The game had just become a bloodsport.
My secret, meticulous plan to play a long game of domination and eternal stalemate was now a pile of smoking ashes. The Game Masters, in their infinite, bored wisdom, had just put a giant, glowing target on the back of every Main Core user in the multiverse and fired a starting pistol.
The race was on. And the finish line was a date with either godhood or eternal, mindless servitude.
"Fuck," I said, the word a simple, profound prayer to the uncaring cosmos.
The map in my mind, once a tool of private strategy, was now a public leaderboard. I could see them all. My own icon, a sovereign crown of chaos and black fire, here on Floor 77. The Aethernova Codex, Silvana's cold, blue flame, burning on Floor 2. The Primeval Edict, a searing, silver sword, now moving at an incredible speed through the void, heading towards the "top" of the Tower. And the ghost of my past, the Seraphina-Kaelen entity, its golden icon now officially marked as the holder of the 'Eidolon Nexus', flickering with vengeful energy on the new Ground Floor of Aethelgard.
Five of the seven were accounted for. The last two... they were still out there, hidden in the vastness of the Tower, their locations now revealed for all of us to see.
This changed everything. My alliance with Lia was no longer just about consolidating power. It was about raw, brutal speed.
My communication link to her was still open. Lia. Report. What is your status?
I have reached the Second Floor, Sovereign, her telepathic voice was a calm island in my storm of renewed purpose. Silvana's forces are in disarray after her defeat in the Arena. The city of Nocturne is a power vacuum. My arrival, as the Warden, has been… noted.
Your mission has changed, I commanded, my thoughts sharp and clear. The alliance offer to Silvana is now a secondary objective. Your new primary objective is to find the nearest revealed fragment. The 'Watcher's' data mentioned another Main Core user here, in the Tower. Where is he?
There was a pause as Lia's Guardian-consciousness accessed the Tower's newly public data stream. The sixth fragment… she sent, a note of something—surprise? awe?—in her voice. It is not just on this floor, Sovereign. It is in this city. It is the 'Chronaeternal Engine'. The heart of The Champion of the Eternal Arena.
My blood ran cold. The Champion I had defeated, the god of time whose will I had broken... the Tower had reset him. He was back. Defeated, but not destroyed. And he was here, on Floor 2.
His location is the 'Clockwork Heart', the central chronometer of Nocturne, Lia reported. He is the new, secret master of the Cogwork Consortium. And Silvana… she is already moving to intercept him.
Of course she was. The race had begun.
"Hold your position," I commanded Lia. "Do not engage. Observe."
I cut the link. I was on the 77th floor. They were on the 2nd. The distance was immense. Even for me, it would take time to travel. Time I did not have.
I needed to end this now.
I stood in the silent, dead throne room of the Lich King. I had the power of six Main Cores within my grasp. I had the allegiance of a Warden. I had armies, empires.
And I had a promise to keep.
I opened the creation engine. I looked at the new, shining icon on my interface. The Sovereign's Sanctum. My own, private, baby universe.
And I made a choice.
I was not going to race Silvana to the Second Floor. I was not going to fight a long, protracted war across seventy-five levels of reality.
I was going to bring the entire, fucking game to me.
[SOVEREIGN'S DECREE INITIATED]
[Target: 'The Sovereign's Sanctum' (Pocket Dimension - Tier 1).]
[Command: 'CONSUME'.]
It was an act of pure, magnificent insanity. I was not going to build my new home. I was going to turn it into a bomb.
I began to pour my will, my power, my authority over Chaos, Time, Law, and Space, into the nascent universe. But I was not giving it laws. I was not giving it form.
I was turning it into a conceptual black hole. A gravity well for reality itself.
[Are you sure, Administrator?] Unit 734's voice was a whisper of digital caution in my mind. [This action is irreversible. You are creating a 'Nexus Event'. You will forcibly pull every Main Core fragment, and their Administrators, to your current location. You will be starting the final battle, here and now, on your own terms. But you will also be drawing the undivided attention of every cosmic power in existence. The Architect. The Static. The Game Masters. All of them.]
"Good," I said, a slow, bloodthirsty smile spreading across my face. "I'm tired of playing hide-and-seek. Let them come. Let them all come."
I pushed my will into the Sanctum.
The effect was not an explosion. It was an inhalation.
The entire Necropolis of the 77th floor, the continent of bone and sorrow, began to groan, to bend, the very fabric of its space-time warping, being pulled towards the single, screaming point of conceptual gravity that was me.
On the Second Floor, Lia and Silvana and the newly-reborn Champion would feel it. A violent, irresistible summons.
On the new Ground Floor of Aethelgard, the Seraphina-Ghost and her golden golem would feel it.
The Primeval Edict, hurtling through the void on its eternal hunt, would feel it.
I was not just inviting them to a party. I was yanking on their chains and dragging them, kicking and screaming, to my execution ground.
The final battle for the fate of the Omnistructure was not going to be a race. It was going to be a cage match. And I had just built the cage.
But as the world began to warp and tear around me, a final, chilling twist emerged. A new presence.
It wasn't a player. It wasn't a god. It was something else. Something that had been drawn here not by the fragments, but by the sheer, raw, conceptual power of my 'Nexus Event'.
It was the Lich King. The one I had defeated. His soul had been erased, his System consumed. But his body, the physical vessel of the transmigrator from another universe, remained.
And it was now inhabited.
A new, feminine, and utterly alien consciousness looked out at me from his eyes. She was beautiful, ethereal, and her aura was one of pure, unadulterated magical power that dwarfed anything I had ever felt before. She was not a player. She was not a god of the Tower. She was something outside the game.
[CRITICAL ALERT,] my System screamed, its voice laced with a digital terror I had never heard before. [A 'World-Breaker' of the highest order has crossed into this reality, using the unstable energy of your Nexus Event as a bridge.]
[Her designation is 'The Witch of Endless Ends'.]
[Her System is not a fragment. It is a complete, fully-realized Omnistructure from a rival System-Verse.]
[And her first, primary objective upon entering a new reality is always the same.]
[OBJECTIVE: IDENTIFY AND CONSUME THE MOST POWERFUL NATIVE ANOMALY TO ESTABLISH DOMINANCE.]
[Congratulations, Administrator. You have just summoned your own, personal, multiversal predator.]