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

Blood aggressively exploded from his nose, his ears, and the corners of his eyes. The sheer electrical feedback of the digital purge literally fried his frontal lobe like an egg in a microwave.

All across the courtyard, hundreds of the infected sleepwalkers collapsed simultaneously. They twitched violently on the cobblestones, blood pouring from their facial orifices as their brains were forcefully hard-reset into total biological death.

They dropped dead instantly.

Back in the Deep Code, Sebastian lowered his hands. The purple corruption was completely gone. The green data pillars hummed with a stable, healthy rhythm.

He had cured the virus. He had saved the healthy refugees. But the cost was bloody and terrifying.

”Patch applied.” Sebastian muttered, his avatar panting heavily from the sheer strain of the Reality Hack.

He hit the disconnect button, ripping himself out of the code and back into his physical body.

Sebastian woke up in the VR pod with a violent gasp. He ripped the helmet off and immediately rolled onto his side, violently dry heaving over the edge of the leather chair.

His head felt like it was trapped in a vice grip. The real world physical toll of executing a Conceptual Law inside the Deep Code was catastrophic. His nose was bleeding freely, a steady stream of dark red dripping onto the concrete floor of the server room.

”Fvck.” he groaned, wiping his face with the back of a trembling hand.

He pushed himself out of the pod. His legs felt like lead, but the twenty percent biological synchronization kept him upright. He stumbled out of the server room and slowly made his way up the spiraling stone stairs toward the grand hall.

When he reached the main level, the chaotic noise of the courtyard had shifted. The panicked screaming of the slaughter had been replaced by the low, traumatized weeping of survivors.

Valerie was standing by the massive obsidian war table. She looked up as Sebastian entered. She looked absolutely horrified.

”Sebastian.” she breathed, taking a step toward him. ”What did you do? The infected, they just stopped. And then their heads just, they just started bleeding out.”

”I ran an antivirus.” Sebastian said, his voice hoarse. He leaned heavily against the table. ”The system purged the corrupted data. Their human brains couldn’t handle the feedback loop. They’re dead. But the rest of the camp is safe.”

Valerie stared at him, her mask entirely broken by the brutal pragmatism of his actions. He had just remotely executed hundreds of people to save a few thousand. It was horrific, but it was mathematically perfect.

”It’s done.” Sebastian muttered, reaching for a canteen of water on the table and taking a long gulp. ”The plague is dealt with. Tell Wraith to help the medics clean up the bodies before they start smelling.”

”Sebastian...” Valerie whispered, her eyes drifting past him. She wasn’t looking at his bloody nose. She was looking at the massive, stained-glass windows of the grand hall.

”What?” he asked, turning around.

”The sky.” she pointed with a trembling finger. ”Look at the sky.”

Sebastian walked over to the towering windows and looked out over the city of Ironhold, or rather, the ruined real world industrial district that now surrounded their magical fortress.

The sky had been a sickly, bleeding crimson for hours. But now, it was changing.

It wasn’t just a color shift. The physical atmosphere of the Earth was literally breaking.

CRACK!

A deafening, world-shaking sound echoed across the megacity. It sounded like a glacier snapping in half, but magnified a million times over.

Right above the downtown metropolis skyline, miles away from Sanctuary, a massive, jagged black line appeared in the red clouds. It looked exactly like a crack in a car windshield, but it was suspended in the empty air.

”Is that, is the sky shattering?” Valerie asked, her voice filled with pure dread.

Before Sebastian could answer, a violent, blinding bolt of purple lightning erupted from the crack. It didn’t strike the ground. It arced horizontally across the heavens, tearing the crack wider.

BOOM!

The sudden, catastrophic drop in atmospheric pressure hit them like a physical blow.

Sebastian gritted his teeth as his eardrums popped painfully. Valerie cried out, clapping her hands over her ears as the localized vacuum violently sucked the air out of the grand hall.

The thick, reinforced stained glass of the Citadel windows groaned under the impossible strain.

”The dimensional barriers are failing.” Sebastian said, his silver-tinged eyes narrowing at the terrifying sight. ”The server merge is accelerating.”

BING! BING! BING!

A deafening, server-wide system chime erupted directly inside their skulls. It wasn’t the triumphant golden text of a cleared dungeon. It was the harsh, flashing red text of a catastrophic global event.

[SYSTEM ALERT: GLOBAL SYNCHRONIZATION AT 35%.]

[WARNING: THE SECOND CALAMITY APPROACHES.]

[WARNING: THE ABYSSAL GATE HAS MANIFESTED.]

Sebastian stared at the glowing red words hovering in his vision. Thirty-five percent. That was the critical threshold.

”What does that mean?” Valerie asked, her face pale as she read the same prompt. ”What is an Abyssal Gate?”

”It means the tutorial is officially over, and the real game just started.” Sebastian said, his voice dropping into a serious calm.

He turned away from the window. The exhaustion in his body was instantly replaced by the cold, calculating adrenaline of survival. He began rapidly tapping on the war table’s holographic interface, bringing up the Citadel’s defense grids.

”At five percent sync, we got Tier 0 zombies and overgrown rats.” Sebastian explained, his fingers flying across the runes. ”At thirty-five percent, the physical world can handle the mass rendering of heavy code.”

He looked up at Valerie. The Arcane Valkyrie needed to be ready.

”Tier 2 monsters are about to spawn into reality, Princess. We aren’t dealing with mindless infected humans anymore. We’re dealing with the Void’s actual standing army.”

Outside, the jagged black crack in the sky tore open completely. A portal the size of a skyscraper bled pure darkness into the real world.

”Galleon!” Sebastian roared into his comm-link. ”Power up the railguns! Wraith! Get everyone inside the inner walls right fvcking now!”

The warning signs were over. The invasion had begun.