**Chapter 43: The Zorgon Commander**
**Day 1,187.**
**Location: Low Earth Orbit – Bridge of the Zorgon Dreadnought *Obsidian Star*.**
**Current Status: Cognitive Dissonance.**
**Mood: Existential Denial.**
General Xar of the Zorgon Hegemony did not possess the biological capacity for fear. His species had edited that particular chemical defect out of their genome four thousand cycles ago. Fear was inefficient. It caused tremors in aiming limbs and hesitation in tactical algorithms.
Instead of fear, Xar felt a cold, jagged error in his processing core.
He stood on the bridge of the *Obsidian Star*, the last remaining Heavy Dreadnought of the invasion fleet. Around him, the holographic displays were screaming in a cacophony of red warning lights.
"Report," Xar commanded, his voice a synthesized grind of metal on gravel.
"Casualties at sixty-eight percent," a sub-officer drone chattered, its mandibles clicking furiously against a console. "The flagship *World Ender* has been... erased. The Third and Fourth Frigate squadrons have retreated to the Oort Cloud. The blockade is broken."
Xar stared at the main viewscreen. He looked at the blue-and-green marble floating in the void. It looked so fragile. By all stellar metrics, it was a Class-1 primitive civilization. They burned fossil fuels. They warred over dirt. They hadn't even mastered faster-than-light travel.
And yet, a few moments ago, a biological entity—a *human*—had physically picked up a four-million-ton destroyer and thrown it like a spear, creating a kinetic impact that defied three separate laws of thermodynamics.
"Replay the impact," Xar ordered.
The screen flickered. He watched the golden streak. He watched the *Scourge* slam into the Extinction Lance. He saw the impossible energy readings.
"It is a trick," Xar murmured. "A projected illusion. Hard-light technology masking a hidden planetary defense battery."
"General," the sub-officer hesitated. "The energy signature came from a single biological source. The readings match the entity designated as 'The Architect'."
Xar slammed a fist onto his command console, denting the tritanium alloy.
"Impossible! Biology has limits. Flesh burns. Bone snaps. Muscles tear. No organic creates force equivalent to a supernova without disintegrating."
He was a creature of logic. The Zorgon Empire had conquered six galaxies by adhering to the rigid, immutable laws of physics. They won because they had better math, better armor, and bigger guns.
Earth was breaking the rules.
And General Xar, a veteran of a thousand campaigns, refused to flee from a glitch.
"Cancel the retreat order," Xar said.
The bridge went silent. The drones stopped typing.
"General?" the sub-officer asked. "The logic engines calculate a ninety-nine percent probability of total fleet annihilation if we re-engage."
"We do not re-engage the fleet," Xar corrected, his four eyes narrowing. "The humans are fighting with chaos. Magic. System anomalies. If we run now, we admit that logic has failed. We admit that the universe is broken."
He tapped a sequence into his personal armory interface. His armor, a hulking exoskeleton of black void-steel and plasma conduits, began to pressurize.
"I will go down there," Xar stated. "I will challenge their strongest warrior. I will dissect him. I will find the battery, the hidden tech, the *trick* behind their power. And I will expose it."
"You are going to the surface?"
"Prepare my drop pod," Xar growled, grabbing his energy lance—a weapon that hummed with the power of a contained neutron star. "Set coordinates for the highest concentration of enemy power. I am going to correct this error personally."
***
**The Descent**
**Location: 30,000 Feet above the Atlantic.**
**Player: Shigu (The Architect).**
I was falling. The wind whipped past me, tearing at my clothes, but my focus was elsewhere.
I was staring at a blue system window floating in front of my face.
**[Incoming Transmission: Wideband Frequency.]**
**[Source: Zorgon Dreadnought *Obsidian Star*.]**
"Oh, for the love of..." I sighed, rolling my eyes. "Can't they take a hint?"
A holographic projection flickered into existence in the sky next to me. It was a giant, ugly alien face. Four eyes, mandibles, and enough cybernetic implants to stock a RadioShack.
**"CITIZENS OF EARTH,"** the voice boomed, overriding every speaker, phone, and headset on the planet. **"I AM GENERAL XAR. YOUR TRICKS DO NOT IMPRESS ME. YOUR PHYSICS ARE A LIE."**
I adjusted my trajectory, angling my fall slightly to the east. "Zero, mute him."
**[I cannot, Architect. He is broadcasting on an analog frequency. He is shouting very loudly.]**
**"I DEMAND A TRIAL BY COMBAT,"** Xar continued. **"SEND ME YOUR STRONGEST. IF YOU DEFEAT ME, THE FLEET LEAVES FOREVER. IF I WIN, I GLASS YOUR CITIES."**
I groaned. "The 'Honorable Duel' trope? Now? I have a Void Lord waking up in the hot tub downstairs, and this guy wants to play gladiators?"
I looked down at the ocean. The purple light from the temple was getting brighter. The water was starting to bubble. Guest_01 was down there, checking his watch, waiting for the apocalypse.
If I stopped to fight Xar, I'd lose ten minutes. In ten minutes, the Void Lord would be fully manifested, and I really didn't want to fight a cosmic horror while worrying about collateral damage in New York.
I needed a champion.
"Zero," I said. "Where is Ren?"
**[Ren has just respawned at the Central Park Soul Obelisk. Status: Disoriented. Debuff: Resurrection Sickness (50% Stat Reduction for 10 Minutes).]**
"Clear the debuff," I commanded. "And teleport him to Xar's landing zone."
**[The landing zone is Times Square. Are you sure? Ren is a Rogue. Xar is a Warlord Class.]**
"Ren is a gamer," I said, a small smile touching my lips. "Xar is playing X-COM. Ren is playing *Devil May Cry*. It's a bad matchup for the alien."
I tapped my earpiece.
"Ren. Wake up, Sleeping Beauty."
***
**Times Square**
**Location: New York City.**
**Status: Respawned.**
**Player: Ren (Level 62 Void Walker).**
Dying hurts. Even in the System.
It wasn't the pain of the impact—that was instantaneous. It was the sensation of being deleted. The moment where your consciousness hits a wall of static, and then you're suddenly standing in a graveyard in Central Park, gasping for air, checking your hands to make sure they're still there.
Ren leaned against a shattered statue, heaving. Beside him, Damon materialized in a flash of blue light.
"I think I swallowed my tongue," Damon wheezed, checking his inventory. "Hey! My shield durability is at zero! Do you know how much it costs to repair Legendary grade gear?"
"Stop whining," Ren spat, checking his daggers. "We just rode a spaceship into a sun. That's a hell of a story."
Suddenly, a golden light washed over them. The heavy, sluggish feeling in Ren's limbs—the Resurrection Sickness—evaporated instantly. Strength flooded back into his muscles.
*Ping.*
**[System Quest: The Duel.]**
**[Objective: Defeat General Xar.]**
**[Reward: Legendary Title - "Kingslayer".]**
**[Note from Admin: "I'm busy. Handle this. Don't embarrass me."]**
"He's outsourcing," Damon laughed. "Typical."
"Where's the target?" Ren asked.
*BOOM.*
A meteor of black metal slammed into the center of Times Square, five blocks away. The shockwave blew out the few remaining windows in the electronic billboards. Dust and debris rolled down Broadway.
From the crater, a mechanical hiss sounded. A massive figure stepped out.
Ren grinned. He spun his daggers, the **[Void Fangs]**, in his hands.
"Stay here, Damon," Ren said. "This one's a solo instance."
"Fine," the tank grunted, sitting down on a bench. "I'll watch the stream."
Ren vanished.
***
**The Duel**
General Xar stepped out of his drop pod. Times Square was a canyon of glass and flashing lights. Even in the chaos, the giant screens were still playing ads for soda and insurance, flickering glitchy images over the destruction.
"Primitive," Xar scoffed. "Excessive sensory input. Inefficient."
He scanned the area. His optical sensors cycled through thermal, ultraviolet, and motion tracking.
"WHERE IS THE ARCHITECT?" Xar roared, his voice amplified by his suit speakers. "I CHALLENGED THE GOD. NOT HIS PETS."
"He's busy," a voice whispered.
It didn't come from in front of him. It came from right next to his auditory receptor.
Xar spun, his plasma lance swinging in a deadly arc that cleaved a nearby lamppost in half.
Nothing was there.
"Stealth technology," Xar analyzed. "Light refraction fields."
He activated his suit's Omni-Scanner. A pulse of red laser light swept out in a sphere.
There. A distortion in the air, ten meters to the left.
"TARGET ACQUIRED."
Xar didn't hesitate. He raised his left arm, which transformed into a rotary ion cannon. *Thrum-thrum-thrum.* A barrage of blue energy bolts chewed up the pavement where the distortion was.
But the distortion moved. It didn't run; it flickered. It appeared on top of a bus shelter, then on the side of a building, then hanging upside down from a billboard.
Ren materialized fully, crouching on top of a flickering Coca-Cola sign. His black armor seemed to drink the light around him.
"You're big," Ren noted, tilting his head. "Lots of armor. Probably high defense stats. Low agility."
"I am the Apex of Zorgon Bio-Engineering," Xar declared. "My reaction time is zero-point-zero-four seconds."
"Lag," Ren smirked. "That's just lag."
Ren jumped.
He didn't jump *at* Xar. He jumped straight up into the air.
Xar tracked him. "Predictable trajectory."
Xar raised his lance to impale the falling human.
But gravity didn't work right for Ren.
**[Skill: Shadow Step.]**
Mid-air, Ren stepped onto a shadow cast by a floating piece of debris. He pushed off *nothing*, changing direction instantly at a ninety-degree angle.
He rocketed toward Xar's exposed flank.
*CLANG.*
Ren's daggers struck Xar's shoulder plating. Sparks flew. The void-infused blades carved a deep groove into the tritanium, but didn't pierce through.
Xar backhanded Ren with a fist the size of a microwave.
Ren saw it coming. He activated **[Phase Shift]**.
The metal fist passed harmlessly through Ren's ghostly torso. Ren solidified instantly after the hit passed, landing on Xar's arm.
"Cute trick," Xar grunted. "Shields up."
An energy barrier flared to life around Xar's armor, shimmering like a soap bubble. It pushed Ren off, burning his armor with electrical feedback.
Ren backflipped, landing on the street. He shook his hands. "Okay. Energy shields. Annoying."
Xar advanced. He was fast for a giant. Each step cracked the asphalt. He thrust his lance, a beam of pure heat that Ren barely sidestepped. The heat was intense enough to singe Ren's eyebrows.
"You rely on glitches," Xar analyzed, pressing the attack. A flurry of strikes, precise, mathematical, leaving Ren no room to breathe. "You phase. You teleport. You hide. But you cannot damage me. My shields are rated for orbital bombardment."
Ren dodged a swipe that took a chunk out of a taxi. He was on the defensive. Xar was right; the daggers weren't hitting hard enough to break the shield recharge rate.
Ren checked his HUD.
**[Enemy Shield Integrity: 98%.]**
**[Ren's Mana: 60%.]**
"Shigu," Ren muttered under his breath. "You gave me the 'Kingslayer' quest. That means he's killable."
He remembered a conversation with the Architect, weeks ago.
*"The System isn't just stats, Ren. It's conceptual. If you can't cut the armor, cut the idea of the armor."*
Ren sheathed his daggers.
Xar paused. "Surrendering?"
"Changing loadout," Ren said.
He reached into his inventory. He didn't pull out a weapon. He pulled out a small, unassuming item. A rusted, jagged piece of metal.
It was a **[Shard of the World Ender]**. A piece of debris Ren had pocketed from the explosion in space just moments ago. It was still radiating residual crimson energy—the chaotic, reality-breaking power of the Zorgon's own super-weapon.
"Improvised weapon," Ren grinned.
He lunged.
Xar scoffed. "A piece of scrap?"
Xar didn't dodge. He trusted his shield. He thrust his lance to intercept.
Ren didn't dodge the lance. He took the hit.
The plasma grazed Ren's side, melting his armor and burning flesh. Ren gritted his teeth, his health bar dropping to red, but he used the momentum to close the gap.
He slammed the **[Shard]** into Xar's energy shield.
*ZZZ-CRACK.*
The shard wasn't just metal; it was a catalyst of unstable energy. When it hit the shield, the frequencies clashed. The Zorgon's own "Extinction" energy reacted with their defensive matrix.
Feedback loop.
The shield didn't just break; it shattered. Xar roared as his own defense system overloaded, shocking him with a million volts of electricity.
"System error!" Xar screamed, falling to one knee. "Energy regulation failing!"
"There's your glitch," Ren whispered.
He dropped the shard. He drew his daggers again.
Now, there was no shield. Only metal.
**[Skill: Void Blade - Armor Piercing.]**
**[Skill: Assassinate.]**
Ren moved. He was a blur of black smoke. He ran up Xar's kneeling leg, up his chest.
Xar tried to grab him, but his servos were locked up from the feedback.
Ren reached the helmet. He reversed his grip on the daggers. The blades glowed with a dark, hungry purple light.
"Game over," Ren said.
He drove the daggers down. Not into the metal, but into the gap at the neck seal.
*Squelch.*
Xar went rigid.
The Zorgon General, conqueror of six galaxies, gurgled. His four eyes dimmed, flickering from red to grey.
"Illogical..." Xar choked out. "A... primitive..."
"We're not primitive," Ren said, leaning close to the helmet. "We just have a better Admin."
Ren kicked off the chest plate, backflipping to the ground as the massive alien suit toppled forward.
*THOOM.*
The corpse of General Xar lay amidst the neon lights of Times Square.
**[Quest Complete: The Duel.]**
**[Title Earned: Kingslayer.]**
**[Global Announcement: The Zorgon Commander has fallen.]**
Ren stood there, panting, clutching his burnt side. He looked up at the sky.
"Your turn, Boss," he whispered.
***
**The Abyss**
**Location: The Atlantic Ocean (Surface).**
**Player: Shigu.**
I hit the water.
I didn't slow down. I entered the Atlantic at Mach 3. The impact created a splash that was technically a tidal wave, but I suppressed it with a pulse of mana.
I sank.
The water turned from blue to black. The pressure built up.
I checked the System log.
**[Ren has defeated General Xar.]**
"Good boy," I smiled in the darkness. "He's learning to exploit the mechanics."
Now, the distraction was gone. The sky was safe. The ground was safe.
That just left the basement.
I reached the seabed. The **[Gravity Well]** I had cast earlier was beginning to fracture. The bubble of slowed time was cracking like an eggshell.
Inside the bubble, the Temple Doors were fully open.
Guest_01 was still standing there, though he looked annoyed that I had kept him waiting.
And behind him...
The Prisoner had stepped out.
It wasn't a monster. Monsters are biological. They have claws and teeth.
This was a tear in the fabric of the world. A humanoid shape made of absolute absence. It was roughly twenty feet tall, wearing tattered robes that seemed to be made of the night sky itself. It had no face, only a swirling vortex where a head should be.
**[Entity Analysis: The First Void Lord.]**
**[Name: Az-Gorath, The Eater of Mana.]**
**[Level: ???]**
**[Status: Hungry.]**
I landed on the silt, creating a small crater. The water pressure was immense, but my **[Aura of the Sovereign]** pushed it back, creating a dry arena for us to talk.
Guest_01 clapped slowly. The sound was muffled by the water wall around us.
"You actually came back," Guest_01 said, sounding impressed. "Most people, after saving the world from an alien invasion, would take a nap. You're a workaholic, Shigu."
"I don't like loose ends," I said, walking toward them. I cracked my knuckles. "And you are a very loose thread."
I looked at the Void Lord. The creature turned its vortex-head toward me. I could feel it sniffing. Not smelling my scent, but smelling my *mana*.
To a creature like that, I must have smelled like an all-you-can-eat buffet. I was a battery that recharged itself by 10% every day for three years. I was the densest source of energy in the universe.
"You brought him here to eat me," I realized.
Guest_01 smiled. "The Zorgon were the hammer. Az-Gorath is the sponge. You can't punch him, Shigu. He absorbs kinetic energy. You can't blast him with magic. He eats it. He is the hard counter to your infinite scaling."
Guest_01 stepped back, bowing theatrically.
"You have infinite power? Meet the Infinite Hunger. Let's see which infinity runs out first."
Az-Gorath let out a sound. It was a shriek that wasn't a sound, but a psychic frequency that made my teeth ache. The water around the air bubble hissed and turned to ice, then sublimated into void.
The creature lunged.
I didn't move. I watched it come.
Infinite Hunger vs Infinite Growth.
I smiled.
"Finally," I whispered, my eyes burning with golden fire. "A DPS check."
I pulled back my fist. I didn't use mana. I didn't use skills. I used raw, unadulterated stats.
Day 1,187.
I punched the Void.
**[Chapter 43 Ends.]**