**Chapter 59: Total War**
**Day 1,235 (Mid-Battle).**
**Location: High Orbit – The Artificial Sun.**
**Current Status: Burning calories (literally).**
**Mood: Apocalyptic.**
Being a star is harder than it looks. You have to maintain a constant fusion reaction, regulate gravity so you don't accidentally swallow the planets you're trying to save, and—in my specific case—act as a lighthouse for a billion frightened gamers while a planet-sized calamari tries to eat you.
I floated in the center of the golden inferno, my arms crossed, sweat evaporating instantly from my skin. My mana bar was a erratic pulse, dipping and refilling as my passive compounding fought against the massive drain of the **[Solar Proxy]** skill.
"Zero," I projected, my voice sounding like tectonic plates grinding together. "Status on the White Wave."
The AI appeared in my peripheral vision, a jagged collection of red lines against the blinding gold.
**[Target: The Geometric Entity.]**
**[Distance: 0.8 AU and closing.]**
**[Activity: Charging. Energy signature suggests a system-wide format command. Estimated time to firing: 48 minutes.]**
I looked past the writhing black mass of Gorgoth. Far out in the deep dark, that tiny white tetrahedron sat motionless. It wasn't attacking. It was waiting. It was a sniper lining up a shot on two brawling drunks.
"48 minutes," I muttered. "We have to kill the drunk in front of us before the police arrive to shoot us both."
I looked down at the surface of Gorgoth. The "Raid" was underway. Millions of tiny specks of light were crawling over the bone-plains of the beast, fighting for every inch.
"Ren," I called over the command channel. "Stop playing with your food. We're on a clock."
"We're trying, Boss!" Ren's voice was filled with static and the sound of explosions. "But the mob density is insane! Every time we kill a Void-Tick, two more spawn from its corpse! We can't push to the Core!"
I grit my teeth. The ants were stalling.
Gorgoth sensed it too. The psychic pressure increased.
*YOUR CHILDREN ARE WEAK,* the entity rumbled. *THEY ARE SOFT MEAT wrapped in HARD METAL. I WILL PEEL THEM.*
"That's it," I said. "Zero. Authorize the Omega Protocol."
**[Warning: The Omega Protocol utilizes 90% of the planetary stockpiles. It will leave Earth and Mars defenseless if it fails.]**
"If this fails," I said, watching a cruiser get swatted out of the sky by a tentacle the size of Texas, "we won't need defenses because we'll be formatted data."
I expanded my aura, sending a pulse of command authority to every ship, silo, and mage in the system.
"All units," I commanded. "Total War."
***
**The Hammer of Humanity**
**Location: The Surface of Gorgoth (Sector 4).**
Damon, the Titan, slammed his shield into the jaw of a Void-Beast. The impact shattered the creature's chitin, but before it hit the ground, the black flesh was already knitting back together.
"They don't stay down!" Damon roared, punting the beast off the ridge. "Healers! Save your mana! Don't top us off, just keep us alive!"
Beside him, Aris, the Arch-Mage, was weaving a complex spell. "The atmosphere is interfering with the leylines! My fireballs are losing 40% potency before impact!"
Suddenly, the sky—my golden sky—shifted.
**[System Alert: Global Cooldown Initiated.]**
**[Incoming Ordinance: Class-Exterminatus.]**
**[ETA: 10 Seconds.]**
Damon looked up. "Take cover! Dig in!"
The raid groups scrambled. Earth Mages raised stone domes. Tech-classes deployed hard-light bunkers. They huddled into the crevices of Gorgoth's bone-crust.
Then, the sky opened up.
It started with the kinetic bombardment.
From the Moon, the massive railguns—the "Rods from God"—fired. Tungsten pillars the size of telephone poles, accelerated to a fraction of light speed. They didn't burn; they just arrived.
*THWACK. THWACK. THWACK.*
They hit Gorgoth like a shotgun blast to a watermelon. Mountains of calcified bone shattered. Craters simply appeared, miles wide, vaporizing the Void-Ticks instantly.
Then came the nukes.
We had scrubbed the radiation fallout from the warheads using mana-filters, turning them into pure blasts of thermal and kinetic energy. Three thousand missiles streaked down from the orbital platforms.
The horizon of the biological planet turned white.
*BOOM.*
The sound didn't matter. The shockwave did. It ripped across the surface of the entity, a tsunami of fire and force. It scoured the "skin" of Gorgoth, burning away forests of cilia and oceans of black sludge.
And finally, the magic.
From the Crimson Citadel on Mars, the Great Pylons fired. A concentrated beam of elemental chaos—Fire, Ice, Lightning, Void—twisted together into a lance of destruction.
It struck the center of the largest crater, drilling down toward the Core.
I watched from orbit. The display was magnificent. It was the culmination of human ingenuity and my system's power. It was enough energy to crack a standard planet in half.
The fire raged for a full minute. The surface of Gorgoth was a roiling sea of plasma.
"Did we get it?" Ren whispered over the comms.
The smoke began to clear.
The craters were there. Massive, bleeding wounds in the flesh of the beast. We had exposed the muscle beneath the bone. Violet blood, thick as tar, formed lakes in the impact zones.
"We hurt it!" Damon cheered from his bunker. "Push forward! Hit the wounds!"
The players surged out, weapons ready.
Then, the laughter started.
It wasn't a sound. It was a vibration in the gore.
*IS THAT ALL?*
The violet blood in the craters began to bubble. It didn't flow down. It flowed *up*.
It hardened. It turned from liquid to solid black carapace in seconds. The wounds didn't just heal; they calloused.
Where the railguns had struck, massive spikes of diamond-hard armor erupted. Where the nukes had burned, the flesh adapted, turning into heat-absorbent scales.
**[Enemy Status: Adapting.]**
**[Resistance Acquired: Kinetic (90%).]**
**[Resistance Acquired: Thermal (100%).]**
"No..." Aris gasped, dropping his staff.
The beam from the Martian Citadel—the magical lance—was still firing. Gorgoth's skin shifted. A giant mouth formed around the impact point.
And it *swallowed* the beam.
*DELICIOUS,* Gorgoth moaned. *MORE SPICE.*
The entity redirected the energy. Veins of glowing violet light surged across its surface, channeling the power we had just fed it.
Thousands of new pods burst open on the surface.
**[Spawn Alert: Void-Hunter (Evolved).]**
**[Affix: Magic Eater.]**
The new enemies pulled themselves out of the slime. They were sleek, armored in the same material as the new scales. They didn't have mouths. They had siphons.
"Pull back!" Damon screamed. "Retreat!"
But it was too late. The Void-Hunters moved faster than the eye could track. They blitzed the front lines. A Mage cast a fireball; the Hunter simply opened its siphon and drank the spell, then decapitated the Mage.
The Omega Protocol hadn't killed the beast. It had fed it.
***
**The Despair**
**Location: High Orbit.**
I hung in space, my golden light wavering.
"It ate the nukes," I said, my voice hollow. "It ate the magic."
**[Analysis: Gorgoth is a reactive organism, Architect. It evolves based on trauma. By hitting it with everything at once, we have accelerated its evolution by 5,000 years.]**
"We inoculated it," I realized. "We just gave it a vaccine for humanity."
I looked down at the raid frames. They were turning gray.
**[Casualties: 15%... 20%... 25%.]**
The numbers were plummeting. But worse than the HP bars were the Sanity bars.
The "Immune" text floating over Gorgoth's new armor was breaking them. Players were stopping. They weren't casting. They weren't swinging.
On the live feed, I saw a high-level Paladin drop his shield. A Void-Hunter loomed over him. The Paladin didn't raise his guard. He just knelt.
"It's over," the Paladin muttered, his voice caught by the local audio. "We're just ants. We're just data."
The Void-Hunter tore him apart.
*GIVE UP,* Gorgoth whispered to them. *THE WHITE SILENCE COMES. I AM THE ONLY SHELTER. BECOME PART OF ME, AND YOU WILL SURVIVE.*
It was a compelling offer. Die to the Janitors, or live as a cell in the body of a god.
"Shigu..." Ren's voice was barely a whisper. "We can't breach the armor. The railguns are useless. The magic is feeding them. What do we do?"
I looked at the timer.
**[Time to White Wave Firing: 30 Minutes.]**
We were trapped. Behind us, the ultimate eraser. In front of us, the ultimate sponge.
My power ticked. Another 0.01% since I started this thought. It was infinite. It was limitless.
But what good is infinite strength if the enemy is made of rubber? What good is infinite mana if the enemy eats magic?
"I need to change the game," I said.
"What?"
"We're playing an MMO," I muttered, my mind racing. "We're using DPS, Tanks, Healers. We're trying to win by reducing its health to zero."
I looked at the White Wave ship in the distance. The tetrahedron.
"But the universe isn't an MMO. It's an operating system."
I closed my eyes. I felt the heat of my own body. The **[Solar Proxy]** form was pure output. It was brute force.
"Zero," I said calmly. "Drop the sun."
**[Architect? If you deactivate Solar Proxy, the temperature will plummet to absolute zero within 180 seconds. The players on the surface will freeze.]**
"They won't freeze," I said. "Because I'm going to bring them inside."
"Inside where?"
"Inside *me*."
I took a deep breath.
"Ren. Order a full retreat. Emergency teleport. Get everyone off Gorgoth. Pull them back to the Citadel."
"But—if we leave, Gorgoth will eat Mars!"
"Let him try," I snarled.
**[Deactivating Solar Proxy in 3... 2... 1...]**
The golden light died.
***
**The Blackout**
**Location: The Solar System.**
Darkness returned instantly.
The blinding gold vanished, replaced by the suffocating void. The stars reappeared, cold and distant.
On the surface of Gorgoth, the players screamed as the temperature crashed. But before the frost could claim them, thousands of beams of blue light engulfed the raid parties.
**[Mass Teleport: Initiated.]**
In seconds, the bone-plains were empty. The players materialized back on Mars, in the Citadel, on the ships. They were battered, broken, shivering, and terrified.
Gorgoth roared in triumph.
*YOU FLEE. THE LIGHT DIES. NOW I FEAST.*
The planet-sized monster began to move. It ignored the tiny ships. It moved toward Mars. It opened its mouth—a maw wide enough to swallow the Red Planet whole.
I floated in the dark, a tiny, human-sized speck between the monster and my home.
I wasn't glowing anymore. I was dark. I had pulled my aura in tight, compressing it until it was a singularity beneath my skin.
"Kael," I opened a private channel to the demoted strategist.
"Admin?" Kael's voice was shaking. He was in the brig, watching the feeds.
"You said the Devourers are refugees," I said. "You said they run from the White Wave because they are 'messy'."
"Yes," Kael stammered. "The Wave deletes chaos. Gorgoth is biological chaos."
"And what am I?" I asked.
Kael paused. "You... you are an anomaly. Your power increases without logic. You are the ultimate variable."
"Exactly."
I looked at the White Wave ship in the distance. It was glowing brighter now, preparing its formatting beam.
"Zero," I commanded. "Target the White Wave ship."
**[Target locked. Weapon system?]**
"No weapon," I said. "Communications. Open a channel."
**[Architect, the Janitors do not negotiate.]**
"Just open it."
A channel opened. Static hissed in my mind. The cold, mathematical presence of the White Entity brushed against my consciousness.
**[QUERY: ANOMALY 1. STATE INTENT.]**
I smiled in the darkness.
"Intent: Tattletale."
I pointed at Gorgoth.
"Hey, Janitor!" I shouted across the void. "You missed a spot!"
I raised my hand.
**[Skill: Aggro Transfer.]**
Usually, this skill is used by tanks to pull a monster off a healer. It generates threat. But I wasn't generating threat for myself.
I grabbed the "Concept" of Gorgoth—its massive, chaotic, messy, biological signal—and I amplified it.
I poured my infinite mana not into a blast, but into a **Highlight**.
I painted Gorgoth in "System Priority" tags. I made it the loudest, brightest, most annoying thing in the universe. To the sensors of the White Wave, Gorgoth suddenly went from a "large target" to a "CRITICAL SYSTEM ERROR."
**[ALERT: CHAOS MAGNITUDE INCREASED BY 10,000%.]**
**[PRIORITY TARGET UPDATED: GORGOTH.]**
**[FORMATTING BEAM REALIGNING.]**
The white tetrahedron shifted. It ignored me. It ignored Mars. Its single, unfeeling eye turned toward the planet-sized beast.
Gorgoth stopped moving.
*WHAT... WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?*
"I called the cops," I whispered.
Then, I turned to Gorgoth.
"You wanted to eat?" I asked. "Open wide."
I didn't fly away. I flew *toward* Gorgoth.
I was done being a sun. I was done being a shield.
I streaked toward the open maw of the beast, a tiny bullet of compressed reality.
*FOOL,* Gorgoth laughed, sensing my approach. *YOU COME TO ME?*
It swallowed me.
***
**Inside the Belly**
**Location: Gorgoth's Esophagus.**
Darkness. Slime. The crushing weight of a gravity well.
I was sliding down a throat the size of a continent. Acid that could melt starships splashed against my skin, but my **[Admin Authority]** kept it at bay.
I wasn't fighting the digestion. I was riding it.
I fell for minutes. Then hours? Time was distorted here.
Finally, I hit the stomach. A cavern of flesh filled with the ruins of eaten civilizations.
"Zero," I said, standing up on a piece of drift-wreckage. "Locate the Core Heart."
**[Signal detected. 500 kilometers directly... down? Directions are subjective here.]**
"Good."
I looked up. I could sense the White Wave charging outside. Gorgoth was distracted, terrified of the eraser beam locking onto it. It wasn't paying attention to the indigestion.
"Kael," I spoke into the comms again. "Are you listening?"
"I'm here, Shigu."
"The White Wave is going to fire in 10 minutes. It will delete Gorgoth. But the splash damage will delete Mars too."
"Yes," Kael said, his voice grim. "Calculated survival rate: 0%."
"Wrong calculation," I said, walking across the acid sea. "I'm going to parry it."
"Parry... the erasure of existence?"
"I'm going to hijack Gorgoth's defense mechanism," I explained. "Gorgoth evolves to survive trauma. We hit it with nukes, it became immune to heat. We hit it with kinetic, it grew armor."
I stopped. I was standing directly over the pulse of the Core Heart.
"So, what happens if I hit it with *Infinity*?"
I clenched my fist.
My power—my lovely, boredom-inducing, game-breaking power—surged. I wasn't just using the 10% from today. I was accessing the backlog.
"Zero. Disable all safety protocols. I want to dump the Mana Pool."
**[Architect... that amount of energy inside a confined space will create a Big Bang scenario.]**
"Not a Big Bang," I corrected. "A hyper-evolution."
I punched the floor of the stomach.
**[Skill: Mana Infusion (Forced).]**
I didn't attack Gorgoth. I *buffed* him.
I poured raw power into the monster. Billions of units of mana. Trillions.
Gorgoth screamed. Not in pain, but in overdose.
*TOO MUCH! TOO MUCH! STOP!*
The monster's cells began to mutate rapidly. It grew. It expanded. Its biological systems went into overdrive trying to process the infinite energy I was force-feeding it.
Its skin hardened, not into diamond, but into something metaphysical. It was trying to contain *me*.
Outside, the White Wave fired.
***
**The Clash**
**Location: Space.**
A beam of absolute white silence struck Gorgoth.
It should have erased the beast instantly.
But Gorgoth was currently glowing with the light of a billion stars, bloated on the power of the Admin.
The White Beam hit Gorgoth's skin.
*SCREEEEEEEECH.*
The universe tore.
The erasure beam met the infinite regeneration buff I was pumping into the beast.
**[Paradox Detected.]**
**[Object cannot be deleted.]**
**[Object contains Infinite Data.]**
The White Wave buckled. The beam fractured, splitting into a thousand strands of light that whipped harmlessly into deep space.
Inside the stomach, I laughed. I was drowning in acid, my body breaking down from the strain of channeling so much power, but I was laughing.
"Error 404!" I shouted into the flesh walls. "File too large to delete!"
Gorgoth was the shield. I had turned the enemy into a tank, and I was the battery keeping it alive.
The White Ship paused.
**[CALCULATION ERROR. TARGET UNSUSTAINABLE.]**
The ship began to overheat. It was trying to delete infinity. It was impossible.
*CRACK.*
The white tetrahedron developed a fissure.
**[ABORT. ABORT.]**
The beam cut off.
The White Ship flickered. It realized it couldn't win this logic battle. It turned and warped away, vanishing into the fold of space.
We had won.
But now, I had a problem.
I was inside a planet-sized monster that was now supercharged with my own power.
*I AM A GOD!* Gorgoth bellowed, its voice shaking the solar system. *I HAVE SURVIVED THE SILENCE! I AM UNSTOPPABLE!*
It looked at Mars. It wasn't afraid anymore. It was hungry, and it felt invincible.
I sighed, wiping slime off my mask.
"Zero," I said wearily. "How much power do I have left?"
**[Reserves depleted. You are running on fumes, Architect. You buffed the boss too hard.]**
"Yeah," I admitted. "I kind of did."
I felt the walls of the stomach crushing in. Gorgoth was trying to digest the source of its new power.
"Ren? Damon?" I called out.
"Boss! You're alive!"
"Yeah. The White Wave is gone. But Gorgoth is... well, he's Level 999+ now."
"We know!" Ren panicked. "His energy readings are off the charts! He's charging a Void Beam that's going to crack Mars in half!"
"Don't worry," I said, sitting down on the floating debris. "I'm already inside the keep."
I looked at the Core Heart beating beneath the acid. It was glowing gold now, infected by my mana.
"Gorgoth thinks he absorbed my power," I murmured. "But he forgot one thing."
**[What is that, Architect?]**
"My mana creates *Order*," I said. "And Gorgoth is a creature of Chaos."
I snapped my fingers.
"System. Activate Trojan Horse."
The gold light inside Gorgoth's veins turned sharp.
The monster froze.
*WHY... WHY CAN'T I MOVE?*
"Because I own you now," I whispered.
**[System Alert: New Pet Acquired.]**
**[Name: Gorgoth.]**
**[Status: Installing Driver Updates...]**
The massive, planet-sized eye of Gorgoth rolled back. The tentacles went limp. The gnashing teeth stopped.
Gorgoth didn't die. He just... stopped being a monster and started being a server.
I laid back on the debris, closing my eyes as the adrenaline crash hit me.
"Ren," I mumbled. "Tell the players... the raid is over."
"Shigu? Shigu!"
"And tell them..." I yawned. "New housing district available. Location: Inside the giant space squid."
My vision faded to black.
**[Day 1,235 Complete.]**
**[Power Increase: +10%.]**
**[Current Status: Napping in the belly of the beast.]**
**Chapter 59 Ends.**