**Chapter 44: Ren vs Xar**
**Day 1,187.**
**Location: Times Square, New York City.**
**Current Status: Premature Celebration.**
**Mood: Glitched.**
The problem with video games, as Shigu had often explained during his lecture-heavy training sessions, was that they taught you to trust the User Interface. If the health bar hits zero, the enemy is dead. If the quest says "Complete," you put down the controller and reach for the snacks.
But reality, even a gamified one, has a nasty habit of ignoring the HUD.
Ren sat on the hood of a crushed yellow taxi, watching the smoke rise from General Xar's massive, motionless suit. The "Kingslayer" title was hovering in his peripheral vision, a shiny gold badge of validation.
"You look like hell," Damon commented, walking over. The tank had unequipped his helmet, revealing a face covered in soot and sweat. He kicked a piece of loose Zorgon armor skittering across the pavement. "But that was a nice finish. Stabbing the neck seal? Classic."
"He was tough," Ren admitted, wincing as he applied a **[Mid-Grade Healing Salve]** to the burn on his side. The green light of the potion knit his skin back together, but the phantom heat remained. "His shields were ridiculous. If I hadn't used that shard..."
"But you did," Damon grinned, slinging his massive sword over his shoulder. "We won. The fleet is gone. The General is dead. Now we just wait for the Boss to finish up his swim and we can go grab a pizza. I think there's a place on 8th Avenue that's still standing."
Ren chuckled, leaning back. The adrenaline was fading, replaced by a bone-deep exhaustion. He closed his eyes, listening to the distant cheers of players across the city.
*Bzzt.*
A sound cut through the noise. It wasn't a cheer. It was the sound of a corrupted audio file screeching through a speaker.
Ren opened his eyes.
The golden **[Quest Complete]** notification in his vision flickered. It turned static grey. Then it shattered.
**[ERROR.]**
**[Quest Update: PREMATURE TERMINATION.]**
**[Enemy Status: REBOOTING.]**
Ren froze. "Damon. Move."
"What?" Damon blinked, looking at his own interface. "My loot menu just closed itself."
Behind them, the corpse of General Xar didn't move. It *vibrated*.
The black tritanium armor began to glow, not with the blue of plasma or the red of the Extinction Lance, but with a blinding, sterile white light. The "dead" machinery wasn't shutting down; it was purging.
**"LOGIC FAILURE DETECTED,"** the synthesized voice boomed, but it no longer sounded like Xar. It sounded like a thousand voices screaming in unison. **"DEFEAT IS IMPROBABLE. INITIATING PROTOCOL: OMEGA."**
"He's entering Phase Two!" Ren screamed, scrambling off the taxi.
He was too slow.
A shockwave of white energy exploded from Xar's body. It wasn't heat; it was pure force. It vaporized the taxi Ren had been sitting on. It lifted Damon—all three hundred pounds of armored tank—and threw him through the front window of a Disney Store three blocks away.
Ren crossed his daggers, activating **[Shadow Mantle]**.
The force hit him like a freight train. His shadow-defense shattered instantly. Ren was launched backward, skipping across the asphalt of Broadway like a stone on a pond, finally crashing into the base of the red stairs at the TKTS booth.
He gasped, spitting blood. His health bar, which had just recovered to 80%, instantly dropped to critical red.
**[HP: 12%]**
**[Status: Concussed, Fractured Ribs.]**
In the center of the crater, Xar stood up.
The bulky, tank-like armor was gone, shed like a cocoon. Standing amidst the debris was a leaner, taller figure. The exoskeleton was stripped down to the skeletal frame, glowing with white veins of energy. The four eyes were gone, replaced by a single, vertical slit of burning light.
He held no weapons. The energy coming off him was warping the air, turning the neon lights of Times Square into a smear of colors.
**"YOU EXPLOITED A GLITCH,"** Xar said. His voice was calm now. Terrifyingly calm. **"YOU USED MY OWN ENERGY AGAINST ME. A CLEVER TRICK. BUT TRICKS ONLY WORK ON SYSTEMS WITH RULES."**
Xar took a step. He didn't walk; he glitched forward, appearing ten meters closer in a single frame of animation.
**"I HAVE DISABLED MY SAFETY LIMITERS. I AM NO LONGER CONSTRAINED BY PRESERVATION. I AM PURE OUTPUT."**
Ren forced himself up, his legs trembling. "Damon! Status!"
There was no answer on the party comms. Damon was either knocked out or buried under rubble.
It was a 1v1 again. But this time, Ren had no mana, no surprise factor, and a broken ribcage.
Xar raised a hand. A beam of white light shot out.
Ren tried to **[Shadow Step]**.
*Fizzle.*
**[System Error: Environment Too Bright. No Shadows Detected.]**
"Oh, come on," Ren hissed.
He threw himself to the side. The beam missed him by an inch, but the heat blistered his skin. The beam hit the stairs behind him, and the entire structure simply dissolved into atoms.
Xar wasn't fighting anymore. He was erasing.
***
**The Abyss**
**Location: The Atlantic Seabed.**
**Player: Shigu.**
I felt the shockwave from New York all the way down here.
I was currently busy holding the fist of a Void Lord. Az-Gorath, the Eater of Mana, was trying very hard to turn me into a calorie snack. His touch was cold enough to freeze time, but my **[Aura of the Golden Sun]** was keeping him at bay.
We were locked in a grapple. It was a contest of raw stats. His infinite hunger against my compounding strength.
*Ping.*
**[Alert: Player 'Ren' is in critical condition.]**
**[Alert: General Xar has entered 'Overclocked State'. Threat Level upgraded to World Boss.]**
I frowned, shifting my grip on the Void Lord's wrist.
"He got back up?" I muttered. "Resilient bugger."
I pulled up the remote viewing window in the corner of my eye. I saw Ren rolling across the pavement, his armor shredded, dodging beams of light that were turning Manhattan into Swiss cheese. Ren was desperate. He was throwing daggers that melted before they hit the target. He was trying to hide, but Xar's light was illuminating every corner, stripping away Ren's stealth.
Ren was going to die. Not a respawn death—Xar's energy signature was high enough to damage the soul data. If Ren died here, he might lose levels, or worse, his account might be corrupted.
I raised my free hand.
"I can end it," I thought.
I could cast **[Divine Smite]** from here. I could drop a kinetic rod from orbit. I could teleport Ren to safety.
I watched Ren scramble behind a crumbling barrier, fear etched on his face. He looked at his daggers. He looked at the impossible enemy. He looked... hopeless.
I lowered my hand.
"No," I whispered to the crushing ocean depths.
"Guest_01," I called out.
The mimic, who was watching our arm-wrestling match with a bag of popcorn (where did he even get that?), looked up. "Yes, Architect?"
"If you help a butterfly out of its cocoon, do you know what happens?"
Guest_01 smirked. "Its wings never develop the strength to fly. It falls and dies."
"Exactly," I said.
I looked back at the screen.
"Ren isn't a soldier," I said softly. "He's my first disciple. I gave him the class **[Void Walker]**. I gave him the tools. But he's still playing by the System's rules. He thinks power comes from Skills and cooldowns."
I punched Az-Gorath in the face, sending a shockwave through the water.
"Ren!" I projected my voice, not through the comms, but directly into his mind via our Soul Link.
***
**Times Square**
Ren was cowering behind the wreck of a subway entrance. The concrete was glowing red hot as Xar bombarded it with continuous fire.
**"COME OUT, RODENT,"** Xar droned. **"ACCEPT THE MATH."**
Ren was checking his inventory. Nothing. No potions left. The **[Shard]** was gone. His daggers were chipped.
*I'm done,* Ren thought. *I can't beat this. He's too fast. He's too bright. I can't use my stealth.*
*"Ren."*
The voice was calm. Heavy. It resonated in his skull like a bell.
Ren looked up. "Shigu? Help me! I can't hit him!"
*"Why are you trying to hit him?"* Shigu's voice asked.
"Because he's trying to kill me!" Ren screamed, ducking as a laser sliced the top of the subway entrance off. "And I can't hide! There are no shadows!"
*"Ren,"* Shigu sighed. *"You are a Void Walker. You don't look for shadows."*
The concrete barrier began to melt. Ren scrambled back, shielding his face.
*"Shadows are just the absence of light,"* Shigu continued. *"You are waiting for the environment to give you cover. You are acting like a player waiting for the level designer to place a hiding spot."*
Ren froze.
Xar rounded the corner. The burning white light of his single eye locked onto Ren.
**"FOUND YOU."**
*"Stop playing the game, Ren,"* Shigu commanded. *"Stop looking for the shadow. BE the shadow. If the light is too bright... turn it off."*
The connection cut.
Ren stared at Xar. The alien raised his hand for the execution strike. A ball of concentrated plasma built up in his palm.
*Turn it off.*
Ren looked at his hands. They were trembling.
He had always used his mana to interact with the world. To step *into* a shadow. To coat his daggers *in* poison. He was an actor on a stage.
But Shigu... Shigu didn't act. Shigu wrote the script.
"I am the Void," Ren whispered.
It wasn't a skill chant. It was a statement of fact.
Ren closed his eyes. He stopped trying to shield himself. He stopped trying to preserve his HP.
He reached inside his own core, past the mana bar, past the stamina bar, into the source of his class. The seed Shigu had planted on Day 1.
He didn't pull power out. He pushed the world away.
Xar fired.
The beam of white death shot toward Ren.
It hit... nothing.
The beam didn't impact. It vanished. It entered the space where Ren was standing and simply ceased to exist.
Xar paused. **"ANALYSIS: ERROR. TARGET LOCATION CONFIRMED, BUT DATA RETURNS NULL."**
Ren opened his eyes. But they weren't human eyes anymore. The whites were gone, replaced by pools of infinite black.
"System," Ren said. His voice didn't echo. It sounded flat, like speaking in a soundproof room.
**[System Alert: User 'Ren' is attempting to rewrite local reality parameters.]**
**[Requirement Met: Intelligence 200, Void Affinity 100%.]**
**[Requirement Met: Existential Despair.]**
"Unlock Domain," Ren commanded.
A black circle expanded from Ren's feet. It moved faster than light. It passed through Xar, through the buildings, through the flashing billboards.
Silence descended.
The noise of the burning city cut out. The wind stopped. The flashing advertisements in Times Square went dark. The fires froze, turning into grey, ash-like sculptures.
The world turned monochrome. Black, white, and grey.
**[New Skill Created: DOMAIN EXPANSION - THE THEATER OF SILENCE.]**
Xar stepped back. For the first time since his reboot, the machine hesitated. The white light of his body was dimming, suffocated by the heavy atmosphere.
**"WHAT IS THIS?"** Xar demanded. **"SENSORS ARE OFFLINE. OPTICAL FEEDS ARE... GREY."**
Ren stood up. He dusted off his shoulder. In this world, he wasn't injured. He wasn't tired. He was the ink on the page.
"You like math, Xar?" Ren asked. He walked forward.
Xar fired a beam.
The beam left his hand, traveled two feet, and dissolved into black smoke.
"In my domain," Ren said, "the coefficient of friction is zero. The speed of light is zero. Sound is zero."
Ren vanished.
He didn't use speed. He simply decided to be somewhere else.
He appeared directly in front of Xar.
**"IMPOSSIBLE,"** Xar roared, swinging a fist of pure energy.
Ren caught the fist. With one hand.
The energy upon contact with Ren's skin turned into grey dust.
"You rely on output," Ren murmured, looking up into Xar's glowing slit of an eye. "But you can't output into a vacuum. There's no medium for your power to travel through."
Ren raised his other hand. His dagger, **[Void Fang]**, was gone. Instead, his hand was shaped into a blade-hand, coated in a darkness so deep it looked like a hole in the monitor.
"You wanted to see the primitive?" Ren asked.
He thrust his hand forward.
It didn't cut. It deleted.
Ren's hand passed through Xar's chest plate like it was smoke. He grabbed the glowing white core—the reactor that was powering Xar's infinite rage.
**"NO,"** Xar gasped. **"I AM ETERNAL. I AM-"**
"You are loud," Ren interrupted. "Be quiet."
Ren clenched his fist.
**[Skill: Absolute Nullification.]**
He crushed the core.
There was no explosion. No dramatic shockwave.
The white light in Xar's body simply... went out. Like a candle pinched by wet fingers.
The mechanical god crumbled. His metal body turned to ash, drifting away on a wind that didn't exist.
**[Enemy Defeated: General Xar (Overclocked).]**
**[Experience Gained: 45,000,000.]**
**[Level Up!]**
**[Level Up!]**
**[Level Up!]**
**[Ren has reached Level 65.]**
**[Class Evolution Available: Void Lord (Lesser).]**
Ren stood alone in the grey, silent world.
He took a deep breath.
"Release Domain," he whispered.
Color rushed back in. Sound returned—the sirens, the crackle of fires, the distant car alarms. The ash of Xar's body scattered across the wet pavement of Times Square.
Ren fell to his knees. The adrenaline crash hit him hard. The pain of his broken ribs returned tenfold.
"Ow," he groaned, flopping onto his back. "Ow, ow, ow."
A heavy footstep crunched nearby.
Ren looked up to see Damon limping out of the wreckage of the Disney Store. He was covered in plush toys and glass shards.
"Did you get him?" Damon asked, spitting out a piece of drywall.
Ren pointed a shaking finger at the pile of grey dust.
"Dustpan," Ren wheezed.
Damon laughed, a booming sound that seemed too loud after the silence of the Domain. He walked over and offered a hand.
"You're a freak, you know that?" Damon said, pulling Ren up.
"Learned from the best," Ren grimaced.
He looked up at the sky. Through the smoke, he could see the faint golden shimmer of the orbital shield.
"We held the line, Boss," Ren whispered to the air. "Don't screw up the finale."
***
**The Atlantic Seabed**
**Player: Shigu.**
**Status: Proud Dad.**
I smiled as the notification of Ren's victory flashed across my vision.
"He did it," I said. "He unlocked a Domain."
"A Domain?" Guest_01 asked, leaning against a coral reef. He sounded genuinely surprised. "At Level 65? That shouldn't be possible until Level 90. The mana density required to overwrite local reality is astronomical."
"He didn't use mana," I explained, turning my attention back to the monster in front of me. "He used concept. He stopped trying to play the game and started modding it."
I looked at Az-Gorath.
The Void Lord seemed to sense that his ally was dead. The Zorgon threat was extinguished. The sky was clear.
The creature shrieked, a sound of frustration and hunger. It doubled its efforts, trying to suck the mana out of my aura. The water around us began to boil from the friction of our opposing energies.
"My turn," I said.
I had been holding back. I had been splitting my focus between the orbital shield, the physics manipulation of the atmosphere, and watching over Ren.
Now? Ren was safe. The fleet was gone. The players were victorious.
My attention was 100% free.
"Guest," I said, my voice dropping an octave. "You wanted to see which Infinity ran out first?"
I let go of Az-Gorath's hand.
The Void Lord surged forward, thinking I had surrendered. Its gaping maw opened, a vortex of swirling darkness ready to swallow me whole.
I didn't dodge.
I took a breath. The air in our bubble vibrated.
**[Compound Interest: Day 1,187.]**
**[Activation: 100% Output.]**
My aura didn't just flare; it detonated. The golden light turned white, then blue, then a color that the human eye couldn't perceive.
The ocean pushed back for miles. The water simply fled from the sheer pressure of my existence.
"You eat mana?" I asked the monster.
I stepped forward. I grabbed the Void Lord by its non-existent neck.
"Then choke on it."
I poured my power *into* him.
Usually, you kill things by hitting them. But Az-Gorath was a sponge. He wanted to absorb energy.
So I gave him everything.
I fed him the energy of a star. I fed him the accumulated compound growth of three years of godhood.
**[Mana Transfer: 50,000,000 MP / Second.]**
The Void Lord froze. Its writhing form stiffened. The vortex on its face spun faster, faster, trying to process the influx.
It began to swell.
"More?" I asked. "Have some dessert."
I doubled the output.
The creature screamed. Not in hunger, but in agony. It was a balloon being filled by a firehose. Its form began to crack, leaking beams of blinding light.
"You can't eat Infinity," I whispered, bringing my face close to its swirling head. "Because Infinity never ends."
*CRACK.*
Az-Gorath, the Eater of Mana, the First Void Lord, did the only thing it could do.
It popped.
The explosion was contained entirely within my grip. A implosion of void energy that collapsed into a single, tiny black pearl in the palm of my hand.
**[Enemy Defeated: Az-Gorath.]**
**[Loot Acquired: Core of the Abyss.]**
I tossed the pearl up and caught it.
Silence returned to the ocean floor. The water, realizing the pressure was gone, came rushing back in to fill the void, crashing around us with the force of a collapsing mountain. I ignored it, maintaining my personal bubble effortlessly.
I turned to Guest_01.
He was standing there, his suit unruffled, but his expression had changed. The smugness was gone. In its place was a calculating, cold wariness.
He adjusted his tie.
"Well," Guest_01 said. "That was... instructive."
"The show's over," I said. "You lost. The Zorgon are dead. The Void Lord is a marble in my pocket. And Ren just broke your level curve."
Guest_01 sighed. He tapped his tablet.
"Phase One is complete," he muttered. "Data collection successful. The variables are... higher than anticipated."
He looked at me.
"You think you won a war, Shigu. But this was just a stress test. We needed to know if Earth was worth the investment."
He began to fade. His body turning into digital pixels.
"You're running?" I asked.
"I'm filing a report," Guest_01 corrected. "The Board of Directors will be very interested in you. A biological entity with infinite scaling? You're not a player, Shigu. You're a product."
He grinned.
"Enjoy the peace, Architect. Next time, we won't send the police. We'll send the exterminators."
He vanished.
I stood alone in the dark, heavy silence of the deep ocean.
The threat was gone. The world was safe.
I checked my status.
**[Day 1,187 Complete.]**
**[Growth: Applied.]**
**[Tomorrow: Day 1,188.]**
I sighed, kicking off the seabed. I began the long swim up to the surface.
"Exterminators," I muttered to myself. "Sounds like more XP to me."
Above me, the sun was beginning to rise on a broken, battered, but very alive world.
**[Chapter 44 Ends.]**