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

If I try to fly this piece of shit another ten feet, the hull is going to violently decompress and turn us all into frozen space-jerky.”

Corbin nodded frantically, tapping his cracked datapad. ”She’s right. The data density in this sector is too heavy. We’ve reached the absolute edge of the Dead Servers. The physics engine here is completely un-rendered.”

Sebastian walked past them and stood at the very edge of the obsidian platform.

He looked out. There was no glowing blue ocean of memories here. There was no floating debris, no ruined cyberpunk cities, and no purple smog. There was only a massive, terrifyingly vast chasm of pure, unadulterated nothingness. It stretched infinitely downward, a lightless abyss that seemed to actively consume any ambient light that dared to touch it.

”The Tartarus Gate is at the bottom of this,” Sebastian murmured, his highly optimized brain running the spatial calculations. ”It’s the ultimate firewall separating the outer servers from the hidden Core OS.”

”We can’t go down there, Sebastian,” Gwen said softly, stepping up beside him and looking down into the terrifying dark. ”The Rusthound can’t make the dive. The pressure will crush the ship like a tin can before we even hit the halfway mark.”

Sebastian stared into the abyss. He knew she was right. He was a Sovereign of Laws. He had his [Concept of Mass] and his [Reality Rendering]. He could manipulate his own localized physics to survive the impossible drop. But Gwen and Corbin were just standard, fragile players. If he took them into the Core OS, the sheer, sterile perfection of the Architects’ environment would instantly un-render their base files.

It was a one-way trip, and he had to take it alone.

”I know,” Sebastian said, his voice dropping the sarcastic, deadpan armor he usually wore. He turned to face the smuggler and the code-smith. ”You guys have gone as far as you can. This is your stop.”

Corbin blinked, adjusting his grease-smeared goggles. ”Wait, you’re leaving us here? On a floating rock in the middle of a cosmic graveyard?!”

”It’s safe,” Sebastian assured him. ”The Architects think I’m a virus. They aren’t going to waste processing power hunting down two low-level smugglers when I’m currently knocking on their front door. The Cleaners won’t come back here.”

Gwen crossed her arms, her jaw tightening. ”And what are we supposed to do? Just sit here and play cards while you go punch God in the face?”

”You’re going to fix the ship,” Sebastian said, pointing at the smoking Rusthound. ”Corbin, you’re the best mechanic in the Juncture. Strip the secondary power cells. Reroute the mana through the emergency life support. Get the engines turning over. Because when I pull the plug on the Core OS, the shockwave is going to be massive. You need to be ready to fly back to Outpost Rust the second the fireworks start.”

Corbin swallowed hard, looking at the broken ship, then back at Sebastian. He slowly nodded. ”I... I can do that. I can rig a bypass. It won’t be pretty, but it’ll fly.”

Sebastian reached into his bottomless digital inventory. The air shimmered, and he pulled out a massive, glowing purple sack. It clinked heavily with the sound of thousands of high-tier items. It was a fraction of the loot he had vacuumed up from the deleted Vanguard dreadnoughts.

He tossed the heavy bag onto the obsidian floor at Gwen’s feet.

CLANG!

”What’s this?” Gwen asked, eyeing the glowing bag.

”Payment,” Sebastian stated simply. ”There’s enough Grand Soul Shards and Mythic-tier armor in there to buy your own private moon. You kept your end of the deal, Seattle. You got me to the router. That’s your severance package.”

Gwen stared at the bag of unimaginable wealth. She had spent three years scraping a miserable, desperate living out of the slums of Outpost Rust, dodging executioners and eating mutated rats just to survive. This was exactly what she had always wanted.

But she didn’t look happy. She looked at Sebastian, her tough, cynical exterior cracking just a fraction.

”You better not die down there, you stubborn glitch,” Gwen said, her voice unusually thick with emotion. She stepped forward and punched him lightly on his armored shoulder. ”If you don’t come back, I’m going to spend all this money hiring a necromancer just to bring you back so I can shoot you myself.”

Sebastian actually smiled beneath his mask. It was a small, genuine expression of rare appreciation.

”Don’t worry,” Sebastian replied, adjusting the collar of his black leather coat. ”I still owe Valerie a fancy dinner. I intend to collect.”

He turned away from the loyal outcasts who had helped him cross the multiverse. He didn’t say goodbye. He just walked back to the absolute edge of the lightless chasm.

The abyss waited below, a silent, terrifying maw of pure darkness. At the bottom lay Tartarus, the prison of the gods, and the backdoor to the creators of the universe.

Sebastian cracked his neck, the heavy pop echoing in the quiet void. He engaged his [Concept of Mass], preparing to plummet into hell.

”Keep the engine running, guys,” Sebastian called out over his shoulder.

He bent his knees, and without a single ounce of hesitation, the Sovereign of Laws stepped off the ledge and dropped like a stone into the absolute dark.

—-

The sensation of falling into the lightless chasm wasn’t like skydiving. There was no wind rushing past Sebastian’s ears, no atmospheric friction to slow his descent. It was a silent, terrifying plunge through a complete, absolute vacuum.

He fell like a heavily armored stone, the oppressive darkness immediately swallowing him whole. The obsidian platform and the smoking ruins of the Rusthound vanished above him in a fraction of a second.

”Okay, this is officially the longest elevator ride of my life,” Sebastian muttered to himself, his distorted, metallic voice vibrating quietly inside his featureless black helmet.

He had expected the drop to take a few minutes. But as his internal timer ticked past ten minutes, the sheer scale of the abyss began to set in.