Global Apocalypse: My System Is Always AFK

The loot from the Ash-Wrought Colossus took a while to fully process — the system, apparently, needed time to properly catalog whatever a hundred-million-health SSS-rank calamity dropped, which Ethan discovered when the promised ”generating rewards” notification sat unresolved for the better part of an hour while he finished lunch, cleared his dishes, and started the mundane, deeply un-cosmic task of washing up.

He was standing at the kitchenette sink, sleeves pushed up, scrubbing the lentil stew pot with the specific, unglamorous focus of a man who’d never quite trusted the void inventory enough to store dirty dishes in it, when his phone — sitting on the counter beside him, screen dark — suddenly buzzed hard enough to vibrate the whole counter.

[REWARD GENERATION: COMPLETE]

[CALAMITY LOOT FINALIZED]

[ITEM ACQUIRED: HEART OF THE BEAST KING]

[CLASSIFICATION: EXCEEDS ALL EXISTING RANKING SYSTEMS]

[TRANSFERRING TO USER VOID INVENTORY...]

Ethan glanced over at his phone, sudsy hands dripping onto the floor, and felt something shift in his back pocket — not painful, not even especially noticeable at first, just a faint, warm pressure, like he’d absentmindedly pocketed a hand warmer that had suddenly decided to activate.

He set down the pot, dried his hands on his hoodie, and reached into his pocket.

The object he pulled out was, by any conventional measure, breathtaking — a crystal roughly the size of a fist, deep violet-red at its core and shot through with veins of pure gold light that pulsed in a slow, steady rhythm, like something inside it was genuinely, actually alive. It was warm to the touch, radiating a faint heat that Ethan could feel through his palm, and even holding it loosely, he could sense a kind of pressure emanating from it — not threatening, exactly, but present, the way you can sense a large crowd behind a closed door before you ever open it.

[ITEM: HEART OF THE BEAST KING]

[ORIGIN: CORE OF THE ASH-WROUGHT COLOSSUS]

[ESTIMATED ENERGY OUTPUT: EQUIVALENT TO A SMALL NATION’S ANNUAL POWER GRID]

[POTENTIAL USES: MASSIVE MANA RESERVOIR, ARTIFACT FORGING CATALYST, SETTLEMENT-SCALE POWER SOURCE]

[NOTE: THIS ITEM HAS NO ESTABLISHED MARKET VALUE]

[NOTE: NOTHING COMPARABLE HAS EVER EXISTED FOR SALE]

”A small nation’s annual power grid,” Ethan read aloud, turning the crystal over in his hand, watching the gold veins pulse faintly brighter with the motion. ”Huh.”

He set it down on the kitchen counter, mildly impressed, and went back to washing his pot, because dishes didn’t clean themselves and the crystal, whatever it was, didn’t seem to be in any immediate danger of exploding or doing anything else that required his urgent attention. It just sat there, pulsing quietly, radiating warmth into the kitchenette like a very expensive, very ancient space heater.

He finished the dishes about ten minutes later, dried his hands again, and picked the crystal back up, considering it with the specific, unfocused curiosity of a man trying to figure out what to do with a windfall he genuinely had no framework for.

”What do I even do with this,” he asked the empty kitchen, mostly rhetorically.

[SUGGESTION: THE CORE COULD POWER THE BUILDING’S SANCTUARY FIELD AND VOID SHIELD INDEFINITELY, EVEN IF USER’S OWN POWER LEVEL WERE TO SOMEHOW DECREASE]

[SUGGESTION: THE CORE COULD BE USED AS A CATALYST TO FORGE ADDITIONAL LEGENDARY EQUIPMENT]

[SUGGESTION: THE CORE COULD SIMPLY BE STORED, GIVEN ITS EXTREME RARITY]

Ethan considered the first suggestion the longest, mostly because it involved something he actually cared about — the safety of the four hundred-plus people currently living downstairs, all of them relying on protections that, as far as he understood it, drew their power directly from his own continued existence and presumably his continued willingness to keep them active.

”Wait,” he said, frowning slightly. ”Does the shield stuff need me specifically to keep running? Like, if something happened to me—”

[CURRENT PROTOCOLS DRAW PASSIVE ENERGY FROM USER’S OWN STAT POOL]

[IF USER’S POWER LEVEL WERE TO DECREASE SIGNIFICANTLY, PROTOCOL STABILITY COULD BE AFFECTED]

[INTEGRATING A DEDICATED POWER SOURCE, SUCH AS THE HEART OF THE BEAST KING, WOULD MAKE PROTOCOLS SELF-SUSTAINING REGARDLESS OF USER STATUS]

That settled it, in the specific, practical way most of Ethan’s bigger decisions tended to get settled — not through grand deliberation, but through a straightforward assessment of what would actually protect the people he’d accidentally become responsible for.

”Okay,” he said, ”do that. Hook it up to the shield stuff. Make it not depend on me specifically.”

[INTEGRATE HEART OF THE BEAST KING INTO SANCTUARY FIELD AND VOID SHIELD PROTOCOLS?]

[CONFIRM?]

”Confirmed. Go for it.”

The crystal in his hand flared bright gold for a moment, warm enough now that Ethan actually had to switch it to his other palm, and then dissolved into a stream of light that shot out from his fingers, down through the floor, spreading through the building’s foundation in visible, glowing veins that pulsed once, twice, and then settled into a steady, ambient hum Ethan could feel through the soles of his feet.

[HEART OF THE BEAST KING: INTEGRATED]

[SANCTUARY FIELD: NOW SELF-SUSTAINING]

[VOID SHIELD: NOW SELF-SUSTAINING]

[ESTIMATED OPERATIONAL DURATION: INDEFINITE]

[NOTE: PROTECTIONS WILL REMAIN ACTIVE REGARDLESS OF USER’S FUTURE POWER LEVEL, LOCATION, OR STATUS]

Ethan stood in his kitchen for a moment, feeling the faint, warm hum of the building’s new, permanent power source thrumming quietly beneath his feet, and felt a small, satisfied smile tug at the corner of his mouth — not the excited, delighted grin he’d worn discovering the void inventory or his teleport skill, but something quieter, steadier.

He walked to his window and looked down at the courtyard, where the afternoon’s usual bustle continued below — children playing, Suresh managing his clipboard with practiced efficiency, hunters coming and going on their supply rotations. None of them knew that the ground beneath their feet had just been permanently, unshakably secured, powered now by something that had once been the heart of a hundred-million-health calamity that would have, under any other circumstances, ended civilizations.

He’d found it in his pocket while washing dishes.

”You know,” he said, to nobody in particular, watching the courtyard below settle into its familiar, peaceful rhythm, ”I really need to start paying more attention to what falls into my laundry.”

He turned away from the window, grabbed a fresh drink from his void inventory, and went to go check if his avatar had found anything else interesting while he’d been busy doing dishes — because as far as Ethan was concerned, permanently securing the safety of four hundred people with a small nation’s worth of accidental power generation was, at most, a nice bonus to an otherwise unremarkable Tuesday afternoon.