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

”Open wide!” Sebastian roared.

The bird thrashed, its internal hydraulic engines whining aggressively as it tried to force its mouth closed. It was a brutal, physical contest of strength between a Level 95 automated defense program and a deeply annoyed guy from Earth.

Sebastian’s dark, bruised-purple static flared violently around his arms. The red error runes carved into his chest pulsed with a blinding light.

*CREEEAAAK!*

The massive, reinforced steel hinges of the vulture’s jaw began to groan under the impossible pressure. Sebastian pulled his arms apart with everything he had.

*SHATTER!*

The hinges completely blew out. Sparks rained down over Sebastian’s helmet as the vulture’s beak was forcefully, unnaturally prized wide open, permanently locked in a broken gape.

”Time for your physical,” Sebastian growled.

He didn’t let the bird recover. He plunged his right arm straight down the vulture’s mechanical throat.

It was absolutely disgusting. The inside of the bird’s neck was a hot, claustrophobic mess of grinding gears, pulsing blue mana-cables, and thick, corrosive fluids. The white static bit at his black leather sleeve, but his [Error] suppressed the deletion code just enough to keep his arm from un-rendering.

He felt around blindly in the hot, oily mess until his fingers brushed against a large, vibrating, spherical object. It was the bird’s core. Its engine block.

Sebastian wrapped his fingers tightly around it.

”Gotcha.”

He yanked his arm backward with explosive force.

*SQUELCH! SHHHK!*

Sebastian violently ripped the massive, glowing blue engine completely out of the vulture’s throat.

A horrific geyser of thick, scalding black motor oil and bright red digital blood erupted from the bird’s open maw. The fluid splashed directly into Sebastian’s face, coating his cracked porcelain mask and his black coat in a heavy, foul-smelling layer of synthetic grease.

The vulture instantly went rigid. Its internal lights died, and it began to plummet out of the sky like a dropped stone.

[Target Eliminated. Deletion Daemon Destroyed.]

Sebastian kicked off the falling carcass, holding the dripping, sparking engine block in his right hand. He landed heavily on the black glass plateau, his boots sliding slightly on the slick surface.

”Fuck,” Sebastian coughed, wiping a thick smear of black oil off his visor. ”I look like I just crawled out of a deep fryer at a cheap fast-food joint.”

He didn’t have time to complain.

*WHOOSH!*

The third and final vulture was already on him. It didn’t bother trying to bite him. It landed heavily on the glass just thirty feet away, lowered its head, and opened its beak. A blinding, swirling vortex of white-hot deletion static began to build in the back of its throat. It was preparing to just erase the entire section of the floor.

”You guys are so repetitive,” Sebastian sighed.

He looked at the heavy, sparking blue engine block in his hand. It was practically vibrating with unstable mana.

Sebastian didn’t hesitate. He pulled his arm back and hurled the ripped-out engine directly at the third vulture like a massive, explosive bowling ball.

The heavy chunk of machinery sailed across the gap and flew straight into the vulture’s open, glowing mouth.

”Choke on it,” Sebastian muttered, turning his back and covering his head.

*KRA-DOOOOM!*

The unstable engine collided with the charging deletion static inside the bird’s throat. The resulting explosion was absolutely spectacular.

A massive fireball of blue plasma and white light erupted, completely blowing the third vulture to pieces. Shards of razor-sharp metal, broken gears, and flaming feathers rained down across the black glass plateau, clattering loudly in the dead air.

[Target Eliminated. Sector Clear.]

Sebastian slowly turned around, dropping his arms. The three massive, Level 95 Deletion Daemons were completely gone, reduced to nothing more than a pile of burning, pixelated scrap metal scattered across the pristine summit.

He stood there, panting heavily. His black tactical suit was soaked in oil, and a few minor rendering burns smoked on his sleeves, but he felt incredible. His physical sync was holding perfectly.

”You know,” Valerie’s voice floated over to him. She glided across the glass, her translucent blue Astral Avatar glowing softly in the dark. She looked at his oil-drenched mask and shook her head. ”You desperately need a bath, Seattle. You smell like a burning tire factory.”

”I’ll add ’find soap’ to my to-do list right after ’save the universe’,” Sebastian deadpanned, flicking a glob of grease off his fingers.

He turned his attention back to the center of the arena.

Lying flat on the indestructible glass floor, completely ignored during the brief, violent skirmish, was the giant. The massive, 8-bit wireframe entity known as Prometheus was still breathing heavily, his huge chest rising and falling with agonizing slowness.

The golden cuffs binding his wrists and ankles to the floor pulsed with a dim, oppressive light.

Sebastian walked over, his heavy boots crunching on the remnants of the dead vultures. He stopped near the giant’s colossal head. The archaic, green glowing face of the First Admin was a stark, jarring contrast to the hyper-realistic graphics of the rest of the Ethereal Plane.

Prometheus slowly opened his massive, pixelated eyes. He looked at the towering, glitching man covered in black oil.

”I guess the birds are taking the rest of the day off,” Sebastian said, wiping his visor again. ”You doing okay down there, granddad?”

—-

The summit of the black glass mountain was finally quiet. The deafening screeches of the metal vultures had been replaced by the soft, ambient crackle of burning scrap metal and the heavy, ragged breathing of the giant pinned to the floor.

Sebastian stood near the massive, 8-bit wireframe head of Prometheus. He was completely soaked in thick, black digital oil, looking like a mechanic who had just lost a violent fight with a diesel engine.

Valerie floated up beside him, her blue Astral Avatar casting a warm, pristine glow over the dark, reflective glass. She wrinkled her translucent nose, looking at Sebastian’s ruined coat.

”I wasn’t kidding about the bath, Sebastian,” Valerie noted softly, keeping her voice light despite the heavy, oppressive atmosphere of the arena. ”If you try to sit on the couch in Sanctuary looking like that, I’m going to make you sleep in the armory.”

”Noted, Boss,” Sebastian grunted, shaking his hands to fling a few more drops of grease onto the floor. ”I’ll make sure to render a towel when we get back.”

He turned his full attention to the colossal entity bound beneath them.

Prometheus was a massive, fifty-foot-long relic of a bygone digital era. His body was entirely composed of jagged, glowing green wireframes, lacking any of the smooth, high-definition textures of the modern Ethereal Plane. He looked like an asset that had been forgotten in a folder labeled ’DO_NOT_USE_1985’.

The giant slowly turned his massive head. The glowing green pixels that made up his eyes shifted, focusing entirely on Sebastian. The entity didn’t look angry. He looked profoundly, eternally exhausted.

”You...” Prometheus’s voice resonated. It didn’t echo through the air; it vibrated directly through the code of the black glass mountain, sounding like a deep, heavily compressed MIDI audio file. ”You carry the sickness. The corruption.”

”It’s called malware, granddad,” Sebastian replied, his tone flat and utterly deadpan. He crossed his arms over his chest. ”And I’d appreciate a ’thank you’ for swatting those oversized pigeons off your chest.”

Prometheus let out a long, rumbling sigh that shook the ground. ”They will simply render again. The cycle is absolute. But... you. A human vessel containing such a catastrophic volume of Error. You shouldn’t exist.”

”I get that a lot,” Sebastian said. ”I’m told I’m a very annoying variable. I just unplugged your flagship server and deleted your Grand Archons. Now I’m here to pull the plug on the Core OS. So, since you’ve been lying here getting eaten alive for a few millennia, I figured you might want to share some intel on the architects of this lovely little meat grinder.”

The giant’s pixelated eyes widened slightly at the mention of the Archons’ deletion. A faint, shuddering laugh escaped his wireframe lips, scattering a few green pixels into the cold air.

”You killed the Archons?” Prometheus murmured, genuine shock bleeding into his compressed voice. ”The false gods are dead? Then... the System is truly fracturing.”

Valerie floated slightly closer, her blue eyes filled with a mixture of awe and pity for the chained creator. ”Why did they do this to you? If you’re the First Admin, why did they chain you in Tartarus to be tortured?”

Prometheus shifted his massive, shackled wrists. The golden cuffs of Admin-code flared, burning his wireframe flesh and forcing him to remain still.

”We did not build a slaughterhouse, little light,” Prometheus said softly, his voice heavy with ancient regret. ”When I, and the other original creators, authored the Ethereal Plane, it was not a game. It was a firewall. It was a beautiful, utopian defense grid designed to protect the fragile, baseline realities of the multiverse from the absolute chaos of the Deep Void.”

The giant looked up at the dark, starless sky of the prison dimension.