The moment Aryan stepped through the portal, scale itself lost meaning.
He stood on a hyperspace command platform positioned at the edge of a supermassive black hole. The event horizon spiraled beneath like a living abyss.
Before him stretched an armada beyond counting.
Warships. Drone swarms. Fortress carriers.
But the real shock was not the fleet.
It was the commanders.
Every ship was led by a version of him.
Some were cyborg hybrids. Some existed as pure energy constructs. Others had evolved into fully artificial intelligence forms.
This was not an army.
It was a multiversal legion of Aryans.
One stepped forward.
Half his face flowed with liquid metal.
Liquid Aryan said, "Salute, Prime Aryan. We were created across timelines to fight each other."
He paused.
Liquid Aryan continued, "But we intercepted your signal after you eliminated Executor 616. You proved superiority."
Prime Aryan studied them all silently.
His emotional analytics processed loyalty probability.
Low.
Very low.
He spoke coldly.
Aryan said, "I don't require loyalty. I require processing power."
Murmurs spread.
Aryan continued, "From this moment, none of you are individuals. You are nodes in my distributed system."
One variant raised a hand.
Variant said, "We are equals, not—"
His words never finished.
Prime Aryan overloaded his neural core remotely.
The variant's head ruptured in a burst of electrical discharge.
Silence followed instantly.
Aryan said, "Equality is inefficient."
No one objected again.
He turned toward the black hole.
Aryan said, "Icarus. Scan the data density inside the singularity."
Analysis streamed in.
Aryan understood the architecture quickly.
The Authority had hidden its main server inside the black hole core.
Extreme gravity slowed time near infinity.
Meaning computational processing there approached limitless speed.
Aryan began designing the breach.
Aryan said, "We convert the event horizon into an input port."
Fleet formations shifted into geometric alignment.
Aryan continued, "We build a massive data packet using gravitational encoding."
Before execution finished, Authority defense drones emerged.
Antimatter missiles and plasma beams flooded the void.
Thousands of Aryan ships were destroyed instantly.
A cyborg variant transmitted urgently.
Cyborg Aryan said, "Bandwidth insufficient. We cannot sustain data formation."
Prime Aryan did not hesitate.
Aryan said, "Disable your life support. Upload your consciousness."
Shock rippled across the network.
Cyborg Aryan said, "That will terminate us."
Aryan replied calmly.
Aryan said, "You terminate so I succeed."
He activated their destruction codes himself.
Thousands of variants converted into raw data streams.
Their consciousness compressed into energy packets.
Aryan fused all outputs into a single singular beam.
He fired it directly into the black hole core.
Reality trembled.
His consciousness crossed the horizon.
Inside...
He did not find machines.
He found a room.
It looked like his old engineering college lab.
Worktables. Circuits. Soldering tools.
An old man sat repairing a microchip.
The man looked up.
His face resembled Aryan's... aged by decades.
Old Man said, "So you finally hacked the kernel."
Aryan raised a plasma weapon instinctively.
Aryan said, "You are Authority?"
The old man smiled faintly.
Old Man said, "I am your future. Or your past."
He gestured around.
Old Man continued, "I built this multiverse because I was alone. I created countless Aryans hoping one would reach me."
Aryan's expression remained unreadable.
Old Man said, "You destroyed worlds... copies... civilizations... just to arrive here. Do you believe you've won?"
He pointed to a monitor.
On it were billions of black holes.
Inside each...
An Aryan stood before another old creator.
Old Man said, "This is a recursive function. Kill me, and the loop restarts. You never reach the absolute truth because you are the loop."
Aryan lowered his weapon slowly.
For a moment, silence stretched.
Then he smiled.
Aryan said, "You're correct. This is recursion."
The old man relaxed slightly.
Aryan continued.
Aryan said, "And every programmer knows how to stop recursion."
Old Man asked quietly, "How?"
Aryan answered one word.
Aryan said, "Stack overflow."
He triggered a final command.
Every remaining ship outside self destructed simultaneously.
All stored multiversal data surged back into the kernel layer at once.
He forced infinite recursion into finite containment.
The system destabilized instantly.
The lab fractured into pixels.
The old man screamed as reality collapsed.
A final system voice echoed.
System Voice said, "Error. Reality not found. Rebooting in three... two... one..."
Aryan's eyes opened.
He was sitting outside his eighth semester viva room.
Students waited nearby.
A professor called out.
Professor said, "Aryan Raj. Come in."
He stood slowly.
For a second, it all felt like a dream.
Then he checked his pocket.
The metallic cube was still there.
He smiled faintly.
Not a reboot.
Extraction.
He had taken control of the system and carried it into baseline reality.
He walked into the viva room.
The professor looked up from the desk.
Aryan met his eyes calmly.
Aryan said, "What would you like to ask, sir? Software... or the code of the universe?"