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

Beside the Paladin floated Saint Jin, the Cyber-Monk. The guy was a horrifying fusion of traditional martial arts and aggressive, high-tier cybernetics. Neon-green data streams pulsed through the wires spliced into his flesh, and a heavy metal halo rotated slowly behind his shaved head, emitting a sharp, lethal hum.

Thousands of tiny, red targeting lasers suddenly cut through the dark purple smog. They shot down from the dreadnoughts, converging perfectly on the tiny, insignificant speck of black leather standing on the rusted dock.

Sebastian sighed, rolling his neck. His joints popped loudly, the dense, biological steel of his vertebrae settling into place. He hated lasers. They always ruined the mood.

”ANOMALY!”

The voice did not come from the sky. It bypassed the chaotic noise of the burning slums and the roaring engines entirely. It was projected using a high-tier Divine Amplifier, an artifact that forcefully shoved the speaker’s voice directly into the skull of everyone within a hundred-mile radius.

Grigori’s voice was rich, deep, and dripping with charismatic, self-righteous authority. It sounded exactly like a politician who was entirely convinced of his own divine mandate.

”You stand before the Vanguard of the Void!” Grigori’s voice echoed in Sebastian’s mind, rattling his eardrums. ”You stand before the collective might of a hundred assimilated worlds! The Grand Design has judged you, Anomaly, and it has found your code completely unacceptable!”

Sebastian raised a single, black-gloved hand and politely tapped the side of his helmet, as if checking an earpiece. ”Customer service is currently busy,” Sebastian muttered dryly. ”Please leave a message after the beep.”

Grigori couldn’t hear him, but the Saint was just getting started. He loved the sound of his own voice way too much to stop now.

”We have tracked your digital footprint across the Juncture!” the Paladin boomed, his holy aura flaring so brightly it looked like a second sun had just ignited on the flagship’s deck. ”You butchered the Vanguard Syndicate on Server 112! You plunged an entire, perfectly ordered corporate utopia into the chaotic void! You slaughtered the Warlords of the Outer Rim, and you dared to challenge the absolute authority of the System!”

Sebastian leaned his weight onto his back leg, completely bored. He started counting the accusations on his fingers. ”Corporate dystopia, actually,” Sebastian corrected the empty air. ”And those Warlords tried to mug me in an alley. If you’re going to read my rap sheet, at least get the context right.”

”You are a cancer!” Grigori roared, his voice reaching a fever pitch of fanatical anger. ”You are a glitch in the sacred geometry of the Ethereal Plane! You manipulate localized physics to mimic the power of a God, but you are nothing but a localized error! A virus that refuses to be deleted!”

On the observation deck, Saint Jin finally moved. The Cyber-Monk didn’t speak. He simply raised his highly augmented, robotic arms and slammed his palms onto a glowing green control terminal.

The entire flagship violently shuddered.

From the bottom hull of the Righteous Dawn, a massive, cylindrical cannon slowly descended. It was the size of a modern skyscraper, forged from dark, heavy metal and lined with thick, pulsing conduits of raw, unadulterated plasma.

This wasn’t an anti-air turret. This wasn’t a standard orbital bombardment weapon.

Sebastian’s eyes narrowed slightly as his [True Sight] rapidly analyzed the descending hardware.

[Weapon Identified: Planet-Cracker Siege Cannon.]

[Status: Charging.]

[Estimated Damage Output: Absolute Planetary Annihilation.]

”Oh, you guys brought the big toys,” Sebastian whispered, a dark, dangerous hum entering his voice.

The massive cannon began to glow. A terrifying, high-pitched whine filled the air as the weapon aggressively siphoned energy from the dreadnought’s core. The air around the barrel physically warped, the sheer gravitational pull of the gathering plasma creating a localized vacuum.

They weren’t just going to shoot Sebastian. They were going to vaporize the entire space leviathan skull, the millions of refugees hiding inside it, and a significant chunk of the surrounding Juncture just to ensure the Anomaly was permanently uninstalled from the multiverse.

”Kneel, glitch!” Grigori’s voice thundered one final time, the sheer arrogance of the demand dripping with absolute certainty. ”Surrender your corrupted code! Accept your deletion, and I will grant you a swift end! Resist, and we will burn this entire graveyard to ash just to watch you suffer!”

Sebastian stared up at the massive, glowing barrel of the planet-cracker cannon aiming directly at his face. He looked at the tens of thousands of elite, Level 80 and Level 90 Saints hovering on their flight decks, their pristine armor gleaming, their weapons drawn, completely confident in their overwhelming, mathematical superiority.

They had the numbers. They had the firepower. They had the high ground.

They thought they were playing a raid boss, and they had brought the entire server population to ensure the clear.

Sebastian slowly pulled his hands out of his pockets. He let out a long, deeply exhausted breath that plumed in the freezing, toxic air. He didn’t feel a single ounce of fear. He just felt a profound, overwhelming annoyance at how incredibly stupid these people were.

He just stood up completely straight, his pitch-black eyes locking onto the arrogant Paladin hovering miles above him.

The monologue was over. It was time to show the corporate elites exactly what a real administrative override looked like.

The planet-cracker cannon on the underbelly of the Righteous Dawn reached critical mass.

The blinding, blue-white plasma gathered at the tip of the massive barrel was so bright it physically hurt to look at. The hum of the weapon was no longer just a sound; it was a physical vibration that rattled the rusted metal plates of the docking bay beneath Sebastian’s boots.

High above, Saint Grigori waited for the Anomaly to break. The Paladin stood on his observation deck, his arms crossed, expecting the ragged man in the black leather coat to drop to his knees and beg for his digital life. He expected the glitch to panic, to try and cast a futile, localized shield, or to frantically attempt a teleportation spell that the dreadnought’s jammers would instantly block.

Sebastian did none of those things.

He didn’t shout back. He didn’t scream a heroic defiance into the void. He knew that arguing with a fanatic was like trying to punch a ghost. It was a complete waste of stamina.

Instead, Sebastian simply raised his right hand.

He didn’t point at the ship. He didn’t form a fist. He held his hand perfectly flat, his palm facing the bruised, broken sky.

He closed his eyes and bypassed the standard spell-casting logic of the Ethereal Plane. He didn’t pull from his mana pool. He reached deep into the foundational, administrative architecture of his own glitched existence. He grabbed the [Code Compiler] that the 10,000x Nexus Glitch had forcefully evolved from a simple typo-fixing tool.

”Let’s change the channel,” Sebastian whispered, his voice dropping into that terrifying, metallic hum of absolute authority.

He didn’t keep his User Interface private. He forcefully grabbed his own localized Admin UI and violently shoved it into the physical rendering engine of the server.

BZZZZT!

The reaction was instantaneous and completely reality-breaking.

Up in the sky, the thousands of elite Saints waiting for the execution order suddenly gasped in unison.

The dark, swirling purple smog of the Juncture between Sebastian and the dreadnoughts violently vanished. It wasn’t blown away by wind. It was completely overwritten.

In its place, a colossal, glowing green holographic screen rendered itself directly across the skybox. It was easily fifty miles wide, a massive, translucent projection of pure, unadulterated source code that completely blocked the armada’s view of the ground.

[SYSTEM ADMINISTRATOR: ZERO. LOGIN CONFIRMED.] [ACCESSING ROOT DIRECTORY.]

The massive green text scrolled across the heavens, completely dwarfing the Righteous Dawn. The sheer, imposing scale of the digital projection made the city-sized dreadnoughts look like tiny, insignificant toys floating in front of a movie theater screen.

On the observation deck, Grigori’s arrogant smile instantly vanished. His jaw dropped. ”What is that? What kind of illusion is this?!”

”It is not an illusion,” Saint Jin replied, his synthetic voice suddenly laced with genuine, uncalculated panic. The Cyber-Monk’s heavy metal halo spun erratically as his internal processors desperately tried to parse the data. ”He is projecting his localized interface into the global rendering engine! He is treating the skybox like a monitor!”

Down on the rusted dock, Sebastian didn’t bother looking up at his handiwork. He had the screen up. Now he needed to run the program.

He reached his left hand into his bottomless digital inventory. He completely ignored his heavy, concrete-encrusted Earth Sword. He ignored the hundreds of high-tier potions and defensive artifacts he had hoarded.