Arthur Sterling materialized on the bow of the Chaos Ark. His heavy boots touched down on the starlight metal with a resounding thud.

The endless apocalyptic siege outside the reality barrier had completely paused.

Trillions of cosmic horrors watched in dead silence as the two apex predators faced each other.

The Void Walker stood ten feet away. His glitching red coded blade hummed with a sickening static noise.

"Do you know how long I’ve wandered this graveyard?" the Void Walker rasped. His voice sounded like two grinding stones.

"Eons. The Prime Creator gave me the 100x Return System. I conquered my bubble. I ascended. But when I reached the deep water, I failed. The system was stripped from me, leaving me as a hollow shell of broken code."

The eyes of the Walker burned with insane jealous fury. "You have the upgraded model. A million fold multiplier. You think that makes you a God? You’re just a parasite relying on a machine. Give it back to me, and I’ll let you die quickly."

Arthur didn’t draw his sword. He just stood there. His hands were tucked casually into his dark coat.

"You failed because you were a bad investment," Arthur said coldly. "You relied on the tool to do the work for you. I use the tool to optimize my absolute dominance."

"We’ll see about that!" the Walker shrieked.

The Void Walker lunged forward. He moved at a speed that fractured the localized time around him.

But he didn’t aim his glitched blade at the chest of Arthur. He aimed it directly at the space between them! He plunged the sword of broken code into the very fabric of reality.

"SYSTEM OVERRIDE! FATAL EXCEPTION!" the Walker roared.

A wave of sickly corrupted red light exploded from the blade and washed over Arthur.

Inside the mind of Arthur, absolute chaos erupted! The sleek flawless blue interface of his system violently glitched. Red warning boxes flooded his vision. The text turned into unreadable corrupted symbols.

There was a virus in his system.

[CRITICAL ERROR]

↳ Hostile code injected into multiplier core.

↳ 1,000,000x Return System crashing... 𝑓𝘳𝘦𝑒𝑤𝑒𝘣𝘯ℴ𝘷𝘦𝓁.𝑐𝑜𝑚

↳ Multiplier reduced to: 0x.

↳ Connection to Bound Consorts severed. Passive EXP paused.

The body of Arthur staggered slightly. The unimaginable infinite well of power he had grown used to suddenly vanished! The sheer weight of the Primordial Chaos pressed down on him. It was no longer held back by the automated defenses of the system.

For the first time since he woke up in the muddy slums of the Mortal Domain, Arthur Sterling was fighting purely on his own base stats.

Up on the command bridge, Sylvia, Morwenna, Lyra, and Aurelia felt the soul link abruptly snap. Panic seized them!

"He lost the multiplier!" Lyra screamed.

"We have to help him!" Morwenna roared.

Her abyssal claws elongated as she moved toward the teleportation array.

"Stay exactly where you are!" The voice of Arthur boomed. He was projecting through sheer unadulterated willpower rather than a system link.

He didn’t look back at the bridge. His pitch black eyes were locked onto the laughing Void Walker. "This is personal."

"You’re nothing without the numbers!" the Void Walker mocked. He ripped his blade from the air and slashed horizontally at the neck of Arthur.

Arthur didn’t panic. He didn’t feel a shred of fear.

The system was gone, but the foundation remained. The millions of sword swings Caden Cross had executed had permanently rewired his muscle memory. The hyper dense mana he had stolen from the Celestial Emperor was permanently etched into his meridians.

The Dimensional Breaker Physique was his actual flesh and blood.

He had used a cheat code to build the mansion, but the mansion was still physically there!

"CLANG!"

The hand of Arthur shot up. The Ebonheart Cube snapped into its longsword form in a microsecond. He parried the glitched blade with such raw devastating physical force that the shockwave shattered the reality barrier beneath their feet.

The eyes of the Void Walker went wide! His arms trembled under the sheer kinetic weight of the block. "Impossible! Your system is offline!"

"The system was just an accelerator," Arthur snarled as he stepped into the guard of the Walker. "The ruthlessness is all me."

Arthur didn’t use reality manipulation. He didn’t use absolute concepts. He used pure hyper violent street fighting mixed with God tier martial arts.

"CRACK!"

Arthur drove his knee into the stomach of the Walker. He folded the ancient entity in half. As the Walker gasped for air, Arthur spun around. He brought the pommel of his pitch black sword crashing down on the back of the man’s skull.

"SQUELCH!"

The Walker slammed face first into the starlight metal of the deck. He desperately rolled away.

He swung his red coded blade in a wild frantic arc. "Delete! Delete!" he screamed. He was trying to force the corrupted system commands onto Arthur.

Arthur ducked under the swing. His movements were a flawless terrifying blur of lethal precision. He stepped on the wrist of the Void Walker, pinning the arm holding the glitched sword to the floor.

"You rely too much on the software," Arthur said softly. His voice was devoid of mercy.

He raised his heavy boot and stomped down on the center of the glitched blade.

"SHATTER!"

The sword of broken code exploded into a million useless red pixels!

The Void Walker screamed. The feedback from his destroyed weapon tore his physical form apart. He lay on the deck. His body was dissolving into ash. His glowing red eyes stared up at the monster standing over him.

The Walker let out a wet rattling laugh. "You think... you think you’re the only one?" he coughed. Blood spilled from his lips. "The Prime Creator... he’s asleep. He makes a new system every eon... throws it into the lower realms... hoping to find a successor strong enough to wake him up. You’re just another pawn in his game."

Arthur looked down at the dying failure. He didn’t feel like a pawn.

"I don’t care about successors," Arthur whispered. He raised the Ebonheart Sword high above his head. The Primordial Flame ignited along the blade with his own sheer willpower."

He plunged the sword directly through the heart of the Void Walker.

"SQUELCH!"

The entity instantly vaporized. He was erased from the multiverse completely.

As the Walker died, the corrupted code infecting the soul of Arthur was violently purged.

[System Update]

↳ Hostile interference neutralized.

↳ Rebooting 1,000,000x Return System...

↳ Systems Online. Multiplier Restored.

A blinding cataclysmic aura of absolute dominance erupted from the body of Arthur! It rippled out into the Chaos Sea and forced the trillions of watching horrors to violently recoil in terror.

Arthur rolled his shoulders. A dark terrifying smile appeared on his face. The CEO was back online.

And he just learned something new about the system.