Awakening a 10,000x Skill Proficiency Multiplier in the Apocalypse-Chapter 29: []: The Vanguard; Mirrors and Madness

He ducked under the wildly swinging fists.

The sheer force of the monster’s attack ruffled his hair. He spun smoothly and slipped behind the towering mass of mutated muscle.

He didn’t wind up. He simply reached out and slapped his open palm flat against the center of the Flesh Hulk’s broad, twitching back.

"Rot, you piece of shit," Sebastian whispered.

The effect was instant and completely revolting.

The conceptual law ignored the monster’s massive health pool and dense armor. It directly attacked the cells holding the creature together. The Flesh Hulk froze as a horrific gurgling gasp escaped its ruined throat.

Where Sebastian’s hand had made contact, a circle of absolute rot exploded outward at a terrifying speed. The grey hardened skin instantly blackened and turned to ash.

But it didn’t stop at the skin. The massive muscle fibers directly beneath melted. They turned into a foul, bubbling black sludge.

The monster shrieked. The sound bubbled through a throat that was rapidly melting.

Without the thick layers of muscle to hold up its own massive weight, the creature’s bones completely failed. The Hulk’s own ribs tore outward through its dissolving skin with a sickening series of wet snaps.

CRACK! SNAP! 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

A huge mess of rotten flesh, melted organs, and black guts splashed heavily onto the expensive floor.

Within three seconds, the towering elite mob had been reduced to a steaming, smelly puddle of biological waste and a few highly corroded bones.

Sebastian stepped back, breathing hard. He calmly wiped a stray drop of black sludge off the cuff of his jacket. He looked at the smoking puddle of gore and then up at the heavily dented panic room door.

"Pest control," Sebastian announced loudly, trying to steady his heart rate. He knocked on the titanium. CLANG! "Pretty sure you owe me a fee for that."

For a long moment, there was nothing but the sound of the acid rain hitting the penthouse windows. Then the heavy clicking of multiple deadbolts retracting sounded through the hall.

The door hissed open. It swung outward with a heavy sigh.

Valerie stood in the doorway. She was still wearing the same tailored corporate suit she had worn to the office that morning. Her dark hair was stuck to her forehead with sweat.

She clutched a heavy silver magnum in her shaking hands. The barrel pointed directly at Sebastian’s chest.

Her dark blue eyes shifted from his tired face down to the horrific, steaming puddle of melted human remains soaking into her expensive carpets. She looked at the ribs sticking out of the black sludge. She breathed in the suffocating, eye-watering stench of dead meat that now completely filled the hallway.

A normal person would have screamed. A normal person would have dropped the gun and thrown up until their stomach bled.

Valerie did neither. She stared at the gore. Her chest heaved and her knuckles were white around the grip of her pistol. She slowly lowered the weapon. Her eyes traced the black, fading veins on Sebastian’s right hand.

She wasn’t looking at him with fear. She was looking at him with the calculating, desperate gaze of a woman who just realized the old rules of the world were dead. The man standing in front of her was making the new ones.

She turned around and disappeared into the panic room for a second. When she returned, she dragged a heavy steel briefcase across the floor. She shoved it over the doorway.

THUD. It hit the floor heavily, showing how heavy it really was.

"Fifty pounds of untraceable gold bars," Valerie said. Her voice was raspy but completely without panic. "Plus two military-grade satellite phones with solar chargers."

Sebastian looked at the briefcase and then up at the heiress. He let out a low, genuine whistle. "Damn, you pack light."

"I pack what matters," Valerie countered as she stepped out of the panic room.

She didn’t tiptoe around the puddle of gore. She stepped right through the edge of it. Splash. Her expensive designer heels splashed in the black sludge as she closed the distance between them.

She stopped right in front of him. She completely ignored the horrible smell of rot on his clothes.

"You said you have a bunker. You said you have guns. I have the money. Get me out of this building, and I will fund your entire war."

Sebastian looked down into her fierce, stubborn eyes. The Arcane Valkyrie was waking up early.

"Deal," Sebastian said. He grabbed the handle of the briefcase. It easily weighed over seventy pounds, but to his enhanced muscles, it felt like a feather. "Try to keep up. The stairs are a bit messy."

_____

The walk down from the eightieth floor was a quiet, fucked-up trip through a slaughterhouse. They didn’t speak.

Sebastian took the lead. The aluminum bat rested on his shoulder. His senses expanded to catch the slightest scrape or gurgle from the shadows.

Valerie followed closely behind. Her silver magnum was gripped tightly in both hands. Her eyes swept the dark corners of the stairwell.

She didn’t complain about the blood soaking into her shoes. She didn’t gasp when they had to squeeze past the mangled, half-eaten bodies of her neighbors. She was anchoring herself to his brutal focus.

In a world that had gone completely to shit, Sebastian’s calm, steady attitude was the only thing making sense.

They finally reached the ground floor lobby. The massive glass doors were smashed. Their boots stepped on broken glass. The reception desk was crushed under a fallen chandelier.

Outside, the night was lit by the sick, blood-red glow of the corrupted sky. The flickering flames of burning cars provided the only other light.

"We need a ride," Valerie whispered. She pressed her back against a pillar as she looked out into the rainy street. "My private garage is three blocks east, but we’ll never make it on foot. There are too many of them."

Sebastian looked out into the gloom. The streets were crawling with Demon Rats and Infected.

"We’re not taking a car. The roads are jammed, and an engine is just a dinner bel. We stick to the alleys. We move quietly."

He stepped out of the ruined lobby. The acid rain instantly soaked his clothes. "it’s cold," he muttered. Valerie followed, shivering as the wind hit her.

They crossed the ruined street and slipped into a narrow, trash-filled alley between two massive corporate buildings. The darkness here was absolute. It was broken only by the sparks of a broken neon sign overhead. BZZT.

They had made it maybe fifty yards when Sebastian suddenly stopped. He didn’t freeze, but his body shifted into a ready stance.

"What the hell is it?" Valerie breathed, raising her gun.

"Company," Sebastian replied softly. "And they aren’t zombies."

From the shadows at the far end of the alley, three blinding beams of tactical flashlights clicked on. They cut through the rain and pinned Sebastian and Valerie in their harsh glare.

The heavy sound of combat boots marching on wet pavement bounced off the brick walls.

"Target acquired. Hands in the air right now. Drop the fucking weapon!" A harsh, amplified voice barked from behind the lights.

Sebastian squinted through the glare. There were six of them.

They weren’t beat cops or panicked national guardsmen. They wore black, high-tech tactical armor. They had multi-lens night vision goggles and heavily modified assault rifles.

The Vanguard. A black ops government hit squad.

In his past life, the Vanguard was one of the few groups that actually understood what was happening in the first few hours of the end of the world. The government had been watching the servers. They knew the digital world was bleeding into reality.

And more importantly, they knew exactly who Player Zero was. They had tracked his IP address when he logged out. They knew he was a massive anomaly.

They didn’t want to save him. They wanted to cut him open and study him.

"You guys are making a huge mistake," Sebastian called out. He sounded more tired than fearless. He didn’t drop the bat, and he didn’t raise his hands.

"I said drop the weapon, Player Zero!" the squad leader roared.

CLICK-CLACK! The unmistakable sound of six assault rifles chambering rounds echoed in the narrow space.

"We have authorization to use lethal force. Stand the fuck down!"

"They know who you are?!" Valerie whispered. Her eyes were wide with sudden panic. "Sebastian, they have armor-piercing rounds. We can’t fight a hit squad!"

"We aren’t going to fight them," Sebastian replied smoothly. "They’re going to fight themselves."

He needed a distraction. Something that would ignore their armor and training. He didn’t need a huge destructive spell. He just needed to completely fuck with their heads.

He dug into the beginner tier of the trickster class. He found the code for a basic Illusion trick. It was a cheap spell used to make a copper coin look like silver for a few seconds.

He channeled a tiny pulse of his real-world mana into his brain. He targeted the light reflecting off the rain puddles.

The system engaged. The glitch roared.

[System Prompt: Action Registered]

↳ Cast Basic Illusion

[System Prompt: Nexus Glitch Activated]

↳ Proficiency x10,000

[System Prompt: Basic Illusion leveled up to 10/10]

↳ Max Level Reached

[System Prompt: Evolution Requirement Met]

↳ Basic Illusion evolves to Tier 1: Optical Warp

[System Prompt: Proficiency Overflow Detected]

↳ Optical Warp leveled up to 10/10

[WARNING: Concept Threshold Breached]

↳ Sensory Law Unlocked

↳ Optical Warp evolves to Conceptual Law: Mirage

Sebastian didn’t just make a hologram. He didn’t bend light. The conceptual law of Mirage let him directly hijack the brains of anyone in his target area.

He snapped his fingers. SNAP!

The three tactical flashlights abruptly cut out. The alley went pitch black for a fraction of a second before the Vanguard’s night vision goggles aggressively adjusted.

But what they saw through their lenses wasn’t Sebastian and Valerie.

To the squad leader, the man standing next to him was no longer his second in command. His eyes were forcefully fed a new reality. He saw a towering, eight-foot-tall Flesh Hulk. Its skin was splitting, and yellow pus leaked from its jaws as it lunged directly at his throat.

"CONTACT! HULK IN THE PERIMETER! FUCK!" the squad leader screamed in absolute terror and squeezed his trigger.

TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT!

The silenced assault rifle coughed violently. It spit a stream of heavy armor-piercing bullets point-blank into the chest of his own teammate.

The man next to him also saw the squad leader as a roaring, mutated monster. He fired back in a blind panic.

Absolute bloody chaos erupted in the alleyway.

The six highly trained soldiers turned their weapons on each other in the tight space. The heavy bullets tore through their advanced armor like paper. Chest plates shattered. Helmets were blown off in showers of sparks and blood.

The sound of men screaming in pain and confusion mixed with the relentless coughing of automatic fire.

"Die! Die, you fucking freak!" one soldier shrieked. He emptied his entire magazine into the twitching body of his communications officer. He was shot down a second later by his own sniper.

Sebastian stood perfectly still, wincing slightly at the noise. He watched the massacre unfold just thirty feet away. The air filled with the sharp smell of gunpowder and the heavy scent of blood.

Valerie pressed her hands over her ears. Her eyes squeezed shut as the horrifying barrage of friendly fire bounced off the brick walls.

It was over in less than ten seconds.

The last Vanguard operator bled out from a severed leg artery. He collapsed onto the pavement. Clatter. His rifle rolled away.

He looked at the bodies of the monsters he had just killed. He watched the illusion fade as his brain died. The faces of his lifelong squadmates were revealed. He let out a wet, sobbing gasp before his eyes rolled back.

Silence returned to the alley. It was broken only by the steady drum of the rain.

Sebastian casually adjusted his grip on the briefcase of gold. He didn’t even look at the dead bodies as he walked past them. Crunch. His boots stepped on empty bullet casings.

Valerie opened her eyes. She stared at the bloody mess, and her breath hitched. She looked at Sebastian’s back as he calmly walked through the aftermath of a massacre he caused with a snap of his fingers.

"You didn’t even touch them," she whispered. Her voice was hollow.

"Fuck physics," Sebastian replied, wiping rain from his face without looking back. "Come on. This stronghold isn’t going to build itself."