Chapter 296: The New Rules, A Magical Headache
"I prefer this," Sebastian said softly, slipping his arm around Valerie’s waist.
A few minutes later, the steaks were plated. They sat around a sturdy, slightly lopsided wooden picnic table that Corbin had built the day before.
There were no grand speeches. There were no toasts to fallen comrades or solemn vows to protect the universe. They just ate. They laughed as Corbin accidentally spilled his water, and they made fun of Wraith for cutting his steak into perfectly symmetrical, mathematically precise squares.
It was utterly, blissfully normal.
When the sun finally dipped below the horizon, painting the sky in deep shades of indigo and violet, Galleon, Wraith, and Corbin packed up the plates and headed back down the hill toward the main town.
Sebastian and Valerie walked back inside their quiet cabin.
The living room was lit by a single, warm lantern sitting on a side table. And taking up almost the entire center of the room was the most phenomenally ugly, orange-and-brown floral print couch ever constructed by human hands.
Sebastian immediately walked over to it and collapsed face-first onto the cushions with a heavy, contented groan.
"Oh my god," Sebastian mumbled into the hideous fabric. "It’s like sitting on a cloud made of marshmallows. I’m never getting up."
Valerie smiled, walking over and sitting down next to him. The couch creaked slightly under their combined weight, but she had to admit, it was incredibly comfortable. She pulled her legs up, resting her head against his shoulder.
Sebastian shifted, wrapping his arm securely around her. He rested his cheek against the top of her head.
He didn’t have his [Code Compiler] anymore. He wasn’t the Sovereign of Laws. He couldn’t fold space or turn angels into exploding piles of meat. If he stubbed his toe, he was going to swear. If he got cut, he was going to bleed.
He had traded absolute godhood for a quiet cabin and an ugly couch.
And it was the best trade he had ever made.
"No more patch notes," Sebastian whispered into the quiet room, closing his eyes as a profound, heavy peace finally settled over his mind.
"No more patch notes," Valerie agreed softly, her fingers gently tracing the faint, faded silver scars on his arm.
The universe took a deep, steady breath outside their window, and for the first time in forever, it was completely silent.
**
The ugly, fluorescent orange couch with the dark brown floral pattern was, without a single doubt, the greatest thing Sebastian had ever experienced in his entire life.
It was scratchy. It smelled faintly of old dust and stale basement air. The springs sagged horribly right in the middle, creating a deep crater that threatened to swallow anyone who sat on it. But to Sebastian, it was a masterpiece of human engineering. It was soft, it didn’t shoot deletion beams at him, and it didn’t require an Administrator override to take a nap on it.
He lay flat on his back, his legs hanging completely over one of the armrests, snoring softly into a faded throw pillow. A thin line of drool pooled at the corner of his mouth.
For the first time in over a year, the universe was quiet. There were no flashing red error screens in his vision. There was no oppressive, bruised-purple cosmic smog pressing down on the roof. It was just a lazy, sunny Thursday afternoon in the rebuilt town of Sanctuary.
*KRA-BOOOOM!*
The explosion was absolutely deafening. It rattled the wooden floorboards of the cabin, violently shook the framed picture on the wall, and shattered the peaceful silence into a million jagged pieces.
Sebastian reacted on pure, unadulterated instinct.
"Shit!" he yelled, rolling violently off the couch.
*THUD.*
He hit the wooden floor hard, instantly scrambling to his feet. He reached his right hand down toward his hip, his brain desperately trying to open his green, corrupted Administrator UI to pull his massive Earth Sword from his bottomless inventory.
He grabbed absolutely nothing but empty air and the fabric of his sweatpants.
"Right. Fuck. No magic pockets," Sebastian muttered, shaking his head to clear the sleep fog.
The System was dead. He had deleted the entire Ethereal Plane interface three weeks ago. He was just a guy standing in his living room, wearing a gray t-shirt and pajama pants.
Valerie sprinted out of the kitchen, sliding slightly on her socks. She was holding a dripping wet spatula in one hand like a tactical baton. Her choppy brown hair was tied up in a messy bun, and her blue eyes were wide with sudden panic.
"What the hell was that?!" Valerie yelled, looking around the living room as if expecting a Void Locust to burst through the floorboards. "That sounded like it came from the armory!"
"I don’t know, but it sounded expensive," Sebastian grumbled.
He jogged over to the front door, grabbing a perfectly normal, mundane iron broadsword that he kept leaning against the coat rack. It wasn’t a Divine-tier weapon. It didn’t glow. It was just a heavy, sharp piece of metal forged by Galleon the dwarf.
Sebastian kicked the front door open and sprinted out onto the porch, Valerie right on his heels.
The sky above Sanctuary was a brilliant, uncorrupted blue. Fluffy white clouds drifted lazily overhead. But rising from the center of the bustling town square, thick, pitch-black smoke was aggressively billowing up into the pristine air.
"Come on," Sebastian sighed, his bare feet slapping against the wooden steps as he ran down the hill toward the smoke.
The town of Sanctuary had grown immensely in the three weeks since the apocalypse ended. Without the constant threat of wandering monsters and the absolute tyranny of the Vanguard Syndicate, the survivors had actually started building a real community. Wooden houses, stone blacksmith forges, and open-air markets lined the dirt streets.
Sebastian and Valerie pushed through a crowd of coughing, panicked citizens who were backing away from the town square.
*CRACKLE... POP!*
Flames were violently licking the sides of a stone building that served as the local forge. The wooden roof of the building was completely blown wide open, pieces of shattered timber and smoking shingles scattered across the dirt road.
Standing right in the center of the debris, covered head-to-toe in a thick, completely comical layer of black soot, was a large, heavily muscled man.
It was Tanker_Bob. The guy Sebastian had fought in the underground arena back in Ironhold over a year ago.
Bob was coughing violently, waving a pair of heavy leather blacksmithing gloves in the air to clear the thick black smoke from his face. His beard was entirely singed off, and his eyebrows were nothing but faint, smoldering gray lines on his forehead.
"Bob!" Sebastian shouted, jogging up to the bewildered man. Sebastian lowered the iron broadsword, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Bob, what the fuck did you do?"
"I don’t know, Boss!" Bob panicked, wiping a thick smear of soot off his cheek. "I swear, I was just trying to melt down some scrap iron! I loaded the furnace with coal, and then I tried to cast my [Basic Smelt] skill to get the fire going!"
Valerie stepped up next to Sebastian, crossing her arms and tapping her spatula against her leg. "Bob, we had a town hall meeting about this literally two days ago. The System is gone. The skills are gone. You don’t have a UI to do the math for you anymore."
"I know, I know!" Bob pleaded, gesturing wildly at the burning, ruined forge. "But magic still exists, right? The boss said magic is a natural law now! I felt the mana in my chest. I focused on the coal, and I just pushed the thermal energy out of my hands like I used to!"
Sebastian let out a long, deeply exhausted sigh. He leaned the iron sword against a nearby barrel of water.
"Bob," Sebastian said, his voice dropping into the tired, flat tone of an underpaid high school physics teacher. "When the Ethereal Plane was running, the System acted as a buffer. When you pressed the button for [Basic Smelt], the server’s physics engine automatically calculated the exact amount of oxygen, fuel, and thermal expansion needed to heat the coal without blowing up your face."
Sebastian pointed a finger at the smoking crater that used to be the roof.
"You don’t have a buffer anymore," Sebastian explained. "You just dumped raw, unadulterated magical heat into an enclosed stone furnace filled with highly combustible carbon dust. You didn’t cast a spell, Bob. You built a pipe bomb."
"Oh," Bob blinked, staring at his soot-stained hands in absolute horror. "Well... shit. That explains the boom."
"Yeah. It explains the boom," Sebastian muttered, rubbing his temples. The headache was coming back.
He didn’t need a UI to feel the ambient magic in the air. Sebastian closed his eyes for a fraction of a second. He took a slow, deep breath. He didn’t have his 10,000x Nexus Glitch anymore.