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, imperial prose that vibrated the windowpanes. "The dawn breaks across the Nine Spires of Aethelgard! The river of celestial mana flows strongest when the sun kisses the eastern mist! He who sleeps through the morning bell shall inherit only the dust of mortal mediocrity!"
From beneath a tangled mound of patched wool blankets, a single pale arm shot forth with the blinding, unnatural speed of a striking viper.
*Thump.*
A carved wooden wine 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, rubbing the sleep from his eyes with two calloused knuckles. He scratched his messy brown hair, yawned until his jaw clicked, and slid his feet into a pair of frayed straw slippers.
He wore a loose, faded gray hemp tunic that looked like comfortable pajamas. It had zero embroidery, zero runic warding stitches, and a faint grease stain near the hem from yesterday’s pan-fried scallion pancakes.
"Another day without Master," Felix remarked, glancing at the empty room. "Quiet. Peaceful. Excellent."
Grandmaster Vivienne Frost had been missing for three years.
According to academy rumors, she was the *Frost-Weaver of the Absolute Zero*, a peerless sovereign who had ventured into the Abyssal Void to fight cosmic demons.
According to Felix, she was just an eccentric landlord who skipped out on her lease and left him with an overgrown floating rock, three cords of dry firewood, 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 any mage in the Dominion of Aethelgard, it looked like a worthless, shattered relic from an ancient ruin—the kind of junk apprentices dredged up from riverbeds and tossed into scrap bins.
To Felix, the obsidian surface lit up with a crisp, amber-hued retro display the moment his thumb touched the center groove.
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? If I stack them in the pantry, the floorbeams are gonna 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, surrounded by overgrown weeds, crooked plum trees, and crumbling stone walls that had long since surrendered to ivy.
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 prestigious branches of the Radiant Dawn Academy—the Solar Peak, the Blade Spire, the Astral Observatory, and the Grand Spires of Law and Alchemy.
On those six spires, thousands of ambitious disciples were currently sweating through four-hour sword drills, memorizing ancient incantations, and swallowing bitter medicinal pills that burned their throats.
Felix stood at his wooden kitchen counter, happily oblivious to their suffering.
He scooped a cup of cold spring water into a battered iron pot, tossed in three handfuls of rolled barley, and lit the small clay stove with a spark of 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 had finally tapped out at three in the morning while testing the physics collision of an unreleased space sandbox game.
When he opened his eyes, he was lying on this wooden cot with an ancient cracked slate on his chest and a bunch of strange floating text boxes over everyone he looked at.
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 that he was on a floating island with zero rent, an absentee master, and an ancient handheld console that handed out free loot while he slept, Felix had zero desire to leave.
"If the devs don't want to fix the logout button, that’s their problem," Felix said aloud, leaning against the weathered cedar porch railing. "I’m staying on this porch until the servers shut down."
***
He focused his gaze across his overgrown front garden.
Every time he looked at something with intent, his passive vision ability kicked in, displaying floating black brackets filled 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 and warm steam filled the small cabin. Felix scooped the thick porridge into a cracked wooden bowl, diced a salted radish into thin slices, and sat down at the small pine table in the center of the kitchen.
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, resonant sound echoed from the far edge of the floating island—the unmistakable screech of metal dragging across stone, followed by the heavy, hurried footsteps of someone sprinting through the overgrown briars of Solitude Spire.
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.
Framed in the doorway stood a young woman, her chest heaving for breath, her silver rapier trembling in a bloodstained 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.