Sebastian was halfway down the third-floor corridor when his encrypted comm link vibrated violently against his thigh. BZZZ! BZZZ!
He paused. His back pressed firmly against the cold peeling wallpaper of the hallway. He tightened his grip on the duct taped handle of the aluminum baseball bat.
The stairwell doors were completely ripped off their hinges. The metallic tang of fresh blood was wafting up from the floors below.
He pulled the comm link from his pocket. The screen was cracked but the caller ID was clear. It was the burner node.
He tapped the screen to answer and kept the device on audio only.
"Did you find the logistics company, princess?" Sebastian asked, his voice a low, steady whisper.
"Sebastian!" Valerie's voice exploded through the tiny speaker.
She was not just panicked anymore. She was absolutely hysterical! The background audio of her feed was a chaotic nightmare of shattering glass and heavy impacts and the distinct wet sound of flesh being ripped apart.
"I cannot leave! I packed the bullion and I have the transport keys but I cannot get out of the penthouse!"
"Damn it, Valerie, calm down and give me actionable intel," Sebastian replied coldly, his eyes tracking a smear of bloody handprints dragged across the opposite wall. "Why are you trapped?"
"My security detail!" Valerie sobbed. CRASH! The sound of a massive impact vibrated through the line. "They went fucking crazy! Their skin started splitting open! They grew these massive, disgusting muscles leaking yellow pus! They butchered my entire staff in seconds. They're trying to break into the panic room right now!"
Sebastian's mind instantly cross referenced the description with the Ethereal Plane bestiary.
"Flesh Hulks," he muttered under his breath. "Tier 1 elites. The System's aggressively targeting the gym bros with high physical conditioning to act as vanguards."
Corporate bodyguards pumped full of real world combat stims were the perfect host bodies for the Void corruption.
"I'm gonna die in here," Valerie whispered, her voice cracking with sheer despair. "The reinforced steel door is buckling. They're just punching it until their own hands break, and then they keep fucking punching!"
Sebastian weighed his options. The cold pragmatic survivor in him whispered that she was a liability. She was trapped in a high rise penthouse surrounded by elite mobs. His real world sync rate was only at 5 percent.
If he went up there and miscalculated he would be torn apart! He could easily find another source of funding.
But the memory of the Arcane Valkyrie flared in his mind. She was the woman who had burned her own soul to keep his heart beating in the final hours of the war. She was a tactical genius. She was ruthless when forged.
He did not just need her money. He needed a general he could trust when he eventually waged war on the System itself.
She was an asset he intended to cultivate.
"Hold the damn line," Sebastian said smoothly. "Keep away from the door. Do not try to use your Ethereal magic. Your physical body hasn't adapted to the mana burn yet. You'll cook your own nervous system, got it?"
"You are coming here?!"
"Yeah, I'm providing customer service," Sebastian replied, and hung up.
He shoved the comm link back into his pocket. He was on the third floor of his apartment building. Taking the stairs down to the lobby was tactical suicide.
The narrow enclosed space of a stairwell was a fatal bottleneck. Judging by the screaming echoing up the concrete shaft it was currently packed shoulder to shoulder with freshly turned Infected.
He did not have time to play baseball with fifty zombies. He needed to move!
Sebastian turned away from the stairwell and sprinted toward the end of the hallway. The corridor terminated at a large reinforced glass window that led out onto a small decorative balcony overlooking the chaotic streets below.
He did not slow down. He brought the aluminum bat up and gripped it with both hands. He swung it like a sledgehammer as he hit the glass.
SMASH!
The reinforced pane shattered into a million glittering fragments. Sebastian vaulted through the opening and landed smoothly on the narrow metal grating of the balcony.
The rain hit him instantly. It was a cold acidic drizzle. The wind howled past his ears.
Thirty feet below him the street was an absolute warzone. Cars were crashed onto the sidewalks with alarms blaring. Mobs of dog sized Demon Rats were swarming over the wreckage. They dragged screaming civilians out of their vehicles and tore them apart in the gutters.
Sebastian stepped up onto the metal railing of the balcony.
He looked down at the concrete pavement thirty feet below. A fall from this height would shatter his legs even with a 5 percent synchronization.
But he was not planning on falling. He was planning on testing a theory!
In the game he had acquired the joke spell Basic Levitate. Through the 10000x Nexus Glitch it had evolved into the conceptual law of Absolute Flight. But could he pull that conceptual law into the real world? Could his partially synchronized biological body handle the mana output of a god tier skill?
There was only one way to find out.
Sebastian stepped off the railing into empty space.
Gravity instantly took hold and pulled him down toward the bloody asphalt at a terrifying speed. The wind roared in his ears.
He did not panic. He focused entirely on the small pulsing well of real world mana sitting in the center of his chest. He did not try to access the conceptual law of Absolute Flight. That would burn him to a cinder. He reached for the lowest tier. He reached for the base component of the skill tree.
He cast the Tier 1 evolution. Wind Cushion!
Normally it was a minor spell used by low level rogues to mitigate fall damage. But the moment the spell registered in his mind the Nexus Glitch violently forced itself into reality!
[Action Registered: Cast Wind Cushion.]
[Nexus Glitch Activated: Proficiency x10000.]
[Evolution Requirement Met. Wind Cushion evolves to: Featherfall.]
WHOOSH!
A massive pressurized dome of condensed air exploded into existence directly beneath his boots.
It sounded like a massive parachute deploying. The kinetic force of his descent hit the invisible cushion of air and violently compressed it. Sebastian's rapid fall was instantly and aggressively arrested.
He did not hit the concrete. He hit the air cushion and bounced slightly before settling gently onto the pavement like a feather.
Tap.
Pain instantly shot through his chest. "Fuck!" It felt like someone had driven a hot iron spike into his sternum! He coughed as a small trickle of blood leaked from his nose.
[Real World Skill Usage: Aeromancy.]
[Mana: 110 / 120]
[Warning: Physical Strain Detected.]
The real world mana burn was brutal. The physical toll of bypassing reality physics engine without a fully synchronized vessel was agonizing.
"Noted," Sebastian wheezed, wiping the blood from his upper lip. "No god-tier magic in the real world yet. Stick to the basics."
He did not have time to rest. His dramatic localized manipulation of the air pressure had drawn attention.
Three Infected snapped their heads toward him. They were drawn by the sound and the sudden displacement of air. They were civilians. There was a man in a business suit and a teenager in a delivery uniform and a woman holding a shattered umbrella.
Their eyes were glowing with a sick red hue, and their jaws dripped with black sludge. Grrr!
They shrieked and charged him! Their movements were jagged and unnaturally fast.
Sebastian did not try to cast another spell. He raised the aluminum baseball bat and rested it against his shoulder. His stance shifted into perfect balanced lethality.
The businessman reached him first and lunged forward with entirely mindless aggression.
Sebastian stepped inside the guard and pivoted smoothly. He swung the metal bat in a brutal horizontal arc.
CRACK!
The aluminum connected perfectly with the side of the Infected head. The force of the 5 percent synchronized blow was catastrophic!
The skull did not just crack. It caved inward entirely. An eyeball popped out of its socket and dangled by the optic nerve as the creature's head was violently whipped to the side. Arterial spray painted the wet pavement black in the moonlight.
The monster dropped like a stone.
Sebastian did not pause. He allowed the momentum of the swing to carry him in a full circle. He brought the bat back around in a devastating backhand strike just as the teenager lunged.
SMASH!
The heavy metal caught the kid directly under the chin. The jaw shattered into a dozen pieces. The sheer upward force lifted the Infected off its feet before it crumpled into a broken heap in the gutter.
The woman with the umbrella hesitated for a fraction of a second. Her primitive programming was momentarily confused by the extreme localized violence.
Sebastian did not give her time to process. He stepped forward and thrust the tip of the bat directly into her chest like a spear. He crushed her sternum before sweeping her legs out from under her. He brutally finished the job with a downward strike to the crown of her head!
Three bodies. Three seconds.
[Ding! Ding! Ding!]
[Real World Kills Confirmed.]
Sebastian stood in the pouring rain. His breath came in steady controlled exhales. He flicked the black blood off the end of the aluminum bat.
He looked up at the towering luxurious skyscraper looming in the distance. The uptown penthouse!
"Hold on Valerie," Sebastian muttered. His eyes narrowed into cold silver slits. "I am coming to collect my investment."