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

The silence of Warehouse 4 was abruptly shattered by a terrifying sound from the outside world.

SCREEEEECH!

It sounded like tearing metal and static. It came from directly above them.

Valerie jumped, her head snapping up toward the high corrugated iron roof of the warehouse. ”What the hell was that?”

Sebastian didn’t even flinch. His newly synchronized senses were feeding him data at a ridiculous speed. ”Phase Spiders. They found us.”

THUD. THUD. SCRATCH.

Heavy and uncoordinated footsteps and the horrific sound of massive claws dragging across the metal roof echoed through the massive room. It wasn’t just one. It sounded like dozens of them!

”The bleeding effect is accelerating,” Sebastian said calmly, stepping over the puddle of black sludge he had just vomited. ”The system is dropping the barriers. The Ethereal Plane is merging with Earth right now. The monsters are rendering into reality, and they are very hungry.”

”They’re on the roof!” Valerie yelled, pointing her magnum upward. ”Sebastian, this roof is just rusted tin! If they’re Level 25 stealth mobs, they’ll tear through it in seconds!”

”I know,” Sebastian replied.

He walked purposefully toward the exact center of the massive concrete floor. His body was literally steaming. The excess heat from his twenty percent physical synchronization radiated off his skin, turning the cool air of the warehouse into a humid sauna.

”Sebastian, we need to run! Or hide! We can’t fight invisible giant spiders in the dark!” Valerie panicked, taking a few steps toward the heavy titanium doors.

”We aren’t running,” Sebastian stated.

He stopped in the dead center of the room. He didn’t pull out his aluminum baseball bat. He didn’t manifest his Earth Sword.

He closed his eyes and tapped into his physical mana pool.

He didn’t have a physical item in his pocket. The True City Core was a digital concept currently sitting in his Ethereal Plane inventory. But with the dimensions actively crashing into each other, the line between digital data and physical reality was extremely thin.

He focused on the concept of the Core. He remembered the heavy and perfect diamond. He remembered the pulsing aura it radiated. He grabbed that concept with his mind and violently yanked it downward into the physical world.

”Come here, you beautiful piece of code,” Sebastian gritted his teeth.

His hands began to glow with a blinding golden light. It was so bright that Valerie had to shield her eyes with her arm.

”What are you doing?!” she shouted over the increasing sounds of tearing metal above them. A large chunk of the roof suddenly buckled inward, revealing a sliver of the Ethereal sky outside.

”I’m installing the update!” Sebastian roared back.

He raised both of his glowing hands high above his head, and then brought them down with absolute terrifying force. He slammed his palms perfectly flat against the cracked concrete floor.

”INSTALL!”

BOOM!

The moment his hands made contact with the floor, a shockwave of pure magic exploded outward!

It wasn’t a destructive blast. It was a wave of creation.

A massive pillar of golden light erupted from the exact spot where Sebastian’s hands touched the concrete. The beam of light was fifty feet wide. It shot straight upward, obliterating the rusted tin roof of the warehouse instantly.

The pillar of light pierced the heavens, tearing a massive glowing hole straight through the suffocating clouds of the apocalypse above the megacity.

”Holy shit!” Valerie screamed, dropping to her knees as the sheer magical pressure forced the air out of her lungs.

The warehouse began to scream.

The physical laws of 2077 reality were violently overwritten by the digital code of the Ethereal Plane. The cracked concrete floor beneath them suddenly rippled and expanded like water.

CRACK! RUMBLE!

The flimsy cinderblock walls of the warehouse shattered outward. In their place, massive fifty-foot-thick walls of pitch-black basalt and interwoven razor-sharp iron thorns erupted from the earth.

The transition was instantaneous and terrifyingly violent. The industrial sector of the city was physically crushed to make room for the newly manifesting architecture. Old factories and rusted silos adjacent to Warehouse 4 were flattened into dust as the massive footprint of the Tier 5 Guild Citadel forced itself into reality.

Up on the roof, the pack of Phase Spiders that had been trying to dig their way in were caught dead in the golden pillar of light.

SCREEEEECH!

The invisible monsters were violently forced into the physical spectrum by the aura. For a fraction of a second, Valerie saw them. They were grotesque, multi-legged horrors made of jagged mandibles.

Then, the golden light incinerated them. They didn’t just burn, they were atomized into fine grey ash that rained down like snow!

Towering sleek obsidian Arcane Towers shot out of the ground at the four corners of the newly established perimeter. They hummed with deep concentrated blue mana, their magical tracking turrets spinning and locking onto the surrounding infected city.

The interior of the miserable warehouse morphed into a sprawling vaulted grand hall of dark glass and polished marble. The dirty tarps and wooden crates vanished, replaced by an imposing obsidian war table and plush banners.

The violent earthquake subsided. The deafening roar of grinding stone faded into a low comforting hum of ambient magical power.

The golden pillar of light slowly dissipated, leaving behind a perfectly clear localized dome of blue sky directly above the fortress, pushing back the crimson bleeding clouds of the Void.

Sebastian remained kneeling in the center of the pristine marble floor. His hands were still pressed against the ground. He was panting heavily, his muscles trembling from the sheer exertion of forcing an entire magical castle through the dimensional barrier.

He slowly pushed himself up. He wiped a streak of sweat from his forehead and looked around the magnificent towering architecture of his new home.

He looked over at Valerie. The heiress was sitting on the floor, her magnum forgotten by her side. Her jaw was hanging open as she stared at the vaulted ceilings of the Tier 5 Citadel that now physically existed in the middle of a futuristic cyberpunk city.

Sebastian cracked a tired and incredibly genuine smile.

”Welcome to Sanctuary,” he said.