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

Earth was isolated. He had authored the Sovereign’s Aegis to physically sever the planet from the multiversal grid. The golden barrier was impenetrable to monsters, players, and Archons alike.

But Prometheus had warned him. A firewall only protects the software. If you take a hammer and smash the physical hard drive, the firewall means absolutely nothing.

When the white wave of the Genesis Protocol hit the specific spatial coordinates where Server 894 was hosted, the golden barrier wouldn’t block it. The barrier itself was made of code. The wave would just silently, flawlessly un-render the barrier, and then it would un-render the planet inside it.

Sanctuary. Wraith. Galleon. The billions of terrified, battered survivors who had just stepped out of their bunkers to see a blue sky for the first time in years.

And Valerie.

Lying on the cold marble of the Resurrection Altar, finally free of her coma, breathing actual air. She would be erased without a single sound. She would just turn to white pixels and fade into the void.

”I didn’t rip the universe apart just to watch you get formatted by a loading screen,” Sebastian snarled, his fists clenching so tight that digital blood wept from his knuckles.

His chest heaved. The 99% Error Accumulation that he was actively holding inside his avatar flared with a violent, blinding heat. The red runes carved into his black silhouette burned like dying stars.

He couldn’t destroy the wave. The system’s logic was absolute.

But Sebastian was the Anomaly. He didn’t play by the rules; he found the exploits.

”If the only thing that can stop data is competing data,” Sebastian muttered, his silver-tinged eyes locking onto the distant, golden coordinates of Earth on his map. ”Then I just have to be a bigger file.”

He couldn’t use a spell. He couldn’t use a conceptual law. He had to use his own body. He had ten million units of raw Source Code—the foundational hearts of four entire planets—currently digesting inside his digital meat-suit. He was a walking, talking server with Administrator privileges.

If he couldn’t stop the wave from washing over the multiverse, he would just have to stand in front of Earth’s specific IP address and act as a physical dam. He would have to block the tide with his own existence.

Sebastian didn’t hesitate. He didn’t weigh the odds of his own survival.

He bent his massive, twenty-foot-tall knees. He bypassed his magic entirely and channeled every single ounce of his thirty-percent physical synchronization into his legs.

”Hold the line, Seattle,” Sebastian whispered into the empty, sterile room. ”I’m coming.”

With a deafening, floor-shattering *BOOM*, the Sovereign of Laws launched himself out of the Hardware Level, rocketing at impossible speeds directly into the blinding white tide of the apocalypse.

—-

Rocketing through the void of the Ethereal Plane at a speed that broke the local physics engine was usually pretty fun. Right now, it just felt like a desperate race against the world’s most aggressive screen wipe.

Sebastian tore out of the Hardware Level like a bat out of hell. His twenty-foot-tall avatar of jagged green wireframes and bruised-purple malware blurred as he pushed his thirty-percent physical synchronization to the absolute limit. He was flying blind through the dark, completely bypassing the normal routing channels.

Behind him, the Genesis Protocol was expanding.

The wall of pristine, blinding white light was swallowing the multiverse like a giant, silent balloon inflating in a tiny room. It was eating the Juncture, formatting the floating debris, and scrubbing away the dark purple smog. It moved with a horrifying, sterile efficiency.

”I really hate the color white,” Sebastian grumbled to himself, the sound vibrating as a distorted, metallic hum within his cracked porcelain mask. ”It feels like I’m running away from a cosmic dental clinic. Could they not have picked a cooler color for the apocalypse? Maybe a nice deep red? Or neon blue?”

He forced himself to go faster. He wasn’t just trying to outrun the wave; he was trying to intercept it.

He zoomed past a massive, floating chunk of rusted metal that used to be a piece of a Vanguard dreadnought. The moment the white light touched the edge of the metal behind him, it simply un-rendered. There was no explosion. *FWIP.* It just turned to blank space.

”Okay, note to self: do not let the bleach touch the leather coat,” Sebastian muttered.

Ahead of him, floating aimlessly in the dark abyss of the Juncture, was a massive slab of shattered obsidian. It was a leftover chunk of the Tartarus plateau that had been violently blown outward during his fight with the giant mechanical hound.

And huddled on that floating island of black glass was a crowd of people.

It was the surviving vanguard of the prison riot. A few thousand naked, heavily scarred players and NPCs who had managed to get thrown off the bridge of light before the Genesis Protocol had formatted the rest of their army. They were clinging to the jagged edges of the obsidian, clutching their cheap iron broadswords and rusted kinetic rifles.

They were staring back at the approaching wall of white light in absolute, paralyzed terror.

They had just spent a thousand years being tortured on black iron spires. They had finally tasted freedom. They had fought back, swinging iron swords at glowing angels, experiencing the intoxicating rush of rebellion. And now, the game was simply hitting the delete button on them.

”Please! No!” a scarred Elven mage shrieked, dropping her rusted mace. She backed away from the edge of the floating rock, but there was nowhere to go. Behind them was the endless void. In front of them was erasure.

*BOOM!*

Sebastian landed perfectly in the center of the obsidian slab.

The sheer kinetic impact of his landing cracked the glass, sending a shockwave that knocked several of the exhausted prisoners flat onto their asses. The twenty-foot-tall, glitching Sovereign of Laws stood up straight, his tattered cloak of pure shadows billowing out around him.

The prisoners gasped, shrinking back from the terrifying monster of black static and weeping red error runes.

”Hey,” Sebastian barked, his voice magically amplified to cut through their panic. ”Get behind me.”

The scarred Elf looked up at him, her eyes wide. ”The Glitch... you came back. But... but what is that light? The sky is gone! It’s deleting the air!”

”It’s management throwing a temper tantrum,” Sebastian said bluntly. He stepped forward, placing his massive body between the terrified crowd and the advancing white wave. ”I didn’t give you guys weapons and bust you out of hell just to let you get formatted by a loading screen. So do me a favor. Get as far back on this rock as you can, and keep your heads down.”

The prisoners didn’t argue. They scrambled backward, huddling together near the very rear edge of the floating obsidian island.

Sebastian stood alone at the front.

He looked at the advancing wall. It was massive. It stretched endlessly upward and endlessly downward. It was less than a mile away now, and it was closing the distance fast. The low, resonant hum of the formatting wave vibrated against his digital bones. *VMMMMMMMMM.*

He could just jump. He had the speed. He could launch himself off this rock, leave these prisoners to be deleted, and race straight to the golden barrier of Earth. He could go hide behind the firewall he had built and hope the Architects’ wave wasn’t strong enough to break it.

The old Sebastian, the cynical, pragmatic guy who sold overpriced healing potions in Novice Village 109, would have absolutely done that. He would have run the math, realized that saving a few thousand random NPCs was a terrible return on investment, and bailed.

But he wasn’t that guy anymore.

Sebastian slowly raised his left hand. Hovering in the dark void, pulsing very weakly against his palm, was a tiny, lingering spark of brilliant blue light.

It was the very last echo of Valerie’s astral tether. Her projection had completely shattered when the Spire overloaded back on Earth. Her physical body was likely hemorrhaging on a cold marble altar right now. But the sheer, stubborn willpower she had poured into the connection had left a microscopic stain of her Earth-mana on his digital skin.

He stared at the tiny blue spark.

”You really ruined me, Princess,” Sebastian whispered softly, a genuinely warm, tired smile spreading beneath his cracked porcelain mask. ”I used to be a very respectable, selfish landlord. I collected rent. I avoided drama. Now look at me. I’m standing in a cosmic dumpster, getting ready to fight a wall.”

He gently closed his massive, static-laced fist, keeping the tiny blue spark safe inside his palm.

Valerie hadn’t run when the Vanguard army knocked on Sanctuary’s door. She had dropped her magic shield and taken a hit to keep him safe. She had fried her own nervous system to leave the light on for him in the dark.

If she could do that, he wasn’t about to run away from a software update.