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

The next morning, Sebastian was unceremoniously summoned.

He sat in a plush and overly aggressive velvet chair in the Headmaster’s office. Headmaster Aldous was a Level 80 Archmage NPC. He had a long white beard and wore robes made of spun starlight. He currently looked like he was about to have a massive panic attack.

”I saw what you did to Drake in the courtyard yesterday, Raven,” Aldous said, pacing behind his massive oak desk. The old man rubbed his temples as his advanced AI was clearly stressed beyond its normal parameters. ”It was brutal. Unforgiving. And exactly the kind of unhinged violence I need right now.”

Sebastian slouched in his chair, his black leather coat rustling. He didn’t take off his white mask.

”Get to the point, old man. I have classes to skip.”

Aldous stopped pacing. He leaned over the desk, his voice dropping to a harsh whisper.

”Students are missing. Five of our top-tier combat scholars vanished last night in the lower training basements. The tracking wards are completely black. The faculty is panicking, and if the nobles find out their kids are gone, they’ll pull their funding.”

”So you want me to be a janitor,” Sebastian said flatly.

”I want you to be a discrete executioner,” Aldous corrected. ”Whatever is down there is bypassing my highest level wards. Find the students. Kill whatever took them. Do it quietly, and I’ll grant you a direct seed into the Grand Tournament finals.”

Sebastian’s eyes narrowed behind the mask. A direct seed meant bypassing a week of annoying preliminary fights.

”Deal. Give me the access key.”

Ten minutes later, Sebastian was standing in front of a heavy iron door in the deepest and forgotten sublevel of the Academy. The sign read Restricted Combat Training.

He didn’t bother with the key. He used his [God Slayer’s Edge] to casually slice the heavy iron deadbolt in half.

CLANG.

He kicked the door open.

The moment he stepped inside, the pristine and polished stone of the Academy vanished.

The air was suffocatingly hot.

”What the fuck,” Sebastian muttered, his hand instinctively resting on the hilt of his Rusty Iron Dagger.

The training dungeon had been entirely terraformed. The stone walls were coated in a thick and pulsating layer of purple-black flesh. Sickly yellow veins throbbed along the floor, pumping an unknown fluid deeper into the darkness.

SQUELCH. SQUELCH.

His boots sank an inch into the spongy and meaty floor with every step. The ambient noise of the dungeon was a horrifying and wet breathing sound.

He activated his [True Sight]. His silver eyes pierced the gloom.

He followed the fleshy tunnels downward until he reached the central training arena.

He finally found the missing students.

They were suspended from the ceiling and completely encased in thick and glowing yellow webbing. They looked like grotesque and human-sized spider eggs.

Drip. Hssss...

A thick and highly corrosive acidic bile was dripping from the ceiling directly onto the cocoons. The acid was slowly and methodically eating through their armor and their digital flesh.

One of the students, a young Paladin, was still conscious. The acid had eaten away the entire left side of his face, exposing the digital bone beneath.

”H-help... me...” the Paladin gurgled, his one remaining eye wide with absolute and mind-breaking agony. ”It’s digesting us... alive...”

Sebastian didn’t feel fear, but a cold and heavy knot of pure disgust settled in his stomach. This wasn’t standard Ethereal Plane lore. This was an invasion.

A massive and wet shifting sound echoed from the darkness above.

THUD.

A nightmare dropped from the ceiling and landed heavily in the center of the arena.

It was a Void Parasite. It didn’t have a defined shape. It was a chaotic and shifting mass of jagged mandibles, hundreds of unblinking and weeping eyes, and long and barbed tentacles dripping with the same yellow acid melting the students.

[Entity: Void Parasite (Corrupted)]

[Level: ???]

[Status: Feeding]

The monster shrieked, a sound like tearing metal and static, and whipped a massive tentacle directly at Sebastian’s head.

Sebastian didn’t dodge. He didn’t even draw his blade.

He tapped into his newly acquired Conceptual Law.

”Stop,” Sebastian commanded.

[Skill Activated: Chrono-Stasis]

BZZZT!

The world violently snapped to a halt. The air itself froze into a solid and unmoving block. The dripping acid stopped mid-air and was suspended perfectly. The shrieking audio of the monster was abruptly cut off.

The Void Parasite hung frozen in the space before him. Its lethal tentacle stopped mere inches from Sebastian’s nose.

Sebastian stepped casually to the side and bypassed the frozen attack. He walked right up to the horrifying and many-eyed face of the monster.

”You guys are early,” Sebastian whispered to the frozen beast. ”You’re not supposed to be in the server until the Merge.”

He raised his right hand. Black and terrifying mana leaked from his fingertips as he activated [Soul Reaping].

He didn’t punch it. He didn’t cast a fireball. He simply pushed his hand directly into the center of the frozen mass of eyes and pulled.

SHLUCK.

He violently ripped the creature’s digital soul completely out of its physical coding.

He canceled the Time Stop.

Reality crashed back in. The Parasite didn’t even have time to scream. Without a soul to anchor its chaotic code, the massive fleshy body instantly dissolved into a puddle of foul and bubbling black sludge.

[Target Executed.]

[Item Dropped: Corrupted Tournament Roster]

Sebastian ignored the mess. He bent down and picked up the glowing and glitched piece of parchment the monster had dropped.

He read the text, and his blood ran cold.

It wasn’t a standard loot drop. It was a data log. It detailed the exact mana signatures of every single high-level player registered for the Grand Magic Tournament. The Void wasn’t just invading randomly. They had hijacked the event.

They were using the tournament as a massive and concentrated feeding trough to harvest the strongest souls on the server before the apocalypse even properly began.

Sebastian crushed the paper in his fist.

”A trap,” he muttered as he looked up at the dying and cocooned students. ”They’re serving humanity on a silver platter.”

He turned on his heel and walked out of the fleshy and rotting basement. He had his direct seed into the finals. Now, he just had to crash the banquet.