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

Drifting through the Juncture felt like being trapped in a depressing and endless loading screen.

There was no sky to look up at and no solid ground to anchor his heavy boots to. There was just an endless chaotic void filled with the floating shattered corpses of deleted video game servers and assimilated planets. Sebastian drifted weightlessly in the dark.

He had just ripped the root access code out of an ancient digital ghost and used it to turn a Level 75 Executioner into a puddle of bubbling grey ash. By all accounts he should have been celebrating, but right now he just felt incredibly tired.

”I really hate this patch,” Sebastian muttered, his voice echoing in the absolute silence of the void.

His physical body was a mess. The twenty percent biological synchronization had turned his muscles tough like steel but even steel had its breaking point. The black leather coat he wore was torn to shreds, exposing the pale skin underneath.

The glowing green hybrid UI of the Legacy Code flickered in the corner of his vision. It served as a constant annoying reminder of his current condition.

[Status: Void Toxicity Building.]

[Warning: Base File Corruption at 12%.]

It wasn’t a poison debuff that ticked down his health bar in neat mathematical numbers. Void Toxicity was a slow creeping numbness. It felt like his internal organs were steadily turning into dead unresponsive pixels. If he didn’t find a Server Filter soon to translate the chaotic data of the Juncture, he wasn’t going to die. He was just going to cease existing entirely.

He needed to get to Outpost Rust. The chained Admin had given him the coordinates to a smuggler’s hub hidden inside the skull of a dead space leviathan. That was where the filters were.

Sebastian focused his mind. Without the Earth server to process his magical commands, his standard spells were totally locked out. He couldn’t cast a flight spell or teleport. He had to rely entirely on the raw Concept of Mass he had just compiled into his green interface.

He dropped his physical mass to near zero, making himself as light as a feather, and kicked off a small floating chunk of rusted metal.

WHOOSH!

He sailed through the dark purple smog like a bullet, bypassing a floating upside down Gothic cathedral and a river of neon green binary code. He was just preparing to alter his mass again to grab onto a massive drifting asteroid when his entire vision violently flashed red.

BZZZT! BZZZT!

It wasn’t a standard system prompt. The green and blue hybrid UI violently spasmed, projecting a massive blaring alert directly across his optic nerves.

[SYSTEM OVERRIDE: GLOBAL BOUNTY INTERCEPTION.]

[Target: Player ’Zero’ (The Anomaly).]

[Status: Hostile Virus Detected.]

[Reward for Immediate Deletion: 1x Divine Iron Shard.]

Sebastian hit the asteroid feet first. He forcefully spiked his mass to two tons right before impact.

CRASH!

His heavy boots instantly cratered the stone, anchoring him to the floating rock. He stood up slowly, dusted off his ruined coat, and stared at the glowing red text hanging in the air.

”You have got to be kidding me,” Sebastian spoke blankly. He rubbed the bridge of his nose beneath his cracked silver visor. ”I delete one admin, and suddenly I am public enemy number one. Typical corporate overreaction.”

The System couldn’t delete him directly anymore. He had the Legacy Code. He was essentially carrying the original antivirus software of the multiverse. So the server was doing what any cowardly entity would do when faced with a problem it couldn’t solve, outsourcing the job to greedy freelancers.

But it was the reward that made Sebastian’s eyes narrow with sharp interest.

A Divine Iron Shard.

Back on Earth, he had bought a Rusty Iron Shard from the auction house for five thousand gold coins. That piece of digital trash had acted as the foundational anchor for his Tier 2 Citadel. It was the only reason Sanctuary currently existed in the real world.

A Divine Iron Shard was infinitely more powerful. It wasn’t just a building block for a castle, it was the raw material required to upgrade a guild territory into a full global empire. If he wanted to keep Valerie, Wraith, and the rest of his people safe from the monsters pouring out of the Abyssal Gates, he needed that shard.

”Okay, Clippy,” Sebastian whispered with a dark smile curving his lips. ”You want to put a price on my head? Thanks for the delivery service.”

He didn’t run and he didn’t hide in the shadows of the asteroid. The defensive survivor who had desperately scraped together copper coins in Novice Village 109 was dead. The Sovereign of Laws was awake, and he was feeling incredibly petty.

Sebastian walked to the highest point of the jagged asteroid. He sat down on a jutting piece of dark grey stone, rested his elbows on his knees, and looked out into the infinite expanse of the Juncture.

He didn’t have to wait long.

The Void was full of scavengers. In the outer servers, warlords and conquerors who had survived the assimilation of their own planets prowled the Juncture like starving sharks. They rode in patched together ships made from the literal crusts of dead worlds, hunting for scraps of code and stray anomalies to feed their own stats.

About twenty minutes later, the dark purple smog in the distance began to churn.

RUMBLE... RUMBLE...

The sound of massive uncalibrated engines echoed through the vacuum. Sebastian watched calmly as a massive silhouette broke through the clouds.

It was a scavenger skiff, but calling it a ship was a generous compliment. It looked like someone had ripped a heavily fortified medieval castle out of the ground, slapped two massive glowing plasma thrusters on the back, and called it a day. The hull was a chaotic mess of jagged bedrock, rusted steel plates, and glowing blue mana conduits that sparked dangerously in the dark.

Massive sails made of stitched together dragon leather billowed in the unnatural solar winds of the void. At the front of the ship, standing on a viewing deck made of fused bone, were five figures.

Even from a mile away, Sebastian’s enhanced True Sight instantly pulled their data.

They were Outer Warlords. Towering grotesque fusions of alien biology and high tier Ethereal armor. They ranged from Level 80 to Level 90. They were the apex predators of their respective dead servers, murderers who had sold out their own species to become lapdogs for the Void.

And they were heading straight for him.

”Five targets. Heavily armored. Probably packing enough magical resistance to shrug off a nuke,” Sebastian analyzed aloud, entirely unbothered.

He didn’t stand up. He didn’t draw his massive concrete encrusted Earth Sword. He just sat on his rock, looking like an exhausted homeless man waiting for a bus.

The massive skiff decelerated, the plasma thrusters whining as the ship drifted to a halt about a hundred yards from Sebastian’s asteroid. The sheer gravitational pull of the cobbled together vessel made the small rocks around Sebastian begin to float upward.

A magical projection suddenly flared to life from the deck of the ship. It magnified the voice of the lead Warlord, broadcasting it across the empty space.

”Target acquired!” the voice boomed. It was a guttural wet sound, like a predator chewing on meat. ”Look at it, boys! The System is offering a Divine Shard for this pathetic bleeding piece of meat! Easiest loot drop of my life!”

The other four Warlords erupted into a chorus of cruel booming laughter. They slapped their heavy glowing weapons against their shields, already celebrating their payday.

Sebastian let out a long exhausted sigh. He slowly stood up, brushing a layer of cosmic dust off his black leather coat. He looked at the massive ship and then at the laughing gods standing on its deck.

”I really hope you idiots brought the receipt,” Sebastian muttered to himself.

He cracked his knuckles, the sound sharp and heavy. The hunt was over. It was time to collect the tax.