The brass clockwork owl perched on the cedar ceiling beam whirred with sudden, violent mechanical malice.
Click-whirrrrr-ding!
Barnaby’s beak snapped open. Polished amber cogs spun behind his brass retinas.
"Awaken, slothful disciple!" the owl screeched in high-pitched prose. The screech vibrated the windowpanes.
"The dawn breaks across the Nine Spires of Aethelgard! The river of mana flows when the sun kisses the mist! He who sleeps through the bell inherits only dust!"
A single pale arm shot out from beneath the wool blankets. It moved with the blinding speed of a striking snake.
Thump.
A carved oak bottle cork was jammed cleanly into Barnaby’s open brass beak.
The owl let out a muffled "Mmph!"
Its internal copper gears spun in place with a dry, grinding rattle. Barnaby stood frozen on his cedar perch, vibrating with sheer, offended metallic indignation.
Beneath the heavy covers, Felix Vance rolled over and pressed his cheek against a cool linen pillow.
"The sun is high up in the sky, and I continue to sleep," Felix murmured to the quiet bedroom. "Who is the archmage? I am the archmage."
He closed his eyes and drifted back to sleep for another four hours.
* * *
By the time Felix finally kicked off the blankets, the morning mist had long since burned off the sky-islands.
Bright golden sunlight poured through the gaps in his warped pine shutters. Outside, mountain sparrows squawked in the eaves of the dilapidated cottage, squabbling over dry thatch.
Felix sat on the edge of the cot. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes with two knuckles.
He scratched his messy brown hair. He yawned until his jaw clicked. Then he slid into his frayed straw slippers.
He wore a loose, faded gray hemp tunic that looked like comfortable pajamas. It had zero embroidery and zero magic stitches. A faint grease stain from yesterday’s scallion pancakes marked the hem.
"Another day without Master," Felix remarked, glancing at the empty room.
"Quiet. Peaceful. Excellent."
Grandmaster Vivienne Frost had been missing for three years.
Academy rumors called her the Frost-Weaver of Absolute Zero. People claimed she fought cosmic demons in the deep void.
To Felix, she was just an eccentric landlord. She had skipped out on her lease. She left him an overgrown rock and zero chores.
Felix reached beneath his straw mattress and pulled out a palm-sized slate of cracked obsidian bound in weathered brass filigree.
To local mages, it looked like a worthless broken relic. It was the kind of junk novices tossed into scrap bins.
To Felix, the obsidian surface lit up immediately. An amber retro display appeared when his thumb touched the groove.
[AETHERDECK OS: BUILD v2.4.1 (IDLE RUNTIME ENGAGED)]
Host Designation: Felix Vance (User ID: 00000001)
Current Location: Seventh Spire (Solitude Peak / Junk Heap)
Status: Fully Rested / Biological Hunger: 42%
Offline Duration: 14 Hours, 18 Minutes, 02 Seconds
Idle Energy Accumulated: 14,300,000 Cosmic Watts
Active Game: <STELLAR IDLE: GALAXY CRUSADER>
[UNCLAIMED AFK REWARDS READY]:
If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
• 1,200x Compressed Star-Iron Ore
• 45x Pure Solar Plasma Droplets
• 1x [Gacha Ticket: Standard Heavenly Summon]
• 1x Mystery Item: Blueprint: "Automatic Tea Kettle"
[1. CLAIM ALL REWARDS] [2. RUN MINI-GAME] [3. SETTINGS]
Felix smiled warmly.
"Now that’s what I call a productive morning," he muttered, tapping the glowing [CLAIM ALL REWARDS] button.
A satisfying, three-tone digital chime played directly behind his eardrums.
Ding-ding-dong!
A faint warmth washed through his chest, settling deep inside his solar plexus. At the same time, a heavy burlap sack appeared on the floorboards with a dull thud.
Inside the sack were twelve hundred thumb-sized cubes of dark metallic ore that pulsed with cold gravitational weight.
Felix picked up one of the cubes. It felt dense as lead, pulling faintly toward the center of the earth.
A translucent black text box popped up over the ore in Felix’s field of vision:
【Item: Compressed Star-Iron Ore】 【Grade: Seventh-Tier Divine Smelting Material】 【Source: Gathered from the debris field of a dying astral meteor.】 【Inspector Note: Blacksmiths in the imperial capital would gladly murder their own uncles for three ounces of this metal. Sells to the junk vendor for 1 copper coin per pound.】
Felix tossed the cube back into the sack.
"One copper a pound," Felix sighed, shaking his head. "Vendor margins in this game are absolutely brutal."
"What am I supposed to do with twelve hundred of these?" he muttered. "If I stack them in the pantry, the floorbeams will sag."
He shoved the sack under his bed with his heel and shuffled out to the kitchen.
* * *
The cottage on Solitude Spire was small, dusty, and delightfully quiet.
It sat on the highest rise of the Seventh Spire. Overgrown weeds, crooked plum trees, and ivy covered the crumbling walls.
Below the island’s cliff edge, a sea of white clouds stretched out toward the horizon like endless whipped cream.
In the far distance, six colossal floating spires hovered in the sky, tethered together by glowing mithril chains. Those were the grand peaks of Radiant Dawn Academy. They included the Solar Peak, the Blade Spire, and the Astral Observatory.
Thousands of ambitious students sweated through four-hour sword drills. They memorized ancient chants. They swallowed bitter pills that burned their throats.
Felix stood at his wooden kitchen counter, happily oblivious to their suffering.
He scooped cold water into a battered pot. He added three handfuls of barley. Then he lit the small clay stove with flint.
While the barley simmered, Felix stepped out onto the front porch and took a deep, refreshing breath.
"The air of this world is definitely crisp," he noted, stretching his arms over his head.
Felix was not from Aethelgard.
Back on Earth, he had spent seven years as a lead quality-assurance tester for an indie game studio. His life had been an endless blur of bug tickets, crash logs, energy drinks, and seventy-two-hour beta-testing marathons.
His heart gave out at three in the morning. He had been testing physics bugs in a space sandbox game.
He woke up on this wooden cot with a cracked slate. Strange floating text boxes hovered over everyone he saw.
To Felix, the conclusion was obvious: he was stuck in an early-access, unoptimized VR sandbox MMO with broken logout functionality.
He didn't care about cultivating immortality. He didn't care about flying on swords or becoming a god. He had spent his entire previous life working himself to death for fifty thousand dollars a year.
Now he lived on a floating rock with zero rent. His handheld console gave free loot while he slept. Felix never wanted to leave.
"If the devs won't fix the logout button, that’s their problem," Felix said aloud. He leaned on the weathered porch railing. "I’m staying on this porch until the servers shut down."
* * *
He focused his gaze across his overgrown front garden.
Whenever he focused his gaze, his passive vision kicked in. Floating black brackets popped up with cynical commentary:
【Target: Common Mountain Dandelion】 【Type: Ordinary Weed】 【Inspector Note: Just a weed. But yesterday afternoon, a stray fat sparrow pooped on the third leaf from the left. Do not use in your salad.】
Felix chuckled softly. He shifted his gaze toward the crooked stone fence near the garden edge:
【Target: Ancient Boundary Ward Post】 【Grade: Sixth-Tier Abyssal Sealing Pillar】 【Durability: 18/100 (Covered in bird droppings and yellow lichen)】 【Inspector Note: Once held back a horde of three thousand Nether-Beasts during the First Age. Currently being used by Felix Vance as a towel rack for drying wet socks.】
"Hey, it’s got two stone prongs on top," Felix defended himself, muttering at the empty air. "It’s literally shaped like a sock hanger. Blame the architect, not me."
He walked back inside the kitchen just as the pot of barley porridge began to bubble.
The smell of toasted grain filled the cabin. Warm steam drifted through the room.
Felix scooped the thick porridge into a wooden bowl. He diced a salted radish. Then he sat down at the pine kitchen table.
He took a bite. It was warm, savory, and perfectly salty.
A small icon flickered in the corner of his vision:
[Consumed: Salted Radish Porridge] [Buff Applied: Minor Satiety (+2 HP/sec for 10 minutes)] [Developer Note: Consumables do not stack. Do not choke yourself.]
"Decent morning buff," Felix murmured, chewing slowly. "A bit bland, but it keeps the hunger bar green."
Suddenly, the wooden floorboards trembled beneath his feet.
A low sound echoed across the floating island. Metal screeched against stone. Hurried footsteps sprinted through the overgrown briars.
Felix paused with his wooden spoon halfway to his mouth.
He listened carefully.
Pant. Pant. Clang.
A heavy thud rattled the kitchen door. The latch rattled violently as if a desperate hand were trying to find purchase on the iron handle.
Felix sighed, slowly lowering his spoon back into the bowl.
"Great," he grumbled, rubbing his temples with two fingers. "Can’t even finish breakfast without the game spawning a random wandering event. If this is another traveling merchant trying to sell me five-copper magic beans, I’m locking the deadbolt."
The kitchen door swung wide open with a loud groan of hinges.
A young woman stood framed in the doorway. Her chest heaved. Her silver rapier trembled in a leather gauntlet.
Felix blinked, chewing his mouthful of porridge as the morning breeze rustled her torn cloak.
The curtain on Solitude Spire’s quiet life had just been violently yanked open.