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

It wasn’t black, oily digital sludge. It wasn’t green, pixelated static.

It was bright, crimson, actual human blood.

”Holy shit,” Sebastian wheezed, staring at the red drops.

The deletion of his nociception code—the hack that had kept him from feeling pain for months—was completely suppressed. The firewall was down. Every single phantom ache, every strained muscle, and every micro-fracture in his biological steel bones came rushing back with a horrific vengeance.

It hurt. It hurt so incredibly bad that his vision swam with dark spots. He hadn’t felt true, unfiltered physical pain like this since the very first day of the Great Merge.

But the pain wasn’t his primary concern.

”Valerie!” Sebastian gasped, raw panic flooding his system.

He scrambled onto his knees, his hands flying to his chest. When he had been a digital god, he had placed Valerie’s lifeless body into a localized stasis pocket of [Gravity Domain] near his heart. But his digital space had just violently collapsed. The stasis pocket didn’t exist anymore.

”Where are you? Where are you?!” he frantically patted his chest, his blood-stained gloves searching his torn coat.

He felt a heavy, warm weight resting inside the inner pocket of his leather jacket.

He unzipped the jacket with trembling fingers and reached inside.

He pulled out a perfectly spherical, flawless golden orb. It was the size of a large apple, radiating a soft, incredibly warm light that pushed back the dark, oily gloom of the Motherboard. It pulsed with a slow, steady, rhythmic heartbeat.

Because the digital pocket couldn’t exist in base reality, the infinite mana of the Sanctuary Core had condensed. It had forcefully converted her soul and her broken physical body into a tangible, physical hard-light crystal to protect her from the Hardware Level’s hostile environment. She was in a state of absolute, physical hibernation.

Sebastian let out a long, ragged exhale, slumping forward until his forehead touched the cold stone floor. He clutched the warm golden orb tightly to his chest, wrapping both of his hands around it.

”You’re okay, Seattle,” Sebastian whispered, his voice shaking. ”You’re okay. I got you. I’m right here.”

He knelt there for a long moment, just breathing, letting the warmth of the golden crystal seep into his aching, bruised ribs. It was the only clean, beautiful thing in an entire universe of grinding brass and rusted iron.

He carefully, gently slipped the golden orb back into the deep inner pocket of his leather coat, zipping it securely over his heart.

”Stay put, Princess,” he murmured. ”I just have to go find the manager and break his kneecaps.”

Sebastian slowly pushed himself up to his feet. His knees trembled slightly, the sheer weight of his own body feeling incredibly foreign without the Ethereal Plane’s stamina buffs to support him. He felt heavy. He felt fragile.

He looked down the sprawling, dark stone corridor ahead of him.

The path was narrow, suspended over a terrifying, lightless abyss of grinding, gnashing gears that stretched endlessly downward. The metal catwalk groaned and swayed under his combat boots.

He reached into his back pocket, intending to pull out his heavy, concrete-encrusted Earth Sword.

Nothing happened.

He patted his pocket again. He tried to mentally access his bottomless inventory, searching for a healing potion, a dagger, anything.

*BZZZT.*

A faint, pathetic gray prompt flickered in his vision.

[Inventory Access Denied. Digital Assets Offline.]

”Right,” Sebastian grunted, letting his hands drop to his sides. ”No magic pockets in the real world. Just me, my coat, and a very bad attitude.”

He took a step forward onto the metal catwalk.

*CREEEAAAK.*

The moment his boot applied weight to the rusted grating, the metal violently groaned. It wasn’t designed to hold a man whose muscles and bones had been permanently altered by thirty percent physical synchronization. He was a human, but his biological density was still closer to that of a tank.

The rusted bolts holding the catwalk to the brass pillar snapped with a loud, sharp crack.

The floor beneath him simply gave way.

”You have got to be fucking kidding me!” Sebastian yelled, his arms flailing as the catwalk dropped out from under him.

Gravity—real, unforgiving, 9.8 meters per second squared gravity—aggressively took hold.

He didn’t have his [Concept of Mass] to lower his weight. He didn’t have [Absolute Flight] to catch himself in the air.

Sebastian plummeted into the dark, lightless abyss, the deafening roar of the grinding, city-sized gears rushing up to meet him. He twisted violently in mid-air, wrapping his arms securely over his chest to protect the golden crystal hidden inside his coat, fully preparing to hit the ground with the grace of a dropped piano.

***

Falling through the dark, hyper-physical sky of the Motherboard was entirely different from falling in the Ethereal Plane. There was no atmospheric drag magically calculated to cushion his descent. There was just the roaring, deafening rush of stale, oil-choked air tearing past his ears as terminal velocity took over.

”Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” Sebastian yelled, the wind whipping the words right out of his mouth.

He plummeted past towering pillars of tarnished brass and massive, rotating iron gears that ground against each other with sparks the size of campfires. The heat radiating from the machinery was stifling.

He couldn’t fly. He couldn’t fold space. He was just a very dense, very angry man falling down a seemingly endless elevator shaft.

Below him, the oppressive darkness finally broke. A faint, flickering yellow light revealed a massive, flat surface rapidly approaching. It wasn’t a soft landing pad. It was a sprawling, reinforced glass skylight built into the roof of a lower industrial sector.

”Brace!” Sebastian hissed to himself.

He didn’t try to land on his feet. The sheer kinetic force of his hyper-dense body hitting solid ground from this height would drive his femurs straight up into his ribcage. He twisted his body violently in mid-air, curling inward and wrapping his arms securely across his chest to shield the inner pocket of his coat where Valerie’s golden crystal rested.

He aimed his broad back directly at the glass.

*KRA-SMASH!*

The impact was absolutely devastating.

Sebastian crashed straight through the thick, industrial glass skylight. The pane shattered into thousands of jagged, deadly shards that rained down alongside him.

He hit the cold, hard floor of dark stone and brass grating a fraction of a second later.

*THUD-CRACK!*

”GAAAAAH!”

Sebastian’s scream echoed through the dim, cavernous room. It was a wet, ragged sound of pure, unadulterated agony. The sickening crunch of his own bones snapping echoed loudly in his ears. The pain receptors in his nervous system, fully unregulated by software, exploded with a blinding, white-hot intensity that nearly made him black out on the spot.

He bounced once, skidding across the rough stone floor in a tangle of limbs and torn leather, tearing his skin open before finally sliding to a violent halt against a heavy iron pipe.

For a long, agonizing minute, the room was entirely silent except for the heavy, ragged sound of his own wheezing breath.

Sebastian lay on his side, his vision swimming with dark, fuzzy spots. Every single inch of his body screamed in protest.

”I literally... just regenerated that shoulder,” Sebastian groaned, spitting a thick glob of hot, metallic-tasting blood onto the floor. *SPLAT.*

He forced himself to move, gritting his teeth as fresh waves of fire shot through his torso. He slowly rolled onto his back and took inventory of the damage. At least three of his ribs were definitely snapped. His left arm throbbed with a deep, pulsating ache that told him it was fractured right down the radius.

He didn’t care about his own bones. He frantically reached into his torn coat with his trembling right hand, unzipping the inner pocket.

He pulled out the golden sphere.

It was perfectly intact. The hard-light crystal pulsed with a warm, steady, rhythmic glow, completely unfazed by the catastrophic crash.

Sebastian let out a long, shuddering sigh of relief, dropping his head back against the cold stone floor. ”Okay. You’re good. We’re good. Just taking the scenic route, Princess.”

He gently tucked the golden crystal back into the pocket, zipping it securely over his heart.

He forced himself to sit up, leaning heavily against the iron pipe. He looked around. He had crashed into a massive, circular processing chamber. The walls were lined with hundreds of thick, pulsing brass pipes that leaked black oil and hissing steam. The lighting was poor, provided only by flickering, caged utility bulbs that cast long, sinister shadows across the floor.

He needed to get moving. He needed to find the Prime Architects’ throne room.

But the crash hadn’t gone unnoticed.

*CLANK. WHIRRR. CLANK.*

Heavy, rhythmic, mechanical footsteps echoed from the dark corridors branching off the main chamber. The sound was accompanied by a wet, sickening, biological squelching noise.

Sebastian slowly pushed himself up to his feet, leaning his weight heavily on his right leg. He favored his fractured left arm, keeping it tucked close to his chest. He narrowed his silver-tinged eyes, staring into the gloom.

”Please tell me it’s just the janitor,” Sebastian muttered, spitting another mouthful of blood.

Three figures stepped out of the shadows and into the flickering yellow light.