"What happened?" a God muttered from the overhead logs. "The Golem just... detonated?"
"Probably a bug," another God replied. "Server lag is spiking. Moving on."
The blinding flash settled into a dull, throbbing heat at the bottom of the crater.
Liam stood in the centre of the wreckage. His skin pulsed with an internal orange glow, each beat syncing with his heartbeat, radiating outward like embers trapped beneath glass. He felt like he'd swallowed a live coal whole and it had decided to take up residence somewhere behind his sternum, steam rose off his bare shoulders in slow curls.
[Hestia has saved a screen capture of the last 60 seconds.]
[Hestia: "I will never forget that meal never. Ever."]
Divine stalker, Liam noted, and moved on he found the actual loot in the rubble.
[Item Acquired: Vulcan's Oven Mitts (Rare) — +40 Defence. Handles objects up to 2,000°C.]
He pulled them on, flexed his hands to check the range of motion, and somewhere behind a collapsed market stall, one of three female players who had apparently forgotten how to leave made a sound she would later describe as a cough. One of them had her menu open and wasn't reading it. Another had stopped mid-sentence to someone who had also stopped listening. The third was holding a piece of rubble she'd picked up with a purpose she could no longer remember Liam didn't notice any of them, he turned to Elizabeth.
Elizabeth was standing where she'd been standing for several minutes, both hands at her sides, looking at him with the expression of someone whose brain had submitted a formal complaint. The steam off his shoulders caught the afternoon light. His silver hair was a disaster. His eyes were still doing the faint orange-glow thing. She was looking at his collarbones, she became aware she was looking at his collarbones Elizabeth looked at the ground.
He turned to the surviving PKers, the "tough guys" who were now shivering and gearless in the shadows. "The Golem is down, quit staring, and get to work. I need every obsidian shard in this crater for a new stove. If I find one gram missing, I'm seasoning my next meal with your armour move."
They didn't wait for a second invitation; they scrambled up into the rubble like terrified squirrels.
"You," Ellie finally choked out, her finger trembling as she pointed at his chest. "Library... exams... the 4.0 GPA... LIAM YOO?"
Liam didn't look at her. He reached into the sizzling wreckage, his bare hand grabbing a jagged, glowing shard of the Golem's inner mantle. It wasn't meat; it was volcanic rock, vibrating with enough heat to distort the air.
[Item Acquired: Golem's Heart-Shard (Raw)]
[Note: Edible? Technically. Recommended? Absolutely not.]
Liam looked at the rock, then took a massive, crunching bite.
Crr-ack.
"He's lost it," a PKer whispered, pausing his digging. "He's actually eating the boss."
Liam chewed slowly, his expression shifting into the analytical calm he usually reserved for midterms. "Tastes like sulphur and burnt iron," he said, his voice vibrating in his chest. "Texture is garbage, it's like a very, very aggressive jawbreaker."
He swallowed. A pulse of orange light rippled through his veins.
[Warning: Internal Temperature Rising.] > [Note: You are not fire-resistant. You are just very, very warm.]
"Man," Liam muttered, wiping a stray spark from his lip. "That's going to be a nightmare to digest, but if I can use this internal heat to sear the toad meat..."
He reached back into the embers and pulled out his actual loot: A pair of heavy, scorched gauntlets that hummed with a low, protective hum.
[Item: Vulcan's Oven-Mitts (Rare)]
[Effect: +40 DP. Allows handling objects up to 2,000°C.]
"Better for taking cookies out of the sun than fighting, but we take what we can get."
Liam pulled them on. They fit with a satisfying, metallic clack.
"We need a roof," Liam said "and a real kitchen."
"Right," Elizabeth said, to the ground. "Roof."
They walked. The three players from behind the stall followed at a distance that could charitably be called coincidental, and Elizabeth kept her eyes forward and her spine straight and tried very hard not to think about the fact that every person they passed did a double-take, and some of those double-takes slid sideways to her with an expression that said: how did she get there.
The letting agency smelled like old paper and lavender. The agent was a Minotaur-kin woman with the professional composure of someone who had encountered most things. She looked up. She looked at Liam. Her pen stopped moving.
The composure lasted three seconds.
"Oh," she said.
"Townhouse," Liam said. "Basalt stove, stone hearth, close to the fountain."
"There's only one left." She slid the key across the counter with a hand that wasn't entirely steady. "One bedroom very cosy."
"One bedroom," Elizabeth said flatly.
"Does it have a basalt stove?" Liam asked.
"The best in the district," the agent said, still looking at him.
"We'll take it."
The agent watched them leave with an expression that took a moment to identify as wistful. She would be thinking about it later.
The kitchen was a masterpiece. Basalt counters, copper fixtures, and a hearth big enough to mean business. The rest of the floor plan had been designed by someone who considered cosy an achievement rather than a warning.
"One bed," Elizabeth said, standing in the doorway.
"You mentioned that." Liam was already running a hand along the basalt counter with the quiet reverence of a man greeting an old friend.
"There is one bed, Liam, and we are two people, and this is not—" she gestured at him, at the bed, at the general architecture of the situation "this is a survival game."
"Elizabeth." He didn't look up from the hearth. "Sit down and eat before your stats drop. Movement speed degrades before HP does."
She opened her mouth. Closed it. There were three loaves of bread on the counter that hadn't been there a second ago, and a single candle, which he was now lighting with the same careful attention he gave everything. She watched him close his eyes over it.
"Are you praying?"
"Networking," Liam said.
"To a video game goddess."
"She sends free loot, and she's been subscribed since Day 1. Better conversion rate than most people I know." He kept his eyes closed, "Dear Santa thanks for the bread and don't let the house burn while I'm working i'll have something good for you by morning."
[Hestia: "I'll hold you to that, little wolf. xoxo"]
[Item received: 1x Enchanted Salt, 1x Premium Spice Bundle.]
[Note: These do not appear in any known drop table.]
Liam looked at the salt, nodded once like this was normal, and started unpacking his inventory.
Elizabeth sat on the edge of the bed and watched him work, which was the problem she was only now identifying. Liam Yoo in a kitchen was a different gravitational event entirely. The focus went somewhere specific and stayed there. His hands moved with the certainty of someone who had done this ten thousand times and still cared about getting it right. He'd pushed the gauntlets up to his forearms.
She was watching his forearms. She looked at the wall the wall didn't help. She could still hear it the quiet, rhythmic sounds of actual competence eight feet away, which turned out to be almost as bad as watching. "You really have no idea," she said, mostly to herself.
"About what?" He was holding a Golem shard above the flame to check heat distribution, not looking at her.
"Nothing." She pulled her knees up. "Forget it."
"Okay," Liam said, in the tone of someone who already had.
The candle finally caught and the hearth decided to stop being dramatic and actually cooperate for once. Orange light did its thing across the basalt counter, the copper fittings, and the absolutely ridiculous silver hair of the most oblivious man Elizabeth had ever had the misfortune of developing feelings for. He was currently whispering something about sulphur to himself like that was a totally normal thing to do, completely unbothered and just vibing with his volcanic rock while the rest of the world basically didn't exist.
Outside, someone stopped walking, then someone else stopped next to them, and then a few more joined the party. By the time the kitchen light had settled into its nice, warm working glow, there were seven people just standing on the cobblestones below the window not really doing anything. They weren't talking or acting weird, they were just existing near it the way you hang out near a really good bonfire even when you didn't actually plan to stay.
Nobody had asked them to be there and nobody had sent out an invite, but the kitchen just smelled incredible and the light was super warm and honestly, sometimes that's all it takes.
Elizabeth looked out the window. Looked down at them and then loked back at Liam.
He still hasn't found a shirt, she thought. Tomorrow is going to be a problem.