**Chapter 54: The Great Quest: Pillars of Creation**
**Day 1,231 (Night).**
**Location: The Birdcage (Hyper-Dimensional Pocket).**
**Current Status: Physics is weeping in a corner.**
**Mood: Deafened.**
There is a misconception that sound cannot travel in a vacuum. That is true for standard acoustics. But when you hit something hard enough to fold space-time into an origami swan, the medium of transmission stops being "air" and starts being "reality itself."
I punched the Star Devourer King.
The impact didn't make a *thud*. It made the universe scream.
My fist, glowing with the condensed energy of a localized supernova, collided with the shifting, obsidian mass of the entity. The shockwave instantly vaporized the artificial grid floor of the Birdcage, sending ripples of white code flying like shrapnel.
**[Critical Hit.]**
**[Damage: 4,500,000,000 (Physical/Holy).]**
The King recoiled. Its massive form—which looked like a storm cloud made of teeth and bad memories—shuddered. It slammed against the boundary of the cube I had created. The walls, anchored by the will of the four players outside, groaned.
**"PAIN,"** the King roared.
Its voice wasn't just loud; it was heavy. It felt like a physical weight pressing against my eardrums.
**"WE HAVE NOT FELT PAIN SINCE THE BIRTH OF THE FIRST GALAXIES."**
"You should get out more," I said, shaking my hand out. My knuckles were smoking. "It builds character."
I floated in the center of the white void, my porcelain mask reflecting the chaotic swirling darkness of the enemy. This was the ideal scenario. Just me, the monster, and a locked room. No civilians to save. No buildings to protect.
I could finally stretch.
**[Limit Breaker: 60%.]**
My aura flared, turning the white room blindingly gold. I vanished.
I reappeared at the King's flank. I kicked. A crescent of kinetic force sheared through a hundred tentacles of shadow.
I teleported again. Upper atmosphere. I brought both fists down like a sledgehammer. The King's main body compressed, buckling under the blow.
For a solid minute, I was a blur of violence. I was moving faster than thought, striking from every angle simultaneously. I was dissecting a god.
But as I landed a blow that should have cracked the planet it was mimicking, I noticed something wrong.
The King wasn't fighting back physically. It was... expanding.
The darkness I punched didn't disperse. It misted, turning into a thick, clinging fog that filled the cube. And within that fog, the noise started.
It wasn't a roar. It was a whisper.
*...why did the lights go out...*
*...mommy, I'm cold...*
*...systems failing, evacuate to the shelters...*
*...the sky is eating us...*
I froze. My fist hovered inches from the King's core.
The voices weren't coming from my comms. They were bypassing my ears and bleeding directly into my cerebral cortex. Millions of voices. Billions. Different languages, different species, all screaming in the final moments of their existence.
The fog condensed. Faces began to press out of the King's body. Alien faces. Humanoid, insectoid, crystalline. They screamed in silent agony.
**"DO YOU SEE?"** the King whispered. Its voice was no longer singular. It was a chorus of the dead. **"WE ARE NOT A BEAST. WE ARE A GRAVEYARD."**
The realization hit me like a bucket of ice water.
The Star Devourers didn't just eat energy. They ate *information*. They consumed the history, the souls, and the final terrified thoughts of every civilization they had ever swallowed. The King wasn't just a monster; it was a walking archive of galactic genocide.
And it just opened the library door.
**[Psychic Attack Detected.]**
**[Source: The Chorus of the Damned.]**
**[Effect: Ego Erosion.]**
A wave of psychic pressure slammed into me. It wasn't trying to hurt my body. It was trying to dilute my *self*. It was trying to drown "Shigu" in an ocean of a trillion ghosts.
I staggered back in the air, clutching my head. The golden eye on my mask flickered.
"Cheap trick," I gritted out.
**"EFFECTIVE,"** the King countered. **"YOU ARE ONE. WE ARE INFINITE. YOU WILL DROWN IN THE NOISE."**
The darkness lunged. Not to bite, but to merge. The fog wrapped around my limbs, heavy and cold. The voices screamed louder, trying to overwrite my thoughts with their despair.
Outside the box, things were getting worse.
***
**Location: Space – Sector Zero (The Kill Box).**
**Status: Critical Failure Imminent.**
"I can't hold it!" Damon roared, his voice cracking over the comms.
Damon, the Anchor of Strength, was currently glowing red, his avatar pinned in space by the metaphysical weight of the chain he was holding. The chain—a visual representation of the spell—was vibrating violently.
"The boss is thrashing around in there!" Elena shouted from the Southern Nadir. Her blue mana was fraying. "The geometric integrity is failing! The Birdcage is at 40%!"
The hypercube floating in the middle of the battlefield was starting to crack. Spiderwebs of white light fractured its surface. Dark energy leaked out, dissolving nearby asteroids.
"If that box breaks," General Thrax hissed, "the backlash will wipe out the fleet."
Inside the *Indomitable Spirit*, Ren was staring at the telemetry. The graph representing Shigu's vital signs was erratic. Spiking and dropping.
"He's taking psychic damage," Ren realized. "He's drowning in there. Zero! Options!"
**[Analysis: The Architect is engaged in a battle of wills against a gestalt consciousness,]** Zero replied coolly. **[The temporary containment field is insufficient. The conceptual weight of the Star Devourer King is heavier than the four Anchors can sustain.]**
"We need a better cage," Ren said. "Something real. Something physical."
**[Affirmative. The 'Birdcage' was a stopgap. To permanently bind an entity of this magnitude, we require the activation of the Planetary Defense Grid.]**
Ren blinked. "We have a planetary defense grid?"
**[Correct. The Architect planted seven seeds during the creation of the Order. The Pillars of Creation. They are dormant terraforming engines modified for containment.]**
Ren slammed his hand on the console. "Where are they?"
**[Three on Earth. Two on Luna. Two on Mars. They must be manually activated to form the Seven-Point Barrier.]**
"Manually?" Ren looked at the tactical map. The system was swarming with Void-Spawn. "You want players to go on a fetch quest in the middle of an apocalypse?"
**[The Architect loves a good fetch quest, Admin Ren.]**
Ren grabbed the microphone. He didn't hesitate.
"Attention all units! Attention all Order members!"
***
**Inside the Birdcage.**
I was on my knees in the void.
The voices were loud. So loud. It was hard to remember my own name. Was I Shigu? Or was I a farmer from the Centauri system watching his crops burn? Was I a scientist on a Dyson sphere watching the sun go dark?
*Give up,* the voices whispered. *Join the silence. It is peaceful here.*
"Peaceful," I mumbled. "Sounds... boring."
**"SUBMIT,"** the King loomed over me. A mouth the size of a continent opened to swallow me.
"Zero," I whispered. My voice was weak, but my connection to the System was absolute.
**[Yes, Architect?]**
"Tell Ren... to flip the switch."
**[The quest has been generated. The players are moving.]**
I smirked beneath the mask.
"Good."
I looked up at the King. The darkness was inches from my face.
"Hey, ugly," I said.
The King paused.
"You brought your ghosts," I said, standing up. The golden aura around me flickered, then solidified. "That's cute. But you forgot one thing."
I tapped the center of my chest.
"I'm the GM. And I have a really big guild."
***
**The Great Quest.**
**[SYSTEM ANNOUNCEMENT]**
**[EMERGENCY WORLD QUEST: THE PILLARS OF CREATION]**
**[Objective: Locate and Activate the 7 Ancient Pylons.]**
**[Time Limit: 10 Minutes.]**
**[Failure Consequence: The Void Consumes Reality.]**
**[Reward: Survival. And Double XP Weekend.]**
The notification appeared on the retinas of every surviving human.
On **Earth**, amidst the ruins of the old world and the gleaming towers of the new Order cities, players stopped what they were doing.
"Three on Earth," a Guild Leader shouted in New York. "Map ping! Central Park! The Mariana Trench! And... Antarctica!"
In the **Mariana Trench**, a submarine piloted by the aquatic-specialist guild *Leviathan's Wake* dove deep.
"Pressure is critical!" the pilot yelled. "Creatures on the sonar! Void-Squids in the water!"
"Torpedos!" the captain ordered. "Blast a path to the pylon! We have 8 minutes!"
On the **Moon**, low-gravity jumpers bounded across the gray dust. The sky above them was a lightshow of orbital bombardment.
"Pylon Delta is in the Tycho Crater!" a player screamed, firing a laser rifle at a swarm of spiders made of shadow. "Cover me! I have the activation key!"
And on **Mars**, under the red sky.
A group of low-level players—the ones who had been too weak to join the space battle—found themselves standing in front of a massive, obsidian obelisk that had risen from the crimson sand.
"We have to touch it?" a Level 15 Mage asked, trembling.
A Level 80 Paladin, who had respawned after dying in the fleet battle, stepped forward. "We have to pour mana into it. All of it."
He placed his hand on the stone. "For Shigu!"
***
**Inside the Birdcage.**
The King slammed a tentacle down. I caught it.
My knees buckled, the sheer tonnage of the blow threatening to crush me. The psychic screaming intensified.
*DIE. DIE. DIE.*
"Shut up!" I roared.
**[Skill: Royal Haki (Modified).]**
**[Output: 100%.]**
I released a pulse of pure dominance. It wasn't mana; it was willpower. It pushed the fog back for a split second.
"You think you're heavy because you carry the dead?" I spat. "I carry the living. Do you know how heavy humans are? They're needy. They're loud. They complain about drop rates!"
I punched the air. A shockwave cleared a circle around me.
"And right now," I grinned, "they are very, very busy."
***
**Earth - Antarctica.**
The blizzard was blinding. The guild *Frostborn* fought back-to-back around a pillar of ice and metal.
"It's charging!" the leader yelled. "Hold the line!"
A massive Void-Beast, looking like a polar bear made of oil, charged. The tank caught it on his shield.
"Activation at 90%!"
**Moon - Tycho Crater.**
The player reached the console. A stray laser hit his shoulder, melting his armor. He screamed but didn't let go.
"Eat this!" he yelled, slamming his hand onto the interface.
The obelisk hummed. A beam of pure white light shot up from the lunar surface, piercing the black sky.
**Mars - Olympus Mons.**
The two obelisks on Mars ignited simultaneously. Two pillars of red light shot into orbit.
**[System Notification]**
**[Pillar 1: Active.]**
**[Pillar 2: Active.]**
**[Pillar 3: Active...]**
***
**Space - The Kill Box.**
The battlefield changed.
From the surface of Earth, the Moon, and Mars, seven beams of light erupted. They didn't fade into space. They curved.
They shot across the void, bypassing the fleet, bypassing the swarm, and converged on the cracking hypercube in the center of the formation.
Ren watched the monitor. "They did it."
The seven beams hit the corners of the Birdcage.
**[Planetary Defense Grid: Online.]**
**[Containment Protocol: Absolute.]**
The white light of the Birdcage turned a deep, resonant violet. The cracks sealed instantly. The flickering, unstable geometry locked into place.
The "4 Anchors" (Damon, Elena, Thrax, Viper) slumped, their connection severed. They were no longer bearing the weight. The planets were.
The cage was no longer a temporary spell. It was a fixed point in the universe. An inescapable prison.
***
**Inside the Birdcage.**
The shaking stopped.
The walls of the cube solidified. The grid lines glowed with the power of three celestial bodies. The voices in the fog didn't stop, but they became... distant. Muffled.
The connection the King had to the outside void—the tether that allowed it to draw on the Silence—was severed.
The King paused. It looked at the walls. It lashed out with a tentacle.
*Clang.*
It sounded like hitting a solid steel wall. No ripples. No damage.
**"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?"** the King hissed. **"WE ARE TRAPPED."**
I stood up. I dusted off my shoulders.
"The door is locked," I said softly.
I checked my mana bar. **Infinite.**
I checked the time. **Plenty.**
"Now," I said, walking toward the mountain of shadow. "You can't run. You can't call for backup. And you can't eat the scenery."
The King shrank back. For the first time, the chorus of voices wasn't screaming in aggression. It was screaming in fear.
**"WAIT,"** the King rumbled. **"WE CAN BARGAIN. WE HAVE KNOWLEDGE. WE HAVE SEEN THE END OF TIME."**
"I've seen the end of time, too," I said, my fist beginning to glow. "It looked boring."
I raised my right hand.
**[Ultimate Skill: The Event Horizon.]**
I condensed my mana. I didn't push it out. I pulled it in. I created a singularity in the palm of my hand. A point of gravity so intense that light bent around my fingers.
"You like black holes?" I asked. "You like eating stars?"
I leaped.
**"NO!"** the King shrieked.
I drove the singularity directly into the center of the King's mass.
"Choke on this."
**[Release.]**
I didn't explode the energy. I inverted it.
The singularity expanded instantaneously. It was a reverse Big Bang. A sphere of pure annihilation scrubbed the inside of the Birdcage.
The darkness screamed. The faces of the dead wailed one last time, not in pain, but in release. They were being burned away. Freed.
The King's form disintegrated. Layer by layer. Shadow by shadow. It clawed at the walls, but the Pillars held. The combined mana of millions of players on Earth, Moon, and Mars kept the cage shut tight.
The Star Devourer King, the terror of a thousand galaxies, dissolved into nothingness.
The light faded.
I floated in the center of the cube. The space was empty. The fog was gone. The voices were gone.
Just me. And a single, small object floating where the King's heart used to be.
I reached out and grabbed it.
**[System Notification]**
**[Enemy Defeated: The Star Devourer King.]**
**[XP Gained: [Integer Overflow] - Level Cap Reached.]**
**[Loot Acquired: The Heart of Silence (Divine Material).]**
**[Quest Complete: The Pillars of Creation.]**
I let out a long breath.
"Zero," I said. "Open the door."
***
**Epilogue of the Battle.**
The violet walls of the Birdcage dissolved.
I floated back into normal space. The first thing I heard was cheering.
It wasn't just the fleet. It was the comms channel. It was the entire human race.
I looked around. The Void-Spawn, leaderless and disconnected from the hive mind, were scattering. The players were hunting them down like sport.
Damon flew over on his battered ship. He looked terrible. His armor was gone, he was bleeding from his nose, and he was grinning like a maniac.
"You okay, Boss?" he asked.
I looked at the loot in my hand. A swirling orb of black crystal.
"I'm fine," I said. "Just a bit of a headache."
I looked at Earth, the Moon, and Mars. The seven beams of light were fading, but the pylons remained active, a dormant shield ready for the next time.
Ren's voice crackled in my ear. "Status on the King?"
"Dead," I said. "Permanently."
"And the loot?"
I tossed the black orb in the air and caught it.
"I think," I said, looking at the destroyed ships of the Galactic Council and the weary players, "I found the power source for the new server."
I turned to the Galactic Council flagship, or what was left of it. General Thrax was watching me on a screen, looking at me with a mix of awe and absolute terror.
"The war isn't over," I announced to the fleet. "The King is dead. But the Silence is still out there. There are other Kings. Other Heralds."
I clenched my fist.
"But now we know they can bleed."
I flew toward the flagship.
"Let's go home. I have a game to patch."
***
**Day 1,232.**
**Location: Mars – The Crimson Citadel.**
**Current Status: Loot Distribution.**
**Mood: Generous.**
The cleanup took hours. But the mood was electric.
I sat on my throne (which I had moved back to the Citadel). A line of players stretched to the horizon. They were here for their rewards.
"Next," I said.
A player stepped up. It was the guy from the Moon who had activated the pylon while on fire.
"Name?" I asked.
"X-Ray," he stammered.
"Good job, X-Ray," I said. I waved my hand.
**[Reward Granted: Title - Guardian of the Moon.]**
**[Item: Void-Forged Laser Rifle (Legendary).]**
He fainted. His friends dragged him away cheering.
"Next."
It was tedious. It was bureaucratic. It was boring.
And I loved it.
Ren stood beside me. "You know," he said quietly, "you scared us in there. For a minute, your signal flatlined."
"I was just meditating," I lied.
"Right. Meditating." Ren looked at the sky. "So, what now? We killed the big bad. We saved the galaxy. Do we retire?"
I laughed. A dry, humorless sound.
"Retire? Ren, look at my stats."
I pulled up my interface.
**Day 1,232.**
**Power Multiplier: 1.1x applied.**
**Current Strength: Infinite + 10%.**
"I'm still growing," I said. "And the universe is a very big place."
I stood up. The crowd went silent.
"We don't retire," I said to my army of gamers, monsters, and gods. "We expand."
"Zero. Prepare the next expansion pack."
**[Title: The Void Walkers.]**
**[Loading...]**
I smiled.
"Let's see what's outside the galaxy."
**Chapter 54 Ends.**