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

The boardroom reeked of blood, expensive cologne, and urine.

Jared slid down the pristine wall, his legs completely giving out. The newly appointed executive of the Onyx Syndicate curled into a pathetic trembling ball on the floor. He couldn’t stop staring at the hovering dripping meat cube that used to be his invincible security detail.

”P-please,” Jared whimpered, his voice a high-pitched broken squeak. He held his shaking hands up toward Sebastian. ”I have money! I have territory! Take it! Take whatever you want, just don’t touch me! Don’t compress me!”

Sebastian looked down at the sniveling traitor with absolute apathy.

”I don’t deal with middle management,” Sebastian said flatly. He took a step back and casually gestured with his hand. ”Gwen. He’s all yours.”

Gwen stepped forward. The hardened smuggler’s face was a mask of cold unyielding stone. She didn’t offer a villainous speech. She didn’t scream about betrayal or vengeance. She had survived the Juncture long enough to know that talking just gave the enemy time to pull a trick.

She walked right up to her uncle, raised her right kinetic pistol, and pressed the burning-hot barrel directly against his forehead.

”Gwen, please! We’re family!” Jared sobbed, tears streaming down his rat-like face.

”Jax was family,” Gwen stated.

BANG!

The deafening gunshot echoed off the vaulted ceilings. Jared’s head snapped back, his skull violently painting the pristine wall behind him. His body slumped forward and instantly went limp as his health bar vanished from the server.

Gwen didn’t even blink. She kept her pistol raised to confirm the kill before slowly lowering the weapon. She let out a long shuddering breath, the tension of the coup finally bleeding out of her shoulders.

”Clean,” Sebastian noted from the side, leaning heavily against the edge of the ruined mahogany table. He coughed, a violent rattling sound that brought up a fresh splatter of black pixelated sludge. ”Now... the vault. Please.”

Gwen snapped out of her momentary closure. She saw Sebastian’s left arm rapidly flickering, the flesh threatening to un-render completely. The Void Toxicity was hitting its critical threshold.

”Right. Stay with me, Seattle,” Gwen urged, rushing over to Jared’s corpse. She ignored the gore and dug her hands into the dead man’s ruined silk suit. She pulled out a heavy biometric data-key that pulsed with a dull encrypted red light.

”Got it. The vault is right behind his desk,” she said, practically sprinting to the back of the room.

She slammed the key into a hidden console on the wall. The heavy steel paneling slid back, revealing a pressurized high-security safe.

HSSSSS.

The vault popped open, venting a cloud of freezing sterile air into the bloody boardroom. Inside, resting on velvet cushions, were three sleek silver metallic cases.

Gwen grabbed one and hauled it over to the table, slamming it down next to the hovering meat cube. She popped the latches.

Inside the case were six small cylindrical vials. They weren’t filled with liquid. They contained a swirling highly concentrated storm of pure brilliant white data. It looked like bottled starlight.

[Item: Premium Server Filter]

[Tier: Divine Utility]

[Effect: Translates, stabilizes, and forcefully integrates foreign and corrupted data streams into the user’s base architecture. Cures Void Toxicity.]

”Take it,” Gwen said, shoving a vial into Sebastian’s good hand. ”Before you turn into a 404 error.”

Sebastian didn’t hesitate. His body was screaming in localized agonizing glitches. He popped the seal on the vial with his thumb and downed the swirling white data in a single desperate gulp.

GULP.

The reaction was immediate and absolutely violent.

”GAAAH!” Sebastian roared, dropping to his knees. He gripped the edge of the table so hard his fingers dug into the solid mahogany.

It didn’t feel like drinking a healing potion. It felt like swallowing a lit stick of dynamite mixed with liquid nitrogen.

The Server Filter violently clashed with the Void Toxicity ravaging his system. Brilliant blinding white light erupted from his eyes, his mouth, and the pores of his skin. The heavy black sludge that had been corrupting his veins was forcefully and aggressively scrubbed away.

But it didn’t just cure the sickness. It acted as a translator.

In Sebastian’s bottomless inventory sat the massive undigested divine cores of the Ocean Deity and the Solar Deity he had cannibalized back on Earth. The foreign alien data had been slowly killing him. Now, the Filter unlocked them.

The 10,000x Nexus Glitch recognized the pure translated data. And it went to work. The blue and green UI overlapping his vision exploded with a torrential flood of notifications.

[Foreign Data Translated. Integration Successful.]

[Massive Experience Processed.]

[Demigod Architecture Expanding.]

[Physical Synchronization Stabilized at 30%.]

Sebastian’s physical body underwent a massive brutal compression.

The raw power of two dead gods was forcefully crammed into his biological meat-suit. His bones cracked, splintered, and instantly re-forged themselves into something infinitely denser than titanium. The muscle fibers across his chest and arms tore apart and stitched back together, hardening into biological steel cables.

The heat radiating from his body was so intense it singed the edges of the carpet. He didn’t grow larger. He didn’t turn into a hulking monster. The physical compression merely refined his baseline human form, packing the kinetic equivalent of a collapsing star into a six-foot frame.

The blinding light slowly faded. Sebastian knelt on the floor, his head bowed, his chest heaving with deep steady breaths.

The violent glitching of his left arm was completely gone. The skin was pale, smooth, and perfect, save for the faint silver runic scars pulsing with absolute power.

”Hey,” Gwen whispered. She took a cautious step backward, her hand resting on her pistol. ”Are you... still you?”

Sebastian slowly raised his head. His eyes were no longer the pitch-black voids of a corrupted anomaly. They had returned to their brilliant burning silver. They radiated a terrifying calm clarity.

He pushed himself up off the floor. His movements were incredibly fluid, entirely devoid of the heavy dragging exhaustion from before. He felt impossibly light, yet mathematically anchored. He was a perfectly optimized biological server.

He flexed his right hand. The sheer kinetic power coiled in his forearm was intoxicating. He felt like he could snap the space leviathan’s skull in half with a backhand.

”I’m better than me,” Sebastian said. His voice was a smooth resonant hum that carried absolute authority.

He looked at the remaining Server Filters in the case, then up at the smuggler. ”You kept your end of the deal, Seattle,” Sebastian noted. A genuine dark smile curved his lips. ”The Onyx Syndicate is gone. The Iron Wraiths are yours. Do whatever you want with the territory.”

He reached over and casually picked up the metal case, snapping it shut.

”But I’m taking the rest of these pills to go,” Sebastian said. ”I have a few more gods to eat, and I don’t want indigestion.”