**Chapter 55: Race Against Time**
**Day 1,233 (Early Morning).**
**Location: The Crimson Citadel – Mars.**
**Current Status: Coding while God.**
**Mood: Pressured.**
Victory has a shelf life. In my experience, it lasts exactly as long as it takes for the adrenaline to wear off and the realization of the cleanup costs to set in.
We had killed the Star Devourer King. We had turned the solar system into a fortress. We had looted a literal piece of the void. By all accounts, we should have been popping champagne and taking a week off to farm low-level mobs for crafting materials.
But the universe, much like a poorly optimized game engine, hates a vacuum.
I sat in the central throne room of the Citadel. The massive holographic map of the local cluster dominated the room. Zero was running simulations, the AI's avatar flickering with a frequency that suggested high-stress processing.
"Show me the drift again," I ordered.
**[Displaying, Architect.]**
The map zoomed out. Far beyond the heliopause, beyond the Oort cloud, the darkness was shifting.
"We killed the King," Ren said, pacing back and forth in front of the dais. He looked exhausted. Being the administrative head of a planetary cult/army took a toll on the complexion. "The swarm scattered. We saw them run."
"The Void-Spawn ran," I corrected him. "The mindless drones. But the Devourers? The civilization behind them?"
I tapped the armrest of my throne.
"They didn't run. They stopped."
On the map, the encroaching line of darkness—the 'Silence'—had halted its advance. But it wasn't retreating. It was boiling.
"Zero, analyze the radiation coming off that front."
**[Analysis complete. It is not radiation, Architect. It is data. A signal.]**
"What kind of signal?"
**[A scream. Or perhaps... a dinner bell.]**
I looked at the black crystal orb sitting on the table next to me—the **Heart of Silence**, the loot dropped by the King. It had been vibrating for the last six hours. A low, resonant hum that made the teeth of anyone within a hundred meters ache.
"They know," I said softly. "The King was a scout leader. A big one, but just a vanguard. When we killed him, his death scream didn't just echo in space. It echoed in the hive mind."
"So they're coming back?" Ren asked.
"Worse," I stood up. My power, now compounded to a level that made the air around me shimmer like heat haze, felt restless. "They're accelerating."
I walked to the balcony overlooking the Martian plains. Below, players were celebrating. I could see fireworks—magical and chemical—lighting up the red sky. They thought the event was over. They thought they had won the game.
"Physics," I muttered. "Zero, what is the speed limit of the universe?"
**[The speed of light, roughly 299,792 kilometers per second.]**
"Correct. That applies to matter. Ships. Lasers. But the Devourers... they eat concepts. They exist partially outside of standard physics."
I pointed at the stars.
"If a ship is ten light-years away, and it starts moving toward us now, we won't see it for ten years. But if something moves through the *mind*? Through the psychic link that connects all sentient life?"
Ren stopped pacing. "Shigu. What are you saying?"
"I'm saying that while their bodies are still light-years away, their influence travels instantaneously."
As if on cue, a notification popped up on my private HUD.
**[Alert: Anomaly Detected on Earth (Sector: Tokyo).]**
**[Type: Mass Psychosis.]**
**[Casualties: 0 (Physical). 400 (Mental).]**
"It's starting," I said. "The physical fleet is the slow knife. The madness is the bullet. And it just hit the atmosphere."
***
**The First Symptom**
**Location: Earth – Neo-Tokyo Safe Zone.**
**Time: 08:00 AM Local Time.**
Kenji was a Level 12 Blacksmith. He wasn't a fighter. He played *Order of Truth* because he liked the crafting mechanics. He liked the feeling of hitting hot metal and watching the numbers go up. It was therapeutic.
He was currently in his shop, a converted garage in the Safe Zone, hammering out a basic steel breastplate for a low-level guild.
*Clang. Clang. Clang.*
Rhythm. Focus.
Then, the rhythm skipped.
*Clang. Clang. Squish.*
Kenji paused. He looked at the anvil. The steel plate wasn't glowing orange anymore. It was... bleeding.
"What the..."
He blinked. The steel rippled. For a second, it looked like human skin. It looked like a face, stretched and screaming in agony.
Kenji dropped his hammer. He backed away.
"System!" he shouted. "Log out! Or... pause! Reset UI!"
No response.
He looked around his shop. The tools hanging on the wall weren't hammers and tongs anymore. They were limbs. Severed, gray limbs hanging on hooks.
"No," Kenji whispered. "This isn't real. It's a glitch."
He looked at the door. He needed to get outside. He needed to find a guard.
He ran to the shutter and threw it open.
Outside, the streets of Neo-Tokyo were bustling. But the sky...
The sky wasn't blue. It wasn't the smoggy gray of the post-war city.
The sky was an eye.
A single, massive, bloodshot eye spanning the entire horizon, staring directly at him. It didn't blink. It judged.
*YOU ARE MEAT,* a voice whispered in Kenji's head. It sounded like his mother, but distorted, played backward. *JUST MEAT WAITING TO ROT.*
Kenji fell to his knees. He clawed at his head. His HP bar was full. His Mana bar was full.
But a new bar, one he had never seen before, appeared in the center of his vision. It was purple, cracked, and it was draining rapidly.
**[Sanity: 45%... 30%... 15%...]**
Kenji screamed.
***
**The Diagnosis**
**Location: The Crimson Citadel.**
"We have reports from Tokyo, New York, and London," Zero announced. The holographic map of Earth was lighting up with purple warning markers. "Civilians are hallucinating. Players are attacking invisible enemies. Friendly fire incidents have increased by 400% in the last ten minutes."
"It's a psychic wave," Ren said, looking at the feed. "They're projecting fear directly into our brains."
"Not fear," I corrected. "Presence. They are broadcasting their existence. The human mind isn't built to comprehend beings that eat stars. Just looking at them—even perceiving them remotely—causes the logic centers of the brain to collapse."
I sat back in the throne. This was the one thing I hadn't accounted for.
I had given humanity strength. I gave them fireballs, diamond skin, and swords that could cut tanks. I had turned them into physical gods.
But I hadn't upgraded their minds. Mentally, they were still soft, squishy humans.
"If this continues," Zero stated, **[Total societal collapse is estimated in 4 hours. The players will turn on each other. The Order will dissolve into chaos.]**
"Four hours," I repeated.
I looked at my hand. I could punch a planet into dust. I could rewrite the laws of gravity in a local area. But I couldn't punch *madness*. You can't intimidate schizophrenia.
I needed a system patch. Fast.
"Zero," I said, my voice hardening. "Open the source code for the Player Interface. Section: Mental Resilience."
**[Section not found, Architect. You deemed it unnecessary in Alpha v1.0.]**
"Well, it's necessary now. We're doing a hotfix."
I closed my eyes. I reached into the depths of the System—the metaphysical layer of mana that I had draped over the world. I visualized the connection between me and the millions of users.
They were panicked. I could feel it. A billion tiny sparks of terror blinking out in the dark.
"I need to give them a shield," I murmured. "But not a physical one. A cognitive filter. A way to gamify the horror so their brains can process it without snapping."
"Gamify... insanity?" Ren asked.
"Exactly," I opened my eyes. "If you see a monster in real life, you go insane. If you see a monster in a video game, you check its stats and look for a weak point. I need to force their brains to interpret the Devourers as game mechanics, not existential threats."
I raised my hands. The air in the citadel began to hum.
"Zero. Initialize **Protocol: Lovecraft.**"
**[Processing...]**
"We are introducing a new stat," I announced. "Start coding. Parameter: **Sanity (SAN)**."
"How does it work?" Ren asked, pulling up a datapad to take notes.
"It works like a health bar for the soul," I explained, talking fast as I manipulated the mana streams. "When a player encounters a Devourer or a Void-manifestation, they take Sanity damage. If it hits zero, they enter a state of **[Madness]**."
"And what happens in Madness?"
"They become an NPC for the enemy," I said grimly. "They turn hostile. We have to prevent that."
"But a bar just tells them they're dying," Ren argued. "It doesn't save them!"
"That's why we need a regen mechanic," I said. I looked at the **Heart of Silence**. "And consumables."
I grabbed the black orb. It was heavy, cold, and whispered secrets I ignored.
"This thing," I held it up. "It's a receiver. But if I reverse the polarity, it can be a jammer."
"You want to jam the Devourers?"
"No. I want to filter them. I'm going to pump my own mana through this thing. I'm going to broadcast a carrier signal that overrides their frequency. My voice. My will. Overwriting their scream."
"Shigu," Ren warned. "That will connect your mind directly to every player on Earth. If the Devourers push back... if they attack you through the network..."
"Then I go insane," I shrugged. "And since I'm currently the strongest being in the solar system, that would probably be bad for property values."
I walked to the center of the room.
"Connect the Heart to the Citadel's amplifier. We have to push this update before the four-hour mark."
**[Time to Wave Impact: 2 Hours, 15 Minutes.]**
"We're racing the light," I said. "Let's run."
***
**The Patch**
**Location: The Void – Between Earth and the Devourer Fleet.**
**Status: Incoming.**
The psychic wave was invisible to the naked eye, but to the magical spectrum, it looked like a tsunami of oil. It rolled through the vacuum, washing over space stations and satellites.
On the stations, automated turrets spun aimlessly. AIs began to spout gibberish.
The wave hit the Moon first.
In the **Tycho Crater**, the players guarding the Pylon fell to their knees. They didn't scream. They just started laughing. Some took off their helmets, convinced the vacuum was breathable cotton candy.
**[Casualties detected on Lunar Surface.]**
**[Sanity Failure: 80% of Garrison.]**
"We're losing the Moon," Ren shouted from the control deck.
"Not yet," I gritted my teeth.
I was floating above the Citadel now, the **Heart of Silence** hovering between my hands. It was fighting me. The essence of the Dead King didn't want to help humanity; it wanted to consume it.
I poured my mana into it.
*Submit,* I commanded.
**NO,** the Heart pulsed. **WE ARE THE VOID.**
*I am the Admin,* I retorted. *And I'm voiding your warranty.*
I engaged **[Limit Breaker: 20%]**.
Gold light erupted from my hands, forcing the black crystal to crack. I didn't break it; I cracked it open to rewrite its core frequency.
"Zero! Upload the patch!"
**[Uploading... 10%...]**
"Faster!"
On Earth, the chaos was spreading. In London, a guild of Mages had barricaded themselves in the Tower of London, but the walls were melting. In New York, players were jumping off skyscrapers, trying to fly without spells.
**[Uploading... 40%...]**
The wave was passing the lunar orbit. It was minutes away from Earth.
"Come on," I strained. The feedback was brutal. I could hear the Devourer Hive Mind noticing me.
**"WHO DENIES US?"** a billion voices whispered in my ear.
"Shigu," I answered. "Spell it right."
**[Uploading... 99%...]**
The wave hit the upper atmosphere of Earth.
**[Upload Complete.]**
**[System Update 4.0: The Mind Shield applied.]**
***
**The Reset**
**Location: Earth – Neo-Tokyo.**
Kenji was curled in a ball on the street, waiting to die. The eye in the sky was getting closer. The whispers were deafening.
*YOU ARE NOTHING. YOU ARE DUST.*
Suddenly, a chime rang out.
It was the clear, crisp sound of a System Notification. It cut through the whispers like a bell.
Kenji opened his eyes.
A gold ripple washed over the sky, erasing the giant bloodshot eye. The gray, severed limbs in his shop reverted to hammers. The melting pavement solidified.
Text appeared in front of him. Bold. Blue. Reassuring.
**[System Update Complete.]**
**[New Stat Unlocked: Sanity.]**
**[Current Status: Low (30%).]**
**[Status Effect: Panicked.]**
**[Administrator Message:]** "Stop screaming. It's just a game mechanic. Take a deep breath. Drink a potion. If you see a monster, hit it. If the sky looks at you, look back."
Kenji blinked. The crushing existential dread didn't vanish, but it... changed. It became quantifiable. It wasn't an infinite abyss anymore; it was a debuff.
"A debuff," Kenji whispered. "I can fix a debuff."
He scrambled to his feet. He pulled a blue mana potion from his belt.
**[Item Consumed.]**
**[Sanity Restored: +20%.]**
The trembling in his hands stopped. The world looked sharp again.
"It's just a mechanic," he repeated, laughing nervously. "It's just a stupid mechanic."
***
**The New Meta**
**Location: The Crimson Citadel.**
I slumped back onto the throne. I was sweating.
"Status?" I rasped.
**[Global Sanity stabilized at 65%,]** Zero reported. **[The mass psychosis event has been converted into widespread 'Mild Anxiety.' Players are engaging the hallucinations using combat skills. Reports indicate players are farming the 'Nightmare Mobs' for XP.]**
I chuckled. Humans. Give them a health bar for anything, and they'll figure out how to grind it.
"We bought time," I said. "The initial psychic wave has been filtered."
"But the source is still coming," Ren added, looking at the map.
"Yes. The fleet."
I stood up and walked to the map. The line of darkness had resumed its movement. Now that their psychic softening-up bombardment had failed, they would have to come in person.
"How long until physical contact?"
**[Calculated speed of FTL drift: 3 Days.]**
"Three days," I mused. "That's a lifetime in gaming."
I looked at the **Heart of Silence**. It was now glowing with a faint, corrupted gold light. I had turned a weapon of mass destruction into a server firewall.
"We have three days to prepare for an invasion of things that defy physics," I said. "We have the Sanity mechanic. Now we need the weapons to back it up."
I turned to Ren.
"Open the armory. Unlock the Tier 5 blueprints."
Ren's eyes widened. "Tier 5? Void-Tech? We haven't tested that. It uses unstable mana."
"The enemy is made of unstable mana," I said. "We need to fight fire with antimatter."
I pulled up the global announcement interface.
**[Global Announcement from Admin Shigu]**
"Attention, Order of Truth. The tutorial is officially over. The horror genre expansion has begun."
"You have 72 hours. Fortify your cities. Stockpile your potions. Keep your Sanity bars full."
"Because in three days, the sky isn't going to just look at you."
"It's going to blink."
***
**Scene: The Deep Void**
**Location: The Devourer Flagship (Conceptually).**
Deep in the Silence, a consciousness shifted.
The King was dead. That was unexpected.
The psychic scream had been muted. That was annoying.
A new entity, vaster and colder than the King, turned its attention to the small, bright solar system.
It tasted the barrier. It tasted the gold light.
**"ORDER,"** the entity mused. **"THEY TRY TO IMPOSE RULES ON CHAOS."**
It began to change its form. If the humans wanted a game, it would play. But it wouldn't play fair.
**"WE WILL SEE,"** the entity whispered across the light-years, **"WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE RULES BREAK."**
It accelerated.
***
**Day 1,233 (Night).**
**Location: Mars.**
I stood on the balcony again. The immediate crisis was over, but the air felt heavy.
My power ticked up. Another 10% at midnight.
I felt my senses expand. I could feel the individual heartbeats of the players on Earth. I could feel the friction of the asteroids in the belt.
I was becoming less human by the day.
"Zero," I asked quietly.
**[Yes, Architect?]**
"If I keep growing... will I eventually become like them? A force of nature? A hunger?"
**[Your growth curve suggests you will surpass them, Architect. Whether you become a hunger or a shield is a variable determined by your 'Sanity'.]**
I laughed.
"Touché."
I looked at my own interface.
**[Sanity: ERROR - VALUE EXCEEDS PARAMETERS.]**
"Right," I smiled, cracking my knuckles. "Let's get to work. I have a universe to save, and I'm bored of playing defense."
**Chapter 55 Ends.**