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

Valerie stepped forward, her boots squelching in the thick mud. *SQUELCH.* She placed a gentle but firm hand on Sebastian’s arm, silently telling him to dial back the homicidal landlord routine.

”Stand up, Aelion,” Valerie said, her voice projecting with the clear, unyielding authority of a corporate CEO who was completely used to dealing with chaotic boardrooms. ”We don’t do the whole worship thing here. You’re on Earth. If you want to stay, you follow our rules.”

Aelion hesitated for a fraction of a second before slowly pushing himself up to his feet. The other nineteen Elves followed, shivering violently in the cool air, their teeth chattering audibly. *Clack-clack-clack.*

”Thank you... Lady Valerie,” Aelion murmured, bowing his head respectfully.

”Now,” Valerie crossed her arms over her oversized gray sweater. ”You said you followed the ripples of the final compile. You tracked us through the Juncture. How exactly did you do that without the System’s navigation interface?”

Aelion wiped a thick smear of mud off his cheek. ”When you deleted the Ethereal Plane’s core logic, you did not destroy magic. You unbound it. On our world, the High Cabal had hoarded all the localized mana, using the System’s levels to keep the lower cities powerless. When the stats vanished, the mana flooded back into the earth. It is raw. It is natural. Our seers felt the epicenter of the cosmic reset. We built the Star-Skimmer and sailed the natural dimensional currents to find you.”

”Yeah, well, your parking job is absolute shit,” Sebastian muttered, gesturing to the half-sunk, smoking wooden ship floating in the lake.

”The dimensional currents are incredibly unstable, Sebastian,” Aelion pleaded, taking a cautious step forward. ”That is why we came. We are not the only ones who felt the shift.”

Sebastian’s silver-tinged eyes narrowed. ”What do you mean?”

”When you restored the four thousand dead servers, you brought back billions of souls,” Aelion explained, his voice dropping into a grave, frightened whisper. ”Most are just confused survivors. But the warlords... the Outer Saints who survived the wipe... they did not lose their physical mutations or their armies. Without the System to keep them confined to their designated servers, the barriers between worlds are completely gone. Natural rifts are opening everywhere. It is total, unadulterated chaos out there.”

Sebastian let out a long, heavy breath, tilting his head back to look up at the darkening, purple sky.

He had saved the universe, but he had accidentally turned it into the Wild West. By removing the System’s rigid structure, he had essentially opened the borders of a multiverse filled with heavily armed, traumatized maniacs.

”Fuck,” Sebastian swore, running a hand through his messy black hair. ”I just wanted to sit on my couch.”

”We came to warn you,” Aelion continued, shivering as a cold gust of wind hit his wet clothes. ”And to beg for sanctuary. The armies of the old world will come looking for the one who stole their godhood. Earth is the new center of the cosmos. You are the target.”

”Let them come,” Wraith’s raspy voice suddenly cut through the air.

The assassin walked down the muddy bank, spinning a mundane, razor-sharp iron dagger between his fingers. He glared at the Elves with absolute suspicion. ”They bleed just like everyone else. Without their fancy admin codes, they’re just meat.”

”Wraith is right,” Galleon grunted, marching up beside him with a massive coil of thick hemp rope slung over his broad shoulder. ”We held off the Vanguard Syndicate. We can hold off a bunch of washed-up warlords. Now, are you pointy-eared freaks gonna help me haul your fancy kindling out of the drinking water, or are you just gonna stand there shivering?”

Aelion blinked, completely taken aback by the dwarf’s blunt disrespect. ”We... we are exhausted. Our mana reserves are entirely depleted.”

”Then use your backs!” Galleon roared, tossing the heavy rope directly at Aelion. *THUD.* The Elf barely caught it, staggering under the weight. ”Welcome to Earth, sparkles. Grab a line and start pulling!”

Valerie smirked, turning to look at Sebastian. ”See? We have a highly efficient welcoming committee.”

”I am going to start charging property tax,” Sebastian grumbled, rubbing his temples.

He watched as Galleon organized the freezing Elves into a makeshift towing crew. The dwarf waded waist-deep into the freezing lake, *SPLASH*, tying the thick ropes to the shattered hull of the galleon. He didn’t have his ’Super Strength’ stat anymore, but his natural dwarven biology made him built like a small tank.

”Heave!” Galleon bellowed.

The Elves groaned, digging their boots into the mud and pulling on the ropes. The massive, scorched wooden ship slowly, painfully began to drag against the muddy bottom of the lake. *CREAAAK... GRIND.* The sound of the splintered hull scraping against the rocks was deafening.

Wraith stood off to the side, his dark eyes scanning the treeline. He wasn’t pulling the rope. He was actively watching the shadows, completely paranoid that the Elves were just a distraction for a larger ambush.

”He’s never going to relax, is he?” Valerie asked softly, leaning against Sebastian’s arm.

”He spent his entire life in a meat grinder,” Sebastian replied, wrapping his arm around her waist. ”You can’t just turn off survival mode. It takes time.”

”And you?” Valerie looked up at him, her blue eyes searching his face. ”Are you going to be able to relax? Or are you going to spend the rest of your life waiting for the sky to crack open again?”

Sebastian looked down at her. He thought about the cold, sterile white light of the Genesis Protocol. He thought about the absolute, agonizing pain of his digital body tearing itself apart. He thought about the feeling of Valerie dying in his arms.

”I’m done waiting for things to happen,” Sebastian said, his voice dropping into a calm, deadly serious hum. ”If these warlords think they can come to my planet and start breaking my things, I’m going to introduce them to basic human physics. No magic. No glitches. Just a crowbar to the teeth.”

*CRACK!*

A loud snap echoed from the lake as one of the wooden masts on the galleon finally gave way, crashing into the water with a massive splash. The Elves shrieked, scrambling backward in the mud to avoid the flying debris.

”Watch your toes, you fragile twigs!” Galleon roared with laughter, perfectly at home in the chaos.

Sebastian sighed, feeling the tension in his shoulders finally start to ease just a fraction. It was messy. It was loud. It was incredibly annoying. But it was real.

”Come on,” Valerie smiled, grabbing his hand and pulling him away from the muddy bank. ”Let’s go back to the cabin. I think your steak is officially cold, but we can heat it up on the stove.”

”If Wraith tries to use his fire magic on the stove, I am going to throw him in the lake,” Sebastian warned as they walked up the dirt path toward the town gates.

”I’ll handle the stove,” Valerie promised, laughing. ”You just focus on eating your vegetables.”

”I am a grown man. I don’t need to eat vegetables.”

”You are a traumatized demigod who needs vitamins,” Valerie shot back, squeezing his hand. ”Don’t argue with the Mayor.”

Sebastian chuckled, a genuine, warm sound that felt foreign in his own throat. He looked back over his shoulder one last time. The sky was completely dark now, filled with a million brilliant, uncorrupted stars. The universe was vast, terrifying, and completely unpredictable.

But as long as he had his ugly orange couch and the woman holding his hand, he figured he could handle a few cosmic headaches.

—

The morning sun filtered through the small, dusty window of the cabin, casting warm, lazy beams of light across the wooden floorboards.

Sebastian lay face-down on the fluorescent orange and brown floral couch, entirely dead to the world. One of his legs hung off the edge, his bare foot resting against the floor. He was drooling slightly into the faded cushion, completely at peace.

*BANG! BANG! BANG!*

Someone pounded on the heavy wooden front door like they were trying to break it off the hinges.

”Fuck off,” Sebastian groaned into the couch cushion, not moving a single muscle. ”I am deceased. Leave a message at the tone.”

*BANG! BANG! BANG!*

”Boss! Open the door!” Wraith’s raspy, panicked voice muffled through the thick wood. ”We got a massive problem!”

Sebastian let out a long, agonizing sigh that rattled in his chest. He slowly pushed himself up, rubbing his eyes with the palms of his hands. Every joint in his body popped and cracked as he swung his legs off the couch. The reality of his thirty-percent physical synchronization meant his muscles were incredibly dense, but it also meant he woke up feeling incredibly stiff without the System’s automatic restorative buffs.

”I swear to god, if he found another aggressive carrot, I am going to strangle him,” Sebastian grumbled.

He shuffled across the living room in his gray sweatpants and a white t-shirt, yanking the front door open.