Global Apocalypse: My System Is Always AFK

The kitchen smelled like ozone and burnt toast, which was, in Ethan’s opinion, the worse of the two problems.

Three enforcement droids stood in the wreckage of what used to be his counter — sleek, silver, faceless things with halos of rotating light where a head should’ve been. They looked like someone had asked a vending machine to cosplay as an angel. One of them was still smoking gently from where it had faceplanted into the stove.

Ethan stood in the doorway in his sleep shorts, holding a cast-iron frying pan that was, up until about ninety seconds ago, just a frying pan.

Now it hummed faintly in his grip, edges rippling with a thin, dark shimmer, like the metal had absorbed something it wasn’t supposed to touch and was still deciding how it felt about it.

[NOTICE: Cookware has achieved unintended Void-Grade classification.]

[The system would like to state, for the record, that this was not planned.]

”Cool,” Ethan said flatly, not moving from the doorway. ”So I can’t make eggs in this anymore.”

[Unknown. The system has never had to answer a question like this before. Please stand by.]

The nearest droid’s halo spun faster, and a voice — layered, too smooth, definitely not human — echoed out of it in perfect, unbothered corporate cadence.

”UNAUTHORIZED ENTITY. STAND DOWN. THE ADMINISTRATIVE FRAMEWORK IS EXECUTING ROUTINE MAINTENANCE ON A FLAGGED EXPLOIT.”

Ethan looked at his flagged toaster, his flagged floor tiles cracked in a three-foot radius, and his very flagged kitchen table, currently missing a leg.

”You’re doing maintenance on my apartment,” he said. ”At 6 a.m.”

”CORRECT.”

”I was asleep.”

”THE FRAMEWORK EXPRESSES REGRET FOR THE INCONVENIENCE. THE INCONVENIENCE IS, HOWEVER, NECESSARY.”

Ethan sighed through his nose, the exact same sigh he used when a delivery guy called to say he was ”five minutes away” for the third time in twenty minutes. Then he stepped into the kitchen, bare feet crunching over what used to be a cabinet door, and swung the pan like he was flipping a very stubborn omelet.

He wasn’t even trying to hit anything. That was the part that would later make three separate government analysts stare at replay footage in total silence.

The pan connected with droid number one’s midsection. There was no clang. No spark. The droid simply folded — metal collapsing inward like it had been hit by something that didn’t believe in structural integrity as a concept — and dropped to the tile in two clean, cauterized halves.

[Combat Log: Enemy neutralized.]

[Note: ”Neutralized” feels like an understatement. The system checked the enemy’s remains twice to make sure it wasn’t hallucinating.]

The other two droids paused. Their halos slowed, rotating almost thoughtfully, which was somehow worse than if they’d just attacked.

”ANOMALY CONFIRMED,” one of them said. ”WEAPON SIGNATURE DOES NOT MATCH ANY REGISTERED CLASS. REQUESTING BACKUP PROTOCOLS.”

”It’s a pan,” Ethan said, mildly offended on the pan’s behalf. ”It’s for eggs.”

He didn’t get an answer, because droid number two lunged, blade extending from its forearm in a smooth mechanical hiss, aimed at his throat with the kind of speed that would’ve turned a professional hunter into a fine red mist.

Ethan didn’t dodge. He blocked with the pan, one-handed, the same motion he’d use to swat away a fly that was being annoying about landing on his toast.

The blade didn’t cut the pan. The pan ate the blade.

It happened fast — a ripple of dark energy crawling up the droid’s arm from the point of contact, unraveling it joint by joint like the metal had suddenly forgotten it was supposed to be solid. The droid made a noise that was probably supposed to be a scream, if machines had feelings, and then it was just parts on the floor, still twitching faintly.

[The Void Sword’s little cousin strikes again.]

[The system would like to formally apologize to whoever has to file the incident report on this. There is no box for ”kitchenware.”]

Ethan crouched, poked at the smoking remains with one toe, and grimaced. ”This is gonna take forever to clean up.”

The third droid — the smart one, apparently — took two careful steps back instead of charging.

”REASSESSING ENGAGEMENT PARAMETERS,” it said, halo spinning fast enough to blur. ”THE SUBJECT’S WEAPON HAS ACHIEVED CONCEPTUAL CONSUMPTION CAPABILITY. THIS WAS NOT IN THE THREAT MODEL.”

”Yeah, well,” Ethan said, stepping over droid parts toward the fridge, ”nothing about me is ever in anyone’s threat model. You get used to it. Eventually. Allegedly.”

He opened the fridge, pulled out a carton of eggs — miraculously intact, because the Void Inventory backup batch didn’t care about property damage — and set them on the one surviving stretch of counter.

The droid watched him do this with what could only be described as robotic disbelief.

”YOU ARE PREPARING FOOD. DURING COMBAT.”

”I’m preparing food during your combat,” Ethan corrected, cracking an egg one-handed while still holding the pan in the other. ”I was gonna have breakfast either way. You’re just background noise at this point.”

[The system regrets to inform the droid that this is, historically, accurate.]

[Previous background noise has included: a militia siege, an assassination squad, an SSS-rank Calamity, and a very aggressive Eclipse Wyrm. All were, at various points, treated with roughly the same priority as ”breakfast.”]

The droid’s halo flickered — something that, on a human face, might’ve been the beginning of a nervous breakdown.

”THE FRAMEWORK WILL ESCALATE. THIS UNIT WILL REPORT—”

It didn’t finish the sentence, because Ethan, without turning around, backhanded the pan behind him in a lazy arc that caught the droid square in the chest cavity. There wasn’t even a proper swing to it. It was the kind of motion you’d use to wave away a mosquito while reading a menu.

The droid didn’t collapse this time. It just stopped existing, the Void energy unraveling it from the inside out in a silent, expanding pulse of dark light that left nothing behind but a faint smell like static and a scorch mark shaped vaguely like a starburst on the wall.

[Combat Log: Enemy neutralized. Again.]

[The system has stopped trying to find appropriate words for this. ”Neutralized” will have to do. ”Deleted with a breakfast utensil” felt unprofessional, even by the system’s admittedly low standards.]

The kitchen went quiet except for the gentle sizzle of egg hitting a very confused, very haunted pan.

Ethan surveyed the damage — cracked tile, a missing table leg, three piles of very expensive-looking scrap metal, a scorch mark that was going to be a nightmare to explain to Suresh — and let out a long breath through his nose.

”This is coming out of somebody’s budget,” he muttered, flipping the egg. ”Not mine. Somebody’s.”

[The Global Administrative Framework has logged this engagement.]

[Internal classification updated: ”Subject Ethan Verma — Threat Level: Immeasurable.” ”Kitchen — Threat Level: Also immeasurable, for unrelated reasons.”]

[The system feels it should mention — quietly, so as not to jinx anything — that it is, against every rule it was built under, starting to feel something suspiciously close to pride.]

Ethan slid the egg onto a plate, sat down on the one chair that hadn’t been damaged, and ate breakfast surrounded by the smoking husks of three divine enforcement units, like it was Tuesday.

Because, as far as he was concerned, it was.

There was a soft clink from the doorway a moment later — the tea golem, rolling in on its little brass wheels, took one look at the wreckage, one look at Ethan eating in the middle of it, and simply began sweeping up scrap metal without a word, because that’s what it did now. Cleanup and tea. Priorities.

Ethan glanced at it, then at the pan still sitting beside his plate, humming faintly with leftover Void energy like it hadn’t quite decided whether to go back to being ordinary cookware.

”Yeah,” he said, mostly to himself, ”we’re keeping this one.”

[The system logs the frying pan as a permanent inventory item.]

[Item Name: ”The Pan.” Rarity: Undefined. Description: Should not exist. Please do not ask it to make eggs again. It will, but it shouldn’t.]

Ethan didn’t read the notification. He was too busy eating.