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

”Shit, shit, shit!” Sebastian cursed, his boots slipping slightly on his own blood.

He dropped flat onto his stomach. The colossal block of iron sailed mere inches over his back. The wind pressure from the swing was so intense it physically lifted him an inch off the glass before dropping him back down.

”WHERE IS YOUR MAGIC NOW, ANOMALY?!” Goliath mocked, his heavy, grinding laughter echoing over the plateau. ”WHERE ARE YOUR BROKEN RULES?! YOU ARE NOTHING BUT A RAT SCURRYING IN THE DIRT!”

Sebastian pushed himself up into a low crouch, panting heavily. The air was stifling, thick with the suffocating heat of the giant’s radioactive armor.

The Architects thought that without his admin-tier hacks, without the 10,000x Nexus Glitch, he was helpless. They had looked at his digital file and assumed he was just a clever programmer who hid behind cheat codes.

They forgot Phase 1.

They forgot that Sebastian didn’t start this apocalypse as a god. He didn’t spawn into the Ethereal Plane with a developer console. He started as a ragged, starving Drifter in a cramped, rain-slicked alleyway. He survived the first few weeks of the Great Merge by fighting rabid Demon Wolves and infected zombies with a rusty knife and pure, unflinching brutality. He didn’t learn how to survive by reading patch notes. He learned how to survive by getting his hands incredibly dirty.

”I don’t need magic to break your kneecaps,” Sebastian muttered, his eyes darting across the battlefield.

He couldn’t fight Goliath at a distance. He didn’t have projectiles, and staying out in the open just made him an easy target for that massive hammer. He needed to get inside the giant’s guard. He needed to make this an ugly, intimate street fight.

Goliath raised the hammer again, clearly preparing to flatten the entire section of the floor.

Sebastian didn’t run away. He sprinted directly *toward* the towering monster.

His heavy combat boots pounded against the black glass. His thirty-percent physical sync allowed him to run at speeds that blurred the human eye, moving like an Olympic sprinter hopped up on combat stims.

As he ran past the fresh crater Goliath had just smashed into the floor, Sebastian reached down without breaking his stride. His gloved hand closed around a massive, jagged three-foot shard of shattered obsidian glass.

The edge of the black glass was molecularly sharp, tapering down to a deadly, razor-thin point.

”ARROGANT TRASH!” Goliath roared, swinging the hammer down in a crushing diagonal arc to swat the incoming human like a fly.

Sebastian didn’t dive this time. He perfectly calculated the geometry of the swing. He slid on his knees, leaning his torso backward in a flawless, physics-defying slide. The massive hammer completely eclipsed his vision, the rusted iron roaring just inches above his nose.

He slid right between Goliath’s colossal, spiked legs.

As he passed beneath the giant, the suffocating heat of the depleted uranium armor washed over him, searing his lungs and blistering the exposed skin on his neck. He ignored the pain.

He drove his boots into the floor to arrest his slide, popping up directly behind the Warden.

Goliath’s armor was virtually impenetrable. It was a solid wall of thick, heavy metal. But no armor was completely seamless. The giant needed to bend its knees to walk. It needed flexible joints to swing that massive hammer.

Sebastian gripped the three-foot shard of jagged black glass with both hands. He didn’t aim for the heavy back plate. He aimed for the small, exposed gap of flexible mesh located at the back of Goliath’s right knee joint.

”Let’s see if you bleed!” Sebastian snarled.

He drove the glass shard forward with every single ounce of his biological steel strength. The jagged obsidian punched directly into the vulnerable gap behind the knee, burying itself two feet deep into the Warden’s mechanical tendons.

*SQUELCH! CRACK!*

A horrific burst of pressurized, glowing green fluid erupted from the wound, spraying directly into Sebastian’s face. It burned like battery acid, searing the skin of his cheek, but he didn’t let go of the glass.

He violently twisted the shard sideways, aggressively tearing through the internal hydraulics of the joint.

”GAAAAH!” Goliath bellowed, a sound of genuine, localized pain that shook the plateau.

The massive giant’s right leg violently buckled. The structural integrity of the knee completely failed under the brutal, physical sabotage. Goliath stumbled, his immense weight betraying him as he crashed down hard onto his right knee.

*THOOM!*

The impact cratered the floor again.

Sebastian let go of the glass shard, leaving it buried in the joint, and quickly rolled backward to avoid being crushed by the giant’s falling mass.

He popped back up to his feet, swiping a stinging smear of green hydraulic fluid off his face. His chest was heaving, his heart hammering a frantic, painful rhythm, but a fierce, utterly unhinged smile was plastered across his face.

Goliath knelt on the glass, using the shaft of his massive hammer to keep himself from falling face-first. The Warden slowly turned his heavy, domed helmet around to look at the bleeding, panting human standing ten feet away.

”You see, buddy?” Sebastian wheezed, rolling his shoulders and raising his fists back into a fighting stance. ”You don’t need a fancy UI to hit someone where it hurts. You just need to be willing to get a little dirty.”

The muddy brawl had officially begun, and Sebastian was entirely in his element.

——

Goliath was pissed. The Level 100 Warden of Tartarus was an apex defense program, a colossal twenty-foot tall behemoth made of depleted uranium, and he had just been brought down to one knee by a guy wielding a piece of broken glass.

”ERROR. STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY COMPROMISED,” Goliath’s synthesized voice roared, vibrating with a furious, ear-splitting feedback loop that sounded like a garbage disposal chewing on a microphone.

Green hydraulic fluid poured from the back of the giant’s right knee where Sebastian had jammed the jagged obsidian shard. The toxic liquid hit the black glass floor and sizzled aggressively.

Sebastian stood ten feet away, panting heavily. His black tactical suit was torn at the shoulder, and sweat dripped into his eyes. Without the comforting hum of his infinite mana pool or the reality-bending hacks of his [Code Compiler], he felt incredibly, dangerously mortal. His chest heaved as he sucked in the scorching, heavy air.

[WARNING: Extreme Heat Detected. Magic Suppression Active.]

[Status: Minor Lacerations. Stamina Depleting.]

The dull, gray, flickering system prompts were the only things his UI could muster under the oppressive weight of Goliath’s Absolute Reality Anchor.

”You look a little wobbly there, big guy,” Sebastian wheezed, wiping a mixture of sweat and human blood from his chin. ”Maybe it’s time to retire. Have you considered taking up golf? It’s much easier on the joints.”

”I WILL CRUSH YOU INTO ATOMS!” Goliath bellowed.

The giant didn’t bother trying to stand up. He couldn’t. His right leg was completely locked up, the internal hydraulics failing. But he still had two massive arms and a hammer the size of a dreadnought engine.

With a deafening mechanical whine, Goliath tightened his grip on the colossal shaft of his hammer. He twisted his massive torso, dragging the head of the weapon across the black glass plateau in a devastating, low-sweeping horizontal arc.

”Oh, shit!” Sebastian yelled.

*SWOOOSH!*

The hammer tore through the air, creating a localized vacuum. It was moving like a speeding freight train, covering the entire width of the platform. There was nowhere to run. Sebastian couldn’t jump over it, and he certainly couldn’t block it.

He threw himself completely flat onto his stomach, pressing his face directly against the burning hot obsidian glass.

*KRA-DOOOOM!*

The massive block of rusted pig-iron sailed mere millimeters over his head. The sheer, unadulterated wind pressure from the swing was so intense it actually lifted Sebastian’s legs off the floor. His eardrums popped painfully. The hammer smashed into a jagged outcropping of black glass behind him, completely pulverizing the structure into a cloud of deadly shrapnel.

”Sebastian!” Valerie screamed from the edge of the arena, her blue Astral Avatar slamming helplessly against the invisible gray wall of the suppression field. ”Get out of there! He’s too big!”

”I’m working on it, Seattle!” Sebastian shouted back, his voice hoarse.

He scrambled to his feet. He couldn’t stay on the defensive. Without magic, dodging a twenty-foot giant with a hammer was a losing game of stamina. He had to disable the weapons.

Goliath ripped the hammer back, raising it for a downward smash. But his restricted mobility made him clumsy.

Sebastian’s highly optimized brain, fueled by his thirty-percent physical synchronization, processed the giant’s movements. He saw the heavy, exposed joints of Goliath’s spiked gauntlet as the monster gripped the handle.

Sebastian sprinted forward. He darted past another fresh crater in the floor and scooped up a massive, three-foot-long shard of shattered black glass that had been kicked up by the hammer’s impact. The edge was molecularly sharp, glistening in the dull gray light.