**Chapter 71: Shigu's Disciple**
**Day 1,254.**
**Location: The Dark Side of the Moon (Sol System).**
**Current Status: Gardening.**
**Mood: Paternal.**
There is a specific kind of loneliness that comes with being an outlier.
It's not the loneliness of isolation. I have an army. I have a guild. I have millions of people worshipping me as the "Admin" or the "Architect." I have discord servers dedicated to analyzing the frame data of my punches.
No, this is the loneliness of perspective.
To a Level 1 Human, a Level 50 Orc is a monster. To a Level 50 Orc, a Level 100 Dragon is a god. To a Level 100 Dragon, I am a natural disaster.
But to me? To Shigu, on Day 1,254? Everything is wet tissue paper.
I sat on a folding lawn chair in the center of the Mare Moscoviense. Above me, the stars were harsh and unblinking, stripped of the atmospheric haze that makes them twinkle on Earth. Around me was my personal sanctuary.
It wasn't a palace. It was a crater I had accidentally made during a sneezing fit on Day 800, which I had subsequently roofed over with a forcefield. Inside, I kept the things that mattered. A mini-fridge. A high-end PC setup powered by a captured lightning elemental. And a small garden of localized reality-warping flowers I'd transplanted from Valos Prime.
I took a sip of iced tea. The condensation froze on the glass.
**[System Alert: Player 'Ren' has achieved Level 100.]**
**[System Alert: First Human to reach the Ascension Cap.]**
I smiled.
"Finally," I whispered to the vacuum.
I had uncapped the levels for humanity, but the XP curve became sadistic after Level 90. To hit 100 this quickly required an efficiency of violence that bordered on the artistic. It meant Ren hadn't slept in three days. It meant he had been soloing dungeon bosses while the rest of the guild was doing group raids.
He was desperate to catch up. He wanted to stand next to me, not behind me.
I respected that.
I opened a direct channel. No guild chat. No public broadcast. Just a whisper from my mind to his neural interface.
"Ren," I said. "Stop grinding. Come to the Moon."
There was a pause on the other end.
"The Moon, Boss? We're clearing a Void Nest in sector 7."
"Let Damon handle the bugs," I said. "Come to the crater. Coordinates sent. Come alone."
"Understood. ETA: Ten minutes."
I closed the connection. I stood up and stretched. My joints popped with the sound of tectonic plates shifting.
It was time to share the burden.
***
**Ten Minutes Later.**
A streak of silver light cut through the black sky.
Ren didn't take a shuttle. He flew. Or rather, he used a combination of *Haste*, *Levitate*, and *Aerodynamic Charge* to turn himself into a human missile.
He slammed into the lunar dust outside my forcefield, kicking up a grey cloud. He walked through the airlock I had set up, his armor battered, scorched, and covered in the black ichor of Void Stalkers.
He looked exhausted. His eyes were bloodshot. But his aura... it was sharp. Honed.
He entered the dome. The air pressure normalized. He took off his helmet, revealing messy dark hair and a face that had aged five years in the last five months.
"Boss," Ren said, snapping a salute. He looked around the crater. He saw the lawn chair. He saw the flowers. He saw the PC. "Nice place. A bit... rustic."
"It's quiet," I said, gesturing to a second lawn chair I had set up. "Sit."
Ren hesitated, then sat. He looked uncomfortable in the stillness. He was a soldier; he was used to the noise of war.
"You hit Level 100," I said.
"Yeah," Ren nodded, looking at his hands. "New skills unlocked. *Divine Blade*. *limit Break*. My stats doubled."
"And?" I asked.
Ren looked up at me. "And I still feel like an insect compared to that Void Lord we fought."
He clenched his fist.
"I saw you out there, Shigu. You tanked entropy. You fed it until it choked. I'm Level 100, the strongest human alive besides you, and if that thing had looked at me, I would have evaporated."
He leaned forward, his intensity spiking.
"What are we fighting for? If the enemies scale to *you*, what is the point of *us*?"
This was it. The crisis of faith. The realization that he was an NPC in a cutscene designed for the protagonist.
I put down my iced tea.
"That's why you're here, Ren. I'm going to tell you the truth. Not the Admin persona. Not the 'Architect' myth. The actual mechanics."
I waved my hand.
**[Skill: Illusion Projection.]**
The air between us shimmered. A graph appeared.
It had an X-axis (Time) and a Y-axis (Power).
"This is a normal progression curve," I explained, pointing to a blue line. It went up, steep at first, then flattened out as it hit soft caps. "This is you. This is Damon. This is the Void Lords."
"The Void Lords flatten out?" Ren asked, skeptical.
"Everything flattens out eventually," I said. "Physics has limits. Even magic has limits based on mana capacity and mental strain. The Void Lords are ancient, Ren. They are incredibly strong, yes, but they have been stagnant for eons. They are Level Infinity, but they are a *fixed* Infinity."
I pointed to a second line. A gold line.
It started at zero. It went up slowly. Then faster. Then faster.
By Day 1,000, it was almost vertical. By Day 1,254, it was just a wall going straight up.
"This is me," I said.
Ren stared at the graph. "That... that shouldn't be possible. That's an exponential curve without a decay function."
"My superpower isn't strength, Ren. It's compound interest. Every day, I get 10% stronger than the day before. Not 10% of my base. 10% of my *current* total."
I let that sink in.
"If I have a power level of 100 today, tomorrow it's 110. The next day 121. In a week, it doubles. In a month, it multiplies by seventeen."
Ren's eyes widened. He was doing the mental math.
"You've been active for three and a half years," he whispered. "The number... it would be..."
"It's a number that requires scientific notation with so many zeros it crashes the HUD," I said calmly. "When I fought the Void Lord, I didn't beat it with technique. I beat it because I generate more energy in a second than a star generates in a lifetime."
I dismissed the graph.
"The Void Lords are terrifying, Ren. But they are finite. I am the only thing in this universe that is truly infinite. Given enough time, I will become larger than the universe itself."
Ren looked at me with a mix of awe and horror.
"Then... why do you need us?" he asked, his voice trembling slightly. "If you're a god among insects, why build the Order? Why save Earth? Why not just float in space and wait until you can eat the Void Lords for breakfast?"
"Because of the boredom," I said instantly.
Then I paused. I looked at the Earth hanging in the sky above us. Blue and fragile.
"And," I corrected myself, "because infinite power comes with infinite detachment. The stronger I get, the less human I feel. The logic of the System starts to override the logic of my heart. I start seeing people as numbers. I start seeing cities as hit-boxes."
I looked Ren in the eye.
"I need an anchor, Ren. I need someone who can stand in my shadow without freezing to death, someone who can remind me which way is down. I don't need a minion. I need a Disciple."
Ren sat in silence for a long time. The hum of the forcefield was the only sound.
"A Disciple," he repeated.
"I can't give you my growth cheat," I said. "That's innate. But I can give you the runoff. I have so much excess mana leaking out of my pores that I have to actively suppress it to avoid crushing the furniture."
I stood up and walked over to him.
"You hit Level 100. Your vessel is finally strong enough to hold a drop of my blood."
Ren stood up too. He didn't flinch.
"What happens if I take it?"
"Two possibilities," I said frankly. "One: Your spirit burns out and you become a mindless mana-construct. Two: You evolve. You stop being a Player and start being an Admin."
I held out my hand. A single drop of golden blood welled up on my finger. It shone like a miniature sun. The gravity in the room shifted toward it.
"This is the invite to the endgame, Ren. No respawns. No logouts."
Ren looked at the drop of blood. He looked at his scarred armor. He thought about the Void Stalkers phasing through walls on Earth. He thought about the feeling of helplessness.
He reached out.
"I never liked the tutorial anyway," Ren grinned.
He touched the blood.
***
**The Ascension.**
It wasn't painful. Pain implies damage. This was rewriting.
Golden light exploded outward, filling the crater. The forcefield rippled. The moonquake sensors on Earth probably just registered a magnitude 6 tremor.
Ren floated in the air. His armor disintegrated, stripping away the legendary metal he had grinded for. Underneath, his body began to change.
His veins turned gold. His eyes burned away, replaced by swirling pools of data. The System interface visible to me went haywire.
**[Target: Ren]**
**[Status: Evolving...]**
**[Class: Paladin -> ERROR -> Reclassifying...]**
**[New Class: Apostle of the Infinite.]**
I watched, keeping my own aura flared to stabilize the reality around him. If I didn't contain this, the energy surge would blow the moon out of orbit.
"Breathe," I commanded, my voice layered with mana. "Accept the math. You are not a container. You are a conduit."
Ren screamed—a sound of pure ecstasy and terror.
The light coalesced. It hardened.
New armor formed around him. It wasn't made of metal; it was made of my mana, solidified into a black and gold substance that looked like crystallized night. A cape of pure starlight unfurled from his shoulders.
He dropped to the ground. He landed on one knee, cracking the bedrock.
He breathed heavily. Steam rose from his skin.
He looked up.
His eyes were no longer human. They were gold, mirroring mine, but softer. Where mine were a raging inferno, his were a steady lantern.
**[Name: Ren]**
**[Level: 100 (Limit Broken)]**
**[Designation: The First Disciple.]**
**[Passive Skill Acquired: Echo of the Architect (Stats scale at 1% of Master's Rate).]**
I whistled. "One percent. Not bad."
Ren stood up. He looked at his hands. He clenched his fist, and space distorted around it.
"I can feel it," Ren whispered. "I can feel... everything. The grid. The code. The leylines on Earth."
He looked at me, and for the first time, he didn't look like he was looking up at a mountain. He looked like he was standing on the first peak of the range.
"1% of your growth," Ren said, a wry smile forming. "That still makes me stronger than anything in the Concordiat."
"Don't get cocky," I warned, sitting back down in my lawn chair. "You're still a baby god. But at least now you won't die if a Void Lord sneezes on you."
Ren laughed. It was a deep, resonant sound that shook the dust.
"So," he said, testing the weight of his new power. "Now that I'm... upgraded. What's the plan? We defended Earth. We patched the holes."
"That was defense," I said. "Defense is boring. Defense is waiting for the enemy to make a move."
I tapped the table, and a holographic map of the galaxy appeared. But this map was different. It showed the dark spaces. The gaps between stars where the Void leaked in.
"The Harbingers are waking up," I said. "Three of them. Ancient entities that serve the Void Lords. They are the ones organizing the Stalkers. They are the generals."
I pointed to three distinct locations in the deep periphery.
"They think they are hunters," I said. "They think they are coming to cull a noisy civilization."
I looked at Ren.
"I want you to take the fleet," I ordered. "Take the Guilds. Take the new weapons we stole from Valos. Go to the Western Reach."
"And you?" Ren asked.
"I'm going to the Core," I said. "There's a Harbinger there trying to corrupt a black hole. I'm going to have a chat with it."
"And the third one?"
"We leave the third one for now," I said. "Let it come. Let it think we're distracted. I want to see what happens when it tries to land on Earth."
Ren nodded. The uncertainty was gone. He had a mission, and he had the power to execute it.
"Disciple," he tested the word. "Does this mean I have to call you Master?"
"Call me Shigu," I said. "Or 'Admin'. If you call me Master, I'm demoting you to Level 1."
"Understood, Shigu."
Ren walked to the edge of the dome. He didn't need a ship anymore. He crouched, energy gathering around him for a launch that would take him back to the fleet in seconds.
"Ren," I called out one last time.
He paused.
"Remember the most important rule of the Order."
Ren looked back, his golden eyes glowing.
"Loot everything," he grinned.
*BOOM.*
He was gone. A streak of gold returning to the blue marble below.
***
**Alone Again.**
I sat back in the silence of the moon.
I checked my status.
**[Day 1,254 Complete.]**
**[Growth Applied.]**
**[Mana Capacity: Increased.]**
**[Physical Density: Increased.]**
The numbers ticked up. The feeling of absolute invincibility washed over me again, stronger than yesterday, weaker than tomorrow.
But the loneliness was a little less sharp.
I had shared the fire. I hadn't burned the house down.
I looked at the PC monitor. The global chat was scrolling by at mach speed.
**[World Chat] xX_Slayer_Xx:** "Did anyone just see a golden meteor hit the Atlantic?"
**[World Chat] HealerGirl99:** "My mana regen just spiked! What is happening?"
**[World Chat] Ren (Admin Rank):** "Order of Truth, mobilize. Fleet assembly at Orbit Anchor 4. We are going hunting."
I chuckled. He learned fast.
I closed my eyes and focused on the Galactic Core.
I could feel it. Thousands of light-years away. A presence. Cold. Malicious. Rotting.
*Harbinger of Silence.*
It was trying to be quiet. It was trying to sneak through the back door of the galaxy while I was distracted with paperwork.
"Hide and seek," I murmured, standing up.
My lawn chair disintegrated into dust simply because I stood up too fast and the air pressure change shattered it.
"Oops."
I floated upward, through the forcefield, into the vacuum.
I looked at the sun. It looked small from here.
"Zero," I said.
**[Yes, Architect?]**
"Queue up a playlist. Something loud."
**[Playing: 'Ride of the Valkyries' - Synthwave Remix.]**
"Perfect."
I gathered my mana. Not a ripple this time. A tide.
I wasn't going to warp. I was going to fold space. I was going to step from the Moon to the Galactic Core in a single stride.
"Coming ready or not," I whispered.
The universe warped around me. The stars stretched.
And the hunt began.
**Chapter 71 Ends.**