Panic broke out.
"Holy shit, he's a hacker!"
"Did you see that fucking damage?! 9k?!"
"Run! Just run!"
The formation broke. The guild members scrambled over their own barricades in pure terror.
Fleeing into the woods.
__
Dead Man's Gorge was exactly as bleak as Sebastian remembered.
The sky above was permanently choked with thick and swirling grey clouds that blocked out the sun, casting the entire canyon in a perpetual and depressing twilight.
The ground was composed of cracked obsidian and pale chalky ash.
Jagged spires of rock jutted out of the earth like the ribs of some colossal and long-dead beast.
[Zone: Dead Man's Gorge]
[Recommended Level: 10-15]
It was a Level 10 to 15 zone, designed for large parties of coordinated players to slowly grind their way through the mid-game.
The ambient noise was a loud blend of clattering bones and low mournful moans. Clack. Clatter. Grooaaan.
Sebastian stood at the entrance of a massive and bowl-shaped depression in the center of the gorge.
Down below, hundreds of Skeletal Warriors and Rotting Ghouls milled about aimlessly.
They were heavily armored in rusted bronze plates, wielding decayed spears and jagged swords.
To a normal player, this was a terrifying army of elite mobs.
To Sebastian, it was an all-you-can-eat buffet of experience points waiting to be harvested.
He pulled up his interface.
He was still Level 4 from the wolf encounter, possessing exactly 100 maximum mana.
His ultimate weapon cost 90 mana to cast.
[Forbidden Spell: Solar Flare]
[Cost: 90 Mana]
If he cast it once, he would wipe out a large chunk of the horde, but he would be left with 10 mana, utterly defenseless while the remaining skeletons swarmed him.
In a normal playthrough, a Mage would have to sit on the ground and meditate for twenty minutes to recover that much mana naturally, or drink expensive mana potions that had a ten-minute cooldown timer due to Potion Sickness.
Sebastian didn't have potions, and he definitely didn't have twenty minutes to sit on his hands.
He opened his inventory and pulled out a handful of the Wilted Mudroot he had purchased from the Alchemy Vendor earlier.
It was Tier 0 garbage.
Chewing on it raw would normally restore maybe 1 point of mana and give the player a debuff called Nausea that reduced movement speed.
Sebastian shoved a handful of the dirt-covered and foul-smelling roots into his mouth.
It tasted exactly like eating a fistful of wet and sulfurous soil mixed with rotting leaves. Crunch, squelch.
He gagged instinctively, but forced his jaw to work, grinding the roots down and swallowing the gritty paste.
Instantly, his Chaos Talent flared to life!
[Talent Activated: Forbidden Alchemy]
[Action: Consumed Organic Matter.]
[Effect: Digestion Cooldown Bypassed. Toxicity Ignored.]
[Mana Restored: 150 Points.]
His mana bar instantly shot past its maximum, the overflow burning slightly in his veins.
He spat a mouthful of black dirt onto the ashen ground, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
"Fuck, that's disgusting," he muttered. "But it gets the job done."
He stepped up to the very edge of the cliff overlooking the massive depression.
Down below, a Skeletal Captain spotted him!
SKREEEEE! Its jaw unhinged, letting out a piercing and skeletal screech that echoed off the canyon walls.
The entire horde of easily five hundred undead monsters turned their hollow and glowing red eyes toward him and began to charge up the slope.
A tidal wave of rusted bronze and clicking bone rushed toward him, a terrifying avalanche of death!
Sebastian didn't even draw his dagger.
He simply raised his right hand, extending his thumb and middle finger.
He didn't bother aiming at a specific target. He was aiming at the entire zip code.
He channeled 90 mana into his fingertips, felt the conceptual weight of a dying star settle into his palm, and snapped his fingers.
"Solar Flare."
[Warning! Mana Depletion Imminent.]
The sky above Dead Man's Gorge didn't just light up. It ignited!
FWOOSH! A sphere of furious and blindingly white plasma dropped from the heavy grey clouds.
It was the size of a small house, radiating a heat so absolute that the air around it instantly warped and tore.
The Solar Flare hit the exact dead center of the skeletal horde.
There was no explosion. There was only erasure.
The heat was so catastrophic that the physics engine skipped the burning animation entirely.
The Skeletal Warriors didn't catch fire. Their bones and bronze armor instantly sublimated into superheated gas!
BOOM!
The shockwave of pure and unadulterated nuclear fusion radiated outward in a perfect and expanding dome of incandescent fury.
The flash blinded Sebastian for a split second, despite the system's protective filters.
The sheer concussive force of the displacement wave hit him like a physical wall, throwing his cloth-covered avatar onto his back.
When he sat up and blinked the afterimages from his retinas, the gorge had fundamentally changed.
The massive depression was no longer filled with ash and jagged rocks.
It was a perfectly smooth and glowing bowl of molten orange glass.
Five hundred Level 10 and 15 monsters were simply gone, leaving nothing behind but scattered and floating motes of experience points that looked like a localized snowstorm of golden light.
Then, the system caught up.
Sebastian's interface didn't just chime. It shrieked like a dying animal as hundreds of notifications tried to populate his screen simultaneously!
[Ding! You have slain Skeletal Warrior x 214!]
[Ding! You have slain Rotting Ghoul x 187!]
[Ding! You have slain Skeletal Captain x 12!]
[Experience Overload.]
[Ding! Level Up! You are now Level 5!]
[Ding! Level Up! You are now Level 6!]
[Ding! Level Up! You are now Level 7!]
[Ding! Level Up! You are now Level 8!]
[Ding! Level Up! You are now Level 9!]
[Ding! Level Up! You are now Level 10!]
[System Notice: MAXIMUM LEVEL FOR TUTORIAL ZONE REACHED.]
Sebastian dismissed the waterfall of blue windows with a wave of his hand.
He stood up, brushing the dirt off his starter clothes.
He had just broken the world record for reaching Level 10 by a margin of several weeks. It had taken him less than four hours.
Suddenly, the sky above the entire game world flashed with a brilliant and golden light.
A booming and ethereal voice echoed from the heavens, heard by every single one of the billions of players currently logged in.
[GLOBAL ANNOUNCEMENT: Congratulations! A player has broken the mortal limits and reached Level 10! The path to the Main Cities is now open!]
[Player Name: ***]
Sebastian had instantly toggled the Hide Identity option the moment the prompt appeared.
He needed to be famous for his wealth, not his level.
Being an anonymous boogeyman was far more tactically advantageous in the early days of the apocalypse.
He opened the global chat interface, which was currently moving so fast it was just a blur of white text.
xX_DragonSlayer_Xx: WHAT THE FUCK?! LEVEL 10?! THE GAME HAS BEEN OUT FOR FOUR HOURS!
HealSlut99: Is this a bug? I'm literally still fighting a Level 1 slime and I've died twice.
Crimson_Viper: WHOEVER DID THIS, I WILL FIND YOU. ALSO, WHOEVER THE DRIFTER IS THAT HACKED THE BRIDGE, MY GUILD IS PUTTING A BOUNTY ON YOUR FUCKING HEAD!
GamerGod420: Bro definitely used mommy's credit card to buy exp boosts. P2W trash game.
Sebastian snorted, closing the chat window.
Let them panic. Let them cry about balance. They were playing checkers, and he was preparing for a thermonuclear war.
With Level 10 achieved, his character was no longer bound to the tutorial zone.
A glowing and runic teleportation circle materialized at his feet, offering him transit to any of the major hubs in The Ethereal Plane.
He didn't hesitate.
He pulled up the map directory and selected the largest, grimiest, and most economically corrupt city on the server.
He needed capital, and he needed it in a place where morals were entirely optional.
"Ironhold," Sebastian commanded.
VZZZT! The runic circle flared, and his body dissolved into a tunnel of blue light, leaving the glassed and molten crater of Dead Man's Gorge behind to slowly cool in the dark.