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

”Drop the shield.” Sebastian repeated into the comm-link.

His voice vibrated the air around him. It lacked any trace of panic and sounded like an absolute terrifying order.

Down in the subterranean core room of Sanctuary, Valerie hesitated. For three agonizing months, that flickering golden dome had been the only thing standing between her and a horrific screaming death.

The outer servers had rained fire, acid and kinetic bombardments on it day and night. Dropping it felt like voluntarily jumping into a woodchipper.

”Sebastian, if I drop this, they’re going to flood the courtyard.” Valerie’s voice cracked over the radio. ”They’re Level 70, Level 80. They are literal gods!”

”They’re shiny piñatas, Princess.” Sebastian said softly. His silver eyes locked onto the glittering army hovering in the blood-red sky. ”Drop the damn shield. I’m tired of them looking at my house.”

”Okay. Okay, fuck it.” Valerie hissed. ”Dropping the Aegis. Good luck, you crazy bastard.”

BZZZZT.

The low comforting hum of the Citadel’s defense grid suddenly whined and died. The massive translucent golden dome that had protected the Sanctuary for months flickered violently.

It turned a sickly transparent grey and then shattered into a billion harmless pixels.

The safe zone was gone.

Up in the bleeding sky, the hovering army of Saints completely lost their minds. A roaring triumphant cheer erupted from thousands of throats.

It sounded like a stadium of psychotic sports fans who had just watched the opposing team’s goalie drop dead.

”THE FALSE CITY FALLS!” A voice boomed from the heavens.

Sebastian stood on the high basalt ramparts. The toxic freezing wind immediately whipped his black leather coat around his legs.

He casually leaned against the obsidian parapet and rested his chin in his hand. He looked incredibly bored.

From the center of the alien armada, a single figure slowly descended.

It was Saint Helios.

The guy looked like someone had taken the concept of a sun god and run it through a tacky pay-to-win cosmetic shop.

He wore flowing robes of pure woven sunlight that physically hurt to look at. His armor was forged from glowing white-hot gold and a massive burning halo of plasma floated behind his head.

[Entity Identified: Saint Helios]

[Class: Solar Deity]

[Level: 85]

”Level 85.” Sebastian muttered and picked a piece of lint off his sleeve. ”Someone’s been grinding the low-level zones. What a loser.”

Helios didn’t just fly down. He aggressively rendered himself into the courtyard. The moment his golden boots touched the polished marble of the Sanctuary, his passive aura activated.

FWOOSH!

A wave of suffocating super-heated air exploded outward from the Saint. The sheer ambient temperature skyrocketed.

The decorative banners hanging from the Citadel walls instantly caught fire. The remaining puddles of blood and water in the courtyard violently boiled into steam.

A dozen of Galleon’s Scrap Golems had been valiantly patrolling the gates. They turned their glowing red eyes toward the intruder and lunged forward.

Their rusted rebar claws raised to tear the glowing man apart.

Helios didn’t even draw a weapon. He just sneered.

”Filth.” The Sun God spat.

The heat radiating from his body spiked. The Scrap Golems didn’t even make it within ten feet of him.

Their rusted iron frames glowed cherry red and then white. The cursed skulls serving as their heads popped like popcorn.

CRACK! POP!

The magical necromancy binding them simply melted. The heavy metal constructs collapsed into glowing puddles of liquid slag on the marble.

”Show-off.” Sebastian sighed as he watched the expensive golems turn into soup. ”Do you know how much scrap metal that took to build, you glowing asshole?”

Helios slowly lifted his head. His eyes burned like miniature suns and locked onto the single ragged figure standing on the high ramparts.

The Saint slowly floated upward with his golden halo pulsing with arrogant power. He hovered perfectly level with Sebastian.

They were separated by maybe thirty feet of open boiling air.

”So.” Helios’s voice was musically amplified and echoed with divine authority. ”You are the anomaly the system weeping about. The little glitch that thinks it can claim a Tier 5 Citadel.”

Helios looked Sebastian up and down. He took in the cracked metallic visor, the torn leather coat and the absolute lack of glowing godly armor.

The Saint let out a rich mocking laugh.

”You look like a beggar who stole a noble’s coat.” Helios sneered. ”I am Saint Helios, conqueror of Server 412, Vanguard of the Void! I have butchered billions to earn my place. And you... you are a native rat playing in a sandbox.”

Sebastian didn’t say a word. He didn’t draw the Earth Sword. He didn’t even shift his posture.

He just stared at the glowing god with eyes that were no longer human. They were swirling pulsing pools of silver server code.

”Kneel, rat.” Helios commanded and raised a hand.

A sphere of hyper-condensed plasma began to form in his palm. It radiated enough heat to melt the basalt wall Sebastian was leaning against.

”Submit your Core, and I might just turn you to ash instead of letting the Crawlers eat your limbs.”

”You talk way too much.” Sebastian said flatly.

He didn’t cast a spell. Spells were for players. Spells required casting times, mana costs and physics calculations.

Sebastian was a Demigod. He was the Sovereign of Laws. He didn’t ask the server to do magic. He opened the developer console and edited the reality of the immediate area.

Sebastian raised his right hand and pointed a single black-gloved finger directly at Helios’s chest.

”Law Edit.” Sebastian whispered. ”Gravity.”

He didn’t make a black hole. He didn’t invert it. He just looked at the exact spatial coordinates currently occupied by the glowing arrogant Sun God.

”Times one thousand.”

BOOM!

There was no flashy beam of light. There was no magical incantation. The localized gravitational constant affecting Saint Helios simply jumped from 1 G to 1,000 Gs in a microsecond.

Helios didn’t fall. He was violently and catastrophically yanked from the sky!

”WHA!”

The Saint’s arrogant sneer didn’t even have time to transition into a look of surprise. He broke the sound barrier traveling straight down.

KRA-DOOM!

Helios slammed into the pristine marble courtyard with the force of a kinetic orbital strike. The impact was absolutely deafening.

A massive crater instantly formed. It spiderwebbed deep into the bedrock of the Sanctuary and sent a shockwave of shattered stone blasting outward.

The physics engine of Server 894 violently shrieked in protest.

At one thousand times Earth’s gravity, a two-hundred-pound man suddenly weighs two hundred thousand pounds.

Human biology is not designed to support the weight of a commercial airliner resting entirely on its own shoulders. Even perfectly enhanced Level 85 digital biology would fail.

The golden divine aura surrounding Helios shattered like cheap glass.

SNAP! CRUNCH!

The sickening wet sounds of catastrophic structural failure echoed through the dead silence of the courtyard.

Helios’s pristine white-hot gold armor crumpled inward like tin foil wrapped around a firecracker. The sheer downward force instantly shattered his legs.

His femurs violently telescoped straight up into his pelvis and obliterated his hips in a spray of bone dust.

”AGGGHHHH!” A horrific gurgling scream tore from the crater.

The gravity didn’t stop just because he hit the ground. It kept pulling.

Helios was pinned to the bottom of the crater like a bug crushed under a boot. His internal organs suffered immediate catastrophic ruptures. His lungs flattened and his stomach burst.

SQUELCH!

A massive pressurized geyser of glowing golden blood erupted from his mouth.

It sprayed wildly into the air before the intense gravity violently grabbed the liquid and slammed it right back down into his own face. It nearly drowned him in his own divine fluids.

Up in the sky, the thousands of glittering Saints froze in absolute unadulterated horror. The triumphant cheering was cut completely short.

They stared down at the crater and were entirely unable to process what had just happened.

Their vanguard was a Level 85 god of fire. He had just been swatted out of the air like a mildly annoying mosquito.

Sebastian slowly lowered his finger. He stepped away from the parapet and walked toward the stairs leading down to the courtyard.

”Cleanup on aisle five.” Sebastian muttered and rolled his shoulders. ”God, I hate tourists.”