Awakening a 10,000x Skill Proficiency Multiplier in the Apocalypse-Chapter 69: []: Urban Warfare, Absolute Zero
THROOM!
The deafening crack of a mana-conducting railgun going off nearly ruptured the eardrums of everyone on the platform.
A beam of pure blue kinetic energy shot from the edge of the Sky-Fortress.
It hit the massive spider-demon dead center. The tungsten slug completely ignored the monster’s Void Shield.
SPLAT!
The Crawler simply ceased to exist as a solid object.
The massive beast exploded into a spectacular shower of black sludge and severed metal legs.
The sheer force of the impact blew a hole clean through the skyscraper. It rained shattered glass and spider guts onto the streets below.
"Hell yeah! Give ’em the good stuff!" one of the Abyss Knights cheered as he slammed another heavy slug into the breech.
Sebastian steered the floating platform directly into the heart of the financial district.
The streets below were rivers of blood. Thousands of Void Crawlers were swarming over the wreckage of military blockades.
They happily munched on flipped tanks and screaming stragglers.
"Valerie! Extraction!" Sebastian yelled.
"I see them!" Valerie shouted back. She was standing at the edge of the platform and her dark hair whipped wildly in the wind.
A group of fifty terrified civilians were trapped on the roof of a burning bank building.
Five Crawlers were scaling the sides with their mandibles snapping hungrily.
Valerie slammed her carved oak staff against the basalt floor of the fortress. Her blue eyes flared with brilliant light.
"Aegis Bridge!"
A massive shimmering pathway of hard-light kinetic energy shot from the edge of the Sky-Fortress and slammed directly into the roof of the bank.
It formed a solid glowing blue ramp.
"RUN! GET ON THE BRIDGE!" Valerie screamed at the civilians. Her voice was magically amplified.
The people didn’t hesitate. They scrambled onto the magical pathway. They sobbed and slipped as they ran toward the hovering fortress.
"Boss, they’re swarming the bridge!" Wraith warned.
The Crawlers had crested the roof and immediately lunged onto the hard-light construct to chase the fleeing humans.
"Hold the bridge, Valerie. I’m going down," Sebastian said coldly.
He didn’t wait for her to argue. He didn’t grab a parachute. Sebastian simply stepped off the edge of the Sky-Fortress.
The wind roared in his ears as he plummeted toward the blood-soaked intersection fifty stories below.
The sheer mass of his twenty-percent physical synchronization made him fall like a literal meteor.
He aimed for the highest concentration of monsters.
BOOM!
Sebastian hit the asphalt with a catastrophic impact. A massive crater formed instantly.
It sent a concussive shockwave that flipped ruined cars and threw dozens of the smaller Void Crawlers into the sides of the buildings.
He slowly stood up from the center of the crushed pavement.
The dust settled, revealing the man in the ragged black coat.
The entire swarm of hundreds of bio-mechanical spiders turned their glowing red eyes toward him.
They hissed and their mandibles clicked rapidly as they registered the massive mana signature standing in their dining room.
"Come and get it," Sebastian whispered.
He opened his digital inventory. He bypassed his heavy swords and his basic combat skills.
He reached for a specific skill book he had ripped from the corpse of Velkhana.
[Item: Frost Breath]
[Tier: 4 Elemental Magic]
He didn’t read it. He crushed the glowing blue crystal in his bare hand.
[Action Registered: Learn Frost Breath.]
[Nexus Glitch Activated: Proficiency x10,000.]
The system practically wept as it was violently forced to process lifetimes of absolute elemental mastery.
[Frost Breath leveled up to 10/10! Max Level Reached!]
[Evolution Requirement Met! Frost Breath evolves to Tier 5: Glacial Roar!]
[Proficiency Overflow Detected! Glacial Roar leveled up to 10/10!]
[WARNING: Concept Threshold Breached. Thermodynamic Law Unlocked.]
[Glacial Roar evolves to Conceptual Law: Absolute Zero.] 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝔀𝓮𝒃𝙣𝓸𝒗𝒆𝒍.𝙘𝒐𝒎
Sebastian felt the terrifying stillness of the universe download directly into his brain.
He understood the fundamental mathematical concept of completely removing all kinetic and thermal energy from a physical space.
The swarm of Void Crawlers lunged at him from all sides. A tidal wave of gnashing teeth and sharp steel legs crashed down on his position.
Sebastian took a deep breath. His lungs filled with raw glitched mana.
He exhaled.
"Freeze."
FWOOOOSH!
It was a wave of pure blindingly white stillness.
The conceptual law of Absolute Zero erupted from Sebastian’s mouth and washed over the entire city block in a fraction of a second.
The effect was horrifyingly absolute.
The hundreds of leaping Void Crawlers didn’t even have time to fall to the ground. They were flash-frozen instantly in mid-air.
Their corrosive acid spit froze into solid harmless yellow icicles before it could hit his coat.
The roaring flames of the burning cars around him were instantly extinguished. The fire itself was frozen into bizarre solid sculptures of red and orange ice.
The temperature dropped so violently that the very air shattered and rained down as microscopic snowflakes.
Sebastian stood in the center of a perfectly silent frozen graveyard.
He casually raised his boot and tapped the leg of a massive frozen Void Crawler suspended inches from his face.
TINK.
CRACK-CRACK-CRACK!
The spider-demon shattered like a cheap dropped wine glass. The absolute removal of thermal energy had made its bio-mechanical armor entirely brittle.
It exploded into a million pieces of harmless frozen dust.
A chain reaction followed. The sheer weight of the frozen monsters caused them to collapse under their own mass.
CRASH!
SMASH!
Hundreds of elite Void Crawlers simply disintegrated into piles of frozen grey slush and shattered glass.
The entire intersection had been cleared in a single breath.
Up above, Valerie was straining.
The civilians had made it across the bridge, but the physical toll of maintaining a massive hard-light construct in the real world was catching up to her.
Sebastian looked up. Valerie was on her knees on the edge of the Sky-Fortress.
Her hands were shaking violently on her staff. Blood was leaking freely from her nose and tracking down from the corners of her eyes. It was a horrifying sign of real-world mana burn.
"Drop it, Valerie!" Sebastian yelled through the comms. "They’re across!"
"I... I can’t... the stragglers..." Valerie choked out.
Two more civilians were desperately climbing up the roof to reach the fading blue bridge.
Valerie screamed and her muscles tore as she forcefully pumped more of her life force into the magic.
The bridge flared bright. It held solid just long enough for the last two people to throw themselves onto the stone platform.
The moment they were safe, Valerie collapsed. The hard-light bridge shattered into a million useless sparks.
Sebastian watched her fall. He felt profound respect.
She wasn’t just a rich girl playing a game. She was willing to bleed out her own eyes to save people who couldn’t save themselves.
"Wraith, get a medic on her," Sebastian ordered smoothly.
He looked down the ruined frozen street. The swarm was endless.
Thousands more Crawlers were pouring out of the distant subway tunnels. They were drawn to the massive spike of magic he had just used.
Sebastian cracked his neck as his breath plumed in the unnaturally cold air.
"Alright, bugs," he murmured as his eyes glowed with that terrifying silver light. "Let’s see how much of this city I have to delete."
