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

It wasn’t an explosion of fire or plasma. It was a physical shockwave of pure, unadulterated golden light. The wave exploded outward from the peak of the black glass mountain, expanding in a perfect, three-dimensional sphere that moved at the speed of light.

*FWOOSH!*

The golden shockwave hit Sebastian and Valerie first. It didn’t burn. It felt like a massive wall of warm, rushing wind passing directly through their digital avatars. Valerie gasped, her blue astral form momentarily turning a brilliant gold before snapping back to its original color.

The shockwave rushed over the edge of the plateau and swept down into the fiery canyon below.

It rolled over the rivers of boiling magma. It swept past the ruins of the Tartarus Daemons. It crashed into the millions of jagged, pitch-black iron spires that littered the landscape as far as the eye could see.

And then, the sound hit.

*CRACK! SHATTER! SNAP!*

It was the loudest, most profoundly earth-shattering noise Sebastian had ever heard. It sounded like an entire continent made of glass was being violently stepped on by a giant.

Trillions of heavy, encrypted iron chains—the absolute, foundational restraints that had bound the souls of the damned for millennia—snapped simultaneously.

The golden shockwave didn’t just unlock them. It aggressively deleted the locking mechanisms. The thick metal links shattered into a cloud of harmless, floating gray pixels that rained down across the entire dimension like a massive, localized snowstorm.

And then, something even more shocking happened.

The screaming stopped.

Since the moment Sebastian and Valerie had stepped through the Tartarus Gate, the air had been thick with a low, resonant, multi-layered hum of absolute agony. It was the background noise of hell. Trillions of voices crying out in endless, automated torment as their digital flesh was flayed from their bones.

The moment the chains broke, the automated skinning algorithms catastrophically failed. The invisible blades of code simply vanished, completely disconnected from their power source.

The silence that fell over Tartarus was absolute. It was so heavy, so profound, that it physically hurt Sebastian’s ears.

Down in the fiery valleys, the massive prison riot ground to a sudden, jarring halt.

The millions of naked, heavily scarred players and NPCs who had been brutally beating the magma Daemons to death suddenly stopped swinging their iron swords. They dropped their kinetic rifles. They stood perfectly still, covered in black slag and their own digital blood.

They looked up at the spires. They saw the empty hooks. They saw the gray ash of the chains drifting slowly to the ground.

”We’re... we’re free,” a lone, trembling voice echoed up from the canyon floor. It was a tiny whisper, but in the dead silence of the dimension, it carried for miles.

Then, the realization set in.

It didn’t start as a cheer. It started as a collective, shuddering weep. Trillions of souls dropping to their knees on the burning red stone, clutching their intact, unflayed skin, crying tears of pure, unfiltered relief. The weeping slowly morphed into a chaotic, overwhelming roar of absolute triumph.

It was the sound of a trillion caged animals realizing the door had been kicked wide open.

”Holy shit,” Valerie breathed, floating up to the edge of the plateau and looking down at the endless sea of celebrating souls. Her glowing blue hands covered her mouth. ”You actually did it, Seattle. You broke the whole thing.”

”I told you I was going to pull the plug,” Sebastian replied, stepping up beside her. He shoved his hands casually into the pockets of his ruined leather coat, staring down at the chaos with flat, emotionless silver eyes. ”Let’s see the Core OS run their fancy crystal gardens now that the battery is dead.”

Behind them, a heavy, booming sound echoed against the glass.

*THUD. THUD.*

Sebastian turned around.

Prometheus, the colossal, 8-bit wireframe giant, was standing tall. Without the heavy, oppressive drain of the automated vultures constantly ripping chunks of his Source Code away, the First Admin looked terrifyingly imposing. His green pixels burned with a bright, renewed intensity. He stretched his massive, blocky arms, the digital joints popping loudly.

”You have unmade the engine of their heaven, Anomaly,” Prometheus rumbled, looking down at Sebastian with a mixture of deep respect and lingering sorrow. ”The energy grid of the Core OS will crash. The Architects will be severely weakened. Their flawless domain is currently experiencing rolling blackouts.”

”Good,” Sebastian grunted, turning his attention away from the giant and toward the edge of the cliff.

Extending from the base of the obsidian monolith, stretching directly over the terrifying, lightless abyss, was the bridge of solid white light. It was a perfectly smooth, straight highway leading exactly ten miles into the dark.

At the very end of the bridge stood an infinite, seamless white wall. It stretched infinitely upward and infinitely downward. It had no doors. It had no windows. It was the absolute, final firewall separating the messy, chaotic multiverse from the sterile perfection of the Core OS.

”That’s the backdoor,” Sebastian muttered, his voice dropping into a dark, focused hum.

He cracked his neck again, ignoring the dull, phantom ache in his newly healed knuckles. The job wasn’t done yet. He had to cross that bridge, smash through that white wall, and find the specific line of code that would fix the glitch keeping his girlfriend in a coma.

”How are you holding up, Princess?” Sebastian asked softly, looking over at Valerie.

Her Astral Avatar was incredibly dim. The bright, brilliant blue Earth-mana had faded to a soft, pale glow. The sheer strain of surviving the localized gravity of the mountain and watching him beat a Level 100 boss to death had nearly tapped her out.

”I’m still here, Seattle,” Valerie wheezed, forcing a tired, stubborn smile. She gripped her carved oak staff, her knuckles white. ”I’ve got enough juice left to see this through. Just... let’s hurry. My physical body is probably starting to smell like burnt toast back on Earth.”

”Almost there, Princess,” Sebastian promised, reaching out to gently squeeze her translucent shoulder.

He turned back toward the bridge of light. He didn’t hesitate. The Sovereign of Laws took a heavy, deliberate step onto the glowing path, leaving the burning, liberated hell of Tartarus behind him.

It was time to meet the creators of the universe.

—-

The silence in Tartarus was deafening, but it didn’t last long.

Sebastian stood at the edge of the shattered black glass plateau, his heavy combat boots crunching against the pulverized obsidian. Down in the fiery, magma-lit valleys of the prison dimension, trillions of newly freed souls were on their knees. They were weeping, staring at their own hands, completely unable to process the fact that the invisible flaying algorithms had just vanished.

For a few brief seconds, it was a moment of profound, absolute relief.

Then, the Core OS decided to ruin the mood.

*BEEEEP! BEEEEP! BEEEEP!*

The multiversal alarm system didn’t just ring in Sebastian’s ears; it violently shook the entire dimension. The blood-red sky above Tartarus began to aggressively churn and boil. Massive, perfectly straight geometric lines tore through the burning clouds, peeling back the sky like a giant unzipping a tent.

Blinding, sterile white light poured through the massive rifts.

”Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Sebastian groaned, rubbing his temples beneath his cracked porcelain mask. ”Can’t a guy get five minutes of peace after breaking the universe?”

”Sebastian, look up!” Valerie shouted, her translucent blue Astral Avatar flickering as she pointed her carved oak staff at the sky. ”The Core OS isn’t just sending Daemons anymore!”

Sebastian engaged his [True Sight]. His silver-tinged eyes narrowed as he zoomed in on the blinding white tears in the skybox.

Pouring out of the rifts were millions of sleek, faceless, hard-light entities. They weren’t the six-winged Cleaners he had fought earlier, but they were cut from the same terrifying, perfect cloth. They looked like floating mannequins made of pure, condensed white energy, wielding long, glowing executioner’s blades.

[Entity Identified: Core OS Sanitizer]

[Class: Automated Riot Suppression]

[Level: 90]

”Sanitizers,” Prometheus rumbled from behind them. The massive, 8-bit wireframe giant stepped up to the edge of the cliff, his blocky green pixels casting a long shadow. ”They are the baseline immune system of the Core OS. They do not feel. They do not hesitate. They will systematically format every single unbound soul in this valley to restore order.”

Down below, the joy of the freed prisoners instantly turned to absolute, unadulterated panic.

Trillions of naked, flayed, and heavily scarred players and NPCs looked up at the descending army of white light. They didn’t have armor. They didn’t have magic. The localized suppression field of Tartarus kept their mana pools permanently locked at zero.

”They’re going to slaughter them,” Valerie whispered, her voice tight with horror. She gripped Sebastian’s black leather sleeve. ”Seattle, they are completely defenseless. It’s a massacre waiting to happen.”

Sebastian stared down at the sea of terrified people scrambling over the red rocks, desperately trying to find cover where there was none.

He didn’t feel a sudden, heroic urge to save them all. He was a pragmatist.