The city shook. The street began to tilt.

A shop-cart and ten kitchens worth of porcelain tumbled towards us from uphill. Plates and bowls shattered into a hail of shrapnel, which clattered harmlessly off of my muscles.

As the gigantic starfish beneath the city moved, towering buildings of coral collapsed into rubble and dust. Streets were being strangled shut by the homes around them. Housing complexes split apart right in the middle, revealing a cross-section full of confused echoes.

There were screams, yes.

There was panic, yes.

But there wasn’t a single strand of Asshole energy being generated.

The destruction such behemoths as the starfish caused was more akin to a natural disaster than something people associated with assholey behavior. Try as he might, the Alphahole’s tantrum wouldn’t generate any new Asshole energy.

It is desperate.

The obvious move was to get eaten by the starfish and enter it whilst enduring deadly digestive acids, but I was riding a Big Dick energy high and my brain rejected all but the Chaddest solutions.

My ribs cracked at the fractures as I drew a deep breath and channeled Big Dick energy into my legs. Without a blink or a moment’s pause, I slammed my face and body against the ground, and initiated [The Happy Chad Skip] technique, an Alpha Stride based on happily skipping around and ending up in unexpected places. Straight down. Through the ground. C’mon. Let’s go!

Big Dick energy resonated with my wish. It was as eager as I was to go down, and understood that taking the long walk to bypass the obstacle before us wouldn’t be very Chad of us.

Like rubber, the ground against my face began to bend. My legs began to dig into the coral. I entered the ground.

The sensation of coral sliding around me was… bizarre.

Its rough surface chafed against my muscles and though I had to work for each step, the resistance I felt didn’t feel like the resistance of walking through a solid object in the traditional way. Rather, after a brief contact with my face, solid mass bent out of my way. Almost as coming into contact with my Big Dick energy was momentarily granting the inanimate ground a limited sentience, allowing it to react to me.

I couldn’t hold back the chuckles.

Here I was, a resident of Happyland Asylum, striding through solid coral, performing deeds impossible to most cultivators, let alone mortals. The progress I’d made in a matter of months was beyond my wildest expectations. I felt capable of anything. Returning to Earth? Easy. I already knew I could do it. Freeing Earth? Only a matter of time. The power I felt within my grasp was downright intoxicating.

After coral, various layers of materials flowed past me, each offering as little hindrance to my movement as the last. I wasn’t certain where I was going, only that I was going the right way, up until a cool rush of liquid washed my vision with flickers of bioluminescent blues. I emerged from the wall and stepped into a narrow organic tunnel.

Walls pulsed, contracting and relaxing lazily. Gently glowing motes moved with the constant flow of the liquid. Web-laced appendages lined the walls like patches of alien moss. Swarms of small things that had more in common with amoeba than any creature I knew floated in the flow, bumping off of me harmlessly, whilst releasing tiny clouds of pink glow into the water when they did.

Dao around me trembled. Alphahole’s Asshole energy was bleeding into his surroundings, some two meters against the current.

So I took a step.

And realized that in a span of seconds, my surroundings had gone from blue to pink. The fidgety little appendages withdrew to hide within the walls. Swarms of friendly free-floating amoeba grew sparser and sparser, until the last straggler disappeared into the dark tubular corridors behind me.

I realized that my presence had triggered the giant starfish’s immune response, when a pair of three-pronged-star blobs the size of bears rounded the corner. Though they lacked faces, the way they moved with two of their horns on top gave me the impression of heavily bulked bouncers, if bouncers wore suits coated in glowing neon-pink spines.

Another thing I realized made me smile. “Hello friends. Me friend. You friends,” I said in [Universal Alpha Speech], while greeting them with an open-armed gesture of welcome.

The star-bouncers lowered their appendages and replied with measured puffs of bioluminescent secretions, which I understood as confusion. Alphahole’s corruptive influence had not yet spread to these two. They were just two immune cells doing their job.

I couldn’t understand what they were saying, but continued to ambulate in a friendly manner as I made my way over to them and gave each a bro hug. They accepted it. “Alright. Sit down. Me give tips on how fight infections.”

They seemed to shrug and sat down. I gave them basic tips on maintaining a diet of balanced nutrition. As payment, they gave me a small pink star-badge as proof of being an honorary immune-cell so that the rest of the starfish’s internal defense systems wouldn’t react to me. I attached it to one of my chest hairs and moved on to face off against the Alphahole.

My lungs started to notify me of a lack of oxygen, but promised me they would manage it.

Neon pink glow faded, replaced again by the calming blue, as I waded against the current. The tunnel widened quickly and I found myself standing in a strange palace of arching organic shapes, pulsing pillars, and structures, which shifted to guide the flow of the great starfish’s lifeblood and the swarms of tiny creatures which lived in it. At the epicenter of that weirdness, atop a caged cradle guarded by a small army of creatures that could only be described as roided up war veteran uncles of the two bouncers, stood a single tilted neuron the size of a tree.

Zaps and sparks discharged along its length like tortured screams. Under the surface, Asshole energy attempted to dig its ugly grabbers deeper into the majestic creature in an effort to complete the possession.

“Bruh. It’s over,” I said, giving the guards a nod when passing them.

My Dao sight highlighted the incorporeal features of the Ghost of Alphahole, laying them over one of the neuron’s bulbous sacks. He scowled. “Take one step closer and I will kill it,” threatened the Alphahole.

I took that step. “You don’t have enough Asshole energy left to sustain yourself, let alone kill something as big as Mr. Starfish here.”

Alphahole cursed.

I continued my approach with calm and steady steps.

“Wait. I will… We could work together. I know a great number of secrets the heads of Gigachad sects have not told you. I know the Celestial Emperor’s weakness. And about the… No wait. WAIT! I can make you even Chadder. I can—”

“Do nothing that would justify your life.” I had come to loom over the neuron and reached out towards the ghost of Alphahole.

Dao trembled as the ghost of Alphahole released the rest of its Asshole energy into a single technique. The weight of a thousand years of assholery crashed into me, flowing straight through my flesh and into my Chad Core and saw the ‘wisdom’ of being a true alpha.

I saw myself returning to Earth with Nelly and a few other sexy babes, leaving the useless beta baggage that Happyland was behind. I did so with ease, wading through Realm of Dao like it was nothing.

I can give you this.

And when I returned I was lauded as the hero I am, awarded every admiration and awe that I deserve. Women queued to kiss my feet. Men bowed, as they should.

It’s what an Alpha deserves.

And when the cultivators learned of my return, all of them were laid to waste. Their sects burned and their blood dripped down my fingers. Those who’d killed my people or hurt my hometown? Those I made to suffer pain and humiliation before my throne.

It would feel right.

And it did. Oh, it did. Righteous wrath flooded my thoughts like ecstasy. I would lead Earth to a new Golden Age and rule it as the Alpha of the world.

I chuckled, flexing my stored Big Dick energy to break Alphahole’s possession attempt. Before he could so much as grunt, I caught the incorporeal strands of asshole energy with my fist.

The dark blue strands flailed madly, screaming insults and threats, yet failed to generate any fresh asshole energy to feed its rapidly dwindling stores.

“Nobody is listening,” I told him. “Just go.”

With a final screech, the last dying flicker of asshole energy was extinguished. The only thing it left behind was a dirty stain on my palm in the shape of a very angry and very small face. I wiped it on the sole of my slipper and asked one of the nearby guard starfish-thingies directions for leaving Mr. Starfish’s insides.

***

The following evening, at the beach next to Mr. Starfish.

“Yahooo! More. More! HARDER!” Nelly shouted.

Laura’s eyebrows scrunched up. [Insane Sister] packed extra Qi into a punch, and with a bestial roar, unleashed it towards the sky in an uncontrolled explosion of demonic Qi, creating a small shower of glowing red flakes. Nelly clapped enthusiastically, glomping Laura into a hug.

The sage realm Qi cultivator teaching the three earth girls and Grog cultivation did her best to maintain a dignified impression, but I could tell she was more than mildly perturbed.

They were all still a little frazzled from waking up from Alphahole’s influence.

But it relieved me to see that things up here were alright, even if I couldn’t remember what appended after my breath ran out inside Mr. Starfish, or how I ended up in this beach chair with my body all bandaged up.

“Bruh, you’re up. Hey Nelly—”

I stopped Maxman shouting with a calm tone. “Let them play. I’m fine. And, to be honest, I might recover slightly faster if Nelly doesn’t jump on top of me right now.”

Maxman chuckled. “Alright, bruh. You want some mega-shrimp? Grog and I went fishing earlier and caught a bunch of great protein.”

“Sure. Thanks, bruh.”

“No problem, bruh. It might take a moment.”

When he took off, Karen, the sage-realm cultivator, and Armstrong noticed me. I waved as they approached.

“About time you decided to wake up. Do you have any idea how long you’ve been keeping us waiting?” Karen asked.

“Roughly 8 hours 21 minutes, if my Big Brain calculations are to be trusted,” I replied.

She rolled her eyes.

“Good work, son,” said Armstrong and clapped my shoulder. Since I’d last seen him, the ancient Gigachad had aged twenty years and lost a hundred kilos of muscle. Not to the point of looking sickly, he still had an athletic physique, but it seemed his Alpha Cultivation had regressed to the Muscles-on-Muscles stage.

“Thank you. I couldn’t have done without your sacrifice.”

He shook his head. “Don’t mention it. It’s the least I could do.”

The cultivator said something in Xianxia to Karen, though her gaze remained fixed on me.

“Se Ah, here insists on being given instructions on how she may repay you,” Karen translated.

I gestured at Nelly and the others. “Teaching them how cultivation works is more than enough.”

Karen translated.

The cultivator lady bowed sharply, vowing something in such passionate Xianxia that even I understood she was making teaching Nelly and the others her life’s mission. She continued to ask Karen to translate the gratitude of the entire city for a good five minutes.

Maxman returned with sweet hot sauce slathered shrimps the size of my arm, and the discussion soon moved to us praising the local wildlife. The Xianxia lady got surprisingly passionate about the virtues of the sentient calamari living in a nearby abyssal crevasse.

Turns out that these cultivators, like most of the locals, weren’t all that different from Earth’s humans. Sure, they had some weird cultural norms, but the murderhoboism that I’d come to associate with cultivators was far from universal. Se Ah, and her hometown had been abandoned by the ones who’d invaded Earth, when they had refused to abandon the mortals. And, by the sound of it, her city wasn’t the only one.

Billions still lived here, trapped in an apocalypse they couldn’t escape.

When I offered to take her people to Earth with us, Se Ah got emotional and excused herself to ‘meditate’.

Maxman went back to grill me more seafood and Karen excused herself to go apply some more essential oils on her nose.

Armstrong and I sat on the beach, staring idly at the distorted night reflected upon the lazy waves.

“First told me to say hi,” I said.

Armstrong nodded. “Glad to hear the grandpa’s still kicking.”

“Was kicking,” I paused. “Last time I saw him he was battling three lesser deity realm cultivators.”

“He’s survived worse.”

“I’m sure you’re right.”

We listened to some waves. In the distance, Nelly squealed with delight.

“Did he… Did the Alphahole say anything to you, before it died?”

“A lot of things. Something about the Celestial Emperor. Promises about power. Nothing noteworthy.”

Armstrong frowned, clasping his hands. “Did Sixth tell you who he was?”

“The Second head of the Gigachad sect?” I asked to confirm my suspicion.

Armstrong nodded gravely. “Up until a few years before the last Voidflight, I had guarded his sealed spirit in my private cultivation gym with the hopes of First finding a way to cure him.”

I turned to study the old man’s features as he spoke. There I saw a glint of buried resentment, and made my guess, “Someone attacked you?”

“A memetic cultivator in command of a bizarre Dao that I have never seen. Before I could figure out how he generated Dao energy, he broke the sealed protein shaker containing the Ghost of Alphahole and struck a weakening blow against my Chad Core. The rest is a blur.”

“I’m assuming this has something to do with the Celestial Emperor.”

Armstrong inclined his head, though there was hesitance in the motion. “Sixth probably intended to tell you this after you finished your Chad Core, if ever, to make sure your focus remains on liberating Earth, but… Yes, it likely involves him. It.”

He continued, “Us Memetic Sects have been fighting the cultivators participating in the Voidflights for generations, far longer than First has been alive, far longer than the oldest current Memetic Sect has been around. And it all began with one man’s ambition to find the perfect Dao.”

“Perfect Dao?”

“Perfect as in… Think of Asshole energy compared to Big Dick energy. One is easier to generate than the other and more widely applicable, but is generally speaking weaker in exchange. Asshole energy can be generated by taking candy from a kid, but loses a straight match with Big Dick energy generated by someone taking that candy from the bully and returning it to the kid. Big Dick energy has a higher potential. This balance of restrictions and potential applies to all Dao energies. The more potent the energy, the harder it is to obtain and harness. Of course, each energy has their own additional weaknesses. Big Dick energy provides reduced boost against opponents weaker than you, whilst Asshole energy is the opposite.”

“Now, after mastering all the Daos of his home reality, Celestial Emperor decided that he was not content with this. He was a well traveled man who had visited many realities that lacked Qi and its equivalents, but had a wealth of culture and ideas alien to his world. He thought to himself, ‘What if I tap into those cultural zeitgeists for new Daos? Maybe then, I could find the ultimate Dao.’”

“Now he and his Celestials and deities wander from reality to reality. They twist reality to introduce Qi to facilitate the growth of Dao abilities, regardless of the damage it does to the reality’s natural laws. Without fail, every reality they’ve traveled to has eventually succumbed to caricaturization by the Dao Storms.”

“We Memetic Sects are Dao cultivators who have chosen to follow concepts universal enough that our presence in other worlds does little to no damage to them. There are always privileged middle aged women complaining about minor inconveniences and there are always individuals whose masculinity and Chadness awes the people around them. And though we seem to have been scattered by the last Voidflight, we all oppose the advancement of the Celestial Emperor’s mad search for his perfect Dao.”

I was struck speechless.

Not only by the vast implications of this reality spanning battle or the threat of caricaturization looming over Earth.

My guts (the parts of them that were still awake) all told me the same thing in loud and clear [Universal Alpha Language]. And I had to agree.

Celestial Emperor’s search was over.

Sooner or later, someone would awaken its Dao powers.

He would find what he looked for on Earth, when the first Sigma Cultivator awakened.

“We need to get back to Earth, and fast.”