The throne of the Netherworld was uncomfortable.
It was carved from a single, massive soul-crystal, and it had a nasty habit of whispering the collected anguish of a billion damned souls into your ass while you were trying to think. It was gaudy, impractical, and frankly, a little cliché.
I sat there, my chin resting on my fist, bored out of my skull.
For the past three months, I had been the undisputed, accidental king of hell. After rebooting the Primeval Edict and sending it on its merry, suicidal hunt for the Watcher, the entire Abyssal Plane had been left with a massive power vacuum. The demons, being the simple, hierarchical creatures they are, had immediately bowed down to the biggest, meanest son of a bitch in the room.
Me.
My court was a farce. A council of cowering demon lords who were terrified of my power to permanently delete their souls. My days were filled with listening to them bicker over burning territories and soul-tithes. It was like being the CEO of a particularly shitty, evil corporation.
My only source of amusement was "Goldie," the entity I had forged from the ghost of Seraphina and the golem of the true Kaelen. I had tasked it with guarding the front gate of my fortress, a job it performed with a constant, bickering, internal monologue that I could listen in on whenever I needed a laugh.
[SERAPHINA:] *You fool! A legion of rot-fiends is approaching from the left flank! Raise the bone wall!*
[KAELEN-GOLEM:] *I am the true prince! I do not take orders from a vengeful harlot! They are my people! I will greet them with diplomacy!*
[SERAPHINA:] *They're literally made of rotting flesh and hate! The only diplomacy they understand is being set on fire!*
It was a perfect, self-contained hell of their own making.
But my own hell was one of profound, cosmic boredom. My grand ambition, to reunite the seven Main Cores, was on hold. The Watcher's last known intel pointed to the final two fragments being in other, inaccessible dimensions. I was a god-king with nowhere to go and nothing to conquer.
"This sucks," I said to the empty throne room.
I had achieved a level of power I could have only dreamed of. My System, now a five-core engine of Chaos, Time, Law, Space, and Will (from my own soul), was a weapon of unimaginable potential. But a weapon without a target is just a lump of metal.
It was on one particularly dull Tuesday (or the abyssal equivalent) that the universe finally decided to throw me a bone.
A new notification, the first in months, pinged in my mind. It wasn't from the Tower. It wasn't a quest. It was a distress signal, a faint, desperate pulse from a part of my own, fractured being.
[EMERGENCY BROADCAST: 'THE INFINITY SHARD' IS UNDER SIEGE. CORE INTEGRITY FAILING. REQUESTING IMMEDIATE ASSISTANCE FROM ANY NEARBY ADMINISTRATOR.]
The signal was weak, distorted, but it contained coordinates. Not to a floor in the Tower. Not to a different dimension.
But to a place I knew. Floor 77. The Necropolis.
The Watcher's voice, the dry, academic whisper of my secret, nihilistic observer, immediately chimed in, its presence a cold sliver of data in the back of my mind.
[Administrator. This is a trap.]
"No shit, Sherlock," I muttered. "Of course it's a trap."
[My analysis is clear,] the Watcher continued, ignoring my sarcasm. [The Architect has located the sixth Main Core. It knows you are the only other active Administrator with the ability to sense the signal. It is luring you into its chosen territory. The Lich King of Floor 77 is one of its most powerful and loyal agents.]
A trap. A challenge. An invitation.
A flicker of something I hadn't felt in months—excitement—sparked in my soul. The boredom was finally over.
"So, The Architect wants to play," I said with a slow, predatory smile. "Good. I was getting tired of the peace and quiet."
I stood up from my uncomfortable throne. I had a new destination. But first, I needed to get out of this backwater dimension.
I summoned Goldie, my bickering gate guardian. The golden golem appeared before me, its eyes glowing with the twin lights of a vengeful prince and a mad queen.
"I'm leaving," I announced. "This dimension is now under your management. Try not to burn it to the ground before I get back."
[SERAPHINA:] *An empire to rule? How delightful. My first decree will be to outlaw your stupid, pompous sense of fashion.*
[KAELEN-GOLEM:] *Blasphemy! My royal raiment is the height of noble taste! I will not allow it!*
I left them to their eternal argument.
I stood at the edge of the Abyssal Plane. I didn't need a portal. I didn't need a key. I was the master of Space itself. I simply… pushed.
The fabric of reality tore open before me, a screaming vortex of pure, dimensional energy. My destination: the Tower, Floor 77.
I stepped through, leaving the Abyss and its petty squabbles behind without a backward glance.
The transition was instantaneous. I materialized on a vast, windswept plain of black, cracked earth under a perpetually gray, sunless sky. The air was cold, and it smelled of old bones and forgotten sorrows. In the distance, a colossal fortress of black ice and obsidian towered over the landscape, a monument to death itself. The Necropolis.
I had arrived.
But as I took my first step in this new, dead world, my System, my glorious, five-core engine, gave me its first, shameless whim of this new arc. It was a testament to its understanding of my true, sovereign nature.
[SOVEREIGN'S WHIM: A GRAND ENTRANCE]
[Description: You have arrived on a new floor, a new stage. The local actors (The Lich King, The Architect's agents) are already aware of your presence. A subtle infiltration is inefficient and boring. A true sovereign does not sneak. He announces.]
[Objective: Use your authority over the 'Divine Tithes' you collected from the gods of the Third Floor. Select the most ostentatious, most ridiculously over-the-top divine power you have in storage (e.g., 'The Solar Flame's Radiance', 'The Storm Lord's Thunderclap'). Fire it into the sky.]
[Purpose: To create a massive, holy middle finger to the entire undead legion of this floor and let them know, without a shadow of a doubt, that their new god has arrived. And he's in a bad mood.]
[Reward: +10,000 SP (for sheer, unadulterated style), the 'Dread Lord's Attention' status effect (all major enemies on this floor are now actively hunting you).]