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

He could see the ruined continents slowly beginning to rebuild. He could see the survivors stepping out of their bunkers, blinking up at the actual, uncorrupted sun.

And he could see Sanctuary.

He zoomed in, his vision bypassing the heavy titanium walls of his Citadel, sinking straight down into the medical ward.

He saw Valerie.

The death-lock was gone. The Spite Protocol was deleted. She was no longer trapped in the translucent block of hard-light magic. She was lying on the Resurrection Altar, breathing softly, her torn azure robes slowly knitting themselves back together as her normal, localized health regeneration finally kicked in.

A profound, heavy warmth filled the swirling static of his chest. It wasn’t a programmed emotional response. It was the last, enduring spark of his humanity, perfectly preserved inside his terrifying new shell.

”I kept the lights on, Princess,” Sebastian whispered, his massive voice incredibly gentle as he watched her chest rise and fall. ”Just like I promised.”

He couldn’t go back. He knew that the moment he authored the new code. If a being of his sheer, catastrophic data density tried to step through that golden barrier, the sheer mass of his existence would instantly crush Earth into a localized black hole. He was too big. He was too broken.

He had saved his world, but he had become a monster to do it.

He was the permanent firewall. The eternal guard dog sitting on the cosmic porch, making sure none of the Void’s rabid strays ever tried to break into his house again.

Suddenly, a sharp, frantic ping echoed in his peripheral vision.

Sebastian slowly turned his head away from Earth, looking out into the deep, unexplored regions of the Juncture.

Far in the distance, past the swirling purple smog, thousands of massive, jagged red portals were violently tearing open. The Void Gods weren’t done. The Ethereal Plane’s automated systems had detected the death of the Grand Archons, and the server was aggressively attempting to dispatch a new wave of executioners to reclaim its lost territory.

Shadowy, skyscraper-sized silhouettes of horrific Titans and heavily armored Outer Warlords began to drift out of the portals, their glowing red eyes locking onto the massive, static-filled Anomaly hovering in front of the golden planet.

They thought they were coming to a slaughter. They thought they were coming to reclaim a rogue server.

Sebastian squared his massive shoulders. His tattered cloak of shadows billowed in the solar wind.

He didn’t feel tired anymore. He didn’t feel the desperate, scrambling panic of a survivor trying to scrape together copper coins. He was a Digital God, and he had a lot of pent-up aggression to work through.

”Come on then,” Sebastian growled, his silver-tinged eyes flaring with blinding, unhinged light within the empty sockets of his mask. ”Let’s see how much math you idiots can handle.”

He raised his jagged, static-laced hand, and the void around him began to violently violently rot.

——

The air inside the Sanctuary medical ward didn’t smell like burnt ozone or acidic blood anymore. It smelled like sterile bandages, strong coffee, and the faint, crisp scent of a fresh morning breeze filtering down through the Citadel’s newly repaired ventilation shafts.

On the cold, runic-carved marble of the Resurrection Altar, Valerie gasped.

Her eyes snapped open. She shot up into a sitting position, her hands frantically flying to her chest. She expected to feel the massive, gaping wound from the Sky-Fortress’s absolute zero detonation. She expected to feel the agonizing, terrifying cold of her mana pool completely burning out.

She felt nothing but smooth, perfectly healed skin beneath her tattered azure silk robes.

”Easy, easy. You’re alright, Princess,” a rough, gravelly voice echoed to her left.

Valerie blinked, her vision slowly clearing.

Standing next to the altar was Galleon. The dwarven engineer looked like he had been dragged backwards through a soot factory, his beard singed and his armor dented, but he was grinning widely. In his hand, he held a steaming mug of actual, real coffee.

Sitting on a stack of ammunition crates across the room was Wraith. The Level 25 Assassin had his mask pulled down around his neck, looking completely exhausted but undeniably alive.

”Galleon? Wraith?” Valerie whispered, her voice hoarse. She swung her legs over the edge of the marble slab. ”What... what happened? The fleet? The tsunami?”

”Evaporated,” Galleon chuckled, taking a loud slurp of his coffee. ”The whole damn wave turned into a snow cone. You bought us enough time.”

”Time for what?” Valerie pressed, her corporate-honed mind rapidly trying to piece the logistics together. She looked around the pristine medical ward. The emergency red lights were gone. The low, desperate hum of the base’s failing generators had been replaced by a powerful, steady vibration of absolute stability.

”Did we repel them?” she asked, her heart hammering. ”Did Sebastian drop a mountain on them?”

Wraith and Galleon exchanged a heavy, loaded glance. The dwarf’s grin slowly faded, and he suddenly found the contents of his coffee mug incredibly interesting.

”Where is he?” Valerie demanded, the panic instantly returning. She slid off the altar, her bare feet hitting the cold floor. ”Where is Sebastian?”

”He’s... he’s not here, Boss,” Wraith said softly, his raspy voice tight with an emotion the hardened killer rarely showed.

”Did he die?” Valerie choked out, tears instantly pricking the corners of her eyes. ”Did his Void Toxicity hit one hundred percent? Tell me he didn’t un-render!”

”He didn’t die, Valerie,” Galleon sighed, setting his mug down on a tray. The dwarf walked over, his heavy boots clanking against the tiles. He gently placed a thick, calloused hand on her shoulder and pointed toward the heavy blast doors leading out of the medical ward. ”He finished the game.”

Valerie didn’t wait for an explanation. She shoved past the dwarf, sprinting out of the medical ward and tearing down the polished obsidian corridors of Sanctuary.

The Citadel was entirely different. The Vanguard Syndicate’s bombardment damage was completely gone. The walls were flawless. The ambient mana flowed smoothly. It didn’t feel like a desperately held bunker anymore. It felt like a true, invincible fortress.

She reached the grand hall and sprinted up the sweeping staircase leading to the upper command deck. She burst through the doors onto the primary observation balcony.

She froze.

The sky above Earth was no longer a swirling, bruised-purple nightmare of toxic cosmic smog. The jagged, bleeding tears of the Juncture were completely gone.

It was blue.

A perfectly clear, brilliant, uncorrupted blue sky stretched out over the ruined industrial district. The sun—the actual, real sun, not a bloated, dying orange pixel—shone down on the city, casting a warm, golden light over the rubble.

For the first time in years, the world wasn’t ending.

But it was what lay beyond the blue sky that made Valerie’s breath catch in her throat.

Wrapping around the entire atmosphere, completely encompassing the globe, was a faint, shimmering web of pure golden energy. It was a massive, impenetrable firewall.

And standing directly outside of that golden barrier, floating in the absolute dark of the multiverse, was a shadow.

It was a colossal, terrifying silhouette composed entirely of shifting black static and deep, bruised-purple error codes. It was easily the size of a moon, dwarfing the planet it guarded. It wore a tattered cloak of pure nothingness, and its face was obscured by a massive, cracked porcelain mask.

”Sebastian,” Valerie whispered, her hands pressing flat against the reinforced glass of the balcony window.

Tears freely spilled down her cheeks, tracing the line of the faint scar on her face. She didn’t need a system prompt to tell her who it was. She knew that cold, utterly unyielding posture. She knew the absolute, stubborn defiance radiating from the horrific entity.

He had gone to the absolute center of the universe. He had ripped the admin privileges out of the hands of the gods, and he had used them to lock Earth away in a pristine, untouchable safe zone.

He had saved her. He had saved all of them.

But the door only locked from the outside.

”You stupid, stubborn bastard,” Valerie sobbed, her forehead resting against the cool glass. ”You didn’t optimize your own extraction route.”

Out in the deep, terrifying abyss of the Juncture, the massive Digital God slowly turned its masked head toward the golden globe.

Sebastian hovered in the void. He looked through the impenetrable barrier he had authored, his unhinged, silver-tinged eyes locking onto the tiny, insignificant speck of Sanctuary down on the surface. He couldn’t see her through the atmospheric rendering, but he knew she was there. He knew she was awake.

A single, thick drop of black, oily digital blood wept from his empty eye socket, trailing down the pristine white porcelain of his mask.

He raised a massive, static-laced hand. With a slow, deliberate motion, Sebastian wiped the drop of virtual god-blood from his chin.

He turned his back on the golden globe of Earth, facing the swirling, endless dark of the multiverse.