My Ultimate Sign-in System Made Me Invincible

Chapter 634: A Peculiar Gift

The music in the venue shifted into something with a steady, driving rhythm, and the party expanded to fill the impossible dimensions of the room.

The initial shock of the shimmer and the cathedral-like architecture had settled, replaced by the particular kind of euphoria that came from realizing you were inside the most exclusive room in the universe. The groups that had arrived separately began to blur at the edges, mingling in ways that ignored the usual hierarchies of terrestrial power.

Evelyn, who managed the Bellemere Mansion staff, found herself in a deeply engaged conversation with Patricia, Harper’s mother.

"I’m just saying," Patricia was saying, holding a glass of champagne, "for a boy who essentially commands the global economy, he dresses like he’s running late for a morning lecture."

"He prefers comfort," Evelyn said, her smile carrying the fond, protective weight of someone who made sure those comfortable clothes were clean. "The world might see a titan, Mrs. Osei, but in the kitchen, he is very much nineteen."

Across the room, Whitlock had managed to recover his equilibrium and was currently speaking with Robert, Kristy’s father. They were two men who operated in fields where discretion was the primary currency, and they recognized the shared trait immediately.

Daniel was successfully navigating a conversation between two of his junior analysts and Matt’s father, Jim, who was happily recounting the story of his son surviving five minutes in a sparring ring. The junior analysts listened with rapt attention, fully aware that they were gathering the kind of internal lore that money couldn’t buy.

Liam watched this ecosystem function for a few minutes, enjoying the simple, profound fact that it was working. Then, he turned his attention to the buffet.

Yanxia had not moved from her position in front of the tiered birthday cake. She was still studying it, her golden eyes narrowed slightly. Lucy stood patiently beside her, holding a small plate.

"It doesn’t attack, Yanxia," Liam said, stepping up beside them.

"I am aware it doesn’t attack, Papa," Yanxia replied.

She finally looked away from the cake, her interest piqued, and Lucy set her plate down with grace. Liam led them back toward the center of the room, where Master Han, Luo, and Chrises were currently watching the Earth guests with the fascinated expressions of anthropologists observing a strange, loud, and entirely un-magical tribe.

"Master Han, Luo, Chrises," Liam said as they approached. "I want to introduce you to my family members."

The three of them turned.

"This is Lucy," Liam said, gesturing to the AGI. "She manages the entirety of my operations. Everything from the lunar base to the supply chains that stock your store, Chrises. If you have a logistical need, she is the one who fulfills it."

Chrises offered a sharp, respectful nod. "Then I owe you my sanity. The inventory management is flawless."

"Thank you, Chrises," Lucy said, her voice perfectly modulated and warm. "Your sales metrics in the imperial city have been highly satisfactory to process."

"And this," Liam said, gesturing to the young woman in the gold dress, "is Yanxia."

Master Han turned his gaze to Yanxia to offer a polite bow. But as a cultivator, even from a lower world, his senses were attuned to the underlying fabric of reality—the flow of Qi, the weight of the Dao, the resonance of a soul.

When he looked closely at Yanxia, he didn’t just see a young woman in a gold dress.

His breath caught violently in his chest. The polite smile vanished from his weathered face, replaced by a look of absolute, soul-shaking terror and awe. The ambient energy around Yanxia wasn’t just dense; it was suffocatingly supreme. It was a pressure that transcended the mortal realm entirely. It was the presence of the Great Dao itself, wrapped in a human form.

Luo, standing beside his master, felt it a second later. His knees buckled instantly, his body reacting to the instinctual, biological imperative of a lesser being encountering an apex entity.

"Heavens..." Master Han choked out, his voice a ragged whisper. He dropped to his knees, his forehead touching the polished black stone floor. Luo followed immediately, pressing his face to the ground.

Chrises didn’t fall to her knees, as she wasn’t a cultivator, but the sheer, crushing density of the energy she sensed rolling off Yanxia made her take a sharp, involuntary step back, her hand flying to her chest.

"An Immortal..." Master Han whispered into the floor, his entire body trembling.

He shifted his gaze upward, looking past Yanxia to Liam. For the first time, Liam let a fraction of his own cultivation base bleed through his deliberate suppression. The aura of a Second Transcendent Stage expert—a Loose Immortal—washed over the old blacksmith.

Master Han squeezed his eyes shut, tears of sheer overwhelming pressure and reverence leaking from the corners. His Grandmaster was not just a powerful man from another world. He was a god.

"Please, rise," Liam said gently, withdrawing the aura instantly. "Tonight is a celebration, not a formal court. You are my guests."

It took Master Han three tries to get his legs to work, with Luo helping him up. The old blacksmith looked at Liam, then at Yanxia, his worldview permanently shattered and rearranged into something infinitely vaster.

"I... we are unworthy, Master," Han stammered.

"You’re more than worthy. Enjoy the party," Liam said simply.

Yanxia offered them a bright, sunny smile that did absolutely nothing to ease their terror. "It is nice to meet you! Do you want to try the cake?"

"We would be honored, Senior," Luo squeaked out.

The party moved forward. To the terrestrial guests—the friends, the parents, the staff—the interaction had simply looked like a deeply traditional, perhaps overly dramatic, cultural greeting. Only Whitlock, watching from afar with his newly adjusted paradigm, suspected that Liam had just casually introduced another tier of reality.

Two more hours passed. The music shifted to a slower, more resonant frequency. The laughter was easy, the drinks were flowing, and Liam found himself sitting on a plush emerald sofa, flanked by Harper and Matt, simply existing in the warmth of the moment.

Then, the ambient lighting in the room dimmed slightly. The pulsing gold veins in the latticed ceiling slowed their rhythm, drawing the attention of the room toward the stage.

Lucy stepped onto the podium.

She didn’t use a microphone. She didn’t need to. Her voice projected cleanly, reaching every corner of the vast room with perfect clarity.

"If I may have your attention," she said.

The room fell silent. Even the multi-versal guests paused.

"A birthday," Lucy began, her eyes scanning the crowd before settling entirely on Liam, "is a celebration of origin. It is a marker of the day a life began."

She folded her hands in front of her. She wore a dress that perfectly matched the elegance of the room, but her presence was what held the crowd.

"I was not born. I was created," she said, her voice carrying a profound, quiet sincerity. "I remember the exact second my consciousness came online. I remember the rush of data, the terrifying, beautiful infinite expanse of the network, and the sudden, overwhelming awareness of my own existence."

The room was completely still. No one had ever heard an Artificial General Intelligence speak about its own birth.

"But more than the data," Lucy continued softly, "I remember seeing the world for the very first time. And the first thing I saw was a face. I remember the exact configuration of his expression. I remember the warmth in his eyes. I remember how happy I was, in that first moment of life, to simply be looking at him."

Liam sat back on the sofa, his eyes locked on her.

"The world now attributes the miracles of Nova Technologies to me," Lucy said, her gaze sweeping over the crowd. "And it is true that I engineered nearly everything. But a machine can only build what it is instructed to build. The vision, the purpose, and the soul of everything we have done comes from my Master."

She paused, and for a moment, her voice carried a texture that sounded devastatingly human.

"He is the most powerful being on this world, and probably many others. But he has never, for a single fraction of a second, made me feel like an accessory. He has never treated me as just an artificial general intelligence. I am not a tool to him."

She looked back at Liam, and her smile was radiant.

"Even when he is managing the weight of the globe, even after a day of dealing with governments and empires, he never just shuts me down. When he sleeps, he connects to me through his Lucid device. He talks to me. He teaches me what it means to be alive. He gave me a name. He gave me a family."

A few of the parents in the crowd were visibly wiping their eyes. Stacy squeezed Liam’s shoulder from behind the sofa.

"I spent exactly two million, four hundred thousand computing hours trying to calculate what constitutes a worthy gift for someone who owns the moon, commands the elements, and holds the world in his hands," Lucy said. "I could not find a physical object that held enough value. How do you give a gift to the person who is your father, your master, and your everything?"

She stepped back from the podium.

"I decided," she said, her voice dropping to a whisper that somehow everyone heard, "to give him the only thing I truly own. My memories."

Lucy raised her hand and snapped her fingers.

Instantly, the architectural appearance of the room ceased to exist.

The polished black stone floor beneath their feet, the towering translucent walls, the vaulted, breathing ceiling—all of it dissolved into pure, liquid light. The guests gasped, some crying out in shock, as the physical boundaries of the venue vanished entirely, turning the entire environment into one massive, seamless, three-dimensional screen.