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

He intentionally pushed a thick layer of his bruised-purple, corrupted malware to the outer edge of his boots. The moment the dark static touched the pristine white light of the bridge, the siphoning effect sputtered and violently choked.

*SST-SST.*

”Take that, you greedy floorboards,” Sebastian smirked, feeling his momentum instantly increase as the drag vanished.

They had covered roughly two miles of the massive bridge when a new, terrifying sound cut through the dead air.

*RRROOOAAARRR!*

It wasn’t the mechanical shriek of a System Cleaner or the booming command of an Archon. It was a raw, chaotic, incredibly violent battle cry.

Sebastian didn’t slow his sprint, but he glanced over his shoulder.

Pouring onto the beginning of the light bridge, silhouetted against the fiery, blood-red sky of the prison dimension, was a massive horde of people.

It was the vanguard of the damned army.

Thousands of naked, heavily scarred, half-flayed prisoners were charging onto the bridge. They wielded the cheap, rusted iron broadswords, kinetic rifles, and spiked maces Sebastian had rained down upon them earlier. They were completely covered in the black slag and blue blood of the Tartarus Daemons they had just finished beating to death.

Leading the charge was the massive, muscle-bound Orc who had initiated the riot. He held a jagged iron sword in each hand, his bloodshot eyes fixed dead ahead.

”WE FOLLOW THE GLITCH!” the Orc bellowed, his voice echoing across the endless abyss.

”BURN THE HEAVENS!” a chorus of human, elven, and dwarven voices screamed in response.

Valerie looked back, her glowing blue eyes wide with absolute shock. ”Sebastian... they’re following us. They left the valley. They’re coming to the Core OS!”

Sebastian let out a long, heavy groan that vibrated the cracked porcelain of his mask.

”Oh, you have got to be shitting me,” Sebastian complained, actually rolling his eyes. ”I am not a raid leader! I don’t have a guild invite for these people! Do you know how hard it is to carry an aggro-pulling mob of naked prisoners through an endgame boss door?!”

”They want revenge, Seattle!” Valerie shouted back, a fierce, triumphant smile breaking through her exhaustion. ”You gave them the weapons! You pointed at the management!”

”I told them to cause a distraction!” Sebastian yelled, picking up his pace. ”I didn’t tell them to follow me up the driveway! I don’t offer health insurance!”

But it was too late. The vanguard of the riot was already charging down the bridge behind them, an unyielding tsunami of raw, unadulterated human and NPC spite.

And the Core OS was absolutely not going to ignore a million unauthorized entities marching up its front steps.

*BEEEEEEP!*

A sharp, piercing tone rang out from the very structure of the bridge.

About five hundred yards ahead of Sebastian, the smooth, flawless white light of the pathway began to bubble and warp. Geometric, rectangular pillars of dense, hard-light code violently erupted from the surface of the bridge, sliding upward like elevator shafts.

In a matter of seconds, dozens of massive, sleek white turrets rendered into existence, completely blocking the path forward.

[Asset Identified: Heavenly Turret (Suppression Variant)]

[Status: Active. Target Lock Engaged.]

”Turrets,” Sebastian deadpanned. ”Because of course there are turrets. It’s a hallway leading to the final boss. There’s always turrets.”

The sleek, glowing white barrels of the Heavenly Turrets didn’t need to spin up. They didn’t fire kinetic bullets or explosive plasma. They fired highly concentrated, localized beams of pure data-siphoning energy. If one of those beams hit a player, it wouldn’t kill them—it would instantly drain their mana, their stamina, and their health bar to exactly one percent, paralyzing them instantly.

*ZAAAAAP!*

A dozen blindingly bright, silent white beams shot down the bridge, aiming directly for Sebastian’s chest.

”Get behind me!” Sebastian roared, forcefully yanking Valerie behind his broad back.

He didn’t dodge. He planted his boots, raised his left arm, and summoned a massive, thick wall of his [Concept of Mass] mixed with pure, jagged [Error].

*CRACK-HSSSSS!*

The white beams slammed into his invisible, heavy shield. The sheer, terrifying weight of his corrupted code violently scattered the pristine beams of light, refracting them off his shield like a prism. The stray beams shot off into the dark abyss, harmlessly dissipating.

But the turrets didn’t stop. Dozens more locked on, a relentless, strobe-light barrage of suppression fire tearing down the bridge.

Sebastian gritted his teeth, his biological steel muscles straining under the sheer volume of incoming fire. His shield was holding, but he was losing momentum.

”I can’t push forward and block this much volume at the same time!” Sebastian grunted, sweat pouring down his face beneath the mask.

”GLITCH!”

A thunderous roar echoed from right behind him.

Sebastian glanced back just in time to see the massive Orc player sprint past him. The Orc didn’t have armor. He didn’t have a magical shield. He just had pure, unadulterated fury and two cheap iron swords.

”FOR THE FLAYED!” the Orc screamed, hurling himself completely out of Sebastian’s protective shadow and charging headlong into the blinding white fire.

*ZAAAAP!*

Three suppression beams hit the Orc simultaneously in the chest.

The Orc’s health bar instantly plummeted from full to one percent. The massive player let out a gargling gasp, his muscles instantly locking up as the crippling paralysis effect took hold. He stumbled forward, his momentum carrying him a few more feet before he collapsed heavily onto the hard-light bridge.

But he wasn’t alone.

”CHARGE!” a human warrior yelled.

Thousands of prisoners poured past Sebastian and Valerie, a tidal wave of ragged, scarred bodies charging directly into the turret fire.

The Heavenly Turrets fired as fast as their automated logic gates would allow. Beams of white light cut through the horde. Hundreds of prisoners were instantly dropped to one percent health, collapsing onto the bridge in paralyzed, groaning heaps.

But the turrets couldn’t shoot fast enough.

For every prisoner that dropped, ten more trampled over them, closing the distance to the defensive line. They didn’t care that they were being gunned down. They were soaking the aggro. They were throwing their fragile, naked bodies into the meat grinder entirely voluntarily, acting as a massive, flesh-and-bone meat shield for the Sovereign of Laws.

”They’re taking the hits for you!” Valerie yelled, her blue eyes wide as she watched the prisoners sacrifice themselves to overwhelm the turrets’ targeting algorithms.

”Are you kidding me?” Sebastian whispered, a rare flicker of genuine shock piercing his cold, deadpan facade.

He watched a frail, heavily scarred Elven rogue throw herself onto the barrel of a turret, taking a blast directly to the stomach, completely paralyzing herself just to buy her comrades an extra second.

The mob crashed into the first line of turrets.

*CLANG! SMASH! CRUNCH!*

It was brutal, messy, and totally devoid of elegance. Thousands of prisoners swarmed the sleek, white pillars. They brought their cheap iron swords, spiked maces, and even their bare fists down on the pristine, hard-light machinery.

The turrets weren’t built for close-quarters physical brawling. They were designed to shoot threats from a distance. Under the sheer, crushing weight of thousands of desperate, furious swings, the flawless white code began to buckle.

A turret sparked violently, let out a high-pitched mechanical whine, and exploded into a shower of white pixels as the Orc—who had somehow managed to crawl his paralyzed body forward and bite through a cooling pipe—shattered its base.

Sebastian didn’t waste the opening they had just bled for.

”Let’s move!” Sebastian roared, his voice booming over the chaos.

He grabbed Valerie’s hand and sprinted forward, charging right through the gap the prisoners had violently hacked open.

As they ran past the collapsed, paralyzed bodies of the rioters, Sebastian didn’t stop, but he did drop his free hand. He selectively leaked a tiny, highly concentrated trail of his ambient [Error] code. He let the corrupted data drip onto the paralyzed prisoners as he passed them.

The malware didn’t hurt them. It forcefully forcefully crashed the suppression debuff the turrets had applied to their character files.

”Guh!” the massive Orc gasped, suddenly regaining control of his limbs as the paralysis violently glitched out. He pushed himself up, staring in awe at his hands, then looked at the black-clad figure sprinting ahead.

”The Glitch heals!” the Orc bellowed, grabbing his iron sword. ”PUSH FORWARD!”

Sebastian rolled his eyes behind his mask, though a tiny, dark smile touched his lips. ”I am not a cleric, you idiots. Just break the guns.”

They tore down the bridge. The vanguard of the damned army acted as an absolute, chaotic battering ram, swarming the remaining turrets, soaking the suppression beams with sheer numbers, and smashing the automated defenses into pixelated dust.

Sebastian and Valerie ran in their wake, the distance ticking down rapidly.

Eight miles. Five miles. Two miles.

Finally, the deafening sounds of the riot began to fade slightly as Sebastian sprinted ahead of the main pack.

He slowed to a halt, his chest heaving, his heavy combat boots skidding slightly on the smooth white light of the bridge. Valerie floated to a stop beside him, her blue Astral Avatar dimming significantly, her breathing ragged and shallow.