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

The Sky-Fortress flew through the clouds of the Ethereal Plane at a speed that ignored standard flying rules.

Down below, the Pacific Ocean was a mess of black water and dead sea monsters.

Sebastian stood at the front of the heavy stone platform. His black leather coat flapped in the wind. The gravity runes kept him firmly anchored, but the speed still made his eyes water.

”Approaching the Eastern Servers, boss!” Galleon yelled from the control console. His dwarven beard pressed against his face by the wind. ”I’m picking up massive mana spikes ahead! It looks like the whole continent is on fire!”

”Drop us out of hyper-cruise,” Sebastian ordered while checking his glitched UI. ”Let’s see what the Iron Covenant is dealing with.”

With a heavy metallic screech, the Sky-Fortress rapidly slowed down. The world snapped into sharp focus.

They were hovering two thousand feet above what used to be Beijing.

The city was gone. It had been replaced by a landscape of ash and shattered concrete. The Great Wall of China had been turned into a massive barricade by the system. It was currently buckling under the weight of an endless Beast Tide.

Millions of Void Crawlers and skeletal giants were throwing themselves at the wall.

But they were just the background noise.

The real problem was standing right in the center of the battlefield. It casually broke apart the Iron Covenant’s disciplined formations.

”Holy shit,” Valerie breathed. She stepped up beside Sebastian and gripped her carved oak staff tightly. ”What is that thing?”

”That,” Sebastian pointed downward, ”is Moloch, the Eater. Level 60 Demon Lord. Tier 3 World Boss. And a massive pain in my ass.”

Moloch was a towering monster that defied logic. It did not have a defined head or limbs. It was a massive slug-like entity composed entirely of gnashing mouths and thousands of yellow eyes. It stood at least five stories tall and left a thick trail of black acid wherever it slithered.

Down on the ground, General Iron was desperately trying to hold the line.

His men were arranged in perfectly synchronized shield walls. Their heavy armor glowed with defensive buffs. They were a military unit trying to fight a monster with spears and swords. It was a mathematically doomed effort.

”Hold the line! Cycle the healers!” General Iron’s amplified voice boomed over the battlefield.

Moloch did not care about their discipline. The Demon Lord reared back and its hundreds of mouths opened simultaneously.

”GARRRGGGH!”

A massive wave of concentrated digestive acid erupted from the beast.

SPLAT! HSSSSS!

The acid hit the front line of the Iron Covenant. The heavy steel shields instantly melted into liquid. The men behind the shields didn’t even have time to scream. The corrosive slime washed over them and instantly melted their armor and flesh.

”Ahhh! Oh god, my arms!” a Paladin gurgled as his flesh slid off his bones.

In seconds, a dozen elite soldiers were reduced to puddles of organic waste. Only their exposed bones remained standing for a brief second before clattering into the mud.

”They’re getting butchered,” Wraith noted. His voice cut through the comms. The Assassin was perched on the edge of a railgun and looked down at the slaughter. ”The acid is dealing continuous true damage. Their healers cannot out-pace the decay.”

”Because they’re trying to out-heal a stomach, which is stupid,” Sebastian sighed and shook his head. ”Alright. Let’s provide that air support we were promised.”

He didn’t draw the heavy Earth Sword. He didn’t pull out the [Solar Flare] spell. A Level 60 Demon Lord had insane magical resistance. Hitting it with fire or ice was just going to tickle its health bar.

Sebastian needed pure kinetic energy.

He walked over to a pile of scrap metal Galleon had left on the deck. He picked up a standard rusted iron spear. It was a Tier 0 weapon that dealt maybe ten points of physical damage. It looked like a glorified pointy stick.

”You’re going to poke it?” Valerie asked and raised an eyebrow.

”I’m going to drop a concept on it,” Sebastian corrected smoothly.

He stepped to the very edge of the Sky-Fortress and looked directly down at the massive mass of mouths below. He held the rusty iron spear loosely in his right hand.

He opened his digital inventory and pulled out a dirt-cheap pamphlet.

[Basic Projectile Buff]

[Tier: 0 Utility Spell]

[Effect: Increases the throwing speed of an object by 5%.]

It was a spell usually used by low-level archers to make their wooden arrows fly just a tiny bit straighter.

Sebastian crushed the pamphlet in his fist. The grey motes of light sank into his skin.

[Action Registered: Learn Basic Projectile Buff.]

[Nexus Glitch Activated: Proficiency x10,000.]

The blue holographic windows flooded his vision. The Ethereal Plane’s servers struggled to process ten thousand lifetimes of throwing mastery being forcefully injected into a single user.

[Basic Projectile Buff leveled up to 10/10! Max Level Reached!]

[Evolution Requirement Met. Evolves to Tier 1: Sonic Throw!]

[Proficiency Overflow Detected! Sonic Throw leveled up to 10/10!]

[Evolution Requirement Met. Evolves to Tier 3: Meteor Strike!]

[Proficiency Overflow Detected! Meteor Strike leveled up to 10/10!]

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

[Meteor Strike evolves to Conceptual Law: Orbital Strike.]

A heavy silence fell over the immediate area of the Sky-Fortress. The ambient mana in the air was sucked toward Sebastian’s right arm.

He didn’t just know how to throw a spear. He understood the absolute physics of falling speed and kinetic bombardment.

”Hey, Iron!” Sebastian’s amplified voice boomed from the heavens. ”You might want to grab an umbrella!”

Down below, General Iron snapped his head upward. His eyes widened as he spotted the massive floating chunk of stone hovering in the clouds.

Sebastian pulled his right arm back. The rusted iron spear began to glow. The sheer kinetic energy gathering around the weapon turned the rusty metal into a vibrating rod of pure white light.

He didn’t aim. His body already knew the exact coordinates of Moloch’s center mass.

He threw the spear.

CRACK-BOOM!

The sound of the sonic boom shattered the stone floor of the Sky-Fortress beneath Sebastian’s boots.

The spear instantly accelerated to Mach 20. The air friction melted the iron weapon into a beam of super-hot plasma.

It looked like a laser beam fired directly from the heavens.

The beam struck Moloch dead center.

There was no epic struggle. There was no dramatic roaring from the boss.

The Level 60 Demon Lord took the equivalent of a tactical nuclear warhead directly to its spine. The kinetic energy forcefully expanded outward into the creature’s body.

SQUELCH. KRA-DOOM!

Moloch violently exploded.

The beast was instantly blown apart from the inside out. A wave of black blood and massive chunks of organs blasted outward in a circular shockwave.

”TAKE COVER!” General Iron shrieked and dived behind a ruined piece of concrete.

The fallout rained down upon the battlefield. A chunk of Moloch’s jaw slammed into a platoon of Iron Covenant soldiers and instantly crushed them. Boiling blood washed over the remaining shield walls. It melted armor and cooked the men inside their suits.

The force of the explosion flattened the remaining Void Crawlers for a mile in every direction. This instantly cleared the immediate siege.

Up on the platform, Sebastian casually lowered his arm. The sleeve of his leather coat was completely shredded from the backlash of the throw.

He looked down at the massive crater where the Demon Lord used to be. The surviving members of the Iron Covenant were groaning. They slowly pushed themselves out from under the heavy chunks of the boss’s intestines.

”Well,” Sebastian muttered, pulling a fresh piece of lint off his remaining sleeve. ”That’s one way to tenderize the meat.”