**Chapter 96: The Choice**
**Day 1,302 (Evening).**
**Location: The Abyssal Frontier (Layer 1: The Deprecated Zone).**
**Current Status: Lagging.**
**Mood: Heavy.**
I punched a hole in the universe, and the universe stuttered.
It wasn't a metaphor. I (Prime Entity Shigu) had just delivered a kinetic payload equivalent to a supernova into the face of a creature that looked like a tangled ball of screaming hyper-links. The creature vaporized. That was the good news.
The bad news was that the sky didn't just turn black; it turned *static*.
For three seconds—an eternity in a high-level raid—the world froze. Ren, mid-swing with his void sword, hung suspended in the air. Jax's solar beam was a solid bar of light, unmoving. The screaming of the Abyssal horrors cut out, replaced by a high-pitched electronic whine.
**[System Warning: CPU Load at 99%.]**
**[Critical Alert: Local Physics Engine is unresponsive.]**
**[Please Wait...]**
I stood there, my golden and platinum aura flickering. I wasn't frozen. My mass was too great for the local time-stop to hold me. I was the rock in the river that the water had to flow around.
"Come on," I muttered, flexing a hand that felt heavier than it had ten minutes ago. "Render, damn you."
The world snapped back into motion. Ren's sword connected. The sound returned in a deafening crash.
But I felt it. The shudder in the floorboards of reality.
"Boss!" Jax screamed over the comms, blasting a creature that looked like a polygon mesh gone wrong. "Did you feel that? The server rubber-banded! I almost clipped through the floor!"
"I felt it," I replied, my voice grim.
I looked at my hands. The 10% growth from this morning had settled in. But in this new zone—this "Abyssal Frontier"—the environment was fragile. It was old code. It wasn't built to handle a user with a file size as big as mine.
I wasn't just fighting the monsters. I was fighting the container I was standing in.
"**Keep pushing!**" I ordered, though my heart wasn't in it. "**Don't let them breach the portal back to Universe-001!**"
I prepared to launch myself at a towering behemoth made of weeping obsidian, but before I could fly, the grey static returned.
This time, it didn't freeze the world. It deleted it.
The monsters vanished. The Order of Truth vanished. The purple sky of the Abyss was replaced by the smell of roasted coffee beans and cheap laminate tables.
***
**Location: A Coffee Shop (Memory Construct).**
**Current Status: Parley.**
I was sitting in a booth. The booth was vinyl, red, and cracked in the corner. I knew this crack. I had picked at it nervously three years ago, before I had powers, while waiting for a blind date that never showed up.
I looked across the table.
The Administrator sat there. He wasn't the shifting, blurry giant from the Root Directory anymore. He had stabilized his avatar. He looked like a middle-aged man in a grey suit, sporting dark circles under his eyes that looked like bruises.
He was stirring a cup of black coffee. He looked incredibly tired.
"The server tick rate dropped to 12Hz just now," The Admin said without preamble. "You nearly crashed the Abyssal sector with a left hook."
I leaned back, crossing my arms. I was wearing my grey hoodie again. The system kept defaulting me to this skin whenever we talked. "Maybe you should upgrade your hardware."
"There is no more hardware, Shigu," The Admin said softly. "This is it. The Abyssal Frontier is the last expansion. It's the junk data at the edge of the hard drive. There is nowhere left to go."
He took a sip of coffee.
"We need to talk. Not as enemies. But as... colleagues."
"Colleagues?" I raised an eyebrow. "Yesterday you tried to delete me. You called me a memory leak."
"You *are* a memory leak," he said, but there was no malice in it, only resignation. "But you are a memory leak that has gained root access. I can't delete you. I can't move you. And as of ten minutes ago, I can't even ignore you."
He placed a folder on the table. A manila folder. It looked mundane, but I could feel the weight of it. It radiated the same platinum power that now ran through my veins.
"What is this?"
"A job offer," The Admin said.
I stared at him. "You're joking."
"I do not possess the algorithm for humor," he replied dryly. "Look at the situation, Shigu. Your mass increases by 10% daily. Exponential growth. Currently, you are stressing the simulation. In a week? You will cause local tears. In a month? You will be heavier than the entire multiverse combined."
He leaned forward, his eyes intense.
"When that happens, the simulation ends. The Blue Screen of Death. Everything—your friends, your empire, the timeline—ceases to exist. You will be the only thing left, floating in a void of null data, forever."
A chill went down my spine. I had felt it earlier. The lag. The rubber-banding. He wasn't lying.
"So," I said, my voice tight. "What's the alternative?"
The Admin tapped the folder.
"Assimilation."
"Excuse me?"
"Become part of the System," The Admin said. "Not a User. Not a Glitch. An Architect. We integrate your code into the Core Kernel. You stop growing as an individual entity, and your infinite energy is redirected to power the simulation itself."
He gestured around the coffee shop.
"Think of it. You are bored, Shigu. I have watched you. You invent wars and games just to feel something. If you take this offer, you will never be bored again. You will be the engine that drives the stars. You will manage the gravity of billions of worlds. You will be the God you are currently pretending to be."
I looked at the folder.
**[System Offer: Ascension.]**
**[Role: Prime Engine.]**
**[Conditions: Surrender of Avatar 'Shigu'. End of 'Daily Growth' Protocol.]**
**[Reward: Stability of the Multiverse.]**
"And the catch?" I asked. "There's always a catch."
"You lose the User interface," The Admin said quietly. "You lose the persona. 'Shigu' ceases to exist as a conscious, human-like mind. You become pure function. You won't remember the taste of pizza, or the sound of your friend Jax making a stupid joke. You won't love. You won't hate."
He paused.
"But Ren will live. Jax will live. Tali will live. They will continue to play the game, safe and sound, powered by your sacrifice. Forever."
The coffee shop was silent. The only sound was the hum of the refrigerator behind the counter.
It was the ultimate hero's choice. Sacrifice yourself to save the world. Give up your humanity to ensure humanity survives.
It was logical. It was noble.
It was also terrifying.
"And if I say no?" I asked.
The Admin sighed. "Then you go back to the Abyss. You keep fighting. You keep growing. And inevitably, probably within forty days, you will stretch the fabric of reality until it snaps. You will be the villain who destroyed existence because he was too selfish to stop winning."
He stood up, buttoning his jacket.
"I can't force you. You have Admin privileges now. You have to choose to execute the command."
He walked toward the door of the coffee shop, which opened into a void of white code.
"I will pause the instance for one hour," The Admin said. "Think about it. Be the hero, Shigu. Or be the end of everything."
He walked out. The door clicked shut.
***
**Location: The Construct.**
**Current Status: Thinking.**
**Mood: Conflicted.**
I sat there for a long time.
I touched the crack in the vinyl booth. It felt real. The memory was perfect.
I thought about Ren. The Void Paladin who used to be an accountant before I woke his power. He had a family now, back on Earth.
I thought about Tali. She was writing a book about the flora of the alien worlds we conquered.
If I took the job, they would be safe. The universe would run perfectly. No more glitches. No more Eldritch horrors tearing through the sky, because I would be the wall that kept them out.
But I wouldn't be *me*.
I would be a battery. A glorified graphics card humming in the dark.
"Boring," I whispered.
But the alternative?
I closed my eyes and simulated the future.
**Day 1,350.** I am the size of a galaxy. I move my arm, and a star cluster extinguishes.
**Day 1,400.** I can no longer interact with matter. My gravity collapses the Order of Truth instantly. Jax dies screaming as he is spaghettified by my mere presence.
**Day 1,500.** The System crashes. Darkness.
I slammed my fist onto the table. The coffee cup rattled.
"I hate binary choices," I hissed. "It's always A or B. Red pill or blue pill. Zero or One."
I pulled up my status screen.
**[Day 1,302.]**
**[Growth: +10%.]**
The number mocked me. The blessing that had saved me was now a curse. A cancer of infinity.
"Why do I have to stop growing to save them?" I asked the empty room. "Why is the container the limit?"
I thought about the Arithmancer. He had tried to solve me. He failed because I was an irrational number.
I thought about the Admin. He was trying to archive me.
*You are too heavy,* the Admin had said. *You are stressing the simulation.*
"I'm too heavy," I repeated.
An idea struck me. It was stupid. It was reckless. It was exactly the kind of thing a gamer would try when the mechanics were broken.
If the bridge is crumbling because the tank is too heavy, you don't delete the tank.
You reinforce the bridge *with* the tank.
"System," I said aloud. "Open Console."
A holographic keyboard appeared in the air.
"I don't want the job," I muttered, typing rapidly. "And I don't want to crash the game. So I'm going to mod the engine."
I accessed my own core file. The "Glitch."
The Admin wanted to separate the power from the consciousness. He wanted to pipe the energy into the walls and delete the mind.
What if I kept the mind, but voluntarily tethered the energy to the walls?
What if, instead of just *existing* inside the universe, I used my daily growth to actively *expand* the universe?
**[Proposed Action: Dynamic Expansion.]**
**[Protocol: Every time User 'Shigu' grows 10%, he expends 9% of that energy to widen the boundaries of the Local Reality.]**
It was a treadmill. An infinite treadmill.
If I did this, I wouldn't get "stronger" in the conventional sense. I wouldn't be able to one-shot the multiverse anymore, because 90% of my daily mana would be instantly burned to pave the road in front of me. I would be constantly exhausting myself just to make the room bigger so I could fit inside it.
I would be Atlas, holding up the sky. But I would still be Shigu.
**[Warning: This process requires constant, conscious concentration.]**
**[Side Effect: Extreme Fatigue. Reduced Combat Efficiency. If you lose focus, Reality collapses.]**
"Sounds like hard mode," I grinned. The fear evaporated. "I love hard mode."
The door to the coffee shop opened.
The Admin stepped back in. "Time is up. Have you made your choice?"
I stood up. I grabbed the manila folder.
"Yeah," I said. "I have."
I ripped the folder in half.
The Admin's face fell. "You choose destruction. You selfish—"
"No," I interrupted. "I choose the third option. The DLC."
I tossed the ripped folder onto the table.
"I'm not going to become your battery. I'm going to be your load-bearing column. I'm keeping my mind. But I'm rewriting my passive skill."
"You can't rewrite a glitch," The Admin scoffed.
"Watch me."
I tapped the console. **[Execute.]**
A shockwave ripped through the memory construct. The coffee shop dissolved. We were back in the white void.
My aura flared. But instead of exploding outward, it turned inward. The golden fire clamped down on my body. It felt like being crushed by a hydraulic press.
**[New Passive Active: The Atlas Protocol.]**
**[Effect: 90% of Daily Growth is converted to Server Stability/Expansion.]**
**[Current Status: Stabilizing...]**
The shaking stopped.
The white void stopped flickering. The "lag" sensation vanished.
The Admin pulled out a datapad. His eyes widened as the scrolling green text stabilized into a steady stream.
"The CPU load..." he whispered. "It dropped to normal levels. You... you're channeling your excess mass into the framework. You're physically stretching the memory limits of the sector as you occupy it."
He looked up at me, awe and horror warring on his face.
"Do you realize what you've done? You have sentenced yourself to infinite exertion. You will never rest. Every day, the burden will get 10% heavier, and you will have to push 10% harder just to keep the world from bursting."
"I know," I said, rolling my shoulders. I felt tired. For the first time in three years, I felt genuinely, physically exhausted. My godhood was no longer effortless. It was work.
"But I get to keep my pizza," I said. "And I get to keep my friends."
I turned away from him, opening a portal back to the Abyss.
"I'm not deleting myself, Admin. And I'm not crashing your server. But don't expect me to do your paperwork."
The Admin stood there, silent. Then, slowly, he nodded.
"If you falter," he called out, "even for a second..."
"Then I guess I'll just have to get good," I replied.
I stepped through the portal.
***
**Location: The Abyssal Frontier.**
**Current Status: Rebooted.**
**Mood: Determined.**
I slammed back into the battle.
The static was gone. The resolution was crystal clear. 4K, 120 frames per second. The air felt crisp.
Ren was still swinging his sword. Jax was still shouting.
"Boss!" Jax yelled. "You glitched out for a second! Everything went weird! And... hey, you look different."
I did. The blinding, eye-searing light of my aura had dimmed. I wasn't a walking supernova anymore. I looked like a man. A man wearing armor made of dense, heavy gold, sweating from exertion.
The giant obsidian beast I had been fighting roared—a sound that shook the mountains of the Abyss.
Before, I would have flicked it away with a thought.
Now?
I felt the weight of the universe on my shoulders. I was burning 90% of my power just to exist without breaking the floor.
That left me with 10%.
I looked at the monster. I grinned.
10% of infinity was still a lot.
"**Order of Truth!**" I bellowed, my voice echoing not with divine reverb, but with raw, human lung capacity. "**The lag is fixed!**"
I summoned the Solar Spear. It was heavy. It felt real.
"**Resume the raid!**"
I charged.
I didn't teleport. I ran. My boots crunched on the purple gravel. I could feel the wind in my face. The adrenaline spiked—real, fearful adrenaline, because for the first time in forever, I wasn't invincible. I was just incredibly, impossibly strong.
The obsidian beast swung a fist the size of a house.
I caught it.
My knees buckled slightly under the impact. The ground cracked. My muscles screamed.
"Heavy," I grunted through gritted teeth.
I looked up at the beast's faceless visage.
"But not too heavy."
I pushed back. I channeled the power of Day 1,302. I threw the beast upward, leaping after it.
As I drove the spear into its chest, I realized the Admin was wrong about one thing. He said I would never be bored if I took his job.
But as the purple blood sprayed and my health bar actually flickered down a fraction of a percent, I laughed.
fighting for your life isn't boring.
It's the only game worth playing.
**[Global Announcement: The Abyssal Frontier is now Stable.]**
**[Zone Difficulty: Mythic.]**
**[Current Objective: Survive.]**
I landed on the corpse of the beast, panting. Ren landed beside me.
"You okay, Shigu?" he asked, eyeing me with concern. "You look... tired."
I wiped sweat from my forehead.
"I am," I said honestly. "I'm holding up the sky, Ren."
Ren didn't ask what I meant. He just nodded, turning his shield toward the next wave of horrors emerging from the dark.
"Then we'll watch your back," Ren said.
"Yeah," Jax added, landing with a thud and venting steam from his cannon. "You handle the sky. We'll handle the squids."
I looked at them. I looked at the infinite dark ahead.
Tomorrow, I would be 10% stronger. And tomorrow, the sky would be 10% heavier.
"Bring it on," I whispered.
**Chapter 96 Ends.**