Awakening a 10,000x Skill Proficiency Multiplier in the Apocalypse

The physics of reversing your own gravity while attached to a rope anchored in a flying dragon were frankly absolute dog shit.

Sebastian was violently yanked upward into the freezing stormy sky. The sudden acceleration hit him like a freight train made of ice.

FWOOSH!

The wind at ten thousand feet did not just blow, it screamed. It tore at his ragged Drifter coat and clawed at his exposed face.

The ambient temperature was easily forty below zero and that was before factoring in the Level 50 Frost Monarch’s passive aura. Every single breath he took felt like inhaling a handful of crushed razor blades.

”Fuck me, I hate flying commercial!” Sebastian grunted. His teeth locked together as he held onto the enchanted dwarven rope for dear life.

Down below, the valley was a blur of grey and white. Up ahead, the massive crystalline underbelly of Velkhana loomed like a falling ceiling.

He was reeling himself in at a terrifying speed.

His arms felt like they were being ripped from their sockets but his grip held firm.

WHAM!

Sebastian slammed feet-first into the soft rotting mass of the Void parasite clinging to the dragon’s stomach.

”Guh!” The wind was knocked completely out of his lungs.

SQUELCH.

His boots sank deep into the bubbling neon-purple pus of the corrupted code. The smell was instantly nauseating, a horrible mixture of rotten eggs and battery acid. It was so potent it actually made his eyes water behind his white half-mask.

Velkhana roared. The deafening sound physically shook the massive scales beneath Sebastian’s feet.

The beast could feel the parasite shifting but she could not reach her own underbelly to swat him away like a bug. Instead, she banked sharply and entered a steep spiraling barrel roll to try and shake the annoying little human off her stomach.

”Whoa, shit!” Sebastian yelled and dropped to his hands and knees.

He dug his fingers directly into the festering black meat of the Void scar to use it as a disgusting handhold. The world spun wildly around him in a sickening blur of dark clouds and distant snowy earth.

He glanced over his shoulder. Somewhere out there in the freezing storm, Valerie was still flying.

The Arcane Valkyrie was a tiny speck of brilliant blue light. She darted through the air and fired useless annoying kinetic bolts at the dragon’s face to keep its aggro divided. She was buying him the seconds he needed.

”Alright big bird,” Sebastian muttered as he spit a glob of freezing blood from his cracked lips. ”Time to clip your wings.”

He did not have his fire magic. The Frost Monarch’s absolute zero aura had completely frozen his mana conduits for anything thermal.

But he did not need fire to kill a god. He just needed gravity, mass, and a really big stick.

He crawled out of the rotting parasite. His boots slipped on the slick icy scales of the dragon’s flank. He moved with the desperate frantic energy of a man fighting against hurricane-force winds.

He reached the absolute center of Velkhana’s back right between the massive joints of her crystalline wings. This was the nexus point of her spinal column.

Beneath these thick glowing blue scales lay the primary nerve cluster that controlled her flight mechanics.

He stood up and fought the wind to keep his balance. He planted his feet wide to anchor himself to the dragon’s back with a microscopic sliver of his Gravity Domain.

He reached into his inventory.

”Manifest.”

THUD!

The Earth Sword materialized in his right hand. The massive concrete-encrusted broadsword slammed heavily against the dragon’s scales.

It was ugly and it was brutal and it weighed over two hundred pounds. But against a Level 50 World Boss, two hundred pounds was basically a toothpick.

He needed more.

Sebastian reached into his coat pocket with his free hand. He pulled out a flimsy dirt-stained pamphlet.

It was the absolute cheapest utility spell he had looted from a dead goblin back in the slums.

[Basic Weight Increase]

[Tier: 0 Utility Spell]

[Effect: Shifts target mass by a fraction of a percent.]

”Let’s see if the server can handle a little extra baggage,” Sebastian smirked. His silver-tinged eyes glowed fiercely in the blizzard.

He crushed the pamphlet in his fist.

The system registered the new skill. Instantly, the beautiful world-breaking 10,000x Nexus Glitch violently woke up.

BING! BING! BING!

A cascade of translucent blue interface windows flooded his vision and illuminated the dark snowy sky around him.

[Action Registered: Learn Basic Weight Increase.]

[Nexus Glitch Activated: Proficiency x10,000.]

[Basic Weight Increase leveled up to 10/10! Max Level Reached!]

[Evolution Requirement Met. Basic Weight evolves to Tier 1: Heavy Burden!]

[Proficiency Overflow Detected! Heavy Burden leveled up to 10/10!]

[Evolution Requirement Met. Heavy Burden evolves to Tier 3: Gravitational Anchor!]

[Proficiency Overflow Detected! Gravitational Anchor leveled up to 10/10!]

[WARNING: Concept Threshold Breached. Absolute Mass Law Unlocked.]

[Gravitational Anchor evolves to Conceptual Law: Gravity Crush.]

A massive throbbing headache spiked right behind Sebastian’s eyes.

The server was forcibly downloading the absolute fundamental understanding of exponential mass into his brain.

He did not just know how to make a rock heavier. He understood how to isolate a specific object and forcefully multiply its atomic density until it rivaled the core of a dying planet.

He looked down at the Earth Sword in his hand.

”Heavy,” Sebastian commanded.

He channeled his glitched mana pool directly into the weapon.

VROOOOM!

The air around the blade instantly warped. The sheer localized mass of the sword skyrocketed. It went from two hundred pounds to two thousand. Then twenty thousand.

He pushed it to the absolute limit.

One hundred tons of localized hyper-condensed mass rested entirely in the palms of his hands.

His synchronized muscles bulged. The dark violet veins in his arms pulsed wildly as he held the impossible weight.

The only reason his arms did not snap clean off was the game’s internal logic recognizing him as the caster of the law. This granted him immunity to the wielder’s strain.

But Velkhana was not immune.

”GGRRAAAAH!”

The dragon let out a sudden terrified shriek. The addition of one hundred tons of dead weight directly onto her upper spine instantly ruined her flight aerodynamics.

Her massive wings beat frantically and the crystalline joints screamed in protest, but it was not enough.

She immediately began to lose altitude. Her nose dipped dangerously toward the icy canyon floor ten thousand feet below.

”Going down!” Sebastian yelled over the wind.

He did not swing the sword. He did not have the leverage for a full arc.

He simply lifted the massive concrete-encrusted blade a few feet into the air, reversed his grip, and drove the jagged tip straight down into the exact center of the dragon’s spine.

CRACK!

It sounded like a battleship cannon firing at point-blank range.

The hundred-ton blade backed by the conceptual law of his God-Slayer’s Edge passive completely ignored the indestructible permafrost scales.

The sword punched through the armor and through the thick digital muscle. It slammed directly into the massive spinal cord of the World Boss.

SNAP!

The spine violently severed.

Velkhana’s entire body went entirely impossibly rigid. Paralysis took hold in a fraction of a second.

Her wings snapped flat against her sides completely dead. Her roaring was abruptly cut off and replaced by a silent wide-eyed stare of absolute system failure.

They lost all lift.

Gravity reclaimed its prize.

The descent was terrifying. It was not a glide. It was a completely uncontrolled terminal velocity free-fall.

”Brace for impact!” Sebastian muttered to himself. He dropped the Earth Sword and pressed his body completely flat against the frozen scales of the plummeting beast.

The wind was a deafening roar. The snowy landscape of the canyon rushed up to meet them at a sickening speed.

The grey sky vanished and was replaced entirely by the rapidly approaching white ground.

Three. Two. One.

BOOM!

The impact was catastrophic.

When a Level 50 World Boss weighing thousands of tons hits solid bedrock at terminal velocity, the resulting crash is less of a physical event and more of an environmental disaster.

The ground violently exploded. A massive blinding shockwave of pulverized ice and shattered snow blasted outward in a perfect ring. It flattened the canyon for a mile in every direction.

Velkhana did not bounce. She burst.

The physics engine of the Ethereal Plane completely shrieked in protest as it tried to render the absolute kinetic trauma.

The dragon’s body split open like a massive overfilled water balloon. Her ribs shattered outward like jagged crystal spears.

Millions of gallons of steaming glowing blue viscera and digitized blood sprayed across the pristine white snow. It painted the entire valley in a horrific coat of neon gore.

Sebastian was thrown from the dragon’s back at the last possible second.

He tumbled violently across the snow. His health bar took a massive hit from the sheer concussive shockwave of the landing.

He rolled to a stop and was buried entirely in a snowdrift.

The world was ringing. A high-pitched endless tone buzzed in his ears.

Slowly, the golden server-wide notification floated into the sky. It cut through the swirling dust and snow.

[GLOBAL ANNOUNCEMENT: VELKHANA, THE FROST MONARCH, HAS BEEN SLAIN!]

[PLAYER NAME: ZERO]

Down in the snow, Sebastian groaned. He weakly raised a hand and gave the glowing text a half-hearted middle finger.

”Fucking... nailed it.”