Chapter 163: The Cosmic War and the Pseudo-Deities
Without warning, the digital walls of the system shattered like glass. Aki, Volt, Sai, and Rena weren't standing on a server floor anymore. They were suspended in the absolute vacuum of Deep Space. Around them, galaxies swirled like glowing whirlpools, and ancient nebulae painted the void in shades of violet and gold. But the peace of the cosmos was broken.
A legion of Fake Gods—titans made of blinding white energy with smooth, featureless masks—were descending upon the universe. They were the "Corrupted Architects," entities that had escaped the system's control and were now intent on erasing both the digital and physical worlds to create a void of their own.
"They're tearing the fabric of reality!" Rena cried, her staff glowing with a frantic intensity as she saw a Fake God crush a nearby moon with its bare hand.
Sai gripped his shield, his boots finding purchase on an invisible platform of energy. "Aki, we can't fight these things with normal stats! They operate outside the level system!"
Aki looked at the Platinum Pen in his hand. It was no longer just a writing tool; it had extended into a blade of pure conceptual light, vibrating with the frequency of the entire universe. "They think they are the creators," Aki said, his voice echoing through the vacuum of space. "But they are just characters who forgot who wrote them."
Three Fake Gods glided toward Aki, their presence warping the gravity around them. "Mortal," their voices resonated in Aki's mind like a thousand crashing cymbals. "You are a grain of sand trying to stop a tidal wave. We are the beginning and the end."
Aki glanced at Volt. The mysterious companion didn't intervene this time; he simply nodded, his violet eyes reflecting the birth of new stars. He was waiting for Aki to claim his true authority.
Aki stepped forward into the void. He didn't use a skill. He didn't cast a spell. He reached out with his pen and began to write across the star-charts themselves. He wrote in the language of the Prime Source, letters so large they could be seen from across the galaxy.
[NARRATIVE OVERRIDE: THE AUTHOR IS PRESENT.]
As the words manifested in golden fire, the Fake Gods recoiled. Their featureless masks cracked. Aki charged, his body trailing a wake of stardust. With a single, fluid stroke of his pen, he bisected the nearest deity. Instead of blood, the creature erupted into a fountain of raw, unformatted data.
"Sai! Rena! Follow the light!" Aki commanded.
With the power Aki was writing into existence, Sai's shield became the size of a tectonic plate, blocking the cosmic rays of the enemy. Rena's magic transformed into solar flares, incinerating the army of pseudo-deities.
The battle for the universe had begun. The system was gone, the servers were a memory, and Aki was no longer just a boy from Earth—he was the Stellar Author, and the cosmos was his final page.