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

The stairwell leading up from the fiftieth floor was a miserable climb. It was a steep and spiraling helix of jagged obsidian that punished the calves of anyone foolish enough to traverse it.

Sebastian carried Valerie on his back. The Arcane Valkyrie was conscious but her digital body was a total wreck. The Magma Carapace conceptual law he had draped over her in the Elemental Forge had saved her life.

However, she was still suffering from her cosmetic silver armor melting into her skin. She was shivering and her breath hitched with every heavy echoing footstep Sebastian took.

”You’re heavy, Princess,” Sebastian grunted.

”Shut up,” Valerie wheezed weakly as her chin rested on his black leather shoulder. ”I’m carrying the emotional weight of this entire guild. Plus, my boots are full of ash.”

”Just don’t bleed on my coat. I just got the Void Spider guts out of the lining.”

Despite the banter, Sebastian’s silver tinged eyes scanned the dark corridor ahead with precision. His twenty percent physical synchronization made the two hundred pound Earth Sword on his hip and the woman on his back feel like a light backpack.

He wasn’t letting his guard down. The Spire was a meat grinder and it didn’t do quiet transitions.

They reached the landing of the eighty ninth floor. The narrow stairwell opened up into a massive rectangular antechamber constructed of polished grey stone. The ceiling was ridiculously high and completely covered in jagged downward pointing iron stalactites.

Sebastian took exactly three steps into the room.

CLANG!

Heavy iron portcullises slammed down over the stairwell behind them. This violently sealed off their retreat.

Before Sebastian could even turn his head, the dark antechamber was flooded with blinding magical light. Torches along the walls flared to life. They revealed a massive barricade of heavy oak tables, overturned statues and sandbags blocking the far exit.

Behind the barricade stood fifty players.

They weren’t mindless monsters or corrupted Void Crawlers. They were humans. They wore matching high tier European knight armor polished to a blinding sheen.

At least thirty of them had heavy mechanized crossbows raised. The tips of their bolts glowed with armor piercing enchantments.

Standing in the center of the formation was a man who looked like he had stepped out of a Renaissance painting and rolled around in a vault of gold coins. He wore an immaculate white cape over gilded plate armor and a smug arrogant smile plastered across his face.

”Welcome to the top floor, peasants,” the man announced. His voice was magnified by an annoying high pitched acoustic spell. ”I am Caesar. Warlord of the European Servers. And you, my ragged friend, are trespassing on my claim.”

Sebastian didn’t draw his sword. He didn’t even put Valerie down. He just let out a long exhausted sigh.

”Are you fucking kidding me?” Sebastian muttered and his voice echoed in the large room. ”Another one? Do you trust fund kids have a group chat where you coordinate these dramatic ambushes, or is it just a natural instinct to be annoying?”

Caesar’s smug smile faltered for a fraction of a second. ”You have a lot of nerve for a dead man. The Apostle warned me you were a glitcher. He warned me you rely on broken overpowered magic.”

Caesar reached into his golden breastplate and pulled out a fist sized metallic cube. It pulsed with a dull leaden grey light.

”The Apostle gave me a gift. A little something to level the playing field,” Caesar sneered. He slammed the cube down onto the stone barricade.

BZZZT!

A massive wave of heavy grey energy exploded outward from the cube. It washed over the room and hit Sebastian like a physical wall.

Instantly, the glowing blue interface in the corner of Sebastian’s vision flickered and turned a dead flat grey. The comforting well of infinite mana in his chest was violently suppressed.

[System Alert: Reality Anchor Deployed.]

[Status Effect: Absolute Magic Suppression.]

[Notice: All active spells, buffs, and localized teleports are disabled.]

Valerie gasped on his back and her grip tightened as the residual healing buffs on her body were abruptly canceled. ”Sebastian! My mana pool just flatlined! I can’t feel my magic!”

”That’s a Reality Anchor,” Sebastian noted clinically. ”High tier suppression artifact. Very expensive.”

”It’s a death sentence!” Caesar laughed and raised his hand. The thirty crossbowmen behind him pulled their triggers back. ”Without your little tricks, you’re just a Level 10 Drifter in a dirty coat! Execute him!”

”Boss,” a raspy calm voice whispered directly into Sebastian’s ear.

Wraith was entirely invisible and clinging to the wall right beside Sebastian’s head. The Reality Anchor had suppressed magic but Wraith’s Shadow Meld wasn’t a spell anymore.

Through Sebastian’s previous glitching, the Assassin’s stealth had evolved into a passive physical state.

”They have us zeroed,” Wraith whispered. ”I can take out five of the shooters before they drop me. You need to move.”

”Stand down, Wraith,” Sebastian said casually. ”I’ll handle the pest control.”

Sebastian gently set Valerie down on the ground behind him to shield her from the firing line. He rolled his shoulders and his joints popped loudly in the quiet room.

He didn’t draw the Earth Sword and he didn’t reach for a dagger. He casually slipped his hand into the bottomless void of his inventory. This inventory was tied to his physical reality and not the game’s magical code.

His fingers brushed against a thin moldy pamphlet he had looted days ago.

[Basic Levitate]

[Tier: 0 Utility Spell]

The Reality Anchor suppressed the casting of magic. It prevented players from channeling mana to form spells. But Sebastian wasn’t casting a spell.

He was crushing a skill book. He was forcing the 10,000x Nexus Glitch to ram a concept down the server’s throat.

”Fire!” Caesar screamed.

THWIP THWIP THWIP!

Thirty heavy armor piercing bolts shot across the room. They tore through the air directly toward Sebastian’s chest.

Sebastian crushed the pamphlet in his fist.

The system shrieked. The Reality Anchor tried to suppress the code but the multiplier was an unstoppable force. It didn’t just bypass the suppression. It shattered the Anchor’s logic entirely.

[Action Registered: Learn Basic Levitate]

[Nexus Glitch Activated: Proficiency x10,000]

[Evolution Requirement Met. Basic Levitate evolves to Tier 1: Float]

[Proficiency Overflow! Evolves to Tier 3: Sky Walk]

[WARNING: Concept Threshold Breached. Gravitational Law Unlocked.]

[Sky Walk evolves to Conceptual Law: Gravity Domain: Invert]

A Reality Anchor could stop a fireball and it could stop a teleport. It could not stop a fundamental law of physics from suddenly deciding that down was now up.

Sebastian tapped his boot against the stone floor. He didn’t use an ounce of magical energy. He just established his localized domain.

”Invert,” Sebastian commanded.

VWOOM!

The thirty crossbow bolts were five feet away from his face when the concept of gravity violently flipped.

The heavy iron bolts instantly shot straight up and buried themselves harmlessly into the ceiling.

But the bolts were just the beginning.

”W-What the fuck?!” Caesar shrieked.

The Warlord, his fifty heavily armored knights, the heavy oak tables, the sandbags, and every loose piece of debris in the room were violently ripped from the floor. It was exactly like falling except they were falling upward.

”AAAAHHHH!”

A chorus of absolute panic erupted as fifty men plummeted fifty feet straight into the air.

Sebastian stood perfectly still on the floor. His gravity was completely unaffected because the conceptual law recognized him as its master. Valerie clung to his leg and her eyes were wide with shock as she watched the European guild launch toward the ceiling.

CRUNCH! SQUELCH! SNAP!

The ceiling wasn’t flat. It was covered in thick jagged iron stalactites.

Heavily armored men slammed into the iron spikes at terminal velocity. The spikes punched effortlessly through their breastplates, through their stomachs, and out their backs. They were skewered like cocktail sausages.

”Oh, my God,” Valerie gagged and covered her mouth.

Men hung suspended from the ceiling and their limbs thrashed wildly as they slowly bled out. The gravity inversion meant their blood didn’t drip down to the floor where Sebastian stood. It rained upward and pooled against the ceiling tiles to soak their own faces.

”Wraith,” Sebastian called out casually as he looked up at the twitching impaled army. ”Clean up the stragglers.”

A patch of shadow detached itself from the ceiling.

Because gravity was inverted for the room, the ceiling was essentially the floor for Wraith. The Level 25 Assassin uncloaked and his boots firmly planted on the stone above them.

He stood upside down from Sebastian’s perspective and walked casually among the skewered screaming knights.

”With pleasure, Boss,” Wraith’s cold voice echoed.

Wraith didn’t use flashy combat skills. He moved with terrifying efficiency.

He walked up to a thrashing Guardian who was impaled through the shoulder. Wraith didn’t say a word. He simply drew his pitch black dagger and slashed horizontally across the man’s exposed stomach.

SHLUCK.

The armor parted like wet paper and the man’s belly was laid completely open. Because gravity was pulling everything down toward the ceiling, the man’s intestines violently spilled out of the wound. They unspooled like heavy ropes and hung down toward the stone tiles in a pile.

The Guardian choked on his own blood and his health bar instantly deleted as the system registered the catastrophic organ failure.

Wraith moved to the next target. A quick brutal thrust under the chin of a crossbowman. The blade severed the spine. A flick of the wrist and a Paladin’s throat was opened. The arterial spray shot upward to paint the ceiling in a fresh coat of red.

Caesar had managed to avoid being skewered. The Warlord had landed in a flat section of the ceiling and his golden armor was heavily dented. He pushed himself up and his face was pale with absolute terror as he watched the Assassin methodically executing his men in a gravity defying nightmare.

”You’re monsters!” Caesar sobbed and tried to draw his sword. His hands shook so violently he dropped it. The weapon clattered against the ceiling. ”You’re fucking insane!”

Wraith stopped. He looked at the crying Warlord. He didn’t rush. He slowly walked over and his boots splashed in the pooling blood on the ceiling.

Wraith kicked Caesar in the chest and pinned the Warlord to the stone.

”Nothing personal,” Wraith said softly.

He drove both daggers directly into the gaps of Caesar’s golden helmet. They pierced through the eyes and deep into the brain.

Caesar’s body went completely rigid. His hands clawed weakly at the air for a second before falling limp. The Warlord of the European Servers was dead.

Wraith pulled his blades out and wiped them on the pristine white cape of the dead leader. He looked down at Sebastian.

”Room is clear, Boss,” Wraith reported.

”Good,” Sebastian nodded. ”Hold onto something. I’m dropping the spell.”

Sebastian snapped his fingers.

POP.

The conceptual law of inverted gravity vanished. Normal physics aggressively reasserted itself.

Fifty heavily armored corpses, gallons of pooled blood, and heaps of loose intestines violently detached from the ceiling and plummeted fifty feet back to the floor.

CRASH! SPLAT!

A wave of crushed metal and wet meat slammed into the ground right in front of Sebastian. The impact sent a spray of blood across the toes of his boots.

Sebastian casually wiped a stray drop of blood off his white mask. He stepped over the mangled flattened corpse of Caesar.

”Come on,” Sebastian said and adjusted his black leather coat as he walked toward the heavy brass doors leading to the ninetieth floor. ”We have a bridge to cross.”