Awakening a 10,000x Skill Proficiency Multiplier in the Apocalypse-Chapter 50: []: Day Zero, The Golden Meat Grinder

The transition was complete. The world had officially broken.

Sebastian stood on the high sweeping basalt ramparts of the newly manifested Sanctuary. The cool magical breeze generated by the Citadel’s internal climate controls ruffled his black leather coat.

He rested his hands on the obsidian parapet and looked out over the reality of Day Zero.

The contrast was jarring and utterly surreal. Behind him was a masterpiece of dark fantasy architecture, a towering gothic stone fortress that belonged in a medieval RPG.

But outside the walls, it was the industrial district of 2077.

Or at least, what was left of it. The violent expansion of the Sanctuary had physically flattened the immediate surrounding city blocks. Rusted factories and concrete high-rises had been pushed outward, creating a massive flat perimeter of crushed rubble around the black walls.

A translucent golden dome of shimmering hard-light magic arched over the entire fortress, anchored by the pulsing Arcane Towers at the corners. It was a safe zone.

Suddenly, a massive translucent blue interface window projected itself directly into Sebastian’s physical vision. It wasn’t a VR overlay. The system had fully integrated with his optic nerves.

BING!

[City Core Installed. Real World Zone Established: Sanctuary.]

[Tier: 5 Guild Citadel]

[Radius: 5 Kilometers]

[Status: Absolute Safe Zone. Hostile Entities barred from entry.]

[Global Synchronization Complete. The Tutorial is over.]

Sebastian dismissed the prompt with a mental flick. His muscles ached with a deep throbbing soreness. The veins in his arms still occasionally pulsed with a dark hue as his body struggled to fully adapt to the twenty percent synchronization. He felt like he had bench-pressed a commercial airliner, but he was alive.

"It’s beautiful," a voice said from behind him.

Sebastian turned his head. Valerie was walking up the stone steps to the ramparts. She had finally discarded her ruined and mud-soaked designer suit jacket. She was just wearing a torn white blouse and dark slacks, her carved oak staff resting heavily in her hand.

She stepped up to the parapet next to him and looked out through the golden barrier. "You actually did it. You pulled the game into the real world."

"I pulled a life raft into a sinking ship," Sebastian corrected, his silver-tinged eyes narrowing. He pointed out toward the ruined streets of the industrial sector. "Look down there. The ship is definitely sinking."

Valerie followed his gaze, and the awe on her face instantly drained, replaced by a pale mask of horror.

The pillar of light that had announced Sanctuary’s arrival was a beacon. In the pitch-black and powerless ruins of the megacity, it was the only source of light and warmth.

And it had drawn a crowd.

A massive undulating horde was pouring out of the city streets and swarming over the crushed rubble of the factories. There were thousands of them!

They weren’t just standard video game mobs. They were the Infected. They were former citizens, neighbors, corporate workers, and homeless vagrants. The Void corruption had aggressively hijacked their biology the moment the servers merged.

They were grotesque. Their skin was mottled grey and tearing at the seams. Black sludge leaked from their mouths, and their eyes glowed with a mindless light. They moved with a terrifying twitching speed, sprinting on broken limbs and shattered ankles. 𝕗𝗿𝕖𝐞𝐰𝗲𝕓𝐧𝕠𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝐨𝚖

"Oh my god," Valerie whispered, taking a step back from the edge. "There’s so many of them."

"Tier 1 Infected," Sebastian noted clinically, leaning his forearms on the stone. "Mindless aggro. They are drawn to the mana signature of the City Core. They want to eat it. And us."

The front line of the horde reached the five-kilometer mark. They didn’t slow down. They blindly threw their rotting mutated bodies directly at the translucent golden dome protecting the Sanctuary.

SPLAT! FZZZZT!

The barrier didn’t just act like a brick wall. It was a Tier 5 magical defense grid. It reacted to hostile entities with extreme prejudice.

The moment the first Infected touched the golden light, the system violently rejected it.

"GARRRGH!"

The monster didn’t bounce off. It stuck to the barrier like a fly on a bug zapper. The holy magic violently cooked the creature from the outside in!

The gore was instantaneous. The Infected’s grey flesh sizzled and popped loudly in the quiet night air. Thick yellow fat rendered instantly under the extreme magical heat, dripping down the invisible curve of the dome like greasy rain onto the pavement below.

"Jesus!" Valerie gagged, covering her nose and mouth with her hand.

The smell hit them a second later. The cool breeze of the Citadel couldn’t entirely filter out the horrific suffocating stench of roasting rotten meat and waste that billowed up from the perimeter.

More Infected crashed into the shield. Hundreds of them!

THUD. FZZZT. POP!

They mindlessly pushed forward, crushing each other against the barrier in their desperation to get inside. The golden shield flared brighter with every impact, acting like a giant magical frying pan.

Eyeballs boiled and burst in their sockets. Skin sloughed off their skulls in blackened greasy strips, revealing charred bone underneath. The monsters didn’t stop screaming until their vocal cords literally melted into ash!

Within minutes, the base of the golden dome was piled high with twitching and smoking blackened husks of what used to be humanity.

Sebastian watched the barbecue with complete apathy. His deadpan eyes tracked the damage outputs and the structural integrity of the shield.

"Smells like a cheap fast-food joint," Sebastian muttered, pulling a piece of lint off his sleeve. "Shield’s holding perfectly. They can’t even scratch the paint."

Valerie stared at him, her eyes watering from the stench and the sheer trauma of watching a thousand people fry to death. "How can you joke right now? They’re, they’re being cooked alive!"

"They were dead the moment the sky turned red, Valerie," Sebastian said, his voice dropping the humor. He turned to face her, his expression cold and hard. "This is Day Zero. The game rules apply now. Empathy gets you killed. Hesitation gets you eaten."

He pointed a thumb back at the sizzling pile of gore on the barrier.

"We have the only working fortress on the planet. By tomorrow morning, the surviving humans are going to see this light. They are going to come here begging for safety. And the warlords are going to come here looking to take it."

Sebastian stepped away from the parapet, his boots clicking sharply on the polished basalt.

"Get downstairs. Pull up the guild management interface. We need to organize the storage, set the rationing protocols, and prepare the induction zones."

Valerie swallowed hard, tearing her eyes away from the horrific meat grinder outside. She gripped her staff tightly, anchoring herself to his ruthless pragmatism.

"Right," she nodded, her corporate mask sliding back into place. "Rationing. Induction. I’m on it."

Sebastian looked out at the burning world one last time. A dark and terrifying smirk spread across his face.

"Let the apocalypse come. We’ve got the high ground."