The interior of the Xylos Dyson Swarm was a cathedral of rot. Billions of biological ships, linked by tendrils of necrotic flesh, formed a solid sphere around the dying Red Giant star. The light here was dim, blood-colored, and suffocating.
Suspended in the center of this hell, The Prometheus—a speck of obsidian Neutronium against an ocean of monsters—held its position.
David floated in the neural suspension of the cockpit, his mind fully merged with the Matter Manipulation Core. He felt the heat of the star below him and the hunger of the forty billion minds surrounding him. The Xylos Hive Mind did not speak in words; it screamed in a psychic frequency of pure, entropic need. CONSUME. ASSIMILATE. END.
"Host, the Swarm is converging," the AI voice of Prometheus echoed, now indistinguishable from David's own inner monologue. "Target density is absolute. They are attempting a Sphere Collapse—simultaneous physical crushing from all vectors."
On the tactical display, the walls of the Dyson sphere began to detach. Billions of ships, ranging from small fighters to moon-sized Devourers, fell toward The Prometheus like a landslide of meat and chitin.
David watched them come. He felt no fear. Fear was a reaction to a lack of control. David controlled the atoms they were made of.
The Alchemy of War
"They want to touch us," David thought. "Let them."
He raised a mental hand. The Matter Manipulation Core pulsed with violet light.
When the first wave of Xylos harvester ships—millions of them—slammed into the space surrounding The Prometheus, they did not hit a shield. They hit a Transmutation Field.
In an instant, the carbon and biological polymers composing the Xylos ships were rewritten at the sub-atomic level. The protons were stripped, the electron shells expanded.
The wave of biological horror instantly turned into pure, crystalline water.
Millions of tons of ice and water vapor exploded outward, shattering the momentum of the ships behind them. The Xylos screamed in confusion as their vanguard became a harmless, freezing cloud.
"Matter is a currency," David said, his voice projected through the ship's external speakers, booming across the electromagnetic spectrum. "And I set the exchange rate."
He shifted his focus. The second wave, heavier Devourer ships, fired massive bio-plasma rounds. David caught the energy with the Core, converted the thermal energy into kinetic mass, and turned their own fire into swarms of tungsten rods that reversed trajectory and shredded the ships that fired them.
It was not a battle. It was a demonstration. A god walking through a garden, pruning the weeds.
The Ultimate Expenditure
But the Swarm was vast. Forty billion ships. Even transmuting them a million at a time would take weeks. The Xylos began to adapt, their hive mind realizing that the small black ship was invincible.
They changed tactics. The entire Dyson Swarm began to constrict. They weren't attacking David anymore; they were attacking the star. They began to drain the Red Giant aggressively, inducing a premature collapse. They intended to blow the star and take David with it.
"Warning," Prometheus alerted. "Stellar instability at critical levels. The Xylos are inducing a core collapse. Supernova imminent in T-minus 120 seconds."
David looked down at the Red Giant. It was a dying, old thing, exhausted by eons of parasitism.
"They want to spend the star to kill me," David realized. "But they don't own it. I do."
He initiated the final protocol of the System. The logic that had governed his life since the day Lily left him. The more I spend, the richer I get.
He wasn't going to save the star. He was going to spend it all at once.
"Prometheus, initiate Stellar Integration. Link the Matter Manipulation Core to the star's fusion center."
"Host, the energy requirement to interface with a star is infinite. You have no cash reserves left."
"I have the Cashback," David corrected. "The ultimate credit. System, I am initiating a trade. I offer the Total Mass and Energy of this Solar System."
"Transaction Pending…" The System's voice, the one that had been with him since the beginning, spoke one last time. It sounded different now. Not mechanical. Proud.
"Transaction Accepted."
The Supernova Purchase
David reached out with the ship's mind and gripped the core of the Red Giant.
He didn't just let it explode. He directed it.
He used the Matter Manipulation Core to rewrite the physics of the star's collapse. He inverted the gravity well, turning the implosion into a focused, directional expulsion of energy.
"BURN," David commanded.
The star died. And in its death, it birthed a ring of pure, blinding white fire.
David shaped the supernova. Instead of an uncontrolled sphere, he forced the explosion into a flat, expanding disc—a blade of stellar fire expanding at the speed of light, slicing outward through the equator of the system.
The shockwave hit the Xylos Dyson Swarm.
There was no resistance. The biological shell, the forty billion ships, the accumulated rot of a thousand conquered worlds—it was all vaporized in a nanosecond. The fire scrubbed the system clean. The Xylos Hive Mind didn't have time to scream. It was simply erased from existence.
The Prometheus rode the shockwave, the Neutronium hull glowing white-hot but holding firm, protected by the Tier 9 manipulation of the blast wave itself.
David watched the universe turn white. He felt the death of the Xylos like a heavy weight being lifted from the soul of the galaxy.
The Final Cashback
As the fire faded, leaving behind a glowing, expanding nebula where the Xylos Prime had been, silence returned to the cosmos.
The System chimed. It wasn't a bell. It was a harmonious chord that resonated through the fabric of reality.
[TRANSACTION COMPLETE: ONE SOLAR SYSTEM EXPENDED.][THREAT ELIMINATED: XYLOS COLLECTIVE (EXTINCT).][CASHBACK MULTIPLIER: INFINITE.]
[REWARD: THE KEY TO THE UNIVERSE.]
A final blueprint appeared in David's mind. It wasn't a machine. It wasn't a weapon.
It was the Source Code.
David understood instantly. The Architects hadn't just built the Forge; they had built the localized laws of physics in this sector to test civilizations. By defeating the Xylos and mastering Tier 9, David had graduated.
He no longer needed the System. He was the System.
The "Cashback" interface dissolved from his vision. The numbers, the balance, the spending notifications—they vanished. He didn't need money anymore. If he wanted a starship, he thought it, and the ambient matter of the universe obeyed him. If he wanted energy, he commanded the vacuum to yield it.
He was the Architect now.
The Return
David engaged the drive. He didn't need to warp; he simply folded space, stepping from the ruins of Xylos Prime back to the Triangulum Sector instantly.
His fleet—the thousand Dreadnoughts—was waiting. Vivian and Seraphina watched on their scanners as the Prometheus reappeared, radiating an energy that felt less like a machine and more like a star.
"David?" Vivian's voice came over the comms, trembling. "The readings… the Xylos signal is gone. Completely gone. What happened?"
"I bought them out," David replied, his voice calm, echoing with the authority of a god. "Hostile takeover completed."
Epilogue: The Post-Scarcity God
One Year Later.
Earth had changed.
It was unrecognizable from the world that had mocked a poor man named David. The Aero City complex now spanned the globe, not as a conqueror, but as a nervous system. The Quantum-Aero Batteries provided free, unlimited energy to every home on the planet. The Nanobot Healing Centers had eradicated disease; cancer, aging, and physical trauma were memories of a darker age.
There was no poverty. There was no hunger. The concept of "money" had become obsolete for survival, retained only as a way to prioritize luxury allocation. The Global Weather Manipulation System kept the climate perfectly stable, reversing centuries of damage.
In the center of the new world capital, a statue stood—not of David, but of the abstract concept of Evolution.
But David was not there.
High above the ecliptic plane of the galaxy, aboard the Prometheus, David sat looking down at the spiral arms of the Milky Way.
Marcus Cole, now the planetary governor of Earth, appeared on the holographic interface. He looked younger, the Nanobots having reversed his aging.
"The integration is complete, David," Marcus reported. "The first colony ships are leaving for the Astraea System. The Purity Collective has fully integrated into the Aero Galactic Defense Force. We are a stellar civilization."
"Good," David said.
"Are you coming back?" Marcus asked. "The people… they worship you. They want to see the Architect."
David looked at the stars. He saw the threads of energy connecting them, the raw code of the universe he could now rewrite with a thought. He remembered the feeling of that first $43 in his bank account. The fear. The anger.
He had spent it all. Every cent. Every resource. Every star.
And in return, he had received everything.
"No, Marcus," David replied, his eyes fixing on the darkness between the galaxies, where other threats, other tests, and other Architects might be waiting. "My work on Earth is done. I bought them the future. It's up to them to keep it."
"Where will you go?"
David smiled. It was the first genuine smile in years.
"I have an infinite budget," David said, the Prometheus engines flaring with the light of creation. "I'm going to see what else is for sale."
The ship turned and vanished into the void, leaving behind a galaxy of light, moving toward the endless, infinite horizon.