**Chapter 95: The Meeting of Gods**
**Day 1,301.**
**Location: Universe-001 (The Newly Formatted Zone).**
**Current Status: Rebooting Reality.**
**Mood: Apprehensive.**
There is a specific feeling you get when you are about to be called into the principal's office. It's a mix of guilt, defiance, and a sinking sensation in the gut that suggests you might have finally gone too far.
I (Mortal Shigu) was currently sitting on a throne made of repurposed geometric logic-shards, eating a bag of chips I had synthesized from pure mana. Below me, the players of the Order of Truth were busy. They were terraforming the sterile white wasteland of the Arithmancer's realm.
Ren was directing a squad of druids to plant a forest on a Möbius strip. Jax was trying to figure out if he could drift a hover-tank on a frictionless plane. It was chaotic. It was beautiful. It was mine.
Then, the sky turned static.
It wasn't the hostile red of the Rot-Mother, nor the sterile white of the Arithmancer. It was the color of a television tuned to a dead channel. A heavy, oppressive grey that tasted like ozone and old copper.
**[SYSTEM ALERT: CRITICAL PROCESS INTERRUPT.]**
**[SOURCE: ROOT DIRECTORY.]**
**[MESSAGE: USER 'SHIGU' IS REQUESTED AT THE FRONT DESK.]**
The music of the victory party died instantly. The players froze. Even the wind stopped blowing.
"Shigu," Ren said, his voice tight. He stepped up to the dais, his Void Armor bristling. "What is that? Is it a new raid boss?"
I stopped chewing my chip. I looked up at the grey static. My gamer instincts were screaming, but not in the way they usually did. This wasn't a monster. This was the Game Master.
"No," I said, wiping crumbs from my tunic. "Bosses have health bars. This thing... this thing has a command prompt."
I stood up. My legs felt heavy. Not physical heaviness, but *conceptual* heaviness. Something was pulling at the core of my being—not at this Avatar, but at the Prime Entity hiding in the sun of Universe-616.
"I have to go," I said.
"We're coming with you," Jax yelled, racking the slide of his solar cannon. "If it bleeds, we can kill it. If it doesn't bleed, we'll make it leak oil!"
"You can't come where I'm going, Jax," I said softly. "You guys are inside the game. I'm being called to the desktop."
I closed my eyes.
"Architect?"
*// YES, SHIGU? //*
The Architect's voice was different. Usually, the AI was calm, detached. Now? It sounded terrified. It sounded like a child hiding under the covers.
*// WARNING. THE SIGNAL ORIGIN IS PRE-EXISTENCE. IT IS THE ADMIN CONSOLE. IF YOU GO, I CANNOT FOLLOW. I DO NOT HAVE THE CLEARANCE. //*
"I know," I said. I took a deep breath. "Keep the Avatar safe. Keep the Order running. If I don't come back... well, it's been a hell of a run."
I severed the link to the mortal plane.
My consciousness shot upward. I left the Avatar. I left the star in System Z-42. I ascended past the physical universe, past the Interstice, past the swirling chaos of the Multiverse.
I went up until there was no "where" anymore. There was only code.
***
**Location: The Root Directory (The Admin Room).**
**Current Status: Buffer Overflow.**
**Mood: Defensive.**
I manifested.
I didn't have my golden armor. I didn't have the solar spear. I didn't have the infinite gravity of a star.
I appeared as I saw myself: a young man in a grey hoodie and jeans.
The room was small. It shouldn't have been small—it was the control center of all reality—but it chose to appear as a small, windowless office. The walls were lined with server racks that hummed with the sound of a trillion souls being processed. The floor was cheap linoleum.
In the center of the room sat a desk. Behind the desk sat a Figure.
It—He—looked exhausted. He wore a white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a loose tie. His face was blurry, shifting between ethnicities and ages every few seconds, but the expression remained constant: utter, crushing fatigue.
He was typing on a keyboard that didn't make a sound.
**[Entity: The Administrator.]**
**[Level: N/A.]**
**[Class: Sysadmin.]**
He didn't look up.
"Do you have any idea," the Administrator said, his voice sounding like paper shuffling, "how much paperwork you have generated in the last 1,300 cycles?"
I stood there, hands in my hoodie pockets. I decided to play it cool. "I like to stay active."
The Administrator sighed. It was a long, heavy sigh that seemed to deflate the room. He finally looked up. His eyes were screens of scrolling green text.
"Active," he repeated. "You conquered Universe-001 yesterday. You killed the Arithmancer. Do you know what the Arithmancer *did*?"
"He tried to kill me," I shrugged. "Self-defense."
"He managed the physics engine!" The Admin snapped, slamming a hand on the desk. "He calculated the friction coefficients for twelve billion galaxies! Now that he's gone, I have to run those calculations manually until I can code a replacement. Do you know how boring friction is, Shigu?"
"Sounds rough," I admitted. "Maybe you should hire an intern."
The Admin pinched the bridge of his nose. "You are not supposed to be here. You are a glitch. A rounding error in Sector 616 that spiraled out of control."
"I prefer the term 'Emergent Gameplay'," I quipped.
"This isn't a game!" The Admin stood up. As he did, the room stretched. The server racks grew infinite. The mundane office melted away to reveal the raw, white void of the Source Code. "This is a complex simulation designed to harvest entropy. And you... you are hogging all the resources."
He pointed a finger at me.
"Look at your file size, Shigu. You are consuming 40% of the local cluster's memory. Your 'Daily Growth' mechanic? It's a memory leak. You get 10% bigger every day. That is exponential. Do you know what happens to an exponential curve on a finite timeline?"
I frowned. "It goes vertical."
"It crashes the server," The Admin corrected. "In approximately two years, your data density will exceed the capacity of the Multiverse. You will not just become a God. You will become a Black Hole of Data. You will overwrite everything else simply by existing."
He sat back down, smoothing his tie.
"I cannot allow the crash. Therefore, I must purge the corrupted file."
He reached for the keyboard.
"Wait," I said, taking a step forward. "I'm not a file. I'm a person. I have friends. I have people relying on me."
"They are NPCs," The Admin said dismissively, typing a command. "Simulated constructs. You are the only anomaly with true agency, which is why you are the problem."
**[System Alert: Deletion Protocol Initiated.]**
**[Target: User_Shigu.]**
**[Method: Total Wipe.]**
The air in the room turned cold.
It wasn't a battle like the ones I had fought before. There were no fireballs. There were no lasers.
There was just... less of me.
I felt my history unraveling. I felt the memory of my first day fading. I felt the love I had for the Order of Truth slipping away like water through fingers.
"Stop!" I shouted. I tried to summon my mana, but there was no mana here. This was the layer *above* magic.
"It will be painless," The Admin said, his eyes focused on the screen. "Just a quick reformat. I'll patch the hole you left, maybe reset Universe-616 to a backup from Day 0. No harm done."
I fell to my knees. My hands were becoming transparent.
*Is this it?* I thought. *After fighting Eldritch horrors, after rewriting time... I just get dragged to the Recycle Bin?*
No.
I remembered the Arithmancer. I remembered what he called me.
*A Glitch.*
A glitch isn't just an error. A glitch is something that refuses to follow the rules. A glitch happens when something is where it isn't supposed to be, and it's too stubborn to move.
I focused. Not on my power. Not on my skills.
I focused on my **Weight**.
For 1,301 days, I had compounded. 10% a day. Every single day.
That wasn't just strength. That was *data*. I had accumulated petabytes of experiences, skills, connections, and raw conceptual mass.
I wasn't just a file. I was the biggest file in the history of the system.
"I..." I gritted my teeth, forcing my transparent hand to solidify. "I... am... not... crashing."
The Admin stopped typing. He frowned. "Why is the progress bar stuck?"
I stood up. It took effort. It felt like lifting the sky. But I stood up.
"Because," I growled, my form flickering from grey hoodie back to Golden Armor and then back again. "I'm too heavy."
The Admin typed furiously.
**[Command: DELETE User_Shigu.]**
**[Processing...]**
**[ERROR.]**
**[ERROR: FILE IS TOO LARGE FOR RECYCLE BIN.]**
The Admin stared at the screen. "That's impossible. I have root access. I can delete galaxies."
"I'm not a galaxy," I said, taking a step toward the desk. The floor cracked under my foot—not physically, but the code of the floor fractured. "I'm a singular point of infinite growth."
The Admin switched tactics. "Fine. If I can't delete you, I'll move you. Quarantine folder."
He typed again.
**[Command: MOVE User_Shigu TO /Quarantine/Void.]**
I felt a tug. A massive, cosmic hook trying to drag me sideways into nothingness.
I planted my feet.
**[Passive Skill Triggered: Immovable Object.]**
**[Effect: Your Mass exceeds the Carrier Limit.]**
The hook snapped. The feedback shrieked through the server room, blowing out one of the racks. Sparks of blue data showered the room.
The Admin looked up, genuine fear finally entering his shifting face. "You... you're Read-Only."
I grinned. It was a feral grin. "Locked for editing, buddy."
I slammed my hands onto his desk. The impact sent a shockwave through the interface. The Admin's monitor flickered.
"You can't delete me," I said, leaning in. "You can't move me. And you can't stop me."
"But the crash!" The Admin stammered, shrinking back in his chair. "If you keep growing, the integrity of the system fails! The entropy harvest will cease!"
"Then upgrade the server," I demanded.
The Admin blinked. "What?"
"You heard me. If I'm too big for the game, make the game bigger."
I gestured to the infinite void around us.
"You're the Admin. You built this box. But the box is too small now. So, expand it. Add more RAM. Patch in new dimensions. Open up the DLC regions you were saving for the next epoch."
The Admin stared at me. He looked at his screen, flashing with **[ACCESS DENIED]** errors. Then he looked back at me.
"That requires... immense energy. I would have to cannibalize the dormant sectors. I would have to waken the Outer Dark."
"The Rot-Mother?" I asked. "The things scratching at the walls?"
"Worse things than her," The Admin whispered. "Things from the Legacy Code. The Old Versions."
"Good," I said. "I need the XP."
The Admin sat in silence for a long moment. He looked at the error logs. He looked at me, a user who had accidentally become a root-level threat.
Slowly, a smile crept onto his face. It wasn't a nice smile. It was the smile of an overworked employee who just found a way to delegate his hardest task.
"You want an expansion?" The Admin asked softly.
"I want limitless content," I corrected.
"Very well."
The Admin began to type. This time, the keystrokes sounded like thunderclaps.
**[SYSTEM UPDATE 10.0 INITIATED.]**
**[PATCH NOTES:]**
**1. USER 'SHIGU' DESIGNATED AS 'SYSTEM FEATURE'.**
**2. DELETION PROTOCOLS DISABLED.**
**3. EXPANSION: 'THE ABYSSAL FRONTIER' UNLOCKED.**
**4. WARNING: DIFFICULTY SET TO 'IMPOSSIBLE'.**
The room began to dissolve. The office was fading, returning me to my reality.
"I have unlocked the firewall," The Admin said, his voice echoing as he faded. "The Outer Gods are no longer invading, Shigu. *You* are invading *them*."
He looked at me one last time.
"You broke my system. Now you have to defend what's left of it. Do not disappoint me, Glitch. If you die to them... well, nature will have done my deletion for me."
"I don't plan on dying," I called out as the white light swallowed me. "I plan on grinding."
***
**Location: Universe-001 (The Euclidean Fields).**
**Current Status: Return of the King.**
**Mood: Electric.**
I slammed back into my body.
The *Violet Shadow* shook. The throne of logic-shards shattered under the sudden return of my full mass.
Ren and Jax were still standing there, staring at the spot where I had vanished. To them, only seconds had passed. To me, it felt like hours.
"Shigu?" Tali stepped forward nervously. "You're back. Did... did you win?"
I stood up from the rubble of the throne. I looked at my hands. They were glowing with a new intensity. Before, my aura was gold—the color of the sun.
Now, laced through the gold, were veins of platinum white. The color of the Source Code.
**[System Notification.]**
**[Title Acquired: The Un-Deletable.]**
**[New Permission: Admin Privileges (Restricted).]**
I looked at my friends. I looked at the vast, conquered white world around us.
"I didn't just win," I said, a grin splitting my face. "I got us a season pass."
Suddenly, the sky of Universe-001 ripped open.
But it wasn't the clean tear of a portal. It was jagged, ugly, and massive. Through the tear, I didn't see stars. I saw eyes. Billions of them, blinking in a darkness deeper than space.
The Admin had kept his word. He had expanded the server. He had opened the gates to the places where the physics engines didn't run.
**[New Zone Discovered: The Abyssal Frontier.]**
**[Warning: High-Level Hostiles Detected.]**
A roar shook the very foundations of the dimension. It sounded like a choir of screaming planets.
Jax dropped his chips. "Uh, Boss? What is that?"
I summoned the Solar Spear. It hummed, reacting to the platinum mana in my veins. It grew longer, sharper, crackling with the power of a rewrite.
"That," I said, floating upward to meet the gaze of the abyss, "is the endgame content."
I turned to the Order of Truth. Thousands of players, flush with victory, looked up at me. They looked scared.
They needed a leader. They needed a God.
"**LISTEN UP!**" My voice boomed, overriding the screaming of the abyss. "**THE ADMIN TRIED TO BAN US. HE FAILED.**"
A cheer went up, tentative at first, then raucous.
"**BUT HE OPENED THE DOOR TO THE BASEMENT. THE THINGS OUT THERE? THEY THINK WE'RE FOOD. THEY THINK REALITY IS SOFT.**"
I pointed the spear at the tear in the sky.
"**I SAY WE SHOW THEM WHY WE ARE THE TOP GUILD IN THE MULTIVERSE.**"
Ren drew his sword. His fear vanished, replaced by the steely resolve of a tank who trusts his healer. "Orders, Prime Entity?"
I looked at the counter in my vision.
**[Day 1,301 Complete.]**
**[Preparing Daily Growth for Day 1,302...]**
The numbers ticked up. My power swelled again. The ache in my soul from the Admin's pressure vanished, replaced by the familiar rush of becoming *more*.
"**Orders are simple,**" I declared, flying toward the rift, a comet of gold and platinum fire.
"**Aggro everything.**"
***
**Day 1,302.**
**Location: The Threshold of the Abyss.**
**Current Status: Entering Combat.**
The darkness rushed to meet me. Tentacles the size of nebulae lashed out. I didn't dodge.
I hit them with the force of a crashing server.
As I tore into the first wave of Abyssal horrors, laughing maniacally, I realized something.
The Admin was right. Eventually, I would grow too big for this. Eventually, the game would end.
But until then?
This was going to be one hell of a high score.
**Chapter 95 Ends.**