Awakening a 10,000x Skill Proficiency Multiplier in the Apocalypse-Chapter 31: []: Forced Log-In, The Countdown Begins

He walked to the corner. Pulled a heavy duffel bag from under some dirty tarps. ZIIIP. He unzipped it. The sleek, metallic curves of his VR helmet caught the dim light.

"Right now, my real-world sync is stuck at 5 percent," Sebastian said. "I can punch through a car engine. But if I cast an anti-air shield here? My brain will melt. Just leak right out of my ears."

"Then how do we stop the missiles?" Valerie asked. Her knuckles turned white gripping her silver-plated magnum.

"We don’t," Sebastian said simply. "The system does."

He pulled the VR helmet out and tossed a second spare headset from the bag over to Valerie. She caught it awkwardly against her chest and looked down at the device as if it were a live grenade.

"If we claim land in the game and build a Sanctuary, the System links it," he explained. "It makes this physical warehouse an extension of that safe zone."

Valerie blinked. Her sharp mind slowly pieced together the crazy logic.

"You are saying if we build a magical fortress in the game, the game will forcefully render a magical defense grid in the real world?"

"Exactly." Sebastian gave a faint smile. "A forced sync event."

"But to build it, I need the City Core from the auction. To plant the core, I need to own the land. And to own the land..."

"You need a guild," Valerie finished. She stared at the helmet. "We need a faction to claim server territory."

"The System needs two players to start a guild," Sebastian tapped his helmet.

"Congratulations, princess. You’re about to co-found the most hated, hunted group on Earth."

Valerie let out a dry and humorless laugh. She looked around the grim dark walls of the bunker and then down at her ruined heels.

" Beats getting eaten by mutant corporate guards. Where are we going?"

"AA vacation spot. The Valley of Cinders," Sebastian said. "It’s a toxic, high-level hellhole. Everything there wants to melt your face off. No sane person goes there. It’s a perfect chokepoint."

"Sounds delightful," Valerie muttered.

She didn’t hesitate. She sat on the briefcase. Kept the heavy magnum in her lap. Slipped the helmet on. HSSSSS. The neural-needles engaged.

"Meet you in Ironhold."

"Don’t talk to anyone. Don’t buy anything," Sebastian warned. Pulling his helmet on. "The Golden Lions put a bounty on my head. Yours too now. We group up, we teleport, and we break the real estate market."

"Understood," Valerie’s muffled voice echoed. "Link start."

Her body went slack as her consciousness was ripped into the digital ether.

Sebastian looked around the dark warehouse. VROOOOM. A military jet roared overhead. Rattling the high windows.

The countdown to a localized carpet bombing had officially begun! The government was terrified, and terrified men with big guns tended to act irrationally.

"Let’s go steal some land," Sebastian whispered to the empty room.

He laid back on the cold concrete floor and let his head rest against his duffel bag. He closed his eyes and initiated the sequence.

"Link start."

WHOOSH.

The heavy claustrophobic darkness of the 2077 warehouse was instantly ripped away violently.

The suffocating smell of wet stone was replaced by the stinging sulfurous smog of the Ironhold teleportation plaza.

Sebastian materialized on the glowing runic dais. His avatar was clad in the same ragged unassuming Drifter tunic he had worn when he humiliated the top two guilds on the server.

BEEP. BEEP. BEEP. 𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢

[System Warning: 47 Unread Messages.]

[Notice: Bounty placed on Player ’Zero’.]

The moment he loaded in, a barrage of system notifications assaulted his vision. Most of them were hate mail from the Golden Lions. This was accompanied by several dozen friend requests from players desperate to ride his coattails.

He dismissed them all with a casual flick of his wrist.

He spotted Valerie immediately. She was standing at the edge of the plaza. Her pristine azure silk robes were completely restored by the game’s instance reset.

She looked incredibly out of place amidst the grimy rusted architecture of the mercenary city.

He walked up behind her and his footsteps were entirely masked by his maxed-out stealth passives.

"You look cleaner than before," Sebastian noted.

"Ahh!" Valerie jumped. Spun around. Raised her oak staff. She saw his deadpan face and let out a long sigh. Lowered the staff.

"Buy a damn bell," she grumbled. Looking around nervously. "Three rogues tried to pickpocket me in a minute. This place is a shithole."

"Builds character," Sebastian said.

[Party Invite Sent.]

[Player ’Valerie’ has joined.]

"Hold onto your staff princess. The next stop makes this place look like a luxury hotel."

Sebastian accessed the teleportation network terminal. He didn’t select a beginner zone or a mid-tier grinding gorge.

He scrolled all the way down to the bottom of the regional map into the crimson-tinted areas specifically designed to instantly murder players below Level 40.

"Destination: The Valley of Cinders," Sebastian commanded.

WHOOSH! The circle flared violent orange. No warning prompt. The System just yanked them away.

——

The portal spat them out like trash.

Sebastian and Valerie materialized on a jagged elevated precipice overlooking a nightmare landscape.

The Valley of Cinders lived up to its namesake. The sky above was a swirling suffocating canopy of black smoke that was illuminated from below by rivers of slow-moving bubbling magma.

Ash fell from the sky like a thick grey snowstorm and coated the ground in a heavy layer of soot.

The ambient temperature was so high that the air itself rippled with heat distortion. This made the jagged obsidian spires jutting from the earth look like they were violently vibrating.

"Cough! Cough!" Valerie doubled over.

she wheezed. Waving her staff to clear the smoke. "It’s like breathing inside a lit furnace."

A system debuff icon flashed above her head.

[System Debuff: Extreme Heat.]

[-50 Stamina/sec. Minor Burn Damage active.]

Sebastian stood perfectly still with his hands resting casually in his pockets.

The heat didn’t bother him and the toxic air didn’t phase him. His physical avatar was functionally immune to the environmental hazards. His passive resistances were boosted to absolute conceptual maximums by the glorious 10,000x Nexus Glitch!