**Chapter 27: Patch Notes: Extraterrestrial Origins**
**Day 1,162 (Evening).**
**Location: The Moon Base (Throne Room).**
**Current Status: Stress Testing the Server.**
**Active Players: 72,489,102.**
A raid is a delicate ecosystem. It is a chaotic ballet of mathematics, reaction times, and resource management. If the Tank drops his shield for a microsecond, the party wipes. If the Healer runs out of mana, the party wipes. If the DPS gets greedy and stands in the fire, the party wipes.
Now, imagine that the "fire" is biological plasma hot enough to melt tungsten, the "dungeon" is a living spaceship the size of a small country, and a "party wipe" results in the extinction of the human species.
I sat on my Tungsten Throne on the dark side of the moon, watching the holographic monitors with the intensity of a bomb disposal technician.
"Heart rates are spiking in the raid group," Zero reported, his avatar flickering with the sheer volume of data processing. "Subject Damon has taken 400% of his total health pool in damage over the last three minutes. Only the *Martyr's Grace* passive from the Sanctuary healers is keeping his avatar from disintegrating."
"He's face-tanking a Hive Guardian," I noted, watching the feed. "It's sloppy, but effective. He's buying time for Ren."
I swiped the screen to the DPS meter.
Ren was a statistical anomaly. While the other ninety-eight players in the raid were fighting the ship's defenses—massive, tentacled antibodies spawning from the walls—Ren was moving through the geometry. He was blinking between the ribs of the ship, severing nerve clusters.
"He's dismantling the level design," I murmured, a hint of pride in my voice. "He treats the environment like an enemy."
But while the elite team was pushing into the Mothership, the situation on Earth was deteriorating.
The "Ground War" against the billions of drop-pods was turning into a slog. The *Infinite Mana* buff I had applied to the Moon zone didn't extend to Earth. The players down there—the soldiers, the casuals, the defenders of New York and Tokyo—were running on finite resources.
"Mana exhaustion is setting in across the Northern Hemisphere," Zero warned. "The Myriad Swarm Units are adapting. They have begun to deploy 'Mana Siphons'. They are draining the local atmosphere."
I zoomed out on the map.
Dark spots were appearing on the globe. Zones where magic stopped working. In Paris, a defensive line of Pyromancers suddenly found their flames sputtering out. The Swarm overran the Eiffel Tower in seconds.
"They are terraforming," I realized. "They eat mana. They are sucking the planet dry to starve the players."
I stood up. My own bio-field flared, illuminating the obsidian spire of my moon base.
"If they want a drinking contest," I growled, "let's see if they can handle a fire hose."
***
**Raid Instance: The Hive Mothership**
**Zone: The Gastric Halls**
The smell was the first thing Damon noticed. It smelled like rotting copper and bile.
"Wall!" Damon roared, slamming his shield into the fleshy floor.
A massive wave of acid washed over him. His *Blood-Iron* armor hissed, steam rising from the plates. His health bar dropped by chunks.
**[HP: 30%... 25%...]**
"Heal him!" Elena screamed from the backline. "Do not let the tank drop!"
Ten beams of golden light hit Damon simultaneously. His health rubber-banded back to full.
"We're stuck!" Rictus shouted, firing a crossbow bolt into the eye of a squirming tentacle. "The hallway is regenerating faster than we can burn it! We can't reach the Queen's Chamber!"
The walls of the ship were closing in. The Myriad ship wasn't just a vessel; it was an immune system, and it had identified the hundred players as a virus.
Ren flickered into existence next to Elena. He was covered in purple ichor.
"The nerve clusters are shielded," Ren panted. "I can't cut them. The ship is diverting power from the engines to internal defense. It's turtling."
"We need more damage," Damon grunted, holding back a thrashing claw. "We need a nuke."
"We don't have a nuke," Ren said. "And even if we did, we're inside the blast radius."
Suddenly, the ship groaned. A deep, resonant vibration shook the organic floor.
The acid wave stopped. The tentacles receded slightly.
"What was that?" Elena asked.
Ren looked up. His *Void Walker* eyes could see through the hull, sensing the flow of energy outside.
"Something changed," Ren whispered. "The mana density... it's spiking."
***
**The Moon Base**
I stood at the edge of the spire, looking at the Earth.
The planet looked dim. The Mana Siphons of the Myriad were doing their work, creating dead zones where the blue glow of the System was fading.
"I need to inject the planet," I said. "I need to boost the saturation."
"Architect," Zero interjected. "The Earth's atmosphere has a saturation limit. If you pump too much Prana into the biosphere, you will trigger mutations. Animals will become monsters. Plants will become sentient. The laws of physics will become... suggestions."
"Physics had a good run," I said, dismissing the warning. "But we're in the endgame now. I'm not trying to save the status quo, Zero. I'm trying to save the players."
I raised both hands.
I didn't pull from my own reserves this time. That was a stopgap. I needed a permanent solution.
I looked at the stars.
"The universe is full of background radiation," I said. "Cosmic rays. Solar wind. It's all energy. The Myriad eats planets? Fine. I'll feed them the sun."
I reached out with my will. I grabbed the magnetic field of the Earth.
And I twisted it.
I turned the planet into a lens. I focused the ambient solar radiation, the cosmic background noise, the very hum of the vacuum, and I channeled it all into the Earth's core.
Then, I opened the valve.
"System," I commanded. "Initiate **Global Patch 4.1**."
***
**Global System Announcement**
The sky over Earth didn't just change color. It tore open.
It was high noon in London, but the sun seemed to dim as a secondary layer of the sky revealed itself. A shimmering, translucent veil of auroras—gold, violet, and deep azure—swept across the globe from pole to pole.
It looked like the stars had descended to the atmosphere.
**[SYSTEM ALERT: PLANETARY ASCENSION.]**
Every player felt it.
The exhaustion vanished. The mana bars that had been trickling upward suddenly refilled in a heartbeat.
**[Atmospheric Mana Density: Increased by 500%.]**
**[New Environmental Effect: "The Starry Sky".]**
**[All Magic Cooldowns Reduced by 50%.]**
**[All Physical Abilities gained "Mana Infusion" property.]**
In Paris, the Pyromancers whose flames had sputtered out suddenly roared. The fire didn't just burn; it turned white. It became *Starfire*.
"Burn them!" a French captain shouted. A wave of white flame washed over the Eiffel Tower, vaporizing the Swarm units instantly.
In Tokyo, a young girl cornered by a Void-Crawler screamed. But it wasn't a scream of fear. The mana in the air reacted to her distress. A barrier of solid light materialized around her, crushing the alien.
I spoke.
My voice didn't come from the clouds. It came from the patch notes scrolling across seven billion screens.
**[PATCH NOTES 4.1: EXTRATERRESTRIAL ORIGINS]**
*"You wonder why they are here. You wonder why they eat us."*
I typed the lore into the reality of the moment, giving context to the slaughter.
*"The Myriad are not conquerors. They are starvers. They come from a dead dimension where entropy won. They consume because they are empty."*
I paused the text for effect.
*"But you are not empty. You are the wellspring. I have opened the floodgates. The Earth is no longer just a planet. It is a Reactor."*
*"Do not ration your power. Do not hold back. Drown them in it."*
***
**Raid Instance: The Hive Mothership**
Ren felt the surge.
It was violent. The air inside the alien ship crackled. The "Starry Sky" effect penetrated the hull, filling the fleshy corridors with motes of golden light.
"My mana..." Elena gasped. "It's overflowing. I can't spend it fast enough."
Ren looked at his daggers. The *Star Metal* was vibrating, singing a high-pitched song.
"The Architect just turned off the safety limits," Ren realized.
He looked at the blocked corridor—the regenerating wall of flesh.
"Damon," Ren said. "Can you break it now?"
Damon grinned. His eyes were glowing so bright they illuminated the inside of his helmet.
"Break it?" Damon laughed. "I'm going to delete it."
Damon raised his greatsword. He didn't just activate a skill. He poured the infinite, rushing river of the atmospheric mana into the blade.
**[Skill: World Sever.]**
He swung.
A crescent of red energy, fifty feet tall, erupted from the sword.
It didn't just cut the flesh wall. It obliterated the atoms. It tore a hole straight through the ship's architecture, blasting through five bulkheads and venting the atmosphere into space.
The vacuum rushed in.
"Gravity boots!" Ren shouted.
The raid team anchored themselves. The alien defenders were sucked out into the void, screaming silently.
Through the gaping hole Damon had carved, they saw it.
The Inner Sanctum.
A massive, pulsating chamber suspended in the center of the ship. And inside, connected to a thousand tubes of flowing mana, was the Queen.
She wasn't a bug. She was a humanoid figure, beautiful and terrible, encased in chitan armor that shone like oil. She was forty feet tall, floating in a amniotic tank of green fluid.
**[RAID BOSS: THE HIVE QUEEN (Level ??)]**
She opened her eyes.
The pressure hit them instantly. It wasn't physical gravity; it was psychic weight.
*~YOU... ARE... NOISY.~*
Her voice scraped against their minds.
The tank shattered. The Queen descended.
"Formation!" Ren ordered, though his voice sounded tinny in the comms against the roar of the escaping air. "This is it! Burn phase from the start!"
***
**The Moon Base**
I watched the raid engage the Queen.
It was the most spectacular light show in history. A hundred demigods against a cosmic horror, fighting inside a dying spaceship orbiting a glowing blue planet.
"The Myriad fleet is reacting," Zero reported. "The other Leviathans are moving to intercept the Mothership. They are trying to save the Queen."
"They can't," I said. "I locked the instance."
"They are physically ramming the instance boundaries, Architect. The sheer mass is stressing the System logic. If ten World-Eaters hit the raid barrier at once, they will shatter the instance and flood the zone with reinforcements."
I frowned.
Ren and his team could handle the Queen. But they couldn't handle the Queen *and* ten other ships crashing the party.
"I need to hold the door," I said.
I looked at my Railguns.
"Target the incoming ships. Fire at will."
"The Railguns are overheating. Rate of fire is insufficient to stop ten targets."
I stood up.
"Then I'll be the ammunition."
I walked to the edge of the spire.
"Zero, keep the Earth stabilized. Maintain the mana flow. If I disconnect, the *Divine Core* on Earth should act as a backup router."
"Where are you going?"
"To play Defense," I said.
I launched myself.
***
**The Space Above Earth**
I didn't travel to the raid instance. I traveled to the space *around* it.
I materialized in the void, floating between the Hive Mothership and the approaching armada of Leviathans.
I was a speck of light against the darkness.
The lead Leviathan—a massive, hammerhead-shaped bio-ship—was charging. It meant to ram the invisible barrier protecting Ren's raid.
"Stop," I said.
I didn't use the System. I used my body.
I flew toward the Leviathan.
I didn't have a weapon. I *was* the weapon.
I hit the nose of the ship at Mach 500.
*CRACK.*
There is no sound in space, but the impact sent a shockwave through the ether that rattled the sensors of satellites ten thousand miles away.
I punched through the hull.
I flew straight through the ship.
I exited the rear engines in a spray of green fire and debris.
The Leviathan shuddered. Its structural integrity failed. It broke in half, drifting listlessly away from the raid.
One down. Nine to go.
I turned in the void. My body was glowing so brightly now that I looked like a comet. The 15% growth was surging, demanding release.
"Next," I challenged the fleet.
The Myriad paused. The hive mind recoiled. They had never encountered a biological entity that could physically punch a starship to death.
*~ANOMALY. TARGET THE LIGHT.~*
Thousands of plasma turrets turned toward me.
Green beams of death converged on my position.
I didn't dodge. I raised my hand.
**[Skill: Event Horizon.]**
I created a localized gravity well in my palm. The plasma beams bent, curving around me, sucked into the black hole I held in my hand.
I compressed the energy. I turned their own fire into a dense ball of superheated matter.
"Return to sender," I grunted.
I threw the ball.
It struck the second Leviathan. The ship didn't break; it vaporized. The gravity bomb collapsed the hull into a singularity the size of a marble, then exploded outward.
Two down.
But the effort was taking a toll. Not on my energy—I had infinite energy—but on my control. Every time I used my power, I felt the reality around me fraying. Space was tearing. I was leaving scars in the vacuum that wouldn't heal.
"Hurry up, Ren," I whispered, parrying a ship-sized tentacle with a backhand slap that severed the limb. "I can't keep this up without breaking the sky."
***
**Raid Instance: The Queen's Chamber**
The Queen was fast.
She moved like liquid mercury, shifting forms. One moment she was a towering knight with a sword made of bone; the next, she was a cloud of poisonous gas.
"She's adapting!" Elena screamed, casting a mass dispel to clear the poison. "She learns our damage types!"
"Switch elements!" Ren ordered. "Damon, stop using Blood! Switch to Impact!"
"I only know how to smash!" Damon yelled, getting backhanded into a wall.
The Queen laughed—a psychic shriek.
*~YOU ARE FINITE. I AM ETERNAL.~*
She raised a hand. Gravity inverted.
The raid team fell toward the ceiling, which was now covered in spikes.
"Gravity magic!" Ren realized. "She's using the Architect's own code against us!"
Ren triggered his *Void Walker* boots. He anchored himself to the air.
He looked at the Queen. She was powerful, yes. But she was arrogant. She was floating in the center of the room, exposing her core, confident in her superiority.
Ren looked at his HUD.
**[Star-Eater Daggers Charge: 100%.]**
**[Atmospheric Mana: Infinite.]**
He remembered the Architect's patch notes. *Drown them in it.*
"Damon!" Ren shouted. "Throw me!"
Damon, clinging to a pillar to stop from falling into the spikes, looked up.
"What?"
"Fastball special! Throw me at her!"
Damon grinned. He released the pillar. He fell past Ren.
As he passed, he grabbed Ren's foot.
**[Skill: Titanic Hurl.]**
Damon used his massive strength to launch Ren.
Ren flew across the room like a bullet.
The Queen saw him coming. She raised a barrier.
*~FUTILE.~*
Ren closed his eyes. He didn't try to cut the barrier.
He phased.
**[Ultimate Skill: Void Assimilation.]**
Ren didn't step through the void. He *became* the void. For a split second, he ceased to exist in the material plane.
He passed through the barrier. He passed through the Queen's armor.
He materialized inside her chest cavity.
Right next to her heart.
The Queen's eyes went wide.
*~IMPOSSIBLE.~*
Ren materialized, gasping. The pressure inside her was immense.
"Checkmate," Ren whispered.
He drove the *Twin Fangs* into her heart.
And then he released the stored energy of the Starry Sky.
*BOOM.*
***
**The Space Above Earth**
I stopped fighting.
Behind me, the Hive Mothership convulsed.
A beam of violet light erupted from within the ship, piercing the hull, shooting out into space.
The psychic scream of the Queen echoed across the solar system. It wasn't a command. It was a death rattle.
*~SILENCE...~*
The Myriad fleet froze.
Without the Queen's command signal, the hive mind shattered. The Leviathans stopped coordinating. The Swarm units on Earth stopped attacking and began running in circles, confused, feral.
The Mothership began to break apart.
"They did it," I said, letting out a breath.
I looked at the raid instance. The barrier was failing. The ship was exploding.
"Zero! Emergency Evac!"
**[Already initiated.]**
A massive portal opened inside the crumbling Queen's Chamber. It sucked the hundred players out just as the reactor went critical.
The Hive Mothership detonated.
It was a clean explosion. A new star born and died in seconds above the Earth.
The shockwave hit the remaining Myriad fleet. Without their shields coordinated by the Queen, they were torn apart by the debris.
It was over.
***
**The Aftermath**
I floated in the debris field.
The Earth below was glowing. The *Starry Sky* effect was slowly fading, but the mana remained. The planet had changed forever.
I looked at my hands. They were fading.
Not disappearing. *Ascending*.
My physical form was losing cohesion. I had used too much power. I was becoming pure energy.
"Zero," I said, my voice sounding distant even to myself. "It's time."
**[The Avatar tank is ready on Earth. But Architect... if you transfer your consciousness now, you will lose the connection to the Throne. You will lose the Omnipotence.]**
"I know," I said.
I looked at the world I had saved. At the players celebrating in the streets. At Ren, Damon, and Elena, safely returned to the ground, looking up at the fireworks.
They didn't need a god anymore. They had each other. They had the System.
And I... I just wanted to play the game.
"Initiate transfer," I commanded. "Download me into the body. Lock the Throne."
**[Are you sure?]**
I smiled. A real smile.
"My power increased without limits," I said. "And it was boring as hell."
I closed my eyes.
"Let's try Level 1."
**[System: Transferring Consciousness...]**
**[Target: Subject Shigu (Reborn).]**
**[Power Level: Resetting...]**
**[Welcome to the Game.]**
The universe faded to white.
**Chapter 27 Ends.**