Chapter 14: I Am Become Death

"Sir, the mission details," a voice called out to me.

I was currently sitting with my legs casually hanging over a helicopter. When I turned to see who had called me, I saw a man decked out in full military attire. He offered me the files in his hand as he said, "Those contain everything we know for the mission."

Accepting the files, I enjoyed the whipping winds that hit me as the helicopter flew over a snowy tundra-like field covered sparsely in trees. I read the files and frowned as the situation began to unravel for me.

The Terrorist Takeover Scenario was exactly what it sounded like. A group of unhinged people had decided to attack the capital city of Zhongtian in this world's version of China. Unfortunately, they succeeded and were now holding the entire city hostage with a nuclear bomb which would detonate in 24 hours if their demands were not met.

I was supposedly the super spy that had been contracted to sneak my way into the city and disarm the bomb. Of course, because in this world I somehow had an infamous reputation for being able to accomplish the impossible, the terrorists had already expressed their intention of setting off the nuke if they so much as thought I was going to be involved.

To keep things as low-key as possible, I'd been contracted at the very last second. Additionally, I would be shortly dropped off over 100 miles away from the city I was supposed to save with only 4 hours to work with.

Suddenly, it made sense why this was a Bad Scenario with a Unique Rarity. I had no time to prepare, the stakes were sky-high, and the slightest mistake would see an entire city get obliterated by a nuke.

With my current Skills and Abilities, I had a decent chance. But it could be better and I had literally hundreds of normal Gachas followed by thousands of Locked ones in stock to further increase my odds of success.

To my surprise, it was actually the Locked Gacha Coins from the Zombie Store Invasion Scenario that came in clutch with exactly what I was looking for. The first thousand Locked Gachas only gave me survival equipment, rations, and essentials for living in a post-apocalyptic world — think medical kits, barricading materials, and the like.

Afterwards, for every 100 Item rolls, I got a new Skill that increased until it maxed out before I started working on another one. For my 2,000th kill, I maxed out a First Aid Skill. For my 3,000th Skill, I maxed out a Weapon Maintenance Skill. Then I maxed out a generic Melee Skill, followed by a Firearm Skill, and a Teaching Skill. It was the Skill I got and then proceeded to max out by my 7,000th Kill that would help me trivialize the danger of the Terrorist Takeover Scenario.

Stealth.

Now I knew how to be purposefully sneaky when I wanted to. It had passive benefits that allowed me to know various tricks to be stealthy without trying, but it was primarily an active Skill like Sprinting which would drain my stamina to suppress my presence to half of what it normally was at Level 10.

That didn't sound like much, but when paired with the intuition I now had for how to move as quietly and unnoticeably as I possibly could, it should make me a ghost to the normal people of this alternate Earth. I would only know once I finally made it to the city and started my infiltration of the makeshift fortress the terrorists had set up at the capitol building.

Moving on after my 8,099th roll, I got a Free Running Skill which Leveled up to 7. It might be situationally useful if I ever found myself without Ki like I did during the 72 Hours, Do Or Die Scenario. But since I could literally fly any other time, the preternatural ability to lessen the detriments of terrain and obstacles while moving, probably wouldn't be useful all that often.

The rest of my good rewards were unusually good.

[Results: Rarity — Rare 900 (Locked) | Savior's Strength (Perk)]

[Results: Rarity — Unique 6,286 (Locked) | Immunized (Perk)]

[Results: Rarity — Uncommon 50 | Inventory Slot x2 (Ability)]

[Results: Rarity — Uncommon 99 | Invulnerability Frame x2 (Ability)]

[Results: Rarity — Uncommon 26 | German x10 (Skill)]

[Results: Rarity — Rare 313 | Tamriel: Healing x5 (Skill)]

[Results: Rarity — Rare 999 | Equipment Slot x2 (Ability)]

[Results: Rarity — Unique 7,500 | New Gacha! (Perk)]

Savior's Strength would give me decent 25% boost to overall power when I was fighting to save or protect others. Immunized gave me carte blanche immunity to all common illnesses, lowered the chances that I'd get anything more severe by 90%, and made it so that even if I got seriously ill for whatever reason — including being poisoned, exposed to venom, or other toxic substances that shut down my immune system — the effects would be reduced by half.

Another two Inventory Slot was nice. I currently wasn't using any of them, but they would be useful once I started concocting the things I had been planning on making with my Alchemy on my free day. The Equipment Slots, on the other hand, could start being used right now. Currently, I only had options for my Chest and Legs. With them, I could instantly change between two shirts and pairs of pants.

I got up and changed into a set of Urban Camo fatigues before changing back to Tundra Camo gear and leaving the other outfit in my reserve slots. When the helicopter got as close as it was going to bring me, I was dropped off and made my way over the Zhongtian while blending into the surrounding environment. It was probably overkill considering how quickly I was going and the fact that I could use long-range teleportation with copious use of Katoyaki's Song, but I wasn't exactly pressed for time, so I focused on putting my new Stealth Skills to the test and getting used to maneuvering with them in mind.

As I made my way over to the besieged city, I smiled at the thought of my Healing magic now being maxed out. With the Skill Advancement Consumable I had reserved, I could remove the level cap for that at a critical moment if need be.

Most important of all, though, was the New Gacha! Perk I got which opened brand new doors for me and my bullshit gambling powers. New Gacha didn't do anything to me, but it did make it possible for me to be rewarded with variants of Gacha that previously weren't in the pool. It would be like hitting the slot machine and winning a few extra tries at the jackpot, though a little more nuanced.

For example, High Roller Gacha would only gamble on whether I got a positive rarity or not, the numerical value would always be at the extreme ends of either side of the spectrum. It was the very definition of high risk, high reward. Set Gacha would only include a pool with rewards that were of the same Rarity as the Gacha used, so no more Common trash from Unique Rolls.

Blessed Gacha only gave positive rarity rewards, Cursed Gacha did the opposite and there were Set Gacha which like the High Roller variants which would only gamble on whether the rarity was positive or not, but with an already decided (random) rarity wasn't necessarily on the extreme ends of the spectrum. There was also Gacha that only rolled, Items, Skills, Abilities, Perks and so on with even more that I could talk about for hours about the possibilities.

I didn't have the time to do that as I was quickly approaching the futuristic setting of Zhongtian. For a place that was surrounded by tundra deserts and little else, there were an unusual number of 100+ floor skyscrapers and signs of urbanization that were visible from several dozen miles away.

The sheer scale hit me all at once when I finally entered the city limits and had to crane my head almost a full 90 degrees back to see the top of the buildings I was blitzing past. I knew it was a big city when I read that nearly 87 million people lived within a twenty-mile radius, but only now was that fully sinking in.

If I messed up, I had a good chance at surviving so long as I wasn't literally within arms reach of the nuclear explosion. I had my base Ki-enhanced physique shielded on two layers, first by my Aura and then by the Reiryoku which had grown a hundred times over since I unlocked my Aura. Then, on top of all that I had Hollowfication to fall back on which would exponentiate the amount of spiritual power shielding me thanks to Saint & Sinner.

Would that be enough to survive ground zero? Probably not, but I was only a single throw away from teleporting far enough to increase my odds countless times over.

All the other people in the city, though… Yeah, I didn't give most of them good odds.

It was extremely depressing when I slipped into the city, seeing that various branches of the military had been called in to quarantine the civilians from getting out. The terrorists had made that demand after blowing up a small tactical nuke in a nearby settlement to prove they were serious.

As I got within a mile of the capitol building, I let my stamina begin to drain to sustain the active ability of my Stealth Skill. There was a heavy presence of militarized gunmen keeping a lookout and defending the fortified building. Enough people were present that the only gaps I could pick out to make any progress had a tenth of a second window of opportunity before they closed.

Trivial.

I entered the building without making a sound and began to explore through the most likely places they might have hidden the nuke based on the report I'd been given on the flight over. Because I was dealing with a bomb with the specs to erase 25% of the city, it was big enough that there were only eight places in the entire building complex where it could be reasonably contained and defended.

The background detail as to how my intel knew this was that the group of terrorists had actually raided a transport vehicle carrying the nuke about a month prior. How they managed to know when and where to strike to get a nearly 500-Kiloton bomb was anyone's guess. Mine was that there was probably a traitor or something high up in the military.

Anyway, my perchant for middling luck followed me beyond the realm of Gacha as I went through five of the eight possible locations before finding the bomb on my sixth try. Because the Scenario wasn't hard enough, the bomb was also being guarded by six people. I wouldn't have known this without my Ki Sense as there was only one way into the room and three of the six were within reaching distance of the gated door.

Oh well, I guess this is as good a time as any to see how fast I could get if I pushed myself to my absolute limit. I activated Sprinting, which was a common enough powerup I used during pretty much all my fights. I galvanized my Aura, letting the black inky glow of my Soul further augment my body. I reached for my face instinctively and used Hollowfication for the first time outside the battle against my Inner Hollow.

As a bone mask covered my face, I delighted in the sudden ecstasy that came with all the power now coursing through my veins. I'd never done any drugs, but this was unlike anything I'd ever heard of. It felt good. It felt amazing. It felt—

Hold on a minute… I put aside my feelings as my Ki Sense picked up a strange phenomenon. The Ki of everyone within my Ki Range was rapidly fading. There was a point at which the fading stopped, but everyone affected was left with their Ki comparable to that of a cancer victim on their last few moments.

Everyone I could sense was dropping like flies and I couldn't stick around to try and find out what was going on. At any moment, someone who could remotely activate the nuke might find out and blast me to kingdom come along with the rest of the city.

I moved faster than I'd ever moved before as I used the Afterimage technique to ignore the concept of acceleration as much as my body could. Within fractions of a second, I crossed into the room containing the bomb and delivered killing blows to everyone present. They might have been at death's door, but there was still a chance that one or more of them was conscious enough to sound the alert that had been placed specifically for me.

My mind was as fast as my body, so I worked at defusing the bomb per the instructions I'd read on the flight over. Because it was originaly built by the government, I knew the schematics inside and out; not really, but I did know everything I needed to not accidentally trigger the bomb and instead safely deactivate it.

It only took twenty seconds to deconstruct the nuke and make it harmless. To make it even more harmless I stored the reactive core into one of my Inventory slots and proceeded to conduct yet another massacre to see if I could achieve the secondary "optional" objective of my assignment.

There was a chance the terrorists had other bombs like the one they used as a show of force at the nearby settlement. So, since I was already here, I had been asked to clean up as many of them as I could if I managed to defuse the bomb without alerting anyone. The government didn't expect all the terrorists of the group to be present, but a good chunk of them probably were considering their leverage.

[Congratulations! For disarming the nuke before anyone could spot you, you have earned a Locked Unique Gacha Coin!]

So, in my current horrifyingly strong state, I started cleaning up what remained of the mostly already-dead people I came across. I had absolutely no idea why they were in the state that I found them.

"It's probably your Reiatsu," Katayoki said, his fluctuating voice sounding remarkably pleasant for once. "You're not doing anything to contain the amount of Spiritual Pressure you're leaking out of your body and it's casting an extinguishing effect on the souls of these regular people. I bet if you pushed it as hard as you could, you just actually kill everyone in a hundred-foot radius just by standing near them."

I tried to get a handle on the power, but couldn't until I dropped the Hollowfication. Once I did, the people in my Ki Sense range stopped losing their lifeforce and slowly started regaining what they'd lost.

Scary… But also useful in a situation where I didn't need to consider collateral damage like the one I was in right now.

I finished killing off everyone armed and that resolved the Scenario.

[Congratulations! For resolving the situation without being spotted or drawing any attention from the enemy, you have earned a Locked Epic Gacha Coin!]