Awakening a 10,000x Skill Proficiency Multiplier in the Apocalypse-Chapter 44: []: Pocket Dimension Royale, Hunting Games

The transition was instantaneous and very loud.

Sebastian was pulled from the cold bunker and dropped right onto the sun-baked sand of the Grand Arena.

"WELCOME, PRODIGIES AND PEASANTS ALIKE!"

A magically amplified voice boomed with the force of an earthquake. The sound physically rattled Sebastian’s teeth. He winced and regretted not getting an audio dampening skill book.

He opened his eyes. The scale of the Imperial Magic Academy’s tournament was absolutely breathtaking.

They weren’t in a normal coliseum. The system had generated a massive artificial pocket dimension. The arena floor was the size of a small city with ruined marble temples and deep trenches filled with magical acid.

Surrounding this warzone was a transparent dome of magic. Beyond that dome sat the audience.

One hundred thousand spectators! The stands towered into the sky and were packed with high-tier NPCs, wealthy noble avatars, and thousands of beta testers who paid crazy amounts of silver just to watch. The cheering sounded like a roaring ocean.

Sebastian stood near the southern edge of the ruined city. He was still wearing his long black leather coat and the plain white half mask that concealed his face. His alias, ’Raven’, floated faintly above his head.

"I really hate crowds," Sebastian muttered. He rolled his shoulders and felt the comforting limitless well of his glitched mana pool.

He cast his [True Sight] outward. Silver light swirled in his eyes behind the mask. He didn’t care about the NPCs. He only cared about the competition.

A hundred yards to his left was Drake standing on top of a shattered marble pillar.

The Duke’s son was no longer the handsome golden boy of the Academy. Half of his face was a horrific mess of pink burn scars. It was a permanent reminder of Sebastian’s [Water Mirror] reflection. Drake was currently drinking a glowing diamond-tier mana potion while scanning the arena with complete paranoia.

’Still relying on consumables. Amateur,’ Sebastian thought. He dismissed the Fire Mage entirely.

To the east was Valerie. The Arcane Valkyrie had fully embraced her class. Her blue silk robes flowed around her and her wooden staff pulsed with raw kinetic energy. She stood right in the open and dared anyone to approach her.

Sebastian couldn’t see Wraith. That meant the Level 25 Assassin was doing exactly what he was paid to do. He was blended perfectly into the shadows and waiting for the herd to thin itself out.

"THE RULES ARE SIMPLE!" the Announcer shrieked. The floating NPC hovered high above the dome on a platform of pure light. "THIS IS A BATTLE ROYALE! NO ALLIANCES! NO MERCY! THE LAST COMBATANT STANDING SHALL CLAIM THE TRUE CITY CORE AND BE FOREVER IMMORTALIZED IN THE HALLS OF THE IMPERIAL ACADEMY!"

Sebastian ignored the theatrics. His silver eyes swept across the northern sector of the arena and suddenly his breath caught in his throat.

Standing in the shadow of a ruined archway was a figure that did not belong in this game.

It was a player but the avatar was fundamentally wrong. The figure was wrapped in a tattered cloak. Black strings of data constantly separated from the player’s limbs and dissolved into static before reforming. The space around the figure warped and made Sebastian’s skin crawl.

[Player Identified: The Apostle]

[Level: ???]

[Status: Administrator Override Active]

’The Void,’ Sebastian realized. A cold and heavy knot settled in his stomach. ’That isn’t just a player. That’s a human who let the Void Parasites entirely hijack his neural link. He’s a walking backdoor for the apocalypse.’

The Apostle didn’t look at the crowd. He didn’t look at Drake or Valerie. The glitching head turned precisely and locked perfectly onto Sebastian. A wide and impossible smile full of jagged code stretched across the Apostle’s face.

The Void knew exactly who Sebastian was. It recognized the anomaly.

"COMBATANTS! PREPARE YOURSELVES!" the Announcer roared and raised a hand.

A massive golden timer appeared in the sky above the pocket dimension.

3...

Sebastian didn’t draw his Rusty Iron Dagger. He let his arms hang loose at his sides.

2...

Across the arena, Mages frantically casted their defensive wards. Guardians slammed their heavy shields into the dirt.

1...

Sebastian locked eyes with the Apostle. He offered the glitching horror a slow and mocking two-finger salute.

"BEGIN!"

The golden timer shattered into a million pieces. The invisible barriers holding the players vanished.

Absolute magical warfare erupted instantly.

Fireballs the size of carriages tore through the sky. Lightning strikes shattered the crystal thickets. The deafening roar of clashing steel and screaming players echoed off the dome.

The hunting games had officially begun.

The Grand Arena instantly devolved into a chaotic meat grinder.

To the normal eye, it was a spectacular display of high-tier magic and epic combat. To Sebastian, it was a disorganized mess of wasted mana and incredibly poor positioning.

He didn’t move from his starting position near the ruined temples. He stood with his hands in his pockets and watched a Level 20 Berserker violently decapitate a Cleric who had forgotten to cast a physical defense ward.

’Idiots,’ Sebastian thought and shook his head as the Cleric’s digital body dissolved into pixels.

He wasn’t going to use his massive server-breaking spells. Dropping a [Solar Flare] or a [Gravity Domain] would clear the board but it would also reveal his full hand to the Void Apostle watching from the north. He needed to conserve his mana and hide his conceptual laws until the final fight.

He was going to rely on his five percent physical synchronization. He was going to use real world combat backed by the absolute unfairness of his teleportation glitch.

"Hey! Edgelord!" a voice barked from his left.

Sebastian slowly turned his head.

A group of three players had flanked him. They wore the overly ornate gold robes of the Academy’s noble faction. The leader was a smug Ice Mage who was currently spinning a glowing blue spear of ice in his hands.

"You look like easy points, Raven," the Ice Mage sneered. "Stand still and I’ll make it quick."

Sebastian let out a very long and exaggerated sigh. "I really don’t have the patience for you people today. My rent is technically due in the real world."

"What the fvck are you talking about?" the Mage demanded. He reared back to hurl the ice spear. "Die!"

Sebastian tapped into his mana pool and activated the conceptual law of [Heavenly Steps].

He didn’t run. He didn’t dodge. He simply ceased to exist in the physical space he occupied.

Fzzt.

The ice spear sailed harmlessly through the empty air where Sebastian had been standing a second prior. It shattered against a marble pillar behind him.

"Where did he" The Mage started. His eyes went wide with confusion.

"Right behind you," Sebastian whispered directly into the Mage’s ear.

He had materialized flawlessly at the Mage’s back. He didn’t use a dagger. He used his synchronized biological strength.

Sebastian reached out with both hands and grabbed the sides of the Mage’s head. Before the player could even register the physical contact, Sebastian drove his thumbs violently forward directly into the Mage’s eyes!

SQUELCH.

The sound was nauseatingly wet and loud. The sheer force of his real-world grip bypassed the game’s standard defense. His thumbs popped the digital eyes like grapes and plunged directly into the brain.

"GURK!" The Mage didn’t even have the breath to scream. His body instantly went rigid as his health bar was violently and immediately deleted.

Sebastian ripped his thumbs out and let the lifeless avatar collapse to the sand. He calmly wiped the glowing blue digital blood off his black leather gloves.

"Gross," Sebastian deadpanned. "I just cleaned this coat."

The remaining two nobles stared at the crumpled body of their leader. Their jaws dropped in sheer unadulterated horror. Mages were supposed to have personal barrier wards! You couldn’t just walk up and poke their brains out with your bare hands!

"He’s a hacker!" the second player shrieked in absolute terror. He was a Guardian and he blindly thrust his heavy iron spear directly at Sebastian’s chest.

Sebastian casually sidestepped the thrust. His movements were incredibly fluid and completely devoid of wasted energy. As the spear sailed past him, he reached out and grabbed the wooden shaft.

With a simple flick of his wrist, he applied the terrifying torque of his synced muscles and snapped the heavy oak staff cleanly in half.

CRACK!

The Guardian stumbled forward. He was thrown completely off balance by the sudden loss of resistance.

Sebastian didn’t hesitate. He took the jagged splintered end of the broken staff in his right hand and drove it forward in a brutal upward arc.

SHLUCK.

The splintered wood bypassed the heavy iron armor of the player’s neck and sank deep into the soft unprotected digital flesh of his throat.

The Guardian dropped his weapon. His hands flew to his neck and desperately clawed at the wooden stake in his windpipe. Blood bubbled violently from his lips as he choked. His eyes were wide with a panicked realization of death. He collapsed to his knees before the system mercifully dropped his HP to zero.

The third player was a young Rogue. He didn’t even try to attack. He dropped his daggers, turned around, and sprinted away as fast as his agility stats would carry him while screaming for his life.

Sebastian didn’t chase him. He just watched the coward run.

A shadow detached itself from the ruins above the fleeing Rogue. Wraith dropped silently from the sky. The Assassin’s blades flashed in the light for a fraction of a second before cleanly severing the running player’s spine. The Rogue’s head bounced across the sand while his body kept running for two more steps before collapsing.

Wraith flicked the blood from his daggers and offered Sebastian a crisp silent nod from a distance before melting back into his [Shadow Meld].

"Good man," Sebastian murmured.

He continued his walk through the battlefield. He was a ghost of brutal and intimate violence.

He didn’t use flashy explosions. He didn’t scream battle cries. He just systematically dismantled anyone foolish enough to step into his immediate radius. He shattered knee caps with perfectly placed kicks. He used the environment to slam heavily armored heads into jagged crystal formations until the helmets caved inward.

The spectators in the stands above had grown eerily quiet. They weren’t cheering anymore. They were watching a horror movie play out in real-time. They were watching a man who seemed to completely ignore the mathematical rules of their magical world.

Within ten minutes, the southern sector of the Grand Arena was entirely cleared. It was a graveyard of violently broken avatars.

Sebastian stepped over the twitching body of a Paladin whose spine he had just snapped over his knee. He looked across the ruined landscape.

The herd had been thinned. Only a handful of players remained alive in the center of the pocket dimension.

And standing atop a massive pile of rubble, surrounded by the horrific dissolving corpses of a dozen players he had infected with his corrupted code, was the Apostle.

The glitching horror slowly turned its hooded head. The jagged static smile widened.

Sebastian cracked his knuckles and the sound echoed sharply in the sudden quiet of the arena.

"Alright, bug," Sebastian said softly. His silver eyes locked onto the Void proxy. "Let’s see what you’ve got."