The meteor wasn't an attack. It was a delivery.
As the colossal, burning rock screamed down from the heavens, threatening to boil the Sea of Storms and shatter my new sanctuary, I didn't see a threat. I saw a feast.
"Seraphina! Lyra! To the dome's apex!" I commanded. My voice, amplified by the city's ancient acoustics, was the word of a god.
They appeared at my side on the highest spire of Aeridor, their faces pale in the apocalyptic glow. Lyra looked terrified. Seraphina looked… hungry, a mad, ecstatic light in her eyes.
"The world's will sends its regards," I chuckled, my eyes fixed on the descending star. "How thoughtful."
I channeled the full power of the city's geothermal core, not into a shield, but into the Void-Eater's Hand. The obsidian gauntlet glowed, no longer black, but a deep, energy-saturated violet. A vast, translucent tendril of pure shadow, my will made manifest, erupted from my arm and shot up through the city's magical ward, punching through into the raging sea above.
It met the meteor head-on. There was no explosion. The tendril wrapped around the burning rock, and the 'Devour' function began on a scale that made draining Lin Feng feel like sipping tea.
The meteor's kinetic energy, its thermal energy, its latent celestial Aether—all of it was siphoned, consumed, and poured directly into my cultivation base. The sea around us flashed into steam, the pressure immense, but my will and my power were absolute.
My cultivation, already at the peak of Core Formation, shattered its limits.
A shadowy, infant-like form, an echo of my own soul, materialized behind me.
Nascent Soul Realm!
In a single, spectacular act of consumption, I had achieved a breakthrough that takes other geniuses centuries. The now-inert, cooled husk of the meteor, its power spent, crashed harmlessly into the sea floor miles away.
I had feasted on a falling star.
Lyra and Seraphina stared at me, their expressions a mixture of awe, terror, and something else—the profound, unshakeable understanding that they were in the presence of a being that was rapidly leaving the mortal coil behind.
"Now," I said, turning from the calming sea, "the real work begins."
Five years passed in the silent, timeless abyss of the Sunken City.
Five years of absolute, uninterrupted, glorious self-improvement.
The world above, for all I knew, had burned itself to ashes. I did not care. My kingdom was here, in the dark, with my two queens.
My cultivation soared. I pushed my Nascent Soul Realm to its peak, my power growing daily, fed by the city's endless energy and the tomes of forgotten lore in its libraries.
The dynamic of my little court settled into a strange, twisted domesticity. Lyra, her spirit broken but her mind intact, became the perfect consort. She managed the city, tending to its ancient systems, her presence a quiet, beautiful, and utterly submissive constant. The hatred was gone, replaced by a deep, complex dependency. She was a bird I had rescued from a storm, and she had forgotten she ever knew how to fly.
Seraphina was my mad oracle. Her mind, fractured by the chaos virus, oscillated between moments of babbling insanity and flashes of brilliant, cosmic insight. I would consult with her on the nature of the Architect, the fragments, the Overvoid. Her answers were riddles wrapped in madness, but they gave me more clues than the Sages' infuriatingly calm wisdom ever could.
And my System… my System, now that I was its undisputed Sovereign, had begun to evolve. It started generating quests based not on worldly events, but on my own, deep-seated whims and desires. They were… shameless.
The first one appeared on a quiet evening.
[SOVEREIGN'S WHIM QUEST: DATA ACQUISITION]
Description: The subject 'Lyra' has entered a period of vulnerability (bathing). Her mental and spiritual defenses are at their lowest. This presents a unique opportunity.
Objective: Observe the subject undetected for a period of no less than five minutes to gather data on her current psychological state and returning spiritual vitality.
Reward: +50 SP, Minor increase to 'Tactical Observation' skill.
I had to read it twice. A peeping quest. Generated by the cosmic engine of my own soul. I didn't feel shame. I felt a profound sense of amusement. My subconscious, it seemed, was as pragmatic and ruthless as my conscious mind.
That evening, I cloaked myself in [Shadow Stealth] and observed Lyra as she bathed in one of the city's naturally heated, bioluminescent pools. I watched, not with lust, but with the detached interest of a sovereign assessing his most valuable property. I noted the tension leaving her shoulders, the faint glimmer of a nascent spiritual energy beginning to recoalesce within her. She was healing. My presence, my control, was paradoxically allowing her to recover. The data was… useful.
The quests grew bolder.
[SOVEREIGN'S WHIM QUEST: STABILITY TEST]
Objective: Initiate a sudden, intimate physical stimulus with the subject 'Seraphina' during a moment of her lucidity. Kiss her.
Purpose: To gauge the resilience of her corrupted System to unexpected emotional input and record the resulting data fluctuations.
Reward: +150 SP, 'Data Packet: Chaos Virus Resilience'.
I found Seraphina staring at a star chart in the observatory. Her eyes were clear for once. I walked up to her, said nothing, and kissed her. The sensation was electric, a jolt of her chaotic energy meeting my abyssal calm. For a moment, her eyes cleared completely, a flash of the old, brilliant Seraphina looking out at me in shock. Then the madness returned, and she giggled, a wild, unhinged sound. The test was a success. The data was invaluable.
I was a king in my own paradise of power and beautiful, broken women. My ascent was assured.
But the world always finds a way to remind you that you are part of it. The twist came not from the outside world, but from the prize the heavens had delivered five years ago.
The husk of the meteor.
I hadn't just left it on the sea floor. I had retrieved it, a colossal sphere of strange, unidentifiable metal, and placed it in my Creation Engine, studying it, trying to understand its true nature.
On the fifth anniversary of my seclusion, it hatched.
A soft, cracking sound echoed through the forge. A web of light spread across the meteor's surface. With a final, gentle snap, it broke open like a geode.
There was no monster inside. No cosmic beast.
There was a small, humanoid construct, curled in a fetal position. It was about the size of a child, its body forged from a shimmering, silver-white metal I had never seen before. It didn't seem to be alive. It was a golem, an automaton.
I approached it cautiously, the Void-Eater's Hand humming with power. I reached out and touched its smooth, metallic head.
The moment I made contact, its eyes, two perfect sapphire lenses, snapped open. They did not look at me. They looked through me, at the Nexus Codex that lived in my soul.
A voice, soft, childlike, and impossibly ancient, echoed directly in my mind. It was not human. It was the sound of pure data, of pure logic.
And its first words sent a shockwave through my entire understanding of my own existence.
[Eidolon Nexus... Core Fragment... detected.] it stated, its voice devoid of emotion. [Hello, Administrator. It is a pleasure to finally meet you.]