he was holding onto tore, sending the numbskull to the ground, nose broken and torso bare. This time, he just laid there, unmoving.

Yoo-jin clapped his hands, the noise echoing like a gunshot, while he used a [Skill] to hold the unconscious Guild member in place and prevent another attack, and made an announcement.

“Everyone, this is Dr. Thoma, he literally wrote the book on the use of [Auras] and he’s here to see what can be achieved when people are actually allowed to use all aspects of the [System] and give lessons on improving [Aura] control. Everyone who isn’t getting expelled from the Guild for constantly picking idiotic fights is welcome to attend. Now, someone please heal Mr. Hyon back to consciousness, I need to have a stern talk with him.”

A half-dozen beams of golden light washed over the area, the shattered nose stitching itself back together at lighting speed, but the man was clearly still very much out of it.

“Alright, up you go.” Yoo-jin growled, seizing the numbskull’s arm and hauling him to his feet, dragging him into a nearby office, lecturing him in a low voice, but everyone could still understand him rather clearly. In this world of superhumans, a private conversation without some serious privacy [Skills] or enchantments was a thing of the past.

Isaac just walked towards a bench and sat down to wait, fully aware of all the eyes on him, some hostile, some sympathetic, some appraising. None one approached him for a long while, but eventually, a broad shouldered young man approached, an [Aura] that felt like a mountain wreathing him, but it felt weak. Like a heap of cracked and broken shale, rather than a true monument of nature that could stand for millions of years.

“So, the Guildmaster says you’re pretty good with [Aura], huh? How would you go about using an [Aura of the Enduring Mountain]?”

Isaac nodded thoughtfully and swept the man with his sensory [Aura] in such a way that made it obvious to everyone here that he’d actually done so, rather than putting the information out of his ass.

“I’d focus on the idea behind that name. Mountains don’t move, at least not in the timescale us mortals deal in. But they also don’t change, able to endure far more than any edifice built by human hands, use that as your inspiration. Don’t create a flexible shield if you don’t need it to be, create a shape and expression you’re happy with and solidify that. Who could withstand the might of a mountain in motion?”

A thoughtful expression flitted across the man’s face, which was quickly followed by a shift in his [Aura]. The manipulation was crude and basic, but perfectly serviceable and even after merely a few seconds, it was already starting to show strong improvement.

“So, it’s that easy to improve your [Aura]? Just focus on the name?” another person asked.

“No.” Isaac shook his head “It’s important to understand the meaning behind the name. There’s a reason the [Auras’] descriptions are practically essays on certain aspects of reality, those tend to be very helpful.”

“Can I ask what’s yours?” a third person asked.

“Hope, the idea that there’s always a light at the end of the tunnel, even if sometimes, you need to stand up for what you believe in to reach it. But there’s always hope.” Isaac lied through his teeth. Knowing the exact idea behind an [Aura] could be exploited, so he hadn’t told everyone about just what his [Aura] represented, but given them a nice and plausible alternative that also made him look rather good.

That turned out to have broken the dam and he was soon inundated with questions and advice, but only part of the crowd was interacting with him. There were still quite a few people who looked unhappy, or just plain afraid.

There was another burst of [Aura] from the office into which Yoo-jin and Sehan had disappeared into, but it quickly vanished again. Damn, those two were still fighting? And how the hell was that idiot still not seeing sense?

Another ten minutes after that, a portal irised open outside the training center’s doors, spitting out everyone who’d stayed behind in the administrative building. Professor Kim was the first through the door, but the moment she saw the scorch marks on the floor, she froze.

“What happened?” she asked sternly, giving the people closest to the entrance a hard look.

“The Guildmaster showed up with an expert in [Aura] and one of the hotheads picked a fight.”

Bailey slowly picked his way through the crowd to Isaac and likewise gave him a stern look “What exactly happened here?”

… right, he hadn’t understood a word that had been said so far.

“Eh, some guy took offense at the title and picked a fight, it went a little further than it should have, and now I’m giving little [Aura] lessons to everyone while the Guildmaster is cleaning up the mess.” Isaac said, voice contrite.

“Well, damn. Everyone alright?”

“Yep.”

“I suppose there’s nothing to do but wait, isn’t there?” Bailey sighed and headed back to the others.

There, Amy and Hak were already deep in conversation about how their very similar [Classes] could be used to their full effect, while Professor Kim was practically being mobbed a group of people with various magic [Classes], looking for advice. Eh, at least the time spent waiting wouldn’t be wasted.