Awakening a 10,000x Skill Proficiency Multiplier in the Apocalypse

The heavy titanium gates of Sanctuary groaned shut, sealing Sebastian off from the charred remains of the valley. He exhaled a long tired breath, rolling his shoulders as the adrenaline slowly leeched from his system.

Inside the courtyard, it was a completely different world. The ambient heat of the Valley of Cinders was entirely blocked by the Citadel’s conceptual architecture. The air was cool and clear.

Standing near the entrance to the grand hall was Valerie. She was leaning heavily on her carved oak staff, her azure silk robes rustling in the gentle artificial breeze.

Beside her stood Wraith, the Level 25 Assassin, who had materialized from the shadows along with three other players clad in dark non reflective leather gear. His mercenary squad.

They were all staring at Sebastian like he had just grown a second head.

”So,” Valerie started, crossing her arms. ”You just vaporized a Level 40 Siege Beast with a junkyard cannon and successfully extorted a real world billionaire for canned beans.”

”Basically, yeah,” Sebastian said casually, walking past them toward the war table in the center of the hall. ”The railgun needs better cooling. Galleon almost melted my eyebrows off. But it gets the job done.”

Wraith stepped forward, his face obscured by his dark half mask, but his posture radiating sheer professional awe.

”Boss,” Wraith said, his voice a low steady rasp. ”My squad and I scouted the perimeter while you were playing politics. The Golden Lions are entirely broken. Baron_K logged out the second he cleared the valley. But you just painted a massive target on our backs.”

”When the game forums catch wind of this, every high level player on the server is going to come looking for the glitch.”

”Let them look,” Sebastian replied, waving a hand over the holographic interface of the war table. ”The Citadel walls are rated for Tier 5 damage. Unless they bring an army of Level 100s, they’re just going to break their swords against the bricks.”

Sebastian tapped a few runes on the table, transferring guild permissions to Wraith.

”You’re head of security now, Wraith. Set up patrol routes for your boys. If anything hostile gets within a mile of the perimeter, I want to know about it. If it gets within a hundred yards, shoot it.”

Wraith offered a crisp perfectly executed salute. ”Understood. We own the shadows.”

He turned and gestured silently to his squad. They faded into the ambient gloom of the courtyard without making a single sound. Professionals.

”They’re creepy, but they’re good,” Valerie noted, watching them vanish. She turned her attention back to Sebastian.

”So, we have a base. We have a crazy dwarf building war crimes on the roof. And we have real world supplies on the way. What’s the next step? We just sit here and wait for the apocalypse?”

Before Sebastian could answer, the ambient lighting in the grand hall violently shifted.

The soft pulsing blue glow of the Leyline Node was instantly overpowered by a blinding pristine golden light that filtered down from the digital heavens.

BING! BING! BING!

The celestial server wide chime echoed in their skulls, carrying that same sickeningly epic tone that usually preceded a massive headache.

Sebastian groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose. ”I swear to God, if it’s another World Boss, I’m going to personally throttle the developers.”

A massive ornate scroll unrolled itself in the center of their vision. The text burned with a fiery golden script.

[GLOBAL ANNOUNCEMENT: THE AGE OF MAGIC APPROACHES!]

[The Imperial Magic Academy formally invites all prodigies to the Grand Magic Tournament!]

[Prize for the Grand Champion: The True City Core]

[Location: The Imperial Capital]

[Requirement: Must be an enrolled student of the Academy to enter the arena.]

Valerie read the prompt, her brow furrowing in confusion. She swiped the notification away.

”A tournament? Sebastian, we already have a base. You planted the City Core shard. Why do we care about some PvP arena event?”

Sebastian didn’t dismiss the notification immediately. He stared at the words ’True City Core’, his dark eyes narrowing into calculated slits.

”Because I didn’t plant a City Core,” Sebastian corrected quietly. ”I planted a Rusty Iron Shard. It’s an anchor. It was enough to trick the game into letting me build this fortress. But a shard is just a foundation.”

He turned to look at her, the exhaustion evident on his face.

”When the Great Merge happens, the digital world overlays the physical one. This fortress? It’s going to manifest over our warehouse. But without a True City Core, the magical defenses won’t translate. We’ll just have a big fancy stone building.”

”The Phase Spiders and the Void Titans will tear through it like wet tissue paper. The True Core is the engine. It brings the conceptual laws of the game into reality. It powers the turrets, the shields, the gravity wells. Without it, Sanctuary is just a tomb.”

Valerie’s eyes widened as the horrific reality of the mechanics sank in. ”So we have to win this tournament. We have to get that Core.”

”Yeah,” Sebastian sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. ”Which means we have to go to school.”

Valerie actually snorted. She slapped a hand over her mouth, but a loud, undignified laugh escaped anyway.

”School? You? The guy who just liquefied five hundred people wants to go sit in a classroom?”

”I hate it as much as you do”, Sebastian grumbled. ”The Imperial Magic Academy is a nightmare. It’s located in the Capital. It’s crawling with snobby high tier aristocratic NPCs who think they’re better than everyone else. And it’s heavily warded. We can’t just blow up the front gates.Trust me, I already ran the math on blowing up the gates. It doesn’t work.”

”So we infiltrate,” Valerie said, her corporate intellect smoothly taking over. She began pacing around the war table.

”The prompt says you have to be a student. I’m an Arcane Valkyrie. My class is inherently magical and high status. I can walk right in the front door, flash some gold, and enroll as a noble. You, on the other hand...”

She gestured to his outfit.

”you look like you crawled out of a sewer. Because you did. The Academy guards will execute you for loitering before you even reach the registration desk.”

”Fine. I’ll put on some of the loot from the guild leaders,” Sebastian said. He opened his inventory. SHING! He equipped Baron_K’s diamond-encrusted chest plate. Then, for good measure, he equipped a bright purple Mage’s hat he looted off a random player.

Valerie stared at him in horrified silence.

”Absolutely fucking not,” she said. ”You look like a disco ball threw up on a pimp. Take that off right now.”

”Hey, the stats on this hat are decent,” Sebastian argued.

”Take it off!” she barked. ”I’ll play the rich diva. You need to be my quiet, unnoticed shadow.

Find something dark. And pick an alias.”

Sebastian rolled his eyes. SWAP! The diamond armor and purple hat vanished. He dug through his trash loot and equipped a long black leather coat and a plain white half-mask.

”The alias is Raven,” Sebastian said, his voice muffled by the collar. ”Happy?”

Valerie looked him up and down.

”Surprisingly, yes. You look like a high-tier edgy assassin roleplayer. It’s the perfect camouflage. But you’re still a Drifter. You have zero innate magical affinity. How do you pass the practical exam?”

Sebastian let out a dry, humorless chuckle.

”Princess, I have a ten thousand times multiplier. I don’t need affinity. I’m going to break their testing equipment into so many pieces.”