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

The Tier 2 Citadel of Sanctuary was running like a proper machine. The water purifiers hummed, the Arcane Towers reliably turned any wandering Infected into fine red mist, and the labor division hauled scrap without complaining much. For a guy living through the end of the world, Sebastian almost felt like he could take a nap.

Almost.

”We are missing people.” Valerie dropped a thick stack of hastily scribbled parchment onto the obsidian war table.

Sebastian sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He was slouched in a ridiculously ornate throne chair that he had dragged into the command room. He still wore his black leather coat, though it was currently dusted with concrete powder.

”Princess, it’s the apocalypse.” Sebastian pointed out dryly. ”People die. They get eaten by invisible spiders. They drink bad water and shit themselves into the grave. Missing is just a polite word for currently digesting in a monster’s stomach.”

”No, Sebastian, listen to me.” Valerie insisted as her blue eyes flashed with frustration. She tapped a manicured finger against the top parchment. ”I track the calorie distributions. I know exactly how many mouths we are feeding in the outer refugee camps. Three days ago, we had four thousand, nine hundred and twelve people. Today, I counted four thousand, eight hundred and fifty. Sixty-two people didn’t just wander off into the wasteland. They vanished from the safe zone.”

Sebastian stopped rubbing his nose. The apathy in his eyes shifted into a cold and calculating stare. The golden dome of Sanctuary was absolute. Nothing hostile could get in. Which meant whatever was taking his workforce was already inside the walls.

”Wraith.” Sebastian called out to the empty shadows of the room.

The Level 25 Assassin peeled himself off the dark ceiling and dropped to the marble floor with a soft tap. ”Boss.”

”Talk to me.” Sebastian commanded. ”You’ve been running perimeter patrols. Who is stealing my laborers?”

”We’ve been tracking anomalies in Sector 4 of the outer camp.” Wraith reported, his voice a steady rasp. ”No forced entries. No blood trails. People are just walking away in the middle of the night. My squad found a storm drain cover that had been pried open from the inside. It leads down into the old municipal sewer lines beneath the camp.”

”Great. More sewers.” Sebastian grumbled, standing up and stretching his back. His bones popped loudly. His twenty percent physical synchronization made him incredibly dense, but it didn’t cure the annoyance of dealing with stupid people. ”I didn’t build a magical fortress just so these idiots could go spelunking in the shit-pipes. Let’s go see what kind of morons are throwing away free rent.”

Twenty minutes later, Sebastian and Wraith stood at the edge of the refugee camp. The smell of unwashed humanity and despair was thick in the air, but Sebastian ignored it. He stared down at the open manhole cover.

He didn’t bother using [Void Walk] just yet. He wanted to preserve his real world mana. He just dropped down the ladder, his heavy boots hitting the damp concrete of the old sewer tunnel with a solid THUD. Wraith landed silently beside him.

The tunnel was pitch black. Sebastian activated [True Sight]. The agonizing spike of pain shot through his optic nerves as the physical darkness was overwritten by the glowing, geometric lines of the server’s source code.

”Holy shit.” Sebastian whispered, his silver-tinged eyes widening in genuine disgust.

”What do you see, Boss?” Wraith asked, holding a pair of matte-black daggers at the ready.

”A really big mess.” Sebastian replied.

The walls of the tunnel weren’t just dirty. Through the lens of the game’s code, they were painted with thick, pulsating runes of pure Void corruption. The dark, sickly purple mana trailed down the corridor like a breadcrumb path of pure insanity.

They followed the runes for half a mile. The air grew heavy, thick with the smell of blood and the stench of raw waste. It was a smell so foul that even Sebastian, a veteran of the apocalypse, had to suppress a gag reflex.

They reached a massive, rusted iron door that had been blown off its hinges.

”Stay sharp.” Sebastian muttered, stepping through the doorway.

The room beyond was an old municipal water reservoir. Now, it was a slaughterhouse.

Dozens of people were huddled in the center of the drained concrete basin. They were the missing refugees. But they weren’t prisoners. They were worshippers.

They were kneeling in a circle, rocking back and forth in a state of absolute, crazed religious ecstasy.

Sebastian’s stomach completely dropped.

The cultists had violently mutilated themselves. They had used their own fingers to gouge out their eyeballs, leaving empty, bleeding sockets that leaked black sludge. They had bitten off their own tongues, their mouths stained with a horrifying mixture of crimson blood and yellow bile. They were using their own feces and blood to finger-paint jagged, chaotic Void runes across the concrete floor.

”Fvck me.” Wraith breathed, entirely losing his professional cool. ”What kind of monster does this to themselves?”

”The kind that let the Void in.” Sebastian said grimly.

In the center of the bloody, shit-stained circle sat a single, humming VR terminal. It had been scavenged from the city and hot-wired to a stolen mana-battery.

The screen of the terminal was completely black, but it was projecting a holographic face into the air above it.

It was a face made of shifting, jagged code and static. It was the Apostle.

”Ah, the Anomaly.” the Apostle’s distorted voice echoed from the terminal’s speakers. It sounded like grinding metal and wet tearing flesh. ”I see you found my little congregation.”

Sebastian didn’t flinch. He walked right up to the edge of the kneeling, swaying cultists. ”I literally punched your soul out of your chest three days ago. How are you still talking?”

”You killed my meat.” the Apostle laughed, a horrifying, glitching sound. ”But I uploaded my consciousness to the Ethereal network before my physical brain died. I am no longer bound by flesh, Drifter. I am pure code. I am a Digital Lich.”

”You’re a glorified computer virus.” Sebastian corrected, his voice flat. ”And you’re stealing my workforce.”

”They are not yours anymore!” the Apostle roared, the hologram flickering violently with red error codes. ”I offered them salvation! I showed them the truth of the Void! They traded their fragile human senses for the eyes of the dark gods!”

”Yeah, they look thrilled.” Sebastian noted sarcastically, looking at a woman who was happily finger-painting with her own intestinal fluid. ”Listen, Clippy. I don’t care about your weird cult fetish. Get out of my basement.”

”It is too late!” the Apostle shrieked in triumph. ”The ritual is already underway! You cannot stop the signal, Drifter!”

The moment the Apostle yelled, the blind, tongue-less cultists stopped rocking. In terrifying unison, they turned their empty, bleeding eye sockets toward Sebastian and Wraith.

”Kill the non-believers!” the terminal screamed.

The cultists lunged. They moved with the jerky speed of low-tier Infected, their fingers curled into claws.

Sebastian didn’t even draw his sword. He just looked at Wraith. ”Take out the trash.”

Wraith didn’t hesitate. The Assassin blurred into motion. SLASH! CRACK! He moved like a shadow of pure violence. His daggers severed tendons and snapped necks with clinical precision. The cultists were mindless and unarmed, they didn’t stand a chance against a Level 25 professional killer.

Within ten seconds, the fifty mutated refugees were dead on the floor.

Sebastian casually walked over the twitching bodies. He stood in front of the humming VR terminal. He stared directly into the static eyes of the digital Apostle.

”You really suck at this villain thing.” Sebastian mocked.

”This was just a distraction.” the Apostle’s voice dropped into a dark hum. ”Look up, Drifter. The real plague is already in the air.”

Sebastian frowned. He raised his heavy, leather-clad boot and stomped down on the terminal. CRUNCH! The machine shattered into a dozen pieces of plastic and wire. The hologram instantly died.

”Boss.” Wraith said, wiping his daggers on a clean patch of a dead cultist’s shirt. ”If this was a distraction, what are they distracting us from?”

Sebastian’s comm-link buzzed violently in his pocket. He pulled it out.

”Sebastian!” Valerie’s voice screamed through the tiny speaker. She sounded completely panicked. ”Get back to the Citadel right now! The refugees in the courtyard, they’ve gone completely insane!”