The pine bedroom was pitch black. Faint silver moonlight sliced through the shutter slats.
Around two in the morning, Felix Vance woke up. He smacked his dry tongue against his teeth.
"Ugh," Felix groaned, staring at the dark ceiling. "So thirsty."
His throat felt like he had swallowed a handful of dry sand.
Ever since condensing that dense rocky core in his belly, his body felt delightfully grounded and cozy.
Naturally, Felix did not attribute this to possessing the thermonuclear fusion capacity of four hundred million tons of hydrogen.
"The server settings are out of whack," Felix muttered. He swung his legs over the mattress. "The devs probably raised the ambient room temperature to push players toward buying stamina-refresh consumables."
He rubbed his temples. He yawned until his jaw popped. Then he shuffled across the floorboards in pajamas.
Up on the rafter, Barnaby sat in total darkness.
The brass clockwork owl let out a muffled buzz behind the carved oak bottle cork wedged in its beak. Its amber mechanical eyes spun with indignation.
Felix paused beneath the perch. He pulled a shiny copper penny from his tunic pocket.
He pressed the cold coin into Barnaby’s right brass claw. The owl’s perching reflex clamped tight around the metal.
"Here is a copper penny, Barnaby," Felix whispered. "Keep the noise down so I can sleep."
Barnaby’s gears clicked with silent rage, but his talons stayed locked on the penny.
Barnaby’s cogs vibrated with rage, but Felix was already out the door and shuffling down the hallway.
* * *
In the kitchen, the air was cool and smelled of dried mint.
Felix walked over to the wooden water barrel in the corner. He dipped a ladle into cold well water. He filled his chipped mug and drank it down in three gulps.
"Ah," Felix exhaled, wiping his chin with his sleeve. "Much better. Cold water is truly the greatest gaming buff known to mankind."
He filled the mug a second time, intending to take it back to bed.
As he turned away from the counter, a faint, rhythmic scuffling sound caught his ear.
Scratch. Squelch. Groan.
It was coming from the back garden.
Felix frowned and padded quietly to the small rear window above the sink.
He leaned against the wooden sill, peering out into the moonlit yard.
Fifty feet away, six dark shapes wriggled in the mud. They squirmed right where Lyra had planted the cabbage seed.
They looked like overgrown raccoons wrapped in black rags, twisting and thrashing around like fat worms on hot pavement.
Felix squinted through the glass.
Instantly, his golden Inspector HUD flickered to life over the six writhing figures:
【Target: Midnight Garden Pests (Level 5 Scavengers)】 【Type: Nocturnal Vermin / Common Annoyance】 【Status: Heavily Pinned by Localized Atmospheric Weight】 【Inspector Note: Mangy intruders attempting to disturb your newly planted cabbage. Highly susceptible to blunt domestic trauma. Clear the area to fulfill the system bounty. Sells to the junk vendor for 0 copper coins.】
Felix stared at the text box in mild disgust.
"Are you kidding me?" Felix whispered, shaking his head.
"I put that seed in the ground five hours ago. How is the wildlife AI already targeting my crops?"
He remembered the AetherDeck alert from earlier: Emergency Quest: Clear 6x Intruding Nocturnal Scavengers.
"One thousand gacha crystals for getting rid of six raccoons," Felix muttered. "If I don't chase them off now, they're gonna chew up the leaves by sunrise, and the quest will fail."
He really didn't want to deal with it. It was two in the morning.
He wanted to be under his blanket. Eight more hours of passive AFK rewards awaited him.
"I'm not putting on heavy work boots just to kick six raccoons," Felix grumbled.
He looked down at his feet.
He wore his favorite straw slippers. They were ratty, comfortable, and had frayed heels.
Felix slipped his right foot out of the slipper.
He held the floppy slipper in his right hand. He balanced his mug of water in his left.
He pushed open the kitchen back door and stepped out onto the porch.
* * *
Out in the cabbage patch, the six elite assassins of the Ashford Clan were living through a waking nightmare.
For three continuous hours, they had been crushed face-first into the fertilizer.
Every bone in Krail's body felt like splintered glass. His lungs burned with every microscopic sip of air he managed to draw.
Beside him, Justin had completely lost his mind, quietly humming clan funeral hymns into a patch of wild onions.
Suddenly, the creak of rusty iron hinges echoed through the dead silence of the night.
Screeech.
Krail strained with every ounce of his remaining willpower, forcing his bloodshot left eye open against the mud.
A young man had stepped out onto the back porch.
He was dressed in wrinkled, faded gray hemp pajamas. His hair was a wild, unbrushed bird's nest. He was yawning openly, scratching his lower ribs with the casual apathy of a peasant waking for a midnight leak.
In his left hand, he held a chipped earthenware mug.
In his right hand, he carried a battered, floppy straw slipper.
To a mortal eye, it was an utterly mundane, slightly pathetic sight.
To Krail’s magic senses, the air warped around the young man. It felt like a crushing gravitational abyss.
The young man didn't just walk. The fabric of space bent beneath his bare left foot.
Behind his thin shoulders, Krail saw the phantom of a colossal planetary sphere. Its sheer mass threatened to drag the entire sky-island down!
The Sovereign... Krail’s soul shrieked in silent agony. The Ancient Slumbering Sovereign has emerged!
And he carries a weapon!
Krail’s gaze dropped to the frayed straw slipper in the young man's right hand.
To Krail’s terrified mind, the woven grass of the slipper wasn't straw.
It was the braided sinew of a Primordial Void Beast, steeped in the karma of ten thousand slaughtered gods!
The frayed threads at the heel were the remnants of broken celestial chains!
"Mercy..." Krail choked out, coughing up black mud.
"Immortal Lord... have mercy on our clan..."
* * *
Up on the porch, Felix didn't hear the muffled gurgling coming from the mud.
All he saw was six fat pests making annoying rustling sounds right next to his precious cabbage.
"Hey!" Felix shouted in a lazy, scratchy voice.
"Get out of my garden, you mangy things! Shoo!"
The pests didn't move. In fact, they seemed to wriggle even more aggressively, digging their faces deeper into the soil.
Felix sighed heavily.
"Unresponsive AI," Felix muttered. "Typical indie game trash. If you don't hit them with a physical hitbox, they just stay stuck in their feeding loops."
Felix took a sip of water from his mug, swallowed it, and raised his right arm.
He gave the frayed straw slipper a casual, dismissive flick of his wrist.
He didn't aim to kill. He only wanted to toss the slipper at the raccoons to scare them off. He would pick it up in the morning.
"Scram," Felix said, tossing the slipper through the air.
It was the most casual, effortless motion in the world.
The problem, however, was that the arm executing the toss was powered by the localized kinetic potential of a 1.0-Earth-Mass rocky core.
* * *
The moment the slipper left Felix’s fingertips, physics completely abandoned the Seventh Spire.
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
The air didn't just part; it collapsed with an earth-shattering sonic crack.
The friction of the straw slipper moving through the troposphere instantly ignited a blinding cone of white-hot ionized plasma.
The slipper crossed the fifty feet to the garden patch at Mach 45.
It didn't hit the assassins directly.
It didn't need to.
The shockwave ahead of the flying footwear hit the cabbage patch like an artillery cannon!
CRACK-THUUUUUUUUUM!
The garden dirt didn't splash—it vaporized into a concussive shock ring of displaced loam, pine needles, and compressed atmospheric air.
The six elite Fifth-Tier assassins weren't just knocked back.
They were scooped out of the earth like dry leaves caught in the exhaust nozzle of a rocket thruster!
"AAAAAAAUUUUUUGGGGGGHHHHH!" Krail’s scream ripped across the night sky.
"THE SLIPPEEEEEEERRRRRR!" Justin wailed in utter despair.
The six men were launched into the upper atmosphere in a perfect parabolic arc.
They tore through the cloud sea like screaming comets. They rocketed over the distant observatory and vanished past two mountain ranges!
The trailing shockwave sheared across the chasm. It sliced off the top of a granite cliff three miles away.
And in the center of the garden?
The straw slipper, having expended its kinetic energy against the atmospheric barrier, bounced gently off a cedar fence post.
Flop.
It flipped in the air and landed on the gravel path. It sat upright, toe pointing toward the door.
* * *
From the deep shadows beside the rain barrel, Lyra Ashford fell to her knees.
Her hands clutched her silver rapier so tightly that her knuckles were bone-white.
Her breath came in ragged, trembling gasps.
She had watched the entire sequence from start to finish.
Six elite assassins had been launched forty miles into muddy berry bushes. Golden stars spun around their bruised heads as they squeaked in shock.
Not with a sacred sword.
Not with an ancient forbidden hex.
With an old, worn-out house slipper.
A casual toss... Lyra whispered inside her shattered mind, her eyes wide with reverence that bordered on religious madness.
He didn't even spill a single drop of water from his cup!
He stood on the porch holding water, Lyra thought. He banished six shadow masters forty miles away with a single shoe!
And look at the weapon!
Lyra stared at the straw slipper resting peacefully on the gravel.* The Divine Relic shattered the clouds!* Lyra whispered. Then it returned to his feet without a single frayed stitch!
What kind of Dao is this?!
Is this the legendary Dao of Absolute Domesticity? The Art of the Careless Swat?!
Lyra’s forehead pressed down onto the cold gravel.
She wept silent tears of pure, unadulterated gratitude.
Senior Brother Felix... you saved me again, she sobbed silently. You knew my clan’s killers were here. You didn't even deem them worthy of putting on your other shoe!
* * *
Up on the porch, Felix blinked.
He looked at the empty cabbage patch.
The six wriggling dark lumps were gone.
The garden path was completely clean only a neat round dent remained in the dirt where the pests had squirmed.
Remarkably, his tiny cabbage sprout in the center was completely untouched, swaying happily in the fresh night breeze.
Felix scratched his messy hair.
"Huh," Felix said to himself. "Must have hit them right on the collider. Physics engines in these games get so wacky with knockback multipliers."
Felix shuffled down the steps. He picked up his slipper and shook off a couple of dry leaves.
He slid his right foot back inside. It felt warm, broken-in, and entirely comfortable.
Suddenly, a crisp digital chime chimed behind his ears.
Ding-ding-dong!
A bright golden box popped up before his eyes:
[AETHERDECK OS: QUEST COMPLETE!]
Emergency Quest: <NIGHTTIME GARDEN PESTS> [SUCCESS]
Intruders Cleared: 6 / 6 (Knocked out of render distance)
[REWARDS DISTRIBUTED TO INVENTORY]:
• 1,000x Astral Gacha Summon Crystals
• 50,000 Cosmic Watts (Idle Energy)
Current Crystal Balance: 1,000 / 1,000 [10x PULL READY!]
Felix’s eyebrows shot up.
A slow, satisfied smirk spread across his face.
"One thousand crystals," Felix chuckled softly. "Nice. That's a full ten-pull on the gacha banner."
He turned back toward the kitchen door, taking another sip of cool well water from his mug.
"I'll pull tomorrow morning after breakfast," Felix murmured, stifling another massive yawn as he pushed the screen door open. "Never do a ten-pull when you're half-asleep. Bad gacha karma."
He shuffled down the dark hallway. He climbed into his cot and pulled the blanket over his head.
Within forty seconds, Felix was fast asleep. He snored into his pillow while the realm wondered what had shattered the sky.