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

The heavy brass doors sealing the ninetieth floor groaned as Sebastian forcefully pushed them open.

Valerie stepped through the archway behind him with her face completely pale. She had just watched fifty men get turned into an inverted meat pinata and her corporate composure was stretched to its absolute breaking point.

Wraith flanked her. His dark daggers were sheathed and his face was hidden behind his mask. He looked entirely unbothered by the slaughter.

”Is it over?” Valerie whispered and her voice trembled slightly. ”Are we at the top?”

”Not yet,” Sebastian said and stopped at the edge of the threshold. ”We have to pay the toll.”

The ninetieth floor wasn’t a room. It was an impossibly massive pitch black chasm. The air here was freezing and entirely devoid of the ambient mana that usually crackled in the Spire’s atmosphere.

There were no walls and no ceiling. There was just an endless abyss of pure terrifying nothingness that stretched downward into infinity.

Spanning this horrific void was a bridge.

But it wasn’t made of stone or wood or even magical hard light.

”Oh my god,” Valerie gagged and instinctively took a step backward bumping into Wraith. ”What is that?”

The bridge was constructed entirely of living stretched faces.

Thousands of pale agonizingly contorted human visages were woven together to form the walkway. Their mouths were stretched wide open and their eyes were wide with absolute unending torment.

They didn’t scream loudly. It was a collective murmuring wail that vibrated in Sebastian’s digital bones. The faces writhed and shifted. Their skin pulled taut as if desperately trying to tear themselves away from the structure.

”The Bridge of Souls,” Sebastian stated and his voice was completely flat. ”The System loves its dramatic set pieces.”

Across the sprawling hundred yard expanse of the bridge, a figure was currently walking.

It was the Apostle.

The Digital Lich was wrapped in his tattered glitching cloak. He moved with a jerky unnatural gait. The space around him warped and pixelated. The faces on the bridge beneath his feet shrieked louder as his corrupted boots stepped on them but they held firm.

Sebastian’s eyes narrowed. He looked past the Apostle to the far side of the chasm.

Floating in the air on the opposite ledge were massive translucent holographic screens. They displayed real world footage. It was the interior of the rusted Detroit factory where the Apostle’s cultists had gathered.

The footage was horrific. The surviving cultists were violently convulsing. They were strapped to heavy surgical chairs. Dark purple Ethereal energy was actively ripping out of their chests and forming spectral glowing orbs that shot directly into the digital servers.

The Apostle stopped in the middle of the bridge and turned around. The jawless static filled face stretched into a sickening smile.

”A toll must be paid, Drifter!” The Apostle’s voice was a grating multi layered screech that echoed across the abyss. ”To cross the threshold of Divinity, the System demands a sacrifice! Something conceptually precious! You must tear off a piece of your own existence!”

The Apostle pointed a glitching finger at the holographic screens.

”I sacrificed my flock! I traded the souls of three hundred devoted followers to pave my way! Their loyalty was precious to me, and now their agony forms my bridge!”

As he spoke, a dozen cultists on the screens violently arched their backs. Their bodies rapidly turned grey and crumbled into ash. In the same moment, a dozen new screaming faces materialized on the bridge directly in front of the Apostle and extended his path forward.

”Sick bastard,” Wraith muttered and his grip tightened on his daggers. ”He’s literally walking on his own people.”

”The Void doesn’t do loyalty. It only does consumption,” Sebastian said coldly.

Valerie looked at Sebastian in pure panic. ”Sebastian, we don’t have cultists! We don’t have followers to sacrifice! What the hell are we supposed to give the System?”

Sebastian didn’t answer immediately. He stared at the wailing shifting faces of the bridge.

If he stepped onto the bridge right now, the System would instantly reject him. The abyss would swallow him whole and his Level 60 avatar would be permanently deleted. The server demanded a conceptual sacrifice. Something fundamental to his humanity.

He could sacrifice his memories of the old world. He could sacrifice his empathy.

’Do not trust the System’s definition of pain.’ The words of Eldric the Timekeeper echoed in his mind. ’The server will lie to you. It will tell your brain you are dying when you are not.’

Sebastian’s silver tinged eyes widened slightly. A cold terrifying realization washed over him.

”It’s a digital space,” Sebastian whispered to himself. ”We are just code. Biology is an illusion here.”

”Boss?” Wraith asked and stepped up beside him. ”What’s the play?”

”You two stay here. Do not step on the bridge,” Sebastian ordered. His voice dropped into an administrative hum. ”I’m going to hack the toll booth.”

Sebastian closed his eyes. He completely ignored the Apostle’s mocking laughter from across the chasm.

He didn’t cast a spell. He reached deep into the foundation of his own digital existence. He activated the Data Manipulation / Reality Hack conceptual law he had evolved in the server rooms of Sanctuary.

But he didn’t target the environment. He targeted his own character sheet.

[WARNING: Self-Targeting Initiated. Modifying Core User Data is strictly prohibited.]

Sebastian violently shoved his 10,000x multiplier against the warning prompt. The firewall shattered like glass.

His vision was instantly flooded with thousands of lines of raw green and black source code. It was the literal blueprint of his avatar. He scrolled through his stats, his items, and his physical rendering parameters.

He scrolled until he found the subroutine responsible for translating digital damage into physical sensation.

The Nociception Code. The Pain Receptors.

It was the one thing tethering his human mind to the brutal agonizing reality of the Ethereal Plane. It was the concept that kept players afraid.

Sebastian highlighted the massive block of code.

”Delete,” he commanded.

[CRITICAL ERROR! Deleting Nociception protocols will result in catastrophic sensory failure!]

[Proceed?]

”Yes.”

The sensation was indescribable. It wasn’t painful. It was a sudden violent absence.

A freezing numbness exploded from the base of his skull and washed over his entire body. He felt a piece of his fundamental humanity snap. The heavy throbbing ache in his muscles from the 20 percent physical synchronization simply vanished. The cold chill of the abyss disappeared.

He opened his eyes. They were no longer silver. They were completely pitch black voids.

He felt nothing. No fear. No hesitation. No pain. He was a machine wrapped in meat.

”Sebastian?” Valerie gasped and took a step back. ”Your eyes... you look dead.”

”I’m perfectly optimized,” Sebastian replied. His voice lacked any inflection and was entirely hollow.

He stepped off the stone ledge and placed his heavy leather boot directly onto one of the screaming faces of the bridge.

[System Prompt: Conceptual Sacrifice Detected.]

[Sacrifice: The Concept of Pain.]

[Status: Accepted. You may cross.]

The face beneath his boot shrieked and its jaw stretched unnaturally wide. Jagged spectral teeth bit down hard into Sebastian’s ankle. They tore through the leather and sank deep into his digital flesh. Blood immediately flowed from the wound.

Sebastian didn’t flinch. He didn’t even look down. His brain registered the damage but the emotional and physical response was entirely absent. It was just math. His HP ticked down by two points. It was irrelevant.

He took another step. Then another.

He walked calmly and his posture was perfectly straight. His black coat billowed in the silent wind of the abyss. The faces snapped and tore at his legs ripping chunks of digital meat from his calves.

Blood stained his trousers and left a trail of red footsteps across the pale fleshy bridge.

The Apostle stopped laughing. The glitching horror stared in absolute uncomprehending shock as the human casually strolled through the torment that should have driven any mortal entirely insane.

”What are you?!” the Apostle shrieked and the static in his voice peaked into a panicked whine. ”You are bleeding! You should be screaming!”

”Pain is just a server notification,” Sebastian said and his hollow voice carried effortlessly across the chasm. ”And I turned my notifications off.”

Sebastian didn’t speed up. He didn’t rush. He simply continued his inexorable bloody march across the Bridge of Souls and left his humanity behind on the stone ledge. He had a god to meet and he wasn’t going to let a little bit of chewing slow him down.