I had a bizarre thought.

If I could not consume the fragment of the Nova Reaper, then perhaps I could contain it. My singularity rejected it, but what if I formed another? A secondary core—one that could stabilize the rogue authority within me instead of letting it destabilize my being. A containment vessel forged from my own existence.

And for that, I needed power.

More power than I had ever consumed before.

So I reached for it. A star.

A massive, colossal behemoth burning in the abyss. Not a mere remnant of cosmic detritus, not a shattered fragment of a world long dead—but a force of nature, a cosmic furnace that had existed for eons.

I expanded my gravity and pulled.

The response was immediate.

At first, I felt the familiar sensation—the steady drag of mass folding inward, drawn toward me like all things destined to be devoured. The swirling tides of plasma, the rippling currents of burning fusion, all bending toward the inevitable.

But something was wrong.

The pull was not as seamless as before. It resisted, twisting in ways that defied my understanding. The star did not simply fall into me—it fought back.

A ripple of force surged against my event horizon, not as an attack, but as an overwhelming counterbalance. A force just as absolute as my own.

Then, realization struck.

I was not pulling the star toward me.

It was pulling me toward it.

The star's gravity was an overwhelming force, an unrelenting anchor in the void, a tidal wave of destruction pressing inward. Its immense core burned with incomprehensible intensity, radiating waves of deadly energy that slammed against me, distorting the fabric of my existence. This was no mere celestial body to be devoured; it was a colossus of fire and force, an unyielding titan that refused to be claimed.

I strained, trying to counteract the pull, but the force gripping me was relentless. A singularity is absolute, but so is a star. I had underestimated its gravity, the sheer magnitude of its presence. I had miscalculated.

I had thought myself vast, unstoppable—but this? This was a colossus.

The star's gravitational waves twisted my form, bending my event horizon, testing the limits of my structure. If I did nothing, I would be consumed. Not by an enemy. Not by the System. But by the very thing I had sought to control.

The force pressing against me was relentless. My event horizon distorted, stretched to the breaking point. The crushing mass of the star didn’t just resist—it threatened to devour me instead. My own pull was weakening. The harder I dragged it toward me, the deeper I was pulled into its gravity well.

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This was not how I had planned it to be.

Everything I had ever devoured—everything I had ever consumed, no matter how vast, no matter how powerful—had never overridden my gravity.

Yet now, I was being drawn in, the star threatening to consume me instead.

I could not survive like this. Not unless I found balance.

I needed control.

If I continued to pull, I would be consumed instead of consuming. If I hesitated, I would collapse.

So I did something I had never done before.

Instead of taking, I expelled.

A violent surge erupted from my being—not a pull, but a release.

Raw energy, light, and radiation—an explosion of force counteracting the overwhelming gravitational collapse. I directed the energy not just outward, but precisely in the opposite direction of the star's pull, using the very force I had taken from it to stabilize myself. This was no mere burst of energy—it was controlled resistance, a calculated backlash against the unrelenting gravity threatening to consume me whole. The very energy I had drawn from the star, I forced outward, turning it into a weapon of my own. A blinding surge of energy ripped through space, faster than thought, faster than light—a force strong enough to defy even a star’s pull.

The sheer force of my release sent beams of concentrated power cascading into the void, a luminous jet blasting outward at nearly the speed of light. The opposing energy forced an equilibrium, allowing me to counteract the collapse, ensuring that my pull no longer spiraled into uncontrollable descent. The energy ripped through the fabric of space, forcing back the inexorable grasp of the star's mass. For the first time, I pushed back.

The crushing weight against my core lessened. The balance shifted. The relentless pull that had nearly destroyed me was now an opposing force, stabilizing my existence, holding me at the threshold between annihilation and control.

And now, with stability restored, I could do what I was meant to do.

I consumed.

The star's burning burning heart spiraled toward me, a supernova of mass and power pouring into my being. This was no slow, measured devouring—this was survival. The swirling tides of plasma, the violent upheaval of collapsing fusion, all of it surged through me, reinforcing what had been broken, expanding my event horizon, stabilizing my fragmented core.

But I did not let it consume me whole.

With newfound control, I shaped the energy, guiding the process rather than surrendering to it. I forced a portion of the star's mass into a separate form—a secondary core, a nucleus outside of my primary singularity. It had no gravitational force of its own, no pull, no hunger. It was a void within the void, a vessel designed to hold what I could not claim.

A place to contain the Nova Reaper's fragment.

But this star alone was not near enough.

It had given me the foundation—a small, fragile core, barely stable, barely capable of holding the foreign power. If I wanted to reinforce it, if I wanted to truly stabilize it, I needed more. Many more.

Countless stars, entire celestial bodies—all of it needed to be consumed.

My existence had been diminished, my event horizon fractured and my core destabilized. If I wanted to restore what had been lost, I needed to devour more—a lot more.

And for this secondary core… it would not be enough to simply stabilize the fragment of the Nova Reaper.

If I wanted to contain the power of the System's enforcers, my second core would need to be reinforced—far beyond what it was now.

The System had thrown its forces at me—forces designed not just to eliminate me, but to rewrite reality itself. The Nova Reaper, the Paradox Hound—these were not mere executioners. They were agents of absolute authority.

Each of them had one thing in common: the ability to alter reality at different levels of authorization. The only distinction between them was how much control they had over that ability—how far they could reach, how much they could overwrite.

And if the System sent another one after me… or something stronger… I needed to be ready.

I could not afford to face the devastation of my belief almost being shattered again.

I had almost unraveled once. I would not let it happen again.

If I had to consume the System's enforcers, then I would make sure I had a place to contain it.

The second core was the first step.

But it would not be the last.