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

Sebastian’s heavy blood soaked boots hit the solid stone of the far ledge.

SQUELCH.

He didn’t look back at the Bridge of Souls. He didn’t look at the thousands of agonizing faces that had just spent the last hundred yards chewing on his calves.

His health bar had taken a moderate hit and hovered around eighty percent. But his brain registered absolutely none of the trauma. The complete deletion of his pain receptors left him in a state of terrifying apathy.

He walked right past the Apostle.

The Digital Lich was frozen in place and his corrupted shifting avatar trembled violently. The Apostle had sacrificed hundreds of loyal followers just to inch his way across the chasm.

Sebastian had just casually walked through the meat grinder like he was out for a Sunday stroll.

”You... you broke the code,” the Apostle stammered and his voice was a horrifying mess of grinding static and wet meat. ”You aren’t a player. You are a localized virus!”

”Take notes, Clippy,” Sebastian deadpanned and his pitch black eyes were entirely devoid of emotion. ”That’s how you bypass a paywall.”

He didn’t bother killing the Apostle. The Void proxy was irrelevant now. Sebastian pushed open the towering unadorned white double doors that marked the end of the ninetieth floor.

The moment he crossed the threshold, the oppressive architecture of the Spire violently vanished.

There were no walls. There was no ceiling.

Sebastian stepped out onto a perfectly circular platform of pristine polished white marble that was roughly the size of a football field.

Beyond the edge of the platform was nothing but the absolute terrifying infinite. He was standing in the dead vacuum of space.

A breathtaking expanse of swirling nebulae, distant burning stars, and absolute blackness surrounded him in every direction. There was no ambient noise. The silence here wasn’t just the absence of sound. It was a physical crushing weight. It was the profound quiet of a dead universe.

Normally a player stepping into a hard vacuum would instantly die. Their lungs would violently decompress and their blood would boil. Their avatar would shatter into frozen pixels in a fraction of a second.

Sebastian’s coat didn’t flutter. There was no wind.

He didn’t gasp for air. He didn’t need to. His passive Life Breath and Thermal Immunity conceptual laws backed by the sheer math of the 10,000x multiplier forcefully overwrote the reality of the vacuum.

The server desperately tried to apply the environmental instant kill debuffs. But Sebastian’s glitched code simply batted them away like annoying pop up ads.

He walked toward the center of the floating marble platform.

Resting on a simple elegant pedestal of pure starlight was the ultimate prize.

The Chronos Heart.

It was a divine artifact. It didn’t look like a piece of gear or a weapon. It was a fist sized geometric shape that constantly folded in on itself and shifted through impossible four dimensional configurations.

It radiated an aura of pure blinding gold that didn’t just illuminate the platform. It felt like it was illuminating the timeline itself.

Sebastian stared at it. The raw power emanating from the artifact made his twenty percent synchronized biological muscles twitch.

This was the key. This was the admin code that would break his Level 60 cap and elevate him to the Demigod tier. This was the engine he needed to permanently rewrite the rules of Earth and seal the Abyssal Gates forever.

He reached his hand out and his black leather glove was inches from the shifting gold.

”I wouldn’t touch that if I were you, Drifter.”

The voice didn’t echo through the air. There was no air to carry it. The voice manifested directly inside Sebastian’s mind and was calm ancient and carrying the weight of a dying star.

Sebastian slowly lowered his hand. He turned around.

Standing ten feet behind him was Eldric.

The Guardian of the Spire did not look like the frail skeletal old man sitting behind the front desk on the first floor anymore.

Eldric was floating a few inches off the marble. He was clad in magnificent flowing robes of deep midnight blue that seemed to be woven from actual galaxies. His eyes were blinding pools of pure silver light. He held a long elegant staff topped with a glowing hourglass that ticked with a deafening localized resonance.

[Entity Identified: Eldric, The Timekeeper]

[Class: Grand Sage]

[Level: 90]

[Status: Divine Guardian]

The sheer atmospheric pressure radiating from the Level 90 NPC was apocalyptic. If Sebastian hadn’t deleted his pain receptors, the simple act of standing near an entity forty levels higher than him would have crushed his digital spine.

”You made excellent time, Anomaly,” Eldric said and his telepathic voice was entirely neutral. ”Walking across the Bridge of Souls by permanently crippling your own sensory code. Brutal. Highly unorthodox. And entirely proving my point about your destructive nature.”

”I’m on a tight schedule, old man,” Sebastian replied and his pitch black eyes locked onto the Sage. He didn’t draw the Earth Sword. He kept his hands loose at his sides. ”The Void is chewing on my planet right now. I need that heart to fumigate my house.”

Eldric slowly shook his head. He tapped the base of his hourglass staff against the marble.

TICK.

A ripple of temporal distortion warped the space between them.

”You misunderstand the purpose of the Spire, Sebastian,” Eldric said softly. ”It is not a vending machine for power. It is a filter. The System requires a God to anchor Server 894. But it does not require a tyrant.”

Eldric pointed his glowing staff directly at Sebastian’s chest.

”I have watched you since you spawned. You don’t fight the Void because you care for humanity. You fight because the Void is trespassing on your property. You extort the weak. You butcher the misguided. You delete the very code of reality to suit your convenience. You are not a savior, Drifter. You are just a different flavor of apocalypse.”

”I’m an efficient apocalypse,” Sebastian corrected flatly. ”I keep the lights on and the spiders out. That’s more than the System ever did for us.”

”Efficiency without empathy is exactly how the Void operates,” Eldric countered and his silver eyes flared with divine power. ”To claim the Chronos Heart, you must prove that you are worthy of guiding a civilization, not just dominating it.”

The void of space around them seemed to darken. The stars in the background rapidly accelerated and blurred into streaks of white light as Eldric’s temporal aura began to aggressively bleed into the environment.

”Defeat me, Sebastian,” Eldric commanded and his voice vibrated with absolute earth shattering authority. ”Defeat me to prove you are worthy of godhood. Or die here in the cold, and let your world burn.”

Sebastian let out a slow steady exhale. The breath didn’t freeze. It simply dissipated into the vacuum.

He didn’t feel intimidated. He didn’t feel the epic weight of the moment. Without his pain receptors and without his fear, he was just a calculator looking at a very difficult equation.

A Level 90 Time Mage. A boss that could literally rewind his own damage.

It was mathematically impossible to win a fair fight.

”Good thing I don’t play fair,” Sebastian whispered.

He raised his right hand and his fingers twitched as he tapped into the deepest most corrupted well of his 10,000x multiplied mana pool. The air around him began to violently glitch and jagged red error codes tore through the pristine white marble.

The final test had begun.