Awakening a 10,000x Skill Proficiency Multiplier in the Apocalypse-Chapter 67: []: The Gate Opens, Raining Spiders

Sebastian stood in the grand hall of Sanctuary and stared at the massive glowing holographic monitors projecting from the obsidian war table.

The heavy air of the thirty-five percent global synchronization pressed against his skull.

The digital countdown hovering in the upper corner of his vision had finally hit zero. The tutorial was officially over.

"Boss," Wraith’s voice buzzed over the localized comms.

The Assassin was perched on the highest spire of the Citadel’s outer wall.

"You need to see this. Downtown. Now."

Valerie rapidly tapped the console and shifted the primary feed to a high-altitude drone camera they had scavenged from the military convoy.

The feed flickered with static before snapping into sharp focus.

Downtown Metropolis was located about ten miles from their industrial sector. Usually, it was a skyline of sleek glass and steel.

Right now, it looked like hell.

"Holy shit," Valerie whispered. Her hands dropped from the keyboard.

A jagged black crack hung suspended in the air directly over the tallest skyscrapers. It was fifty stories high.

It didn’t look like a portal. It looked like the universe had been stabbed.

Sickly purple light pulsed from the edges of the tear and cast a horrifying glow over the panicked city streets below.

"The Abyssal Gate," Sebastian muttered. His voice was completely flat. "They didn’t even wait for the full merge. The Void Gods are impatient."

"Sebastian, what comes out of a gate that big?" Valerie asked. Her voice shook.

"The standing army," Sebastian replied. "Tier 2. Say goodbye to the zombies, Princess. The real bugs are here."

On the massive monitor, the black tear suddenly widened with a deafening noise.

SCREEEECH!

The sound distorted the drone’s audio feed.

Then, it started raining monsters.

They poured out of the fifty-story portal like an unending waterfall of dark metal and alien flesh. Thousands of them.

They hit the sides of the glass skyscrapers. Their massive claws easily punched through the reinforced windows to arrest their fall.

They scuttled down the buildings with terrifying speed.

"Void Crawlers," Sebastian identified them. "Bio-mechanical spider-demons. Nasty armor, heavy physical damage, and they eat literally everything."

The drone zoomed in on a busy intersection. The traffic was completely gridlocked.

Thousands of civilians had abandoned their cars and tried to flee on foot as the sky tore open above them.

It was an absolute massacre.

A massive Void Crawler easily the size of a dump truck dropped directly into the center of the crowd.

It looked like a fusion of a tarantula and a rusted tank. Its sleek carapace dripped with corrosive black slime.

CRUNCH!

The monster didn’t even slow down. It landed directly on top of a screaming family and instantly turned them into a sickening paste of crushed bone and red pulp.

The crowd erupted into pure panic. People trampled each other as they screamed and cried. The spiders swarmed the streets.

The camera caught a businessman in a torn suit desperately sprinting away from an overturned bus. He didn’t make it.

A Crawler lunged forward with explosive speed. Its massive mandibles snapped shut directly around the man’s waist.

"AGGGHHHH!" the man shrieked.

The spider violently jerked its head back.

SNAP!

SQUELCH!

The man was brutally torn in half. His lower body fell to the pavement in a spray of thick blood.

His upper torso remained trapped in the monster’s jaws. Wet ropes of intestines unspooled from his severed waist.

The horrifying part was that the top half of the man was still alive. His arms flailed wildly as he screamed in agony.

The Crawler tilted its head back to swallow him whole.

"Turn it off. Turn it off!" Valerie gagged. She turned away from the screen and pressed her hands over her mouth.

"Leave it on," Sebastian ordered coldly. "We need to see the deployment response."

Down in the city, the military finally engaged. A blockade of National Guard troops held a defensive line at the edge of the financial district. They were reinforced by three heavy Abrams tanks.

"OPEN FIRE! BRING THOSE FREAKS DOWN!" a tiny voice yelled over the drone’s audio.

TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT!

BOOM!

Hundreds of assault rifles lit up the dim street. The tanks fired their 120mm cannons directly into the swarm of towering spiders.

In the old world, that kind of concentrated firepower would have leveled a city block. In the new reality, it was a joke.

The heavy tank shells and armor-piercing bullets hit the air ten feet away from the Crawlers and simply stopped.

A shimmering purple hex-grid flared to life around the monsters.

"Void Shields," Sebastian sighed. He rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Physical projectiles below Tier 3 don’t even trigger the hit detection. They’re shooting spitballs at a brick wall."

The military response collapsed in less than sixty seconds.

The Void Crawlers charged right through the hail of useless bullets. One of the massive spiders leaped onto the lead Abrams tank.

Its scythe-like front legs plunged directly through the thick armor of the turret like it was made of warm butter.

SCREEEECH!

The spider forcefully ripped the entire turret off the chassis. It tossed the multi-ton hunk of metal aside like a discarded toy.

The crew inside didn’t even have time to scream before the monster plunged its mandibles into the exposed hull.

The infantry line broke. Soldiers dropped their useless rifles and ran. Their tactical training was entirely shattered by the Ethereal Plane.

It didn’t matter. The spiders were faster.

A Crawler swept its massive leg through a squad of fleeing soldiers. The jagged barbs on its limb skewered three men at once.

The monster lifted them into the air. The soldiers thrashed and gurgled.

Their blood rapidly drained down the spider’s leg. It was physically absorbed into the bio-mechanical armor to heal whatever minor scratches the military had managed to inflict.

"They’re wiping the whole sector," Wraith’s voice came over the comms again. "Boss, they are eating the concrete, the steel, the people. They’re gathering biomass."

"I know," Sebastian said.

He leaned over the war table. His silver-tinged eyes tracked the red blips multiplying on the holographic map.

"They’re building a nesting ground. If those things lay eggs, the entire eastern seaboard is going to be buried under a billion spiders in a week."

"We’re safe here, right?" Valerie asked. She forced herself to look back at the screen and gripped her oak staff tightly.

"The Citadel walls are Tier 5. The golden dome vaporizes anything Void-corrupted." 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

"We’re safe for a month. Maybe two," Sebastian calculated smoothly. "But if they breed, they’ll out-scale us."

"They’ll consume enough biomass to hit Level 50. Then they’ll just walk over our dome and crush this fortress under their sheer weight."

He stood up straight. The exhaustion in his muscles was completely gone. It was replaced by the cold adrenaline of the coming war.

"We can’t just hide in the bunker," Sebastian said. "We have to pull the weeds."

"With what army?" Valerie demanded. "Vance’s guys are out of ammo and traumatized! We have a bunch of refugees and some scrap metal golems!"

"We don’t need a massive army," Sebastian smirked. A dark glint appeared in his eyes.

"We just need a really big can of bug spray. Let’s go see what Galleon has been building in the garage."