**Chapter 58: Arrival of the Devourer**
**Day 1,235 (Noon).**
**Location: The Crimson Citadel – Mars.**
**Current Status: In the dark.**
**Mood: Annoyed.**
The sun didn't set. It didn't fade behind a cloud. It was deleted.
One moment, the Martian plains were bathed in the pale, dusty light of midday. The next, the world was plunged into a darkness so absolute it felt heavy, like a physical weight pressing against the eyes. It wasn't just the absence of light; it was the suffocating pressure of something massive displacing the void itself.
The temperature plummeted instantly. Frost began to web across the transparisteel windows of the Citadel's throne room.
"Zero," I said, my voice cutting through the sudden silence of the command deck. "Who turned off the lights?"
The holographic avatar of the AI flickered into existence, glowing a stark, panicked red against the black room.
**[Alert: Solar Occlusion Detected.]**
**[Source: Object entering the inner system at 1 AU.]**
**[Diameter: 140,000 kilometers.]**
I stood up from the throne. "140,000 kilometers? That's not a ship. That's a gas giant."
**[Correction: It is a biological entity, Architect. It has positioned itself directly between Earth/Mars and the Sun. It is casting a shadow over the entire warzone.]**
I walked to the balcony. The sky above was a tapestry of stars, but where the sun should have been, there was only a circular void. A black hole in the fabric of the sky. And around the edges of that void, the starlight bent and warped, caught in the gravity well of the intruder.
The Devourer had arrived. And it had brought its own night.
***
**The Panic**
**Location: Earth Orbit – Defense Platform Alpha.**
"Hold fire! I can't see targets!"
Commander Vance screamed into his comms. The Defense Platform was in chaos. The sudden darkness had triggered emergency floodlights, casting long, erratic shadows across the deck.
Outside the reinforced glass, the vacuum of space was teeming with movement.
The massive shadow blocking the sun wasn't empty. It was leaking.
Millions of smaller shadows were detaching from the main mass, spiraling toward the inner planets like a swarm of locusts. They didn't show up on radar as metal. They showed up as meat.
"Scanners are down!" an officer yelled. "The Sanity filters are spiking! The system is reading the enemy as... glitching geometry!"
Vance looked at his HUD. The **[Sanity]** bar, the new mechanic introduced by the Admin, was throbbing purple.
**[Warning: Cosmic Horror Proximity.]**
**[Sanity Drain: 1% per second.]**
**[Effect: The Human mind cannot comprehend the scale of the beast. System is applying 'Raid Boss' texture pack to preserve user cognitive function.]**
"Look at the screen!" the officer pointed.
The main viewscreen flickered. The System was working overtime. It took the incomprehensible reality of the Devourer fleet—writhing masses of tentacles, eyes, and non-Euclidean flesh—and overlaid a digital interface on top of it.
Red health bars appeared over the swarm.
Level markers popped up. **[Void Tick - Lvl 80]**. **[Hollow Cruiser - Lvl 150]**.
And in the distance, over the massive entity blocking the sun, a single, colossal nameplate burned in the darkness like a neon sign in hell.
**[WORLD BOSS: GORGOTH THE SUN-EATER]**
**[LEVEL: 999 (CAP)]**
**[HP: ∞ / ∞]**
Vance swallowed hard. "Infinite HP?"
"Commander!" the comms officer shouted. "Incoming hail! It's... it's on all frequencies. It's not audio. It's in our heads!"
***
**The Hunger**
**Location: The Crimson Citadel.**
I felt it before I heard it.
It was a vibration in the mana. A sound that wasn't a sound, but the sensation of a billion teeth gnashing together. It bypassed the ears and vibrated the bones directly.
*OPEN.*
The word slammed into the minds of every living being in the solar system.
*THE COLD COMES FROM BEHIND. THE WHITE SILENCE PURSUES.*
*OPEN THE SHELL. LET US IN.*
I gripped the railing of the balcony. The sheer psychic pressure was enough to crack the stone beneath my hands. This wasn't an invasion force looking for conquest. This was a stampede.
"They're terrified," I whispered.
Ren stumbled onto the balcony, clutching his head. Blood was trickling from his nose. "Shigu... they're screaming. They want to... hide inside the planet?"
"They want to consume the planet and wear it like a shell," I corrected. "They think our reality is a bunker against the White Wave. And they're willing to kill us to get the best seats."
I looked up at the black disk of Gorgoth.
"Zero. Connect me to the Global PA. Override the enemy broadcast."
**[Processing... Connection Established.]**
I took a deep breath. My chest expanded. The golden core of my power, infinite and compounding, surged.
"Attention, Gorgoth," I spoke.
I didn't shout. I simply projected my will. My voice rolled out of the Citadel, amplified by the mana-network, and hit the vacuum of space. It collided with the psychic scream of the Devourer, pushing it back.
"The bunker is occupied," I said. "And we don't take refugees who eat the furniture."
The response was immediate. The black disk shifted.
*THEN WE SHALL EAT THE OCCUPANTS.*
The swarm accelerated.
***
**The First Volley**
**Location: The Void Between Mars and the Swarm.**
The space between the planets lit up.
But not with sunlight. It lit up with the purple fire of the Devourer cannons—massive, biological sphincters on the "ships" that launched projectiles of condensed void-matter.
These weren't lasers. They were slugs of "nothingness." When they hit a stray asteroid, the rock didn't explode; it simply ceased to exist, leaving a spherical cutout in reality.
"Shields!" Ren screamed.
**[System Alert: Planetary Barriers Activated.]**
The Seven Pylons I had constructed—massive towers of enchanted obsidian located on Earth, Luna, and Mars—pulsed in unison. A triangular grid of gold hard-light sprang into existence, connecting the three celestial bodies.
*BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.*
The void slugs slammed into the golden barrier. Ripples of energy distorted the view of the stars. The impact was silent in the vacuum, but the shockwave rattled the teeth of players on the surface below.
**[Shield Integrity: 98%.]**
"They're testing the fence," I noted, watching the readouts. "Zero, give me the firing solution for the Void-Busters."
**[Targeting solution acquired. 5,000 units locked.]**
On the moons of Mars and the orbital stations of Earth, the new Tier 5 cannons swiveled. These were weapons designed by the now-demoted Kael, fueled by the very mana essence I generated.
"Fire."
Five thousand beams of pure, concentrated starlight erupted from our lines.
They crossed the distance in seconds. They skewered the first wave of the swarm. The biological ships shrieked—a psychic sound of pain—as they were incinerated.
**[Kill Count: 4,200 Enemy Units.]**
A cheer went up from the Citadel below. The players saw the numbers. They saw the XP notifications pop up.
*+50,000 XP (Shared).*
"They bleed!" someone shouted. "If it bleeds, we can farm it!"
I didn't cheer. I was watching the main mass.
Gorgoth hadn't moved. The massive planet-sized entity was absorbing the light of the stars.
"Zero," I said. "Analysis of the debris."
**[Analyzing... The destroyed ships are reforming.]**
"Thought so."
On the viewscreen, the clouds of vaporized flesh weren't dissipating. They were pulling back together, stitched by invisible threads of violet gravity. The "dead" ships were resurrecting.
*WE ARE ETERNAL,* the voice of Gorgoth rumbled. *HUNGER DOES NOT DIE.*
"Regeneration," Ren cursed. "How do we kill something that puts itself back together?"
"We don't hit the body," I said, eyes narrowing. "We hit the core. But first... we have a temperature problem."
I looked at the environmental readouts.
**[Global Temperature: -40°C and dropping.]**
**[Status Effect: Hypothermia detected in 60% of Player Base.]**
Without the sun, the Earth and Mars were rapidly freezing. The magical shields stopped the void slugs, but they couldn't generate heat.
"They don't need to beat our shields," I realized. "They just need to wait for us to freeze to death in the dark."
I looked at my hands.
My power increased without limits. Every day, another 10%. By now, the numbers were abstract. I contained enough energy to vaporize the solar system ten times over.
I had been holding it back. Repressing it to stay human. To stay grounded.
"Ren," I said calmly. "Tell the players to put on their sunglasses."
"What? Why?"
I walked to the edge of the balcony. I stepped up onto the railing.
"Because I'm going to turn the lights back on."
***
**The Artificial Star**
**Location: High Orbit over Mars.**
I jumped.
I didn't use a flight spell. I simply applied force. The balcony crumbled into dust as I launched myself upward, piercing the atmosphere in a heartbeat.
I broke orbit. I floated in the freezing vacuum, a tiny speck of gold against the overwhelming wall of darkness that was Gorgoth.
The entity loomed over me. Up close, it wasn't just a black sphere. It was a landscape of nightmares. Valleys of teeth. Oceans of oil. Mountains made of calcified bone. It was a planet made of corpses.
*TINY SPARK,* Gorgoth whispered. *YOU ARE WARM. I WILL DRINK YOU FIRST.*
A massive tentacle, the width of a continent, lashed out from the entity's surface. It sought to crush me.
I didn't dodge.
I closed my eyes. I reached into the core of my being—the "Admin Access" of the universe.
"System," I commanded internally. "Remove Limiters. Safety Protocols: Off."
**[Warning: Mana Output will exceed vessel capacity. Physical form may destabilize.]**
"Do it."
**[Unlocking... 10%... 50%... 100%.]**
I opened my eyes.
They weren't human eyes anymore. They were burning novas.
**[Skill: Solar Proxy.]**
I released the energy. All of it.
*FWWOOOOOM.*
Sound cannot travel in space, but light can. And this light screamed.
A sphere of pure, golden plasma erupted from my body. It expanded instantly, growing from the size of a human to the size of a moon, then larger. It wasn't fire. It was concentrated "Order." It was the conceptual opposite of the Void.
I became a star.
The golden light slammed into the darkness of Gorgoth. The entity recoiled. The continent-sized tentacle evaporated instantly, burned away by the sheer thermal and magical output.
The light washed over Mars and Earth. The frost on the Citadel windows melted in seconds. The sky turned from black to a brilliant, blinding gold.
**[System Alert: Global Buff Applied.]**
**[The Architect's Warmth.]**
**[Effect: Cold Immunity. +200% Mana Regen. Sanity Restore: Max.]**
In the Citadel, Ren shielded his eyes, looking up at the new sun hanging in the sky.
"Show off," he grinned.
***
**The Raid**
**Location: Space – Proximity to Gorgoth.**
I floated in the center of my own miniature sun. I felt... stretched. Being a star was exhausting. I couldn't keep this up forever. Maybe an hour before I burned out my physical body.
But an hour was plenty of time for a raid.
"Gorgoth!" I projected my voice, now booming with the authority of a deity. "You blocked the sun. I replaced it. Your move."
The planet-sized monster shrieked. The light burned its skin. It couldn't hide in the dark anymore.
*IT BURNS! IT BURNS!*
"Listen up, Order of Truth!" I connected to the global channel.
"The boss is revealed. I've stripped its stealth. I'm holding the aggro. But I can't kill it alone while I'm busy being a lightbulb."
I pointed a finger—a massive flare of solar energy—at the surface of Gorgoth.
"I'm opening a path. Teleporters are online."
A beam of solid light connected my position to the defense grid, creating a bridge of mana that pierced Gorgoth's outer atmosphere.
"Your objective is the Core. Dive into the beast. Find the heart. And kill it."
**[Global Quest: The Belly of the Beast.]**
**[Objective: Destroy Gorgoth's Core Heart.]**
**[Reward: Survival.]**
"Launch the boarding pods!"
From the surface of Mars and the orbital stations, thousands of drop-pods shot out. They rode the beam of my light like a highway. They were filled with the best players humanity had to offer. The Titans, the Arch-Mages, the Shadow Walkers.
They weren't fighting ships in a dogfight. They were landing *on* the monster.
***
**The Landing**
**Location: Surface of Gorgoth (Sector 4: The Bone Plains).**
Damon, the Titan, braced himself as his pod slammed into the surface of the enemy.
*CRUNCH.*
The hatch blew open. Damon rolled out, his massive shield raised.
The gravity was heavy—about 1.5x Earth standard. The air was toxic, but his helmet filtered it out.
He looked around.
The "ground" was made of calcified ribs the size of skyscrapers. The "grass" was writhing black cilia. And the sky was a blinding gold, thanks to Shigu hovering in orbit.
"Clear the LZ!" Damon roared.
A dozen Void-Ticks, size of cars, skittered over the bone-ridges toward them.
"Formation!"
Behind Damon, his guild poured out. Healers cast buffs. Rangers took high ground on the giant ribs.
Damon slammed his shield into the ground. **[Skill: Fortress Wall].** A shockwave of earth mana cracked the bone-floor, flipping the ticks onto their backs.
"For the Admin!" he shouted.
He charged, his hammer glowing with the golden light of the new sun above.
All across the surface of the planet-sized entity, thousands of battles erupted simultaneously. Humanity was like a virus, injecting itself into the host to kill it from the inside.
***
**The Duel of Concepts**
**Location: High Orbit.**
I watched the ants land. Good. They were in.
But Gorgoth wasn't ignoring me.
The entity realized that I was the anchor. If it could extinguish me, the cold would return, and the humans would die.
The surface of Gorgoth rippled. A massive mouth—thousands of miles wide—opened directly beneath me.
*YOU ARE BRIGHT,* Gorgoth spoke, its voice straining against the pain of the light. *BUT FUEL RUNS OUT. HUNGER IS ETERNAL.*
From the mouth, a beam of pure darkness erupted. It was a **Void Roar**. A concentrated stream of entropy designed to unmake existence.
It hit my solar sphere.
*CRASH.*
The collision of gold and black sent shockwaves through the entire solar system. Satellites were knocked out of orbit. The tides on Earth went haywire.
I gritted my teeth. The pressure was immense. It felt like holding back a tidal wave with my bare hands.
**[Mana Reserves: Dropping. 90%... 85%...]**
**[Structural Integrity: 70%.]**
"You think hunger is eternal?" I shouted back, pushing more power into the light. "Hunger is just a lack of something! I am the *supply*!"
I focused. I needed to buy the players time.
"Zero! How deep is the core?"
**[Estimated depth: 4,000 kilometers beneath the crust. The players are advancing, but resistance is heavy. They need 30 minutes.]**
"I'll give them thirty."
I saw the darkness creeping around the edges of my light. Gorgoth was trying to swallow my star.
*I HAVE EATEN SUNS BEFORE,* Gorgoth taunted. *YOU ARE JUST ANOTHER CALORIE.*
"I'm not a calorie," I snarled.
I reached into my inventory. I pulled out the **Heart of Silence**, the artifact we had looted from the King. It was still vibrating with the corrupted code I had purged earlier.
"I'm the indigestion."
I crushed the artifact in my hand.
The raw void energy inside it mixed with my solar aura. It shouldn't have worked. Matter and antimatter. But I forced them to fuse.
**[Skill Created: Twilight Nova.]**
My light changed. It wasn't just gold anymore. It was gold laced with streaks of absolute black.
I punched the Void Roar.
The beam of darkness shattered. My counter-attack spiraled down the throat of the beast, a drill made of chaotic energy.
Gorgoth choked. The planet shuddered.
*WHAT... WHAT ARE YOU?*
"I'm a gamer with cheat codes," I panted, sweat vaporizing off my skin. "And you're blocking my view."
***
**The Real Threat**
**Location: Deep Space (Beyond the Devourer).**
While the battle raged, while Shigu wrestled a planet and humanity fought on its surface, something else was watching.
Far beyond the orbit of Pluto, where the Devourer fleet had entered, a ripple appeared in the fabric of space.
It wasn't a tear like the Devourers made. It was a... smoothing.
The chaotic radiation of the void flattened out. The quantum foam stopped bubbling.
A single, perfect white ship emerged. It was geometric. A tetrahedron of flawless white material that reflected no light, only absolute flatness.
It was small. Maybe fifty meters across.
Inside, there was no crew. Only a consciousness of pure math.
**[Anomaly Detected: Solar System 42-B.]**
**[Observation: Indigenous chaos entity 'Gorgoth' engaged with Local Anomalous High-Energy Variable 'Shigu'.]**
The consciousness analyzed the golden star fighting the black planet.
**[Analysis: The High-Energy Variable exceeds standard parameters for organic life. It represents a disorderly accumulation of power.]**
The white ship began to charge a weapon. It wasn't a gun. It was a formatting tool.
**[Conclusion: The Devourer is messy. The Human is messy. Both must be corrected.]**
**[Initiating Protocol: The White Wave.]**
**[Timer: 1 Hour.]**
***
**Location: High Orbit.**
I felt a chill. Not the cold of space. Not the psychic scream of Gorgoth.
A chill of *recognition*.
I looked past the monster I was fighting, out into the deep dark. I saw the tiny white speck.
"Zero," I said, my voice tight. "Do you see that?"
**[Target unidentified. It reads as... nothing. Zero data. Perfect silence.]**
My heart skipped a beat.
The Devourers were the refugees. Kael was right. They were running from the janitors.
And the janitor just clocked in.
"Ren!" I shouted over the comms. "Tell the raid teams to hurry! We don't have thirty minutes anymore!"
I channeled every ounce of power I had, expanding my star until it scorched the very edges of Gorgoth's atmosphere.
"Finish it!" I roared. "Finish it now, or we all get deleted!"
**Chapter 58 Ends.**