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

FWOOSH!*

The blue light radiating from her body blinded the entire room. The heat spiked so aggressively that the marble altar beneath her began to hiss and crack.

Wraith threw his arms over his face, shielding his eyes from the impossible glare. ”Boss, stop!”

”Reroute all auxiliary power to the primary transmitter!” Valerie commanded, her voice overlapping with a terrifying, ethereal echo. ”Hold the line!”

Galleon cursed loudly in dwarven, letting go of the sparking cables and diving off the scaffolding just as the entire upper half of the Spire glowed white-hot.

”We’re redlining!” Corbin shrieked, burying his head in his arms.

Valerie didn’t flinch. She grit her teeth, her entire physical form vibrating as the absolute limit of her human endurance was pushed, stretched, and finally shattered. She didn’t care if her brain melted. She didn’t care if she died on this table.

She was going to punch that signal through the void, and she was going to hold it there until her idiot frontline fighter walked through the door.

—

The bridge of solid white light extending toward the Core OS was a place of absolute, sterile nightmare.

Sebastian stood at the very end of the ten-mile highway. He was breathing heavily, his broad, static-laced shoulders rising and falling. His heavy combat boots were planted firmly against the humming, vibrating hard-light floor.

Looming directly in front of him was the absolute firewall of the Ethereal Plane.

It was an infinite, seamless wall of blinding white material. It stretched infinitely upward into the absolute dark, and endlessly downward into the abyss. There were no keyholes. There were no access panels. Just a smooth, terrifyingly perfect plane of pure, unadulterated logic.

”Okay. This is it,” Sebastian muttered, reaching his left hand into his pocket. His fingers brushed against the pulsing, vibrant green orb that Prometheus had ripped from his own chest.

He needed to merge the First Admin’s raw foundational code with his [Code Compiler]. He needed to write a localized routing key to bypass the blind spot.

But before he could pull the orb out, the quiet, humming silence of the bridge was violently shattered.

*BZZZZT! KZZZT!*

It sounded like a massive television screen losing its signal.

Sebastian spun around.

Hovering just a few feet behind him, Valerie’s Astral Avatar was tearing itself apart.

”Valerie!” Sebastian yelled, his voice a distorted, metallic bark of pure panic.

The pristine, brilliant blue light of her Earth-mana was heavily corrupted by thick, jagged lines of gray static. Her translucent azure silk robes were aggressively un-rendering, turning into loose, floating blocks of low-resolution polygons.

But the worst part was her legs.

From the knees down, her astral form had completely ceased to exist as a cohesive shape. Her legs were just a swirling, chaotic mess of gray television static that hissed and popped in the dead air.

She couldn’t support her own weight anymore.

”Ah!” Valerie gasped, her eyes rolling back.

She collapsed. She didn’t fall gracefully. Her projection pitched forward, dropping toward the hard-light bridge like a stone.

Sebastian didn’t think. He didn’t run the math on collision physics. He engaged his [Heavenly Steps].

*Fzzt.*

He instantly folded the spatial coordinates between them, materializing directly underneath her falling form. He dropped to his knees, his massive, black-gloved hands shooting out to catch her before she hit the ground.

”I got you. I got you,” Sebastian grunted, his biological steel arms wrapping securely around her glitching waist and shoulders.

The moment he caught her, the sheer, catastrophic heat of her failing signal hit him. Even through his heavily modified, frictionless black tactical gloves, he could feel the terrifying temperature of her astral form. She was burning up.

Through the translucent blue light of her face, Sebastian saw the digital representation of her physical trauma. Bright red pixels—the digital echo of real, human blood—were pouring from her nose, tracking down her chin, and leaking from her ears.

”Hey. Hey, Seattle, look at me,” Sebastian pleaded, his silver-tinged void eyes locking onto her face.

Valerie’s head lolled against his chest. She weakly opened her eyes. The bright blue light in her pupils was incredibly dim, flickering like a dying candle in a windstorm.

”Hey, yourself,” Valerie wheezed. Her voice barely reached his mind. The audio tether was snapping, the connection filled with heavy pops of white noise. ”I think... I think the router needs a reboot back home.”

”Cut the damn line, Valerie!” Sebastian demanded. His voice wasn’t deadpan anymore. It was raw, shaking, and entirely human. ”Your physical brain is hemorrhaging! If you don’t drop this connection right now, you are going to die on that table!”

”No,” Valerie whispered, her voice barely a breath.

She weakly raised her hands. Her translucent, glitching blue fingers gripped the lapels of his ruined black leather coat. Her grip was incredibly weak, but the stubbornness behind it was absolute.

”Valerie, listen to me,” Sebastian said, his tone bordering on frantic. He held her tight against his chest, entirely ignoring the chaotic green wireframes of his own glitching form snapping around her. ”I have Prometheus’s gift. I have the routing key. I don’t need the beacon anymore! I know where the door is!”

”You’re an idiot,” Valerie coughed, a spray of red pixels splashing against his featureless black helmet. ”You think... you think this wall is the end? The Core OS... it’s pure logic, Sebastian. The lag in there... it will tear your mind apart before you even find the keyboard.”

She was right. The moment he stepped through that infinite white wall, the environmental pressure of the absolute core would make the Juncture look like a relaxing vacation.

”I can handle the lag,” Sebastian lied.

”And you’re a terrible liar,” Valerie smiled, though her face twisted in pain as another wave of static ate a chunk of her shoulder.

She looked up at him. She didn’t see a terrifying, eight-foot-tall monster of malware and red error runes. She just saw the guy who had stubbornly haggled with her over a potion, and then casually decided to fight a god to keep her safe.

”If I let go... the void will eat your mind, you idiot,” Valerie gasped, her fingers tightening on his coat. ”I am not hanging up. I am leaving the light on.”

Sebastian stared down at her. He felt a deep, dark, and utterly apocalyptic rage boiling in the very center of his digital soul. It wasn’t directed at her. It was directed at the system. It was directed at the Architects who had built a universe that forced a woman to slowly cook her own brain just to give him a fighting chance.

”Valerie, please,” Sebastian whispered, his voice cracking. ”I can’t lose you again. Not after everything. Just log off.”

”No,” she said softly.

Her legs were completely gone now, the gray static slowly creeping up her thighs. She was literally fading away in his arms.

”Carry me,” Valerie demanded. It wasn’t a request. It was the absolute, unyielding order of a Guild Master. ”Just carry me to the end, Seattle.”

Sebastian’s jaw locked so tight his teeth audibly ground together.

He didn’t argue anymore. He knew it was entirely useless.

”Yeah. Okay, Princess,” Sebastian murmured. ”I’ll carry you.”

He smoothly slid his left arm under her knees—or where her knees used to be before the static took them—and kept his right arm firmly around her back. He stood up slowly, effortlessly lifting her fading, glitching form against his chest.

She weighed absolutely nothing in the digital space, but she felt like the heaviest thing he had ever held.

Valerie rested her head against his shoulder. Her eyes fluttered shut, her breathing shallow and erratic. ”Don’t... don’t take too long. It’s getting really hot back home.”

”I’m going to make this fast,” Sebastian promised.

He turned his masked face toward the infinite, seamless white wall.

The cold, pragmatic survivor was entirely gone. The Sovereign of Laws was running on pure, unfiltered, highly concentrated human spite. His 99% Error Accumulation, which he had been desperately suppressing to keep his form stable, began to actively simmer just beneath the surface of his black tactical suit.

The red runes carved into his chest flared with a blinding, aggressive heat.

”Hold on tight, Seattle,” Sebastian growled, his silver eyes burning like twin supernovas behind his cracked visor.

He reached into his pocket with two fingers, pulling out the buzzing, brilliant green orb that Prometheus had given him. He didn’t gently press it against the wall. He didn’t politely ask the firewall for permission.

Sebastian took a heavy, thudding step forward. He raised the green orb, fully preparing to violently smash the foundational code of the First Admin directly into the flawless face of the Core OS.

”Let’s see how much force a perfect world can take.”

—-

The bridge of solid white light felt entirely wrong beneath Sebastian’s combat boots. It didn’t have the satisfying, gritty crunch of dirt or the hard, reliable thud of stone. It felt like he was actively sprinting across the surface of a giant, vibrating smartphone screen.