**Chapter 68: Looting the Galaxy**
**Day 1,249.**
**Location: The Grand Athenaeum, Valos Prime.**
**Current Status: Information Osmosis.**
**Mood: Voracious.**
There is a fundamental truth about gamers that the Galactic Concordiat failed to calculate.
They accounted for our aggression. They accounted for our strange, reality-bending powers. They even accounted for my specific, terrifying density. But they did not account for the hoarding instinct.
If you give a human a sword, they will kill a monster.
If you give a human a metaphysical inventory system with infinite slots, they will steal the monster's teeth, the rug the monster was standing on, and the chandelier hanging above it.
I stood on the uppermost terrace of the Grand Athenaeum, looking out over the conquered capital. It had been twenty-four hours since I punched a hole in the moon and erased the Seraphim.
The city of Valos, once a pristine utopia of white silence and geometric perfection, now looked like a colony of termites had found a pile of sugar.
Smoke—mostly from celebratory barbecues—drifted up from the plazas. The pristine white walls of the government district were covered in neon-spray tags marking Guild territory. And everywhere, absolutely everywhere, there was the sound of looting.
**[Guild Chat] xX_LootGoblin_Xx:** "Guys, the hover-benches in the park aren't bolted down. I repeat, the benches are lootable."
**[Guild Chat] Paladin_Dave:** "Does anyone know if 'Compressed Dark Matter' is a crafting mat or a bomb? I just put three in my bag and my stamina is draining."
**[Guild Chat] Admin (Shigu):** "It's a bomb, Dave. Put it down."
I sighed, shaking my head. My army. The saviors of the Sol System. A collection of super-powered magpies.
"They are... efficient," a voice said beside me.
It was Ren. He was leaning against a marble pillar, scrolling through a holographic manifest. He looked tired but satisfied. His armor had been repaired, and he was sporting a new cloak made of a fabric that seemed to drink the surrounding light—Concordiat Stealth-Weave, no doubt.
"Efficient is one word for it," I replied. "Did we secure the orbital shipyards?"
"Secured and stripped," Ren reported. "Kael is freaking out. He says the Concordiat manufacturing bays use a type of molecular printing that puts our 3D printers to shame. He's already reverse-engineering the schematics. Give him a week, and the Order won't just be crafting swords; we'll be printing dreadnoughts."
"Good. And the Treasury?"
Ren grinned. "Damon broke into the central vault an hour ago. Turns out, the galactic currency is Credit-Chits based on localized energy reserves. We're currently the richest organization in the Milky Way, provided the economy doesn't collapse from us stealing the bank."
"It won't collapse," I said, turning away from the balcony and facing the massive, towering doors of the Athenaeum. "Because I'm about to restructure the economy. Money is just a resource. Knowledge... that's the leverage."
I walked toward the doors. They were fifty feet high, made of a gold-infused alloy that hummed with psychic resonance.
"You handle the hardware, Ren," I commanded. "Let the players strip the armories and the banks. I'm here for the software."
Ren nodded and stepped back. "Don't fry your brain, boss. The locals say this library contains the history of the last million years."
"A million years?" I cracked my neck. "Sounds like a light read."
***
**Inside the Athenaeum.**
The library was not a room filled with books. That would be too archaic for a civilization that spanned stars.
It was a void.
Stepping through the doors was like stepping into deep space, but instead of stars, the darkness was filled with floating cubes of blue light. Billions of them. They drifted in complex orbits, spiraling around a central column of blinding white data.
There were no shelves. No librarians. Just the data, existing in a state of quantum superposition until observed.
"Zero," I said into the silence.
The red avatar appeared, looking around with digital awe.
**[Architect. This is... significant. The data density here exceeds the total storage capacity of the Earth's internet by a factor of ten trillion.]**
"Can you interface with it?"
**[Attempting handshake...]** Zero flickered. **[Access Denied. Biometric lock. It requires a DNA signature from a High Councilor or a localized neural key.]**
I frowned. "Bureaucracy. Even at the end of the world."
I walked onto the invisible bridge that spanned the data-void. I reached out and touched one of the floating blue cubes. It shied away from my finger like a frightened fish.
"I don't have a library card," I muttered. "And I don't feel like hunting down Xylar to borrow his hand."
I closed my eyes. I focused on the hum of the System in my blood.
Day 1,249. My mana capacity was effectively infinite. My **[Intelligence]** and **[Wisdom]** stats were so high they broke the rendering engine of my own HUD.
I didn't need a key. I was the Admin.
**[Skill: Mana Interface (Admin Rank).]**
**[Skill: Data Devourer.]**
I opened my eyes. They were glowing with a harsh, golden light.
"I'm not asking for access," I told the empty room. "I'm seizing the server."
I slammed my hand onto the invisible bridge.
Gold energy exploded outward. It didn't destroy; it infected. The golden light raced along the invisible pathways of the room, turning the blue data cubes gold one by one. It was a virus of pure authority.
The room shuddered. A synthesized voice—the Librarian AI—screamed in protest.
*WARNING. UNAUTHORIZED AC—*
"Sshhh," I whispered. "This is a library. Keep your voice down."
I pushed more mana. The resistance crumpled. The AI, realizing the futility of opposing a being who could punch moons, submitted.
**[Access Granted.]**
**[Welcome, Administrator.]**
The billions of data cubes stopped drifting. They aligned. They formed a massive, swirling tunnel of information, with me at the center.
"Show me," I commanded. "Show me the Janitors. Show me why they freeze worlds. Show me what they are afraid of."
The data slammed into me.
It wasn't like reading. It wasn't like watching a movie. It was remembering. I was suddenly living a million years of history in a nanosecond.
***
**The Vision.**
*I was a star.*
*No, I was a civilization living around a star. I was the Progenitors. We were beings of pure energy, inhabiting the galactic core five million years ago.*
*We were loud. We built Dyson spheres. We bent gravity. We cracked the code of immortality.*
*We celebrated. We broadcast our victory to the universe. We shouted into the dark: "We are here! We are gods!"*
*And then, something heard us.*
*The vision shifted.*
*I saw the dark. Not the vacuum of space, but the True Dark. The space between dimensions. The Void.*
*Something moved in the Void. It was vast. Incomprehensibly vast. It made galaxies look like marbles.*
*It didn't have a shape. It was a concept. It was the concept of Entropy given hunger. It was the heat-death of the universe, conscious and malicious.*
*It heard the noise of the Progenitors. It sensed the high energy concentration.*
*It breached reality.*
*It didn't invade with ships. It invaded with physics. It unraveled the laws of the Progenitor systems. Fusion stopped working. Gravity reversed. Time rotted.*
*The Progenitors died screaming as their very existence was digested by the Void.*
*The vision shifted again.*
*I saw the survivors. The cowards. The ones who hid.*
*They built machines. Cold, logical machines designed for one purpose: Silence.*
*These were the first Janitors. The White Wave.*
*Their directive was simple: Keep the noise down. Keep the energy levels low. If a civilization gets too strong, too loud, too magical... cull them. Prune them. Freeze them.*
*Do not let the Void Lords hear us again.*
*The Janitors weren't conquerors. They were terrified gardeners, frantically cutting down any flower that grew tall enough to be seen over the garden wall.*
***
**Reality.**
I gasped, stumbling back. The connection broke.
I was back in the Athenaeum. I was on my knees, sweat dripping from my forehead onto the invisible floor.
My head pounded. The sheer volume of information I had just absorbed would have liquefied a normal human brain. Even with my stats, I felt like I had just chugged the ocean through a straw.
**[Mental Stress: Critical.]**
**[Recovery in progress...]**
I stayed there for a moment, breathing heavily, letting the golden fire in my veins burn away the headache.
"So that's it," I whispered.
Zero materialized in front of me. The avatar looked concerned.
**[Architect? Your vitals spiked. Did you find what you were looking for?]**
I stood up, wiping the sweat from my brow. My expression was grim.
"I found out why the Janitors are such jerks," I said. "They aren't trying to rule the galaxy, Zero. They're trying to hide it."
**[Hide it from what?]**
"The Void Lords," I said, the name tasting like ash in my mouth. "Extra-dimensional predators that eat high-energy civilizations. The Janitors are a containment protocol. They suppress growth to prevent the universe from being noticed."
I walked to the edge of the bridge, looking at the swirling gold data.
"It makes sense," I mused. "Why freeze me? Why trap Sol? Because my power... my daily growth... it's the loudest signal in the history of the universe."
I looked at my hands. Every day, I grew 10% stronger. Every day, I became a brighter beacon.
To the Janitors, I wasn't just a rogue variable. I was a dinner bell ringing so loud it was going to wake up the monsters sleeping in the basement of reality.
**[Analysis: If this threat is real, the Janitors' actions are logical. By continuing to grow, you endanger the entire material plane.]**
"Logical," I agreed. "But cowardly."
I clenched my fist. The air around my hand crackled with black lightning—a new elemental affinity I had picked up from the archive's combat data.
"They decided the only way to survive was to stay small. To stay quiet. To live in a cage so the wolves don't see you."
I laughed. It was a low, dangerous sound.
"I don't do cages, Zero."
**[Then what is the plan? The Void Lords are classified as Extinction-Level Entities. If the Progenitors fell to them...]**
"The Progenitors were stagnant," I cut in. "They reached a cap and stopped. They thought they were gods, so they got lazy."
I turned back to the massive doors of the library.
"I don't have a cap. I don't stop."
I checked my status.
**[Day 1,249.]**
**[Next Compound: 5 Hours.]**
"Let them come," I said. "Let the Void Lords hear me. If they eat energy, then I'll just have to become something too big to swallow. I'll give them such profound indigestion they'll regret ever breaching this dimension."
"But first," I added, my mood shifting back to practical matters. "I need to go shopping."
***
**The Royal Armory, Valos Prime.**
I found Damon deep in the bowels of the Concordiat's elite weapons storage.
The room was vast, filled with racks of glowing plasma weaponry, gravity hammers, and suits of armor that looked like works of art.
Damon was currently holding a massive cannon that looked like it belonged on a tank, not a person. He was giggling. It was a disturbing sound coming from a seven-foot-tall man made of muscle and violence.
"Damon," I called out.
He spun around, leveling the cannon at me before realizing who it was. "Boss! Look at this! It's an Anti-Matter Projector! It fires destabilized particles! If I pull this trigger, everything in that direction just stops having electrons!"
"Nice," I said. "Pack it up. Pack it all up."
"Already on it. The Guild inventory is full, so we're filling up the cargo bays of the stolen ships."
I walked over to a display case. Inside, floating in a stasis field, was a small, unassuming black cube.
My new *Data Assimilation* skill flared. I instantly knew what it was.
**[Item: Singularity Core.]**
**[Description: A contained micro-black hole used to power planetary shields.]**
I smashed the glass and grabbed the cube. It was heavy, pulling at my skin with immense gravity.
"Damon," I said, tossing the cube up and catching it. "How fast can you mobilize the fleet?"
"The fleet?" Damon lowered the cannon. "We just got here. The guys are still looting the gift shops."
"Playtime is over," I said. "We have the technology. We have the money. We have the knowledge."
I looked at the black cube in my hand.
"I learned something in the library. The Janitors operate out of a central hub called 'The White Room'. It's a megastructure located in the galactic halo. It's where they monitor the noise levels."
Damon's eyes lit up. "We're going to raid the GMs' house?"
"We're going to burn it down," I corrected. "They think noise is dangerous? I want to make so much noise that the universe shakes."
I turned to leave the armory.
"Get Ren. Get Kael. Tell them to stop reverse-engineering toasters and start outfitting ships. We're leaving Valos in forty-eight hours."
"Where are we going?" Damon asked, hefting his anti-matter cannon.
"To the edge of the galaxy," I said. "We're going to kill the silence."
***
**The Flagship *Retribution* (Formerly *Logic's Embrace*)**
**Bridge.**
**Two Days Later.**
The ship—a stolen Concordiat Dreadnought that Kael had spray-painted black and red—hummed with power. The bridge was bustling with Order of Truth members.
Gone were the stiff, robotic alien crews. In their place were teenagers in hoodies, men in tactical gear, and women in wizard robes, all shouting coordinates and eating snacks over million-credit consoles.
I sat in the captain's chair. It was comfortable.
Ren stood to my right. "Fleet status green. We have fifty converted warships, manned by the top raiding guilds. The portal network is stable."
"Course set," a Navigator shouted. "Galactic Halo coordinates locked in."
I looked at the viewscreen. The stars of the Core were dense and bright. But we were heading away from them. Toward the dark rim where the Janitors watched us.
I thought about the Void Lords. I thought about the inevitability of entropy.
Most people, upon learning that there are monsters outside the universe waiting to eat them, would hide. They would turn off the lights and pray.
But I wasn't most people.
I opened my System menu.
**[Skill Point Available: 1,500 (Accumulated).]**
I dumped them all into **[Signal Amplification]** and **[Aura Projection]**.
"Zero," I said.
**[Yes, Architect?]**
"Turn on the external speakers. All frequencies. Galactic wideband."
**[Broadcasting.]**
I leaned into the microphone.
"Attention, Janitors. Attention, Void Lords. Attention, whatever creeps are hiding in the dark."
I grinned.
"My name is Shigu. I am currently holding the collected wealth of the Galactic Concordiat, I am flying a stolen dreadnought, and my power level is currently 'Yes'."
I signaled the helm.
"I'm coming for you. And I'm not bringing snacks."
I pointed forward.
"Warp."
The stars stretched into lines. The *Retribution* lurched forward, punching a hole through hyperspace, leading a fleet of loot-crazy, super-powered gamers into the heart of the enemy's territory.
We had looted the galaxy. Now, it was time to loot the gods.
**Chapter 68 Ends.**