Apocalypse Redux

Chapter 51: Funhouse Mirror

Chapter 51: Funhouse Mirror

Summoning List (Elemental, Space Subtype)

Name

Material Cost

Mana Cost

Lesser Space Elemental

Tier 3 Circle, Measuring Tape

100

Space Elemental

Tier 6 Circle, Measuring Tape, House Blueprint

350

Greater Space Elemental

Tier 9 Circle, Measuring Tape, Map

6,000

Lord of Time and Space

Tier 10 Circle, Measuring Tape, Alarm Clock

12,000

The summoning list for Space Elementals was incredibly tiny, but simultaneously incredibly terrifying. At least the fact that it was pretty hard to imagine how a monster created from, well, space, looked meant that all but the most terminally reckless idiots refrained from summoning them.

Pretty soon though, people would start to figure out that one could get the so-called ‘reward’ summons that were things like pocket dimensions, legendary weapons, and the like. Mind you, in this case, ‘legendary’ referred to actual weapons from myth and legend, not just powerful ones. They weren’t defined as such, looking just like regular monster summons in the menus until you summoned one for the first time.

But the requirements for those rewards were pretty steep, like the fact that one needed to kill a bloody Space Elemental for even the most basic of spatial storages. That was a hurdle that had killed almost anyone who tried to go for them and would continue to do so for a while yet, but eventually, it would be surmounted and then, there would be hell to pay. Then again, there should be people able to handle even Tier 6 Space Elementals by then. He hoped.

Isaac tossed the measuring tape, a representation of space itself, into the summoning circle and charged it, then sat down to wait for his mana to fully recover. This was not a fight he wanted to enter in anything less than perfect form. Once that was done, he activated the circle and ...

… reality itself shattered like a broken mirror, bits and pieces of the world floating off in a dozen different directions while others fell into place where they’d been, a single step in any direction able to fling him dozens of meters in one direction or be completely unable to shift his position, at all. Space twisted into a Mobius Strip in one place, an infinite loop one could never escape, and the very concept of a straight line ceased to exist.

Somewhere overhead, a massive spiraling fractal pattern the size of a car hung, the pattern growing denser and denser towards the center until it simply looked like a single solid chunk in the very middle. The core, the only part of its monstrous body that actually mattered.

Up was down, left was right, and when he thrust Old Reliable in its knife form towards the Elemental’s core, yellow light glimmering for a ranged [Piercing Strike], the blade hammered into the ground instead, tearing through the rock still covered in metal from a dead Forge Golem like tissue paper. A sharp branch from a tree that should have been halfway across the clearing suddenly swished past as it was carried past him, or maybe he was moving past it, but there was no way to tell.

A sharp piece of metal suddenly whizzed towards his chest, despite still being stuck in the ground, completely unable to move.

Isaac jumped over it, or at least tried to, but he’d barely moved ten centimeters off the ground before his skull impacted the hard metal his feet had pushed off from mere moments ago. Ow.

The blade swished past, missing him by a mere hair’s breadth, him falling slightly to the left of where he’d jumped from enough to make the attack miss, no matter how razor thin the margin might have been.

Slowly, oh so slowly, his [Hunter’s Gaze] began to unravel the spatial layout of this topsy turvy world, warning him when moving in the wrong direction would fling him face first into the pointy end of a branch or twenty meters up in the air.

He began to advance, phasing through some pointy objects that swished past, chopping up others. [Far Strike], the new ranged stab granted by evolving [Piercing Strike], thrown projectiles enhanced with whatever [Skill] would work with it flew out, flashing upwards to obliterate that thing. They all missed by a mile, sometimes figuratively, sometimes literally.

In reality, it was only affecting an area around thirty meters across, but within that area, its power was absolute, twisting anything and everything to its whim. The only thing that could resist was him, his Fortitude solidifying his body, preventing it from being twisted and warped into unnatural shapes that would break the mind of anyone to whom it happened.

Thankfully, that thing was merely a Tier 3 monster and Isaac had a heavy investment in that Stat, making that not much of a threat. The only problem was the motherfucking monstrous special warp that would not let him get close enough to stab the fucker!

Two steps forward, one step to the side that somehow still carried him onwards, then his intuition failed him as the next step suddenly left him further back than he’d started out from.

Isaac dodged another volley of attacks, barely avoiding some, phasing through others, especially when an attempt at ducking under a metal spike ended with him flying face-first towards another, even larger spike while space twisted and bucked like a wild animal. A rabid, possessed by the devil, batshit insane animal with a side helping of berserk.

Finally, Isaac made it right underneath the core and summoned both of Old Reliable’s forms, then began tossing them skywards. A spike he’d missed tore through his gut, but one of his blade’s lanced downwards and severed its connection to the ground, allowing him to yank it out and toss it to the side, the wound healing the instant the blade was no longer blocking the wound.

His attacks were flung every which way, even ones that categorically on target suddenly veered away as the Elemental flexed the slightest bit of its will, rendering all his tricks null and void.

Then, Isaac jumped straight up, [Piercing Strike] flaring along the Kriegsmesser, the mana and core purpose of the [Skill] cementing its position in space as he flew skywards, applying the same energy onto the knife and flinging it at the core … and then it simply moved to the side.

For the briefest moment, he saw an opening, and stepped.

His teleportation [Skill] dropped him off on the exact opposite side of the core of his knife, thrust out his hand and used the blade’s own [Skill], [To Me]. A basic ability that let him call the blade into his hand in a straight line, even though the current state of the world made mockery of that very concept.

But there was no such thing as Old Reliable and him. There was only Isaac, a human with a part of him that very much resembled a weapon, occasionally physically separate from him, yet having intrinsically and eternally become a part of his very soul. So even if it was currently over there, it was still a part of him. The blade and his hand, were one and the same thing, hardened as everything about him was, impossible to break, bend or twist.

Still glowing yellow, the blade flew through the core as if it wasn’t even there, having utterly ignored the spatial warping. A moment later, everything snapped back into place, dumping him back onto the ground after a brief moment’s fall.

Isaac looked triumphant, collapsed to his knees … and threw up. He should have been immune to nausea at this point, but as bad as having everything suddenly twist like that had been, having it snap back into position even more quickly had been too much for his poor, abused, inner ear.

Thirty seconds or so later, he wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand, then rubbed at it too clean it in the rain. It was no longer pouring like a dozen gods were trying to drown him on dry land, but it was still raining.

A small spere densely covered in intricate patterns that flowed into each other, making it utterly impossible to tell where one ended and the next one began. The core, a guaranteed drop from an Elemental, the only problem when it came to actually getting one was, well, killing the fucking Elemental.

With the core clutched in his hand, Isaac walked into his ‘living’ container and briefly phased once inside, deliberately excluding the water, letting all the moisture fall through him, leaving him perfectly dry. From there, it was a matter of moments to draw out a Tier 5 circle, drop the core in and charge it once his mana hit the required amount. After all, creating an Extradimensional Pocket required a whopping 250 mana.

Congratulations! You’ve surmounted immense odds and managed to create an Extradimensional Pocket, a member of the [Rewards] type summons. (Rewards tab in the instruction manual unlocked)

Your Extradimensional Pocket can be opened at will, by you and only you, within fifty meters of the place where it was summoned and has a volume of 3x3x3 meters.

Each person can only have one Extradimensional Pocket, to access it from elsewhere requires a Remote Access Core (inscribed Lesser Space Elemental Core, see inscription?) that will be consumed upon use and grants the user five minutes of access to his core.

Re-using this ritual will move the existing Extradimensional Pocket to the new site, anchoring it there until it is moved again.

There was a shimmer in the air as he opened the Pocket. It wasn’t an actual room he could access, sadly, but the actual Extradimensional Room exceeded his current mana pool by quite a bit, though it required the same ingredients.

He could also instinctively tell what was in the Pocket at all times, currently, it was obviously empty. Then, he walked around the clearing and tossed each of the Forge Golem bits into it. The next time he visited Stagmer, he could just use the temporary access version of the Pocket to drop it all off there. Easy as pie.

While it would cost him a very painful fight each time he used this trick to transport large amounts of material, but he could do it. Isaac sat down at the kitchen table, scooped up a book off of it and read a few chapters, then headed back out for the next fight against an Elemental. And again. And again until he was left with a total of five cores and had even gained an Aspect that offered [Spatial Affinity], [Funhouse Warp] and [Spatial Turbulence].

The latter two were cool enough, but utter mana hogs and wouldn’t fit him at all, so he decided to not get those while the former would enhance all space aligned [Skills], including teleportation, but that would be a hell of a lot more useful in someone else’s hands. Probably a nice gift for when one of his colleagues gained a portal [Skill], and given their [Classes], that shouldn’t even take very long.

Soon, he’d be in a position to start making moves on Tier 5 and above monsters, but there was one big problem with that. He now had a property he could summon at, out of the way and all, but it was also legally tied to him, which meant that any messes that occurred on it were also his.

Now, he was very much off the beaten path here, but he was also under an open sky, so there was a direct line of sight to any and satellites that might have this place in their field of view. Everyone who met him in a professional capacity and had half a brain could tell he summoned on the side, but having big and clear video evidence of fights against some of the more dangerous ones would be bad, especially if they were retroactively identified as being Tier 5.

There were solutions to block that with magic tricks, but at that point, the concealment would be even more conspicuous that the actions it was hiding. The solution for now was pretty easy though, just put a roof over it, then slap an illusion onto it that made it always look the same when viewed from above. He’d already hired people for that, though, so he could just stick with the more basic monsters until then.

Eventually, they’d figure out a solution for Vegas casinos and then he could apply it here too. Well, he saidfigure out, but he really meant was that he’d feed them the solution, earning the team all a niece cash infusion from people with fuck-you money and possibly earning themselves more actual sponsors and support.

Right now though, it was time for a break, so fall asleep with a good book in his lap while the rain gently pattered against the metal roof of his ‘house’.