Global Apocalypse: My System Is Always AFK

”A word with it,” Priya repeated, staring at him. ”Ethan, that thing is the size of a small mountain. It’s hovering. How exactly do you plan to have a conversation with something that’s not even touching the ground?”

Ethan considered the question seriously, tilting his head back to study the Eclipse Wyrm’s massive silhouette blotting out what should have been a perfectly good afternoon sky. ”Good point,” he said. ”I guess step one is getting it to touch the ground.”

”And how do you intend to do that?”

”Working on it.”

He pulled up his void inventory on reflex, scrolling through the accumulated pile of absorbed tomes he’d mostly forgotten about since the grandmaster spatial spell incident weeks earlier, searching with the specific, hopeful curiosity of a man rifling through a junk drawer for exactly the right tool. He found it faster than he expected — a slim, unassuming volume he’d absorbed during the great library sweep and never actually gotten around to reading properly, its listing catching his eye now for the first time.

[TREATISE ON GRAVITATIONAL THEORY, VOLUME I]

[RARITY: LEGENDARY]

[CONTENTS: TIER-8 GRAVITY MANIPULATION — ”THE WEIGHT OF WORLDS”]

[EFFECT: TEMPORARILY INCREASE GRAVITATIONAL PULL WITHIN A DESIGNATED AREA]

[STATUS: UNABSORBED]

”Oh, hey,” Ethan said, brightening considerably. ”Perfect. This is exactly the tool for the job.”

[ABSORB THIS TOME?]

”Absolutely, yes, absorb it,” Ethan said, already tapping through the prompt without a shred of hesitation, the same way he’d absorbed dozens of other tomes over the past weeks purely out of bored curiosity — except this one, for once, had an immediate, obvious application.

The knowledge flooded into him the way it always did, warm and instant, an entire tier-8 field of gravitational theory settling into his understanding like a fact he’d simply always known and never bothered to use.

[SKILL ACQUIRED: THE WEIGHT OF WORLDS (PASSIVE/ACTIVE)]

[EFFECT: USER MAY DESIGNATE A ZONE AND TEMPORARILY MULTIPLY GRAVITATIONAL FORCE WITHIN IT]

[NOTE: THIS SPELL IS TYPICALLY RESERVED FOR PLANETARY-SCALE TERRAFORMING PROJECTS]

[NOTE: USER INTENDS TO USE IT ON A SINGLE FLYING CREATURE]

[NOTE: THE SYSTEM HAS STOPPED BEING SURPRISED BY THIS PATTERN]

”Great, glad we’re on the same page,” Ethan said, already turning his attention back up toward the Eclipse Wyrm, which had shifted position slightly, wings beating in another slow, lazy sweep that sent a fresh gust rattling through the courtyard below.

Priya, still standing beside him with her radio forgotten in one hand, watched him roll his shoulders and stare up at the massive creature with the specific, focused concentration of a man about to attempt something he’d never technically practiced before.

”You’re just going to try it,” she said. ”Right now. On something that size.”

”Seems like the fastest way to get my sunlight back,” Ethan said. ”Also, in case it doesn’t work, might want to clear everyone out of the courtyard. Just to be safe.”

Priya didn’t need to be told twice. She barked orders into her radio, and within seconds, the last stragglers still lingering near the World Tree’s shade were being ushered toward the building’s interior, leaving the courtyard and the open field beyond the sanctuary boundary empty and waiting.

Ethan raised both hands toward the sky, focusing on the specific, warm certainty the absorbed tome had planted in his understanding, and pictured, with as much precision as he could muster, a column of gravitational force reaching up from the empty field beyond the sanctuary boundary directly into the space the Eclipse Wyrm currently occupied.

”Down,” he said, mostly for his own benefit, ”you go down.”

The air around the creature shimmered, a faint, distorting ripple spreading outward from its massive body like heat haze over summer asphalt, and for a moment nothing else happened at all — the Wyrm continued its slow, lazy hover, wings beating in the same unhurried rhythm as before, seemingly unbothered by whatever Ethan had just attempted.

[SKILL ACTIVATED: THE WEIGHT OF WORLDS]

[TARGET GRAVITATIONAL FORCE: MULTIPLIED BY 50x]

[EFFECT APPLYING...]

Then the creature’s wingbeats faltered.

It happened gradually at first — a slight dip in its hovering altitude, a visible strain entering the rhythm of its massive wings as they beat harder, faster, fighting against a pull that had, in the space of a few seconds, made its own considerable bulk feel fifty times heavier than it had any right to be. The Wyrm let out a confused, guttural roar, wings straining against a force it had no framework to understand, its vast shadow over the district beginning, slowly, to shrink as the creature’s altitude dropped in increments too small to be dramatic yet but too consistent to be anything but deliberate.

”It’s working,” Priya breathed, watching from the courtyard’s edge, disbelief plain on her face. ”It’s actually working.”

”Told you,” Ethan said, though there was real effort in his voice now, sweat beading at his temple despite the cool afternoon air — not because the spell strained him physically, but because holding the gravitational anchor steady against something the size of a mountain required a level of sustained focus he genuinely wasn’t used to applying to anything.

The Wyrm’s wingbeats grew increasingly desperate, its massive frame tilting and lurching as the fifty-fold gravitational increase overwhelmed muscles built for flight under entirely normal conditions. It tried, one final time, to climb — a last, powerful surge of both wings driving downward in a stroke that should have carried it upward and out of the affected zone — and instead succeeded only in accelerating its own descent, the strain finally too much for even its considerable strength to overcome.

It fell.

Not the graceful, controlled descent of a creature choosing to land, but a genuine, uncontrolled plummet, wings flailing uselessly against a gravitational pull that had turned the sky itself into a hostile, crushing weight. The Eclipse Wyrm crashed down into the empty field beyond the sanctuary boundary — the same open, rubble-strewn stretch of ground that had once hosted part of the original monster wave weeks earlier — with an impact that shook the entire district, a colossal crater blooming outward from the point of collision, dust and debris billowing skyward in a churning cloud that took several long seconds to settle.

Ethan lowered his hands, releasing the gravitational field the instant the creature’s full weight hit the ground, and let out a long, satisfied breath, the strain of the past thirty seconds finally easing out of his shoulders.

[TARGET: GROUNDED]

[GRAVITATIONAL FIELD: DEACTIVATED]

[NOTE: SKILL EXECUTED SUCCESSFULLY]

[NOTE: THIS IS THE FIRST RECORDED USE OF TIER-8 GRAVITY MANIPULATION AGAINST A LIVING TARGET]

[NOTE: MOST PRACTITIONERS SPEND DECADES BEFORE ACHIEVING RELIABLE CONTROL]

[NOTE: USER LEARNED IT TEN MINUTES AGO]

The Eclipse Wyrm, dazed and disoriented in the crater it had just created, struggled to right itself, wings twitching weakly against ground it clearly hadn’t intended to touch. Ethan glanced at it, considered whether it was worth finishing off properly, and decided, with the same casual pragmatism he applied to most confrontations, that a creature grounded and humbled posed considerably less of a threat than one still hovering over his window.

”Okay,” he said, turning back toward the building, sunlight — actual, uninterrupted sunlight — finally streaming back down across the courtyard now that the sky had cleared of its unwelcome tenant. ”Someone else can handle mop-up. I’ve got a nap to get back to.”

Priya stared at him, then at the smoking crater beyond the sanctuary boundary, then back at him again, still processing the fact that a threat rated SS — one her entire coalition of guilds had been explicitly ordered not to engage — had just been grounded in under a minute by a spell Ethan had learned specifically for the purpose, deployed with the sole motivation of reclaiming a patch of afternoon sunlight.

”You,” she said finally, ”pulled the sky down. To protect your nap schedule.”

”Priorities,” Ethan said, already walking back toward his building, stretching his arms overhead with the satisfied ease of a man whose afternoon plans had, against considerable odds, been fully restored. ”Turns out gravity’s pretty useful once you actually bother reading the instructions.”