Word travels fast in a corporate environment. In the boundless unformatted expanse of the Chaos Sea, it traveled even faster!

The absolute erasure of the Abyssal Progenitor and the total annihilation of the Celestial Court had sent a shockwave of terror and greed across the infinite dimensions. But it wasn’t just the raw power of Arthur that drew their attention. It was the source of it.

The Outer Gods had realized what Arthur possessed. He held the Tool of the Prime Creator. The System.

Within days of the skirmish of Aurelia, a massive unprecedented cosmic bounty was placed on the head of Arthur Sterling. The reward wasn’t just wealth. It was the promise of absolute multiversal supremacy to whoever could pry the System from his dead soul!

The siege of the Chaos Ark began on a Tuesday.

It wasn’t a coordinated military strike. It was a chaotic apocalyptic gold rush.

Looking out the panoramic viewport of the command bridge, the void was completely obscured by an endless ocean of hostile entities. There were trillions of them!

There were rogue gods from shattered pantheons. There were massive Eldritch mercenaries composed of shifting geometries. There were swarms of star eating leviathans drawn by the scent of blood.

They threw themselves against the glowing reality enforcing sail Kaelith had woven around the Citadel. They were desperately trying to breach the hull.

"BOOM!" "CRACK!" "KRAA-THOOM!"

The noise was deafening! It was a continuous unending thunder of conceptual magic and anti matter slamming against the shields.

Inside the command bridge, the atmosphere was entirely different.

Arthur Sterling still sat at the head of a long polished mahogany dining table. He casually cut into a perfectly seared flank of celestial beast meat. He took a sip of his wine, completely unbothered by the fact that the universe was actively trying to murder him.

"System," Arthur muttered between bites.

"Status."

[System Status]

↳ Siege underway. Outer Barrier integrity holding at 94%.

↳ Auto Loot and Auto Refine protocols are fully active.

↳ Converting hostile corpses, shattered concepts, and raw divine energy directly into System Points and hull upgrades.

[System Resources]

↳ Current System Points: 18,450,000,000 and rising rapidly.

Arthur smirked. He wasn’t fighting a war. He was running a highly efficient farming simulation.

The Ark was a massive floating meat grinder. The idiots outside were just throwing themselves into the blades. They were continuously upgrading the very ship they were trying to destroy!

He looked down the table. Lyra and Kaelith were currently enjoying the meal. Sylvia, Morwenna, and Aurelia were conspicuously absent.

Arthur treated the cosmic siege like a corporate rotation schedule. He sent his Queens out onto the outer deck in shifts. He let them slaughter the endless waves of enemies to gain equal combat experience and funnel massive amounts of passive EXP back into his multiplier.

"Lyra," Arthur said while wiping his mouth with a silk napkin. "Your shift starts in ten minutes. Tag Morwenna out. She’s been ripping apart leviathans for six hours, and she gets cranky if she misses dessert."

"Yes, Emperor!" Lyra grinned. Her violet eyes gleamed as she tossed a dagger into the air and caught it. "I’m going to farm so many spatial rings today."

Suddenly, a violent localized tremor shook the Citadel!

It wasn’t the ambient banging of the trash mobs. It was a concentrated highly structured impact that bypassed the outer sail completely.

"BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!"

"Emperor!" Kaelith projected. Her six spider limbs instantly flew over the tactical console. "We have a hull breach! Sector 4, the primary courtyard! Three Chaos Lords have coordinated a localized reality fold and bypassed the shields!"

Arthur sighed and set his silver fork down. "I swear, you can’t even eat in peace in this dimension."

He didn’t run to the courtyard. He didn’t even stand up from his chair. Arthur simply tapped into his Administrator Privileges. His pitch black eyes glowed with the raw terrifying power of the Absolute Zenith.

He projected his vision down into the courtyard. Three towering multi dimensional horrors made of rotting light and jagged bone were currently slaughtering their way through a squad of Vanguard defenders.

"My property," Arthur whispered.

He didn’t use a sword. He didn’t cast a spell. He just used his Reality Manipulation to target the specific spatial coordinates the three Chaos Lords were occupying.

"Delete."

"Pop! Pop! Pop!"

There was no grand explosion. There was no epic struggle. The three incredibly powerful ancient Gods simply blinked out of existence!

They were erased from the fabric of reality as easily as a typo on a spreadsheet.

Arthur picked his fork back up. "Breach sealed. Send a cleanup crew to mop up the blood."

Outside the Ark, the endless roaring ocean of hostile entities suddenly paused.

The trillions of beasts and rogue gods parted like the red sea. A deep unnatural silence fell over the battlefield.

A lone figure was walking through the void. He was completely ignoring the chaotic pressure of the Primordial Chaos!

The figure stepped directly onto the bow of the Ark, bypassing the reality shields of Kaelith as if they didn’t exist.

He didn’t look like a monstrous Eldritch god. He was a humanoid figure clad in a tattered dark cloak.

"Emperor," Lyra gasped as she stared at the viewport. "He’s on the ship."

Arthur finally stood up. He walked over to the glass. His eyes narrowed as he analyzed the intruder.

The man pulled back his hood, revealing a pale scarred face. His eyes glowed with a sickly glitching red light. He raised a hand, and a longsword materialized in his grip. The blade wasn’t made of metal or magic. It was made of raw fractured system code. It pulsed with error messages and broken math.

The Void Walker.

[Warning]

↳ Entity Identified: The Void Walker.

↳ Notice: Entity possesses remnants of the 100x Return System.

The predatory smile of Arthur returned. This wasn’t just another bounty hunter. This was a former employee who had failed the company, and he is going to be a huge competitor.

The Void Walker pointed his glitched blade at the command bridge. His voice echoed directly into the mind of Arthur. "You’re using my old toy," the Walker sneered. "Hand it over. Or I will crash your entire bullshit."

Arthur cracked his neck. The sound was sharp in the quiet room. "Hold my wine, Lyra. I need to go fire someone."