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

The bright floodlights of Sanctuary cut through the red smog of Day Zero like a massive glowing middle finger aimed directly at the United States military.

A mile away in the hastily constructed command tent of the National Guard, Colonel Vance slammed his fist against a folding table.

”Turn off those goddamn lights!” Vance roared as he rubbed his bloodshot eyes. ”I gave the order to cut their grid! How are they projecting that much wattage without municipal power?!”

A communications officer frantically typed at a laptop while sweating profusely in his tactical gear. ”Sir thermal imaging shows no diesel exhaust. They aren’t running generators. The energy signature is anomalous. It’s registering as a localized high voltage atmospheric storm.”

”Magic,” Vance spat the word out like it was poison. ”They have a magic castle and now they have magic electricity. Fine. Frontal assaults are off the table. Artillery didn’t scratch the paint. We go to Plan B. Send in the freaks.”

The Colonel keyed his radio and switched to an encrypted highly classified frequency.

”Vanguard Actual this is Command. Operation Ghost Protocol is green. Bypass the outer perimeter. Infiltrate the structure. Neutralize the hostile leadership. Bring me that Drifter alive if possible. Dead if he twitches.”

”Copy that Command,” a deep distorted voice replied over the static. ”The Meta Squad is moving.”

Down in the ruins of the industrial sector, four figures detached themselves from the shadows of a crushed concrete pillar.

They didn’t look like normal soldiers. They were Meta Humans.

In the desperate months leading up to the Great Merge, a black ops division of the government had discovered the first physical manifestations of the Ethereal Plane’s corruption. Instead of destroying it they weaponized it. They had actively injected elite Special Forces operators with refined Void monster blood.

The results were grotesque pumped abominations.

The four Vanguard operators stood over seven feet tall. Their tactical armor was stretched to the breaking point over bulging muscles. Thick black veins crawled up their necks and disappeared beneath their multi lens night vision helmets. They breathed heavily as their biology constantly warred with the dark magic forcibly integrated into their cells.

”Activate camo,” the squad leader hissed.

With a soft hum the optical camouflage suits powered on. The advanced light bending technology seamlessly mapped the ruined environment around them. To the naked eye they completely vanished and became nothing more than faint distortions in the air.

They moved with terrifying speed and cleared the hundred yards to the golden barrier of the Sanctuary in seconds.

They didn’t try to bash through the front gates. They scaled the fifty foot walls using heavy duty magnetic grapples.

Down in the courtyard, the Scrap Golems continued their mindless clanking patrols. The horrifying amalgamations of rusted iron and charred human skulls swept the area as their glowing red eyes searched for targets.

But the Golems operated on basic low tier Ethereal logic. They relied on standard visual rendering. The military’s optical camo perfectly bypassed their primitive hit detection radius.

The four invisible giants slipped right past the army of undead machinery and breached the heavy iron doors of the Citadel’s western wing.

They stepped into the dimly lit stone corridors of the Sanctuary.

”We’re in,” the squad leader whispered over the comms. ”No resistance. Proceeding to the central command node.”

They thought they were the apex predators. They thought they were the ultimate fusion of human technology and monster biology.

They were dead wrong.

Fifty feet down the corridor, Wraith was clinging effortlessly to the ceiling like a massive terrifying bat.

The Level 25 Assassin didn’t need optical camo. He had the conceptual law of Shadow Meld. He was entirely out of phase with the physical lighting of the room. He was just another patch of darkness in a very dark hallway.

Wraith’s real world synchronization was lower than Sebastian’s as it sat at a modest eight percent. But for an Assassin eight percent of a superhuman agility stat was enough to turn him into a ghost.

He didn’t see the Vanguard operators. The camo was good.

But he could smell them.

The scent of corrupted monster blood radiating from their sweat was overwhelming. He could hear the heavy frantic thumping of their enlarged mutated hearts. He could feel the slight displacement of air as their massive invisible bodies pushed down the corridor.

’Amateurs.’ Wraith thought as his pulse remained completely steady. ’Loud. Clumsy. Heavy.’

He didn’t use a gun. Guns made noise. Guns drew attention.

Wraith slowly and silently drew his twin Ethereal daggers. The jagged black blades drank the ambient light to ensure there was no glint of steel to give away his position.

He let the four invisible soldiers pass directly beneath him. He waited until the last man in the formation was exactly one step behind the rest.

Wraith simply let go of the ceiling.

He dropped silently and landed perfectly behind the rear guard with a soft padded tap that was instantly drowned out by the thudding boots of the Meta Humans.

Before the soldier could even register the shift in air pressure Wraith moved.

He didn’t slash. He thrust.

Wraith drove the pitch black dagger directly upward. He slipped the blade perfectly beneath the hard kevlar plating of the soldier’s helmet and deep into the soft unarmored flesh under his jaw.

CRUNCH!

The blade punched through the roof of the mouth and severed the tongue before burying itself hilt deep into the soldier’s mutated brain.

Wraith ruthlessly twisted the handle and completely pulverized the neural center.

The soldier’s body instantly went rigid. He couldn’t scream. His vocal cords were destroyed. He simply let out a wet gurgling hiss as thick black arterial blood exploded from the wound and violently painted the stone wall next to them in a horrific spray of crimson and oil.

Wraith ripped the blade out and kicked the back of the dying man’s knee. He lowered the massive twitching body to the floor with absolute silence.

One down. Three to go.

The squad leader stopped. The optical camo shimmered slightly as he held up a hand.

”Hold,” the leader growled softly. ”Comms check. Four report.”

Dead air.

”Four report!” the leader repeated as a hint of panic bled into his distorted voice.

He turned around. The optical camo of the dead soldier had shorted out to reveal the massive bleeding corpse lying on the polished stone floor. The hallway looked like a slaughterhouse. Blood was rapidly pooling into a thick slippery puddle.

”CONTACT! REAR GUARD DOWN!” the leader roared as he raised his heavily modified assault rifle.

”Where?! I don’t see sh!t on thermals!” another soldier panicked and spun wildly as his weapon tracked empty space.

They were relying on technology. Wraith relied on the System.

[Skill Activated: Shadow Step]

Wraith didn’t run. He instantly folded the space between himself and the nearest panicked soldier and materialized directly inside the man’s guard.

”Right here,” Wraith whispered. His voice was a chilling rasp in the dark.

SLASH!

Wraith brought both daggers down in a vicious crossing pattern. The Ethereal blades ignored the dense mutated muscle and sliced cleanly through the soldier’s thick thighs.

”AGGGHHHH!” the Meta Human shrieked as his hamstrings completely severed. His legs gave out and he collapsed heavily onto his knees. His assault rifle clattered uselessly to the floor.

Before the soldier could even hit the ground Wraith spun and used the momentum to deliver a devastating roundhouse kick directly to the side of the man’s helmet.

CRACK!

The reinforced neck snapped with a sound like a gunshot. The soldier slumped over dead before his face hit the stone.

”OPEN FIRE! LIGHT UP THE HALLWAY!” the squad leader screamed as pure terror finally broke through his combat stims.

TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT!

The two remaining soldiers squeezed their triggers and unleashed a blind deafening barrage of heavy armor piercing rounds down the corridor. Sparks flew as bullets chewed chunks of rock out of the walls and shattered the decorative vases lining the hall.

Wraith wasn’t there.

The moment he had kicked the second soldier he had already dropped back into Shadow Meld and pressed his back flat against the ceiling directly above the muzzle flashes.

He watched them completely waste their magazines as the deafening noise covered the sound of his movements.

Click-click-click.

The rifles ran dry.

”Reloading!” the squad leader yelled while frantically reaching for a fresh magazine.

He took a step backward to seek cover.

It was a fatal mistake.

His heavy combat boot stepped directly into the massive slick pool of blood spilling from the first two corpses. The thick oily monster blood acted like liquid grease on the polished stone.

SWISH. THUD!

The squad leader’s feet flew out from under him. He slammed violently onto his back and the breath knocked out of his lungs. His optical camo shorted out completely as he crashed into the gore.

Wraith dropped from the ceiling like a stone.

He landed directly on the chest of the downed leader and pinned him to the floor. Before the massive mutated soldier could throw him off Wraith reversed his grip on his dagger and plunged it directly into the center of the man’s throat.

SQUELCH.

The leader’s eyes rolled back as his massive hands weakly pawed at Wraith’s wrists. He drowned in his own blood.

The final soldier standing just five feet away stared in absolute horror. He had just watched three of his biologically enhanced superhuman squadmates get dismantled in less than twenty seconds by a guy wielding what looked like oversized kitchen knives.

He dropped his empty rifle. He didn’t draw his sidearm. He turned and ran.

He sprinted back toward the heavy iron doors with his boots echoing frantically. He just wanted out. He wanted to get away from the monster in the dark.

Wraith stood up from the twitching corpse. He calmly wiped the blood from his blades onto his leather pants. He didn’t chase the fleeing man. He just pulled a single jagged throwing knife from his bandolier.

He didn’t even look. He just flicked his wrist.

THWACK!

The knife sailed through the air with terrifying speed and buried itself perfectly into the back of the running soldier’s neck to sever the spinal cord instantly.

The man’s momentum carried him forward. He face planted directly into the heavy iron doors with a dull thud and slowly slid down the metal to join the pile of corpses.

Silence returned to the corridor. It was broken only by the wet dripping sound of blood pooling on the stone.

Wraith casually walked over to the final body and yanked his throwing knife free. He tapped his encrypted comm link.

”Boss,” Wraith’s steady unbothered voice echoed over the channel. ”Outer perimeter breached. Four hostiles. Genetically modified. They bypassed the golems using optical camo.”

”Status?” Sebastian’s voice crackled back completely devoid of concern.

Wraith looked down the hallway. It was an absolute slip and slide of spilled intestines, shattered armor, and headless corpses. Game skills absolutely decimated biological science experiments.

”Status is clear,” Wraith replied smoothly. ”Taking out the trash now. Might need a mop.”