Museum Core Chapter 121: Final Preparations

Thalassophobia was absolutely bloody awful; that was something she could say with absolute certainty.

And yet, for this fight, she’d been given something that largely removed it as an issue, through one simple trick.

Pocket Depthfinder (C-Rank, common)

A simple enchanted contact lens.

The Pocket Fishfinder will show the outline of the seafloor at a distance of up to ten kilometers.

Energy draw: tiny

Yes, she could still “see” sod all, but now she knew exactly where the ground was, and could use that to orient herself. The fact that there might be innumerable horrors between her and it was still making her want to curl up in the corner and stay there until the mission was over, but it was helping more than she’d expected it to.

Jaclyn pulled up her status so that she had something else to look at.

Name: Jaclyn Abrams

Race: Human

Class: Anima Monk

C-Rank, Level 4 -> 6/20

Class Abilities

Spirit Bond: Honey Badger (F-Rank)

Spirit Projection (E-Rank)

Ancient Bond: Haast’s Eagle (D-Rank)

Mythic Bond: Lernean Hydra (C-Rank)

Statistics (0 points available)

Body: 510

Magic: 40

Mind: 454

Spirit: 460

Skills

Pugilism 42

Fist of the Indomitable Badger 42

Athletics 43 -> 44

Situational Awareness 44

Bullshit Radar 37

Martial Arts 42 -> 43

Alternate Skill Set (currently inactive, switch available)

Mana Control 20

Utility Magic 20

Ballance 16

Breathing 12

Inspect 23

Movement 12

***

As per usual for C-Rank, she’d advanced, but only a little, despite how much she’d trained.

She glanced over to where the “new guy” was sitting.

Elias of the Crimson Sea.

Not too many people knew that was also the name of Daedalus’ fairy. And even fewer had actually met it.

Obviously, that Elias looked massively different than the man sitting over yonder, but in terms of bearing and attitude… if Daedalus’ fairy was a transformed human, there was little reason to think the core himself wasn’t a former human as well.

Between that, everything Frye had deduced from both his and her own observations, and a general gut feeling … all in all, she probably knew what was going on here.

Not to mention that the fact that the mysterious “world’s strongest man” being a dungeon core made sense for another reason. He was stronger irrespective of circumstances, because anytime he could create a dungeon, he could drown any single foe, herself included, in bodies.

Any other fighter had their combat power at least somewhat linked to matchups.

She, for example, was at her best against opponents who used toxins, since she was outright immune to those.

Then she was reasonably well matched up with anyone who had actual weak points she could strike, and a vulnerability to her own toxic blood was a plus.

Inorganic foes were a pain in the behind to fight.

And finally, users of fire, acid, and radiation were really bad news for her.

She’d win against Hunter in a heartbeat out of the water, but he’d beat her just as quickly in the ocean.

Fuller’s radiation would have made him her natural counter if they’d been at the same rank, but she’d happily take him on in the ocean, since water was surprisingly good at blocking radiation. She’d once heard that if the ozone layer entirely failed, the top one meter of the ocean would block out all the radiation that would then hit the surface.

Yes, UV radiation was very different from the gamma rays the general used, but she’d checked, water worked against those, too.

With how combat strength worked, to be unbeatable, the mystery man would have to be absurdly powerful as a regular human, the kind of strength that would have likely been detected at some point by a seismograph if nothing else.

But there was a powerhouse, a very public one at that, which she was already suspecting …

Overall, in all likelihood, Daedalus was the mysterious “Thomas Stettin.”

But bringing that up had precisely zero upsides, unless one counted the gratification of knowing one had solved a puzzle. She didn’t.

So yes, they had a choice between keeping their cordial, perhaps even friendly, relationship with Daedalus, or, or they could “confront” him with that information, and hope it wasn’t taken in any of the dozen ways that would result in him getting mad, such as it being understood as some subtle threat to his family or the like.

Honestly, this was likely a secret that both she and Frye would take to their graves. There was no real way to use it well, and far too many ways for it to bring about disaster.

“Deputy Director Abrams,” Elias announced as he noticed her gaze, rising to his feet and walking towards her. “We’ll be here for another day before something happens. How would you feel about some light sparring?”

“Define ‘light,’” Jaclyn replied. Aboard a warship designed prior to the appearance of superpowers, them sparring at anywhere near their full strength would cause utter devastation.

“Start at normal human speeds, then speed up until we have to switch to flying,” he offered.

That was probably something she needed to train anyway. With how her flight worked, requiring her to control her wings with her shoulders, throwing punches in the air was difficult.

However, it was also hard to train. The only one who could easily fly was Henderson, but while he could fly, he needed to do so in phoenix form, which both made the whole affair incredibly dangerous but also only worked so-so, since fighting a humanoid opponent was very different from chasing after an eagle-sized bird.

Jaclyn nodded. “But we should do this on the helipad.”

It was a large, flat, open section of deck and was designed to have a multi-ton heli land on it, with additional structural reinforcements and shock absorbers to boot.

And the vehicle that normally occupied it was presently away, and would continue to be so for another hour. A brief conversation with the destroyer’s captain later, and she was standing on “the field of battle,” across from the first offworld human she’d ever met.

He’d withdrawn a quarterstaff from a spatial storage and was now brandishing it at her, while Jaclyn stuck to her hands, as per usual.

“I’d suggest we just start slow, and speed up together,” Elias offered, again. “Ready?”

She dropped into a combat stance and nodded … but the staff was already whipping at her side.

The world slowed down to a crawl as she instinctively began to pull on the full potential of her stats, all the while tamping down on the physical side of things to avoid wrecking her surroundings.

It felt as though both she and the staff were moving through molasses, the sheer mismatch between how fast she could think and how quickly she was letting herself move almost painful … as was restraining herself to not immediately lash out and kick that stick out of his hands.

But within the constraints of training, it hit. Though she barely even felt it.

Jaclyn made a grab for the staff, but he yanked it back with a spin, one that then sent the other end at her temple, slowly.

That one, she did block, moving slightly faster than she should have, and he immediately sped up to match.

Back and forth they went, over and over, she got whacked in just about every spot Elias could reach, and in a real fight, she’d have died a dozen times over.

When she moved forward, that bloody stick was between them, and any time she moved back, it got launched after her.

The only thing she really took away from any of that was that Elias typically used a spear, not a quarterstaff, and was used to having a pointy end on his weapon.

It would slither past her guard and poke her in the chest, stomach, he’d even tweaked her nose once … and she was still yet to land a clean hit.

But one thing was certain: they’d started getting a bit too rough for the ship.

“I think we might have to take this to the skies, now,” she suggested.

In response, he summoned a pair of crimson dragonfly wings on his back and began to hover a meter off the deck, so she summoned her own wings.

Turns out, Elias was just as good in the air as he was on the ground. And apparently, her wings were rather easy targets for anyone who cared to go after them. She quickly lost count of how many times that blasted quarterstaff snuck past her guard and shattered the ethereal constructs, and to add insult to injury, Elias often used the tip of his weapon to tweak her nose as he drew it back.

No contact with the actual cartilage, which would have hurt like mad, but she could still feel the tip of her nose bed every time that weapon swished past.

Just how easy was this for him?

“Who are you?” she finally asked. He was actually physically weaker than her, something that likely stemmed from the fact that he also invested into magic, yet he was kicking her around like a football.

“I’m you,” he grinned. “In half a century, give or take a decade or two.”

“You’re me …” she frowned. “Please tell me that’s a metaphor, not time travel …”

“What?”

Elias looked genuinely stunned at that moment, then he burst out laughing, actually falling out of the air before he managed to resummon his wings.

“Really?” Jaclyn raised an eyebrow.

He snorted as he looked back at her and flew back up to her height.

“Time travel doesn’t exist, and quite frankly, even if it did, do you really think you could have possibly mistaken your future incarnation as anything but that?”

Jaclyn frowned, but before she could say something, he continued.

“Basically, I was the lightning rod. Anything went wrong, and I’d put myself between it and the innocent, and usually, I’d also win. And grow. And then I’d be a little stronger when facing the next one. And the next. And the one after that, until I wa- …” he cut himself off, pausing before continuing in a way Jaclyn assumed was different from what he’d been about to say. “… until I wound up here.”

That was a … weird thought. Was that really who she was?

No, that was a stupid question. It was who she’d been from the very moment she’d chosen to become a police officer. The only thing that had changed was the scope. And perhaps the fact that de-escalation wasn’t exactly useful as a tool against monsters. And just in general, her current job had gained a decidedly military bent.

“If that’s my future …” Jaclyn trailed off with a grin that was only slightly forced. “… then I’d better train until I can take all comers, don’t I?”

Elias didn’t reply with words, instead hefting his staff in anticipation of another exchange.

They clashed in the skies above the transformation zone, her fists against his quarterstaff … and she lost, still.

Until she came to a realization and asked herself a question: why the hell was she dodging? Why was she still trying to avoid getting hit?

Yes, training was meant to be realistic; she should avoid taking hits that would have taken her out of the fight, had this been a real conflict, but there were a lot of hits she could take without being affected in the least.

The next swing of Elias’ staff cut across her midsection, catching her jacket and tearing a huge swathe off it, but that let her grab onto the shaft of the spear and yank, then ram Elias in the chest with her elbow as he flew past … or at least that was what should have happened.

Instead, he’d let go of the spear the instant she’d laid hands on it and she’d gone spinning back through the air, until she’d finally managed to stabilize herself and looked over at her training partner, who’d just returned from diving after the torn-off chunk of clothing, as well as his staff.

“Thank you,” she said as he handed it over and fused it back into her clothing with a spell.

“Not a bad plan,” Elias commented. “But that trick’s easy to counter if you’ve seen it before. And doubly useless against soulbound weapons, which I would have normally used.”

“Why soulbound weapons?” she asked.

He summoned his spear, dropped it, then summoned it straight back into his hand.

“They’re easy to get back.”

That made sense, and she should have gotten that herself. No excuse, save perhaps the fact that Jaclyn neither used weapons herself, nor was she used to fighting opponents that did.

She decided to fling herself right back at Elias, go right back to duelling her opponent, hoping she’d be able to manage something this time around.

Sure, trapping the weapon as it struck her wouldn’t work, but what about trapping it between them? Or …

Jaclyn could see him starting to dodge, bringing the staff around to slam it into her ribs … and, dismissing her wings, she let it, feeling herself fold around the wood as she began to be pushed away even as she grabbed the staff.

Once again, Elias began to let go of his weapon, but this time, the grab had only been a midpoint in her plan, a stepping stone that allowed her to fling herself past his weapon and towards him.

A beat of his wings carried him up, almost enough to avoid her entirely … but the important point was the sheer mismatch between what she weighed, and how much mass she could actually move.

Jaclyn only managed to snag the very bottom of his trousers leg with her middle and index finger, but that was enough for her to yank herself up, the laws of physics demanding that he be yanked downwards at the same time, and then her other hand slammed into his ribs, the first clean strike she’d landed this entire fight.

Yes, in a real fight, he’d have killed her a dozen times over by now.

Yes, in a real fight, he’d have used magic.

Yes, this wasn’t a fight she could have realistically won if it had been serious.

Yet at the same time, Jaclyn could feel her chest swell with pride, and a grin creep onto her face. She’d actually managed to outwit and then hit him. That was at least a little impressive, and the system seemed to agree.

Skill Evolution: Fist of the Indomitable Badger 42 -> Immortal Badger Fist 44

“Please tell me that did something,” Elias asked, holding his side.

Jaclyn nodded, grinning while doing her best to “look inward,” playing out her combat scenarios in her mind, to trying and figure out what had changed.

Skills were … well, they could be, complicated.

Pugilism was simple, every level in it let her hit harder while also muting the equal and opposite reaction that resulted from her hitting something, managing the “recoil” from her blows.

Athletics boosted all her “athletic” actions, improving her ability to put her stats to use.

Situational Awareness gave her a sixth sense of sorts, crossed with something that was almost but not quite eyes at the back of her head.

Martial Arts, meanwhile, helped her apply her knowledge and skill in combat, making moves flow more smoothly into each other, making it easier to adapt individual moves to other situations, and just in general smoothing out the process of repetition of individual moves creating muscle memory.

And finally, her martial style itself, the most complicated of them all.

Enhancing that directly applied to her learning moves and techniques, and likely had the most direct impact on her in combat, but the single biggest difference was always made was when it evolved.

Because then it took all her old techniques, and transformed them to work with her new circumstances/capabilities.

It had started out as Bàoquán, or Leopard-style Kung Fu, then transformed into Fist of the Indomitable Badger to take full advantage of the fact that she could now easily absorb blows in exchange for landing her own strikes, massively increasing her windows of opportunity as long as she managed to minimize the damage she took. Which was what the evolved skill helped with. A lot.

“I’ll leave you to that,” Elias interrupted her thoughts, walking off.

Jaclyn sighed internally, then tried to marshal her thoughts again, focusing on what the new skill was now telling her to do.

It was still largely similar to the first evolution, but in addition to helping her take advantage of her toughness, it also showed her how to shift blows so that they’d be easier to heal.

Useful, though not quite as ground-breaking as the first one … except that was only on the technique level. As far as the actual empowerment went, her precision, her economy of motion, it was a difference like night and day. It normally took months of training or an anchor beast battle to get even a single level in a skill that was over forty, yet she’s just gotten two from a bloody training match!

***

All in all, the fallout from the EUS had been surprisingly minimal. At least for Thomas.

Yes, Elias was barely around anymore, but that was only in the physical sense; mental communication was as good as ever, and would have to suffice for now, even though he generally preferred a face-to-face conversation.

And no one seemed to have connected two and two together on his identity … or, at the very least, not acted on it.

Part of Thomas wished that this were a regular video game, where his identity being discovered would be immediately announced by a “quest failed” notification or something.

As it was, he’d always be wondering … yet doing so was a complete and utter waste of time, when he could instead be preparing to murder that damn anchor beast.

Mostly, parking several hundred depth charges at the ocean’s surface, ready to be cut loose when it was time, calling upon every human ally he had, plus Elias, and made a proper plan, this time around.

… and most importantly, he’d actually gotten permission to poke the bear, this time around.