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

The Sky-Fortress slowly descended through the smoke of the destroyed battlefield.

The smell was terrible. It was a mixture of cooked human flesh and melted iron. Valerie had her face buried in her elbow. She actively fought down the urge to empty her stomach over the edge of the stone platform.

Sebastian was entirely unbothered. He hopped off the deck before the fortress even touched the ground. His boots landed softly in a thick puddle of black sludge.

SQUELCH.

He walked casually through the destroyed area. The area looked like a meatpacking plant had been run through a blender and painted over the ruins of Beijing.

He stepped over a massive eyeball the size of a boulder. He completely ignored the groaning soldiers of the Iron Covenant who were desperately trying to heal their acid burns.

”You...”

A voice spoke from the cover of a shattered concrete pillar.

General Iron stumbled forward. The Paladin was a complete mess. His heavy armor was bent and dripping with Moloch’s blood. He was missing his helmet, and a nasty burn marked the left side of his jaw.

He looked at Sebastian with a mixture of awe and terror.

”You just dropped a kinetic strike on my front line,” Iron coughed. He spit a glob of grey ash onto the ground. ”You killed fifty of my men with the boss’s collateral damage.”

”I saved three thousand of your men by instantly deleting the boss,” Sebastian corrected. He locked his eyes onto the General. ”You’re welcome. Now, where is my payment?”

Iron stared at him for a long second. The military commander knew he was standing in front of an anomaly that could wipe his entire guild off the server with a flick of his wrist. Arguing about collateral damage was a waste of breath.

The General reached into his ruined breastplate and pulled out a glowing metallic cylinder covered in complex data streams.

He tossed it to Sebastian.

”The Eastern Regional Core blueprints and the access keys,” Iron grunted. ”The territory is yours, Drifter. Just keep the bugs off my back.”

Sebastian caught the cylinder. A quick system prompt confirmed its authenticity. He pocketed it with a satisfied smirk.

”Pleasure doing business with you, General. Try to clean up this mess. It smells like a fast-food dumpster out here.”

He turned his back on the military leader and walked toward the absolute center of the impact crater.

Sitting in the middle of a massive hole was the prize. It was completely untouched by the kinetic blast due to the system’s loot preservation laws.

It was Moloch’s Soul Shard.

Unlike the tiny grey shards dropped by standard players, this thing was massive. It was the size of a refrigerator. It was a pulsing crystal of deep purple. It swirled with the condensed data of the Level 60 Demon Lord.

”Jackpot,” Sebastian whispered.

He didn’t need Galleon to forge a cauldron for this. He just pressed both of his hands flat against the massive crystal.

He activated his glitched [Soul Synthesis] and his Chaos Talent, [Forbidden Alchemy].

FZZZZZT!

The massive purple crystal shrieked. It sounded like a thousand voices screaming in unison as Sebastian forcefully scrubbed the corrupted soul of the boss. He converted it into pure liquid experience points.

The crystal shattered into a blinding torrent of silver light. It shot directly up Sebastian’s arms and into his chest.

The rush of experience was physical. It felt like being injected with liquid adrenaline. His muscles tightened and his spine arched. The dark veins on his neck pulsed violently as the server dumped a huge amount of data into his physical vessel.

[Massive Experience Gained!]

[Ding! You have reached Level 15!]

[Ding! You have reached Level 25!]

[Ding! You have reached Level 40!]

[Ding! You have reached Level 50!]

[Ding! You have reached Level 59!]

The blue interface windows flashed across his vision like a slot machine paying out a jackpot. He felt his physical strength skyrocketing.

He was riding the high, waiting for the beautiful ding of Level 60.

CLUNK.

The flow of energy abruptly stopped.

Sebastian gasped and stumbled forward. The remaining silver light from the Soul Shard bounced off his chest and splashed uselessly onto the muddy ground.

”What the fuck?” he hissed, clutching his chest. His heart rate was hammering but the happy rush of progression was completely gone. It felt like hitting a brick wall.

He ripped open his status panel.

[Name: Sebastian (Zero)]

[Class: Sovereign of Laws]

[Level: 60]

[Status: MAXIMUM MORTAL LIMIT REACHED]

A massive golden padlock icon sat directly over his experience bar. The bar itself was entirely full but the numbers refused to tick over to 61.

[System Message: Mortal Limit Reached. A physical vessel cannot contain further data without structural collapse. To advance to Tier 4 (Demigod), you must acquire Divinity.]

”A hard cap,” Sebastian growled. His voice dropped into a dangerous tone. ”The game literally ends the world, and it still enforces a progression bottleneck. Unbelievable.”

”Everything okay down there, Boss?” Wraith called out from the Sky-Fortress. His daggers were drawn as he scanned the perimeter for surviving monsters.

”The system is gating me,” Sebastian yelled back. He kicked a piece of Moloch’s charred bone across the crater. ”I hit Level 60. I need Divinity to break the cap.”

Valerie climbed down the loading ramp holding her staff. She looked at the golden padlock hovering in his shared UI.

”Divinity? What is that? A drop? An item?”

”It’s a concept,” Sebastian sighed, running a hand through his hair. ”And it doesn’t drop from monsters. It’s an administrative bypass code.”

He looked up at the sky and his eyes narrowed.

”We can’t just farm it. It’s locked inside a trans-dimensional dungeon. A server hub that connects all the Ethereal Plane’s assimilated worlds.”

”You mean there are other planets?” Valerie asked. Her eyes widened.

”Dozens of them. All dead. All assimilated by the Void,” Sebastian said grimly. ”The dungeon is called The Spire. It’s the ultimate filter. If a server can’t produce a player strong enough to clear it and claim Divinity, the system stops sending monsters and just digests the planet whole.”

”So, where is it?” Valerie asked. She gripped her staff. ”Do we fly there?”

”We don’t go to The Spire,” Sebastian muttered. He pulled his black coat tightly around him. ”The Spire comes to us. And usually, it makes a very loud entrance.”

——

Sebastian didn’t have to wait long for the universe to prove him right.

They had just returned to Sanctuary. The Sky-Fortress settled heavily into the engineering bay when the entire planet violently convulsed.

It wasn’t a localized rumble. This was a deep groan that physically vibrated the tectonic plates.

Inside the command room, Sebastian, Valerie, and Wraith grabbed the edges of the obsidian war table to stay on their feet. The heavy glass ceilings of the fortress rattled dangerously. The holographic map of the world flickered with intense static.

”Boss! The sensors are going crazy!” Galleon’s voice shrieked over the comms from the basement. ”The mana grid is spiking! Something massive just entered the atmosphere!”

”Pull up the global feed, Valerie,” Sebastian ordered. His voice was calm despite the shaking room. ”Look at the Pacific.”

Valerie tapped the runic console and her fingers flew across the interface. The holographic map zoomed out and shifted focus to the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

The satellite feed displayed a horrific sight.

The sky over the ocean literally unzipped.

It wasn’t a portal. It was a physical tear in the sky. From the starry void beyond the clouds, a structure descended.

It was a tower of pure obsidian. It was impossibly massive. It looked like a black needle meant to puncture the core of the Earth. It stretched from the upper atmosphere all the way down to the waters below.

”Holy mother of...” Wraith whispered. His stoic face completely shattered as he stared at the projection.

BOOM!

The Spire impacted the Pacific Ocean.

The sound didn’t translate through the silent hologram, but the physical effect was immediate. The sheer mass of the dungeon displacing the water created a massive event.

A hyper-tsunami easily a thousand feet high exploded outward in a perfect ring from the impact zone.

”There goes the West Coast,” Sebastian noted clinically. He crossed his arms.

On the feed, the massive wall of black water raced toward the shorelines. It swallowed entire islands in a fraction of a second. When it hit the ruined coastal cities of the old world, it didn’t just flood them. It erased them.

Skyscrapers were snapped in half like dry twigs. Millions of low-level Infected and surviving human refugees were instantly crushed under billions of tons of water.

The camera feed showed the aftermath. It was a swirling graveyard of debris and shattered infrastructure. Bloated corpses floated in the newly formed inland seas.

”Millions just died,” Valerie breathed, her hands covering her mouth. ”Just from it landing.”

”The system doesn’t care about collateral damage,” Sebastian stated coldly. ”It only cares about the top percentile.”

As if responding to his words, the global server chime rang out.

BING! BING! BING!

The sound echoed in the skulls of every surviving human on the planet. A massive golden scroll unrolled across the sky and completely dwarfed the clouds.

[GLOBAL EVENT: THE DIVINE INHERITANCE]

[The Spire has manifested on Server 894 (Earth).]

[The path to Divinity is open. Claim the Chronos Heart. Ascend to the Demigod Tier.]

[WARNING: The Spire is a highly restricted zone. Weakness is not tolerated.]

[Rule 1: Only players ranked in the Top 100 on the Global Leaderboard may enter.]

The golden text faded. It was replaced immediately by a massive floating list of names that hovered over the capital cities of every remaining human faction.

Sebastian tapped the war table and pulled the leaderboard directly into their localized UI.

[Global Leaderboard - Server 894]

[Rank 1: Zero (The Drifter) - Level 60]

[Rank 2: The Apostle (Digital Lich) - Level 59]

[Rank 3: General Iron (Paladin) - Level 55]

[Rank 4: Valerie (Arcane Valkyrie) - Level 54]

[Rank 5: Imperator (Warlord) - Level 52]

...

[Rank 9: Wraith (Assassin) - Level 50]

”Looks like we all made the cut,” Sebastian said. A dark smirk pulled at the corner of his mouth.

Valerie stared at the glowing list. Her eyes locked onto the second name.

”The Apostle? Sebastian, you literally ripped his heart out! You purged the network! How is he Rank 2?!”

”He’s a virus, Princess,” Sebastian replied. His eyes narrowed. ”You don’t kill a virus by smashing one computer. He uploaded his consciousness to the Ethereal network. He just found a new meat-suit to pilot. And he’s been grinding.”

Wraith stepped forward and his daggers rested loosely at his hips.

”A hundred players. The absolute strongest warlords, corporate elites, and military generals on the planet, all locked in a single tower. It’s going to be a bloodbath.”

”It’s a race,” Sebastian corrected and turned away from the table. He cracked his knuckles and the sound was sharp in the quiet room. ”The Apostle wants Divinity so he can open the Abyssal Gates permanently. If he reaches the top floor before I do, he deletes Earth.”

He looked at Valerie and Wraith.

”Galleon holds the fort. The three of us are going to the beach. We have a tower to climb, and I have a god complex to validate.”