Chapter Text
The Pleiades Watchtower was a monument to many things: ancient magic, insurmountable trials, and, as Subaru Natsuki was rapidly discovering, the Great Sage Flugel’s absolutely atrocious sense of interior design.
"I'm just saying." Subaru wheezed, wiping a thick layer of four-hundred-year-old dust from his forehead, "if you're going to build a magical tower of doom, you could at least invent a magical Roomba to go with it."
"Stop your incessant whining, Barusu. Your lack of stamina is an insult to the very concept of breathing." Ram stated flatly. She didn't even look up from where she was meticulously adjusting the blankets around her sleeping sister, Rem.
Subaru ignored the jab, mostly because his attention was drawn to a suspicious-looking bookcase that had just... slid into the floor with a loud clunk. Where the bookcase had been, a narrow, uncomfortably smooth stone staircase spiraled downward into absolute darkness. There was a faint neon-green glow pulsing from the bottom, accompanied by an eerie, repetitive humming noise that sounded suspiciously like 8-bit chiptune music.
"Ooooh! A secret passage!" Meili clapped her hands, her braided hair bouncing. "Do you think there are scary mabeasts down there? Can I pet them?"
Before Subaru could tell the former assassin that petting whatever glowing monstrosity lived in the basement was a terrible idea, a streak of black and orange slammed into his legs.
"Master! No, no, no!" Shaula wailed, wrapping her arms around Subaru's calves with the grip of a frightened toddler. "We can't go down there! That's the Forbidden Zone!"
"Shaula, let go of my pants, you're pulling them down!" Subaru squawked, scrambling to keep his dignity intact. "What do you mean, 'Forbidden Zone'? Is it another Trial?"
"No!" Shaula shook her head so violently her scorpion-tail braid whipped against the stone walls. "Master Flugel was very strict! He told me, 'Shaula, this is the Admin Room. It runs on a completely different physics engine. If you go in there and mess up the block updates, the whole server will crash and I will ban you from reality.' I don't know what a server is, Master, but I don't want to be banned!"
Silence descended upon the group.
"An... Admin?" Julius Juukulius placed a hand on his chin, his brow furrowed in deep, aristocratic contemplation. "Is that a high-ranking ecclesiastical title in your homeland, Subaru? The 'Server' must refer to a sacred relic."
"I suppose this 'Engine' is some sort of ancient, forbidden magical conduit." Beatrice muttered, floating closer to the staircase and sniffing the air. "The mana down there is completely sterile, in fact. It feels... cubic. Betty doesn't like it."
Subaru stared at the green glow, a terrible, sinking realization washing over him.
Admin. Server. Engine. Block updates.
Flugel wasn't just a sage from Earth. He was a colossal, unrepentant gamer.
"Julius, it’s not a sacred relic." Subaru rubbed his temples, feeling a massive headache coming on. "And Beako, it's not a magical conduit. I think... I think Flugel literally built a secret basement to play video games without the Dragon checking up on him."
"A room dedicated solely to meaningless visual entertainment?" Ram scoffed, her eyes narrowing in profound disgust. "So it is a degenerate's den. Perfect for you, Barusu. Lead the way."
"Hey, I take offense to that! And I'm not going down there!" Subaru protested.
"Emilia-sama requires us to search every corner of this tower for clues." Julius pointed out with infuriating elegance, drawing his sword. "If the Great Sage hid his most treasured 'Admin' secrets here, it is our duty as knights to uncover them. Do not fear, Subaru. I shall protect you from the block updates."
"You don't even know what that means!"
Despite Subaru's protests, Emilia gave him a small, encouraging smile. "It'll be fine, Subaru. We're all together. What's the worst that could happen?"
‘Famous last words.’ Subaru thought miserably.
With Shaula still violently sobbing about being "banned," and Julius marching forward with terrifying confidence, the group descended the stairs. At the bottom, they didn't find a boss room. They found a simple, flat oak door. It didn't have a handle. Instead, floating above it in bright, blocky text were the words:
[ LEFT CLICK TO OPEN ]
Julius, ever the proactive knight, stepped forward. "A strange incantation. Allow me."
Before Subaru could scream, Julius reached out and simply pushed the door.
The chiptune music abruptly stopped. A loud, compressed crunching sound echoed through the void, and the entire basement shattered into perfect, one-meter squares.
The transition was anything but graceful.
A deafening, rapid-fire POP-POP-POP echoed around them, sounding exactly like a giant aggressively chewing bubblegum. The solid stone of the Watchtower dissolved into perfect, floating one-meter cubes before vanishing completely into an endless, terrifyingly blue expanse. Above them, the clouds were no longer fluffy wisps of vapor, but rigid, flat white rectangles slowly panning across the sky.
"What is the meaning of this geometric heresy?!" Julius shouted.
"Betty doesn’t understand this mana! It’s all... blocky!" Beatrice shrieked, clutching tightly to Subaru’s jacket as they plummeted.
"Fascinating," murmured a voice next to them. Eridna, currently occupying Anastasia Hoshin's body, was falling upside down with her arms crossed, completely unfazed by the deadly plunge. Her eyes analyzed the rendering world below. "The spatial dimensions are locking into a strict grid. There is no curvature to this reality. It is entirely composed of voxels. I wonder... if we hit the ground, will we bounce or shatter?"
"Now is not the time for a science lecture, you fake fox!" Subaru screamed, the wind rushing past his ears.
"Master! I'm sorry! I won't ruin the server! Don't banish me to the void!" Shaula wailed, flailing her limbs in every direction, narrowly missing Meili, who was actually giggling as if they were on a roller coaster.
Below them, the world was actively generating. But it wasn't a world. Out of the vast, empty sky, a minuscule shape snapped into existence. It was an L-shaped platform made entirely of hovering dirt cubes, topped with impossibly vibrant green grass. In the center stood a single tree made of chunky brown wood and a canopy of solid leaf blocks. Next to it sat a large, wooden chest.
"Brace yourselves!" Emilia cried out, trying to form an ice shield, but only managing to spawn a single, perfectly cubic block of ice that immediately began to fall alongside them.
They hit the ground hard. But surprisingly, the impact wasn't fatal. It felt as though an invisible, rigid barrier absorbed the shock, leaving them with nothing but minor aches and profound disorientation.
Subaru face-planted into the dirt. He tasted the soil, it tasted distinctly of pixels and suppressed childhood memories.
Before he could even process the fact that they had successfully landed on a classic Skyblock map, a blood-curdling scream pierced the air.
"REM!"
Subaru snapped his head up. Ram, who had been fiercely protective of her sleeping sister throughout the fall, had landed precariously on the very edge of a dirt block. The bizarre, rigid physics of this new world lacked any natural friction. When Ram tried to adjust her footing, she slipped. She managed to catch herself on the edge, but the sudden jolt tore Rem from her grasp.
Rem, still entirely unconscious, tumbled backward off the edge of the floating island, disappearing beneath the dirt blocks into the endless, empty void below.
"No! Rem!" Ram screamed, her usual composed, sarcastic demeanor shattering completely as she reached out over the abyss, her fingers grasping at empty air.
Time seemed to freeze for Subaru. The void beneath the island was a bottomless blue expanse. In a normal world, hitting the ground would kill you. In this world, falling into the Void meant being erased from existence entirely.
Adrenaline surged through his veins. He didn't think; his body just moved with the desperate, honed reflexes he had developed over countless deaths and battles.
"Get back!" Subaru roared, scrambling toward the edge. As he ran, his hand shot to his hip, grasping the handle of his weapon.
CRACK!
With a vicious flick of his wrist, Subaru unleashed his Guilty Whip. The brown leather uncoiled like a striking viper, darting down into the abyss. It whizzed past the edge of the dirt block, diving into the blue void.
Snag.
Subaru felt a violent, bone-jarring yank on his right arm, so powerful it threatened to dislocate his shoulder. The whip snapped taut. He threw his weight backward, digging his heels into the blocky grass, sliding a few millimeters before coming to a dead halt.
"I've got her!" Subaru grunted, his teeth gritted. The leather whip was wrapped securely around Rem's ankle, suspending her unconscious body just a few meters below the bottom of the floating island.
"Subaru!" Emilia gasped, immediately dropping to her knees beside him and grabbing the whip with both hands to help him bear the weight.
"Allow me." Julius was there a fraction of a second later, his pristine white boots planting firmly on the pixelated dirt. He seized the whip just behind Subaru's grip, easily absorbing the majority of the physical strain with his knightly strength. "Heave on my mark. One, two, pull!"
Together, with Emilia and Julius assisting, they hauled the whip upward. Rem's limp body cleared the edge of the dirt block, and Ram immediately lunged forward, catching her sister and pulling her safely onto the center of the tiny island.
Ram collapsed onto the grass, clutching Rem so tightly her knuckles turned white. She buried her face in Rem's blue hair, her shoulders shaking violently. For a long moment, the only sounds on the island were the rustling of the blocky leaves and Ram’s shaky, uneven breaths.
Subaru fell onto his back, staring up at the square clouds, chest heaving. His arm was screaming in pain, but a wave of immense relief washed over him. He had saved her.
Eriidna walked over, inspecting the edge of the dirt block with morbid curiosity. "Fascinating. Dropping an object beyond the y-axis limit seems highly ill-advised."
"You... you couldn't have helped pull?!" Subaru panted, glaring up at the fox-witch.
"I am merely an observer in this physical vessel, Natsuki Subaru. Heavy lifting is for knights and fools." Eridna replied with a serene smile.
Ram slowly lifted her head. Her eyes, usually filled with disdain whenever they looked at Subaru, were wide and watery. She swallowed hard, her voice trembling just slightly. "Barusu... I..."
She didn't finish the sentence, but she didn't have to. The overwhelming gratitude in her expression was something Subaru had rarely, if ever, seen.
"Don't worry about it." Subaru forced a weak, exhausted grin, sitting up and rubbing his shoulder. "That's what the Lolimancer is here for."
He finally took a good look around. They were all crammed onto a tiny patch of dirt floating in an infinite sky. A tree. A chest.
"Alright." Subaru sighed, pushing himself to his feet. "Listen to me, everyone. Do not step off the edge. Do not try to fly. And whatever you do, nobody touch anything until I say so. We are in a very specific, very dangerous type of survival situation."
"A survival situation?" Julius raised an eyebrow, adjusting his collar. He looked toward the large, wooden chest. "Is that so? Perhaps the Great Sage left supplies in that container. Allow me to inspect it for provisions."
"Julius, wait! Step away from the box!" Subaru shrieked, throwing his entire body between the Greatest of Knights and the blocky wooden chest. He spread his arms wide, acting as a human shield for the most important inventory of their lives.
Julius froze, his hand hovering just millimeters from the latch. Ever since the Authority of Gluttony had severed his connection to his beloved quasi-spirits, Julius had been relentlessly trying to prove his usefulness through physical action. He blinked, his eyes reflecting genuine bewilderment. "Subaru? I merely intended to inventory whatever provisions the Great Sage left us. Why do you defend this wooden container with such ferocity?"
"Because in this specific type of hell, the stuff in this chest is the only thing keeping us from an eternity of starving on a floating dirt patch!" Subaru panted, his heart hammering against his ribs.
Eridna, casually leaning against the completely square trunk of the single tree. Her eyes gleamed with intense, analytical curiosity. "You speak with absolute certainty about a realm that defies all known laws of magic and physics, Natsuki-kun. How could you possibly comprehend the rules of this... cubic domain?"
"Yeah, Barusu." Ram added, her tone dripping with its usual venom as she gently stroked the unconscious Rem's hair. "Did you hit your empty head too hard on the dirt? Stop acting like you know everything."
"Are you guys dumb?!" Shaula suddenly yelled, throwing her arms affectionately around Subaru’s neck from behind. "Of course Master knows where we are! Master made this place!"
The group fell entirely silent, staring at the Great Spirit of the Pleiades Watchtower.
Shaula’s scorpion-tail braid wagged happily. "I remember now! Master Flugel used to scream at this glowing box in his room all the time! He kept shouting things like, 'Shaula, never dig straight down!' and 'If that green exploding thing ruins my house one more time, I'm deleting the universe!' He called it his 'Skyblock survival run'."
"A green exploding thing?" Julius muttered, his hand instinctively resting on his sword hilt. "We must remain vigilant."
"Wait, I suppose Betty remembers something similar." Beatrice chimed in, floating down to land softly on the pixelated grass next to Subaru. She crossed her arms, looking thoughtful. "When we were back at the Roswaal mansion, Subaru would often talk in his sleep. He would complain about 'mining for diamonds' and crying over dropping his 'enchanted pickaxe' into the lava, in fact. Betty thought it was just a pathetic delusion."
Subaru groaned, burying his face in his hands. His gamer rage from years ago had somehow become ancient, prophetic lore in another world.
"Okay, look." Subaru sighed, pushing Shaula off his back and turning to face the group with the utmost seriousness. He clapped his hands together. "Yes, Shaula is right. And yes, Beako is right. This world is based on a game from my homeland. But right now, it is very real, and if we mess up, we die."
Subaru took a deep breath, pacing across the tiny three-by-three dirt platform. "I will explain everything. But you all need to listen carefully, because the physics here are broken, and the margin for error is exactly zero."
Subaru took a deep breath, running a hand through his hair. He looked at the faces of his companions, powerful magic users, a spirit arts knight, an artificial spirit, an assassin, and whatever Shaula was. None of them understood hitboxes or rendering distances. He had to translate his gamer knowledge into something they would respect.
"Listen to me very carefully." Subaru began, adopting the most serious, commanding tone he could muster. "Forget everything you know about mana, physics, and Od Laguna. We are no longer in our world. We have crossed into an Artificial Dimension created by Flugel. Let's call it... the Domain of the Absolute Grid."
"The Absolute Grid?" Julius repeated, his eyes narrowing in intense focus.
"Yes." Subaru nodded gravely. "In this dimension, the natural flow of the world has been replaced by a rigid, unbreakable law of geometry. Every single piece of matter, the dirt beneath our feet, the wood of this tree, even the water and fire, is locked into perfect, indivisible cubes. Nothing is round. Nothing flows naturally. Matter cannot be destroyed, only broken down into smaller cubic forms and placed elsewhere."
Eridna gently touched her chin, her eyes gleaming with sudden realization. "Fascinating... That explains the complete absence of atmospheric curvature and the lack of natural wind currents. The spatial dimensions are entirely locked. It is a world of absolute, unyielding order."
"Exactly." Subaru pointed a finger at her. "Now, this specific floating island is what Flugel called a 'Skyblock.' But in terms you might understand, this is the Trial of the Void."
"Trial of the Void." Emilia whispered, looking nervously at the edge of the tiny island. "It sounds so... lonely."
"It's a sadistic test of survival." Subaru explained, pacing back and forth across the three-by-three dirt patch. "Flugel stripped away the entire earth, leaving us with only the bare minimum of existence. Below us isn't just a long drop. It is the Void, an erasure of existence. If you fall down there, there is no bottom to hit. You will simply be deleted from reality."
Beatrice instinctively floated closer to Subaru, her small hands clutching her dress. "Betty finds this trial entirely tasteless, in fact. What kind of Sage forces people to balance on a speck of dirt?"
"A Sage who wants to see if we can create matter from nothing." Subaru said, finally turning his attention back to the wooden chest. "And that is why nobody can touch this box but me. Inside this chest are the primordial seeds of creation."
Ram raised an eyebrow, her sarcastic demeanor slipping just a fraction. "Primordial seeds? It is a wooden box, Barusu. Stop being so dramatic."
"I am not being dramatic!" Subaru insisted. "Inside this chest is a condensed entity of extreme heat, essentially a dormant Great Spirit of Fire in liquid form, and a block of absolute, magical ice. If we combine these two opposing forces in a very specific, calculated spatial arrangement, their clash will continuously birth infinite stone."
Julius’s eyes widened in profound awe. Deprived of his own spirits by the Authority of Gluttony, the idea of manipulating primordial elements to create an infinite source of matter resonated deeply with his knightly soul.
"To harness the opposing forces of nature to forge a foundation for our survival..." Julius murmured, his posture straightening. "It is an elegant, brutal test of our worthiness. A true trial of the Great Sage."
"Yes, exactly! But!" Subaru raised his hands, stressing his next words. "If we mess up the ritual... if we let the fire overpower the water in the wrong position... they will fuse into a cursed, unbreakable black stone called Obsidian. We have no tools to break Obsidian. If that happens, the ritual is ruined, and we will slowly starve to death on this dirt patch."
The group fell into a heavy, tense silence. The stakes were now perfectly clear to them. This wasn't a game, it was a delicate alchemical ritual of life and death.
"I understand." Julius said, his voice brimming with unwavering resolve. He stepped back from the chest and bowed his head respectfully to Subaru. "I shall defer to your expertise in this domain, Subaru. Lead the ritual. Tell us where to dig the trenches for the primordial elements."
Subaru nodded sagely, crossing his arms to project an aura of absolute, veteran confidence. Internally, however, a frantic, screaming monkey was aggressively banging cymbals together inside his brain.
“Wait... how does a cobblestone generator actually go?!” Subaru panicked inwardly. “It’s a four-block trench, right? But wait, does the water need to flow into a one-block-deep hole, or two? Does the lava go on the left or the right? If I mess up the elevation by a single voxel, the lava touches the water source block and turns into obsidian! Oh God, I haven't played this map since middle school!”
"Subaru?" Emilia asked softly, tilting her head. "You're sweating. Are the primordial elements too dangerous to handle?"
"N-No! Not at all, Emilia-tan!" Subaru stammered, quickly wiping his forehead with the back of his sleeve. "I'm just... mentally preparing myself. It has been a few years since I last performed this specific ritual. Before we begin the excavation, we should verify our catalyst materials. We need to make sure the Great Sage didn't alter the standard inventory."
"A wise precaution. A true knight must always inspect his armaments before a perilous campaign." Julius agreed, his tone dead serious.
"It sounds more like Barusu has absolutely no idea what he is doing and is merely stalling for time." Ram noted dryly, narrowing her eyes at him.
"Quiet, pinkie! Master is doing high-level brain stuff! His genius takes time to load!" Shaula defended him aggressively, her scorpion-tail hair swishing.
Ignoring Ram’s painfully accurate deduction, Subaru stepped forward to do the honors. Driven by a mix of curiosity and tension, the rest of the group instinctively huddled closer, forming a tight circle around the small, blocky wooden box. Even Eridna leaned in, her eyes wide with academic anticipation, while Beatrice floated directly over Subaru's shoulder to get a good look.
Subaru placed both hands on the pixelated wooden lid, took a deep breath, and lifted it.
A loud, heavily compressed, low-resolution CREEEAAAK echoed across the floating island.
Inside the chest, nestled against the wooden bottom, were three distinct items. They possessed no grand magical aura, yet they completely defied every known law of physics simply by existing next to each other.
The first was a perfectly cubic block of translucent, freezing blue ice, so unnaturally cold that it passively emitted tiny, square white particles into the air. The second was a heavy iron bucket, brimming with bright, bubbling orange lava. Despite containing molten rock, the bucket wasn't melting, nor was it setting the wooden chest on fire.
And resting right between the ultimate fire and the absolute ice, completely undamaged, was a folded piece of white paper.
"Fascinating." Eridna murmured, her breath hitching. "A vessel containing liquid heat of extreme density, placed directly beside a manifestation of absolute zero... yet neither affects the other. The thermal isolation in this container is utterly flawless."
"Betty is offended by this bucket." Beatrice frowned, pointing at the lava. "That is not how fire mana works, in fact. It lacks any natural spirit signature."
"Subaru, look." Emilia pointed a delicate finger at the center of the chest. "Is that... a letter?"
"Looks like Flugel left us a tutorial... or a taunt." Subaru muttered. He carefully reached into the chest, making sure not to accidentally dip his hand into the pixelated magma, and picked up the note.
Subaru unfolded the crisp white paper. The handwriting was messy, casual, and painfully familiar to anyone who had spent too much time on internet forums.
He cleared his throat and began to read aloud.
"Sup, intruders (or Shaula, if you actually broke the rules). Welcome to my ultimate survival server! If you're reading this, your physical bodies are currently in sleep mode back in the Watchtower. Don't worry, time moves differently here. Probably. Anyway, to unlock the exit portal and not get permanently deleted, you just need to complete a few basic achievements. Finish the list, and you go home. Easy, right? Good luck, have fun, don't fall in the void.
xX_GreatSageFlugel_Xx"
"What in the world is an 'xX'?" Eridna muttered, peering over his arm. "Is that a secret insignia of his bloodline?"
"It's a sign of terminal brain rot." Subaru sighed heavily. "But that's not the worst part. Look at this list."
He unrolled the paper further. It just kept unrolling. And unrolling. It fluttered in the non-existent wind, nearly touching the grass.
"There are... fifty tasks on here." Subaru said, his voice trembling. He began reading the first few items.
Build a cobblestone generator.
Build a house.
Expand your island.
Build a melon farm.
Build a pumpkin farm...
"Melons? Pumpkins?" Emilia blinked her beautiful eyes in pure confusion. "Subaru, we don't have any seeds. We only have dirt and a tree. How are we supposed to grow a farm?"
"It gets worse." Subaru swallowed hard, skipping further down the impossibly long list. "Number 15. Build a platform 24 blocks away from your island for mobs to spawn. Number 32: Spawn 10 snow golems. Number 34: Build and light a Nether Portal."
"A Nether Portal?!" Beatrice shrieked, floating upward in a panic. "Betty refuses! That sounds like a gateway to a demonic realm! And what in Od Laguna's name is a snow golem?!"
"Barusu, this is madness." Ram snapped, snatching the bottom of the list to read it herself. "Craft sixty-four stone bricks? Bake ten loaves of bread? Collect ten Enderpearls? Half of these words hold absolutely no meaning. This 'Great Sage' was clearly a raving lunatic."
"He was a completionist." Subaru corrected her, rubbing his temples to fight off a massive migraine. "It's a specific type of madness. But he's right about one thing... the only way out is to play his game."
He gently took the list back from Ram, his eyes locking onto the very first line.
[ 1. Build a cobblestone generator. ]
"This right here." Subaru pointed firmly at the first task. "This is the bottleneck. Everything else on this list, the house, the farms, the furnace, requires stone. If we don't complete task number one, we fail all fifty."
Julius Juukulius stepped forward, his posture impeccably straight, his eyes burning with a renewed, almost dangerous level of knightly determination. The sheer length of the list hadn't intimidated him, it had inspired him.
"Fifty labors to prove our worth and secure our return." Julius declared, placing a hand over his heart. "We must not be disheartened by the absurdity of the requests. We shall tackle them one by one, beginning with this 'cobblestone generator'."
"Exactly." Subaru nodded, relieved that Julius was finally on the same page. "Okay. I'm going to carefully measure and dig the trench. It needs to be exactly four blocks long, with a one-block dip in the second slot. Meili, come help me punch the dirt."
"Okaaaay!" Meili skipped over, cracking her knuckles.
"Julius." Subaru turned to the knight. "Stand by the chest. Do not touch the lava or the ice yet. I will tell you exactly when and where to place them. Got it?"
"You have my word, Subaru." Julius nodded solemnly. "I shall guard the primordial elements with my life."
Subaru turned his back to the chest, falling to his knees to begin drawing the precise schematic in the dirt. He was so focused on calculating the exact flow of the water mechanics that he completely missed the thoughtful, analytical gleam that had just entered Julius's eyes.
“He instructed me to guard them.” Julius thought to himself, looking down at the bucket of lava and the block of ice. “But simply standing here is not the way of a knight. Subaru is bearing the heavy burden of the excavation. The least I can do is prepare the elements for him... Surely, the water must be melted first to flow properly.”
With a gentle, helpful smile, Julius reached into the chest and picked up the block of absolute ice.
Subaru was entirely in his element. For the first time since being summoned to this terrifying, unpredictable fantasy world, he felt like he was back on familiar turf. He was on his hands and knees in the pixelated dirt, meticulously using his finger to draw the blueprint of salvation.
"Okay, Meili." Subaru pointed to a specific voxel of dirt. "I need you to punch this block out. Just this one. Then we move one block to the right, and punch two blocks down. That creates the dip. The dip is the most important part of the entire ritual. If the water doesn't flow into the dip, it hits the lava source block directly. And if that happens... game over."
Meili giggled, already holding a massive, one-meter cube of solid oak wood over her head with one hand as if it weighed absolutely nothing. "You're so bossy, Onii-san! But okay, I'll punch the dirt!"
While Subaru was utterly consumed by the sacred geometry of the cobblestone generator, he was entirely oblivious to the knightly initiative taking place directly behind him.
Julius stood by the chest, holding the heavy iron bucket of bubbling lava in his right hand and the freezing block of translucent ice in his left. He observed the frost slowly creeping up his pristine white glove.
“Subaru spoke of water.” Julius deduced internally, his eyes filled with analytical purpose. “Yet, the Great Sage has provided us with ice. A fundamental contradiction. In order for Subaru's ritual to succeed, this solid manifestation of frost must first be converted into a liquid state. Furthermore, the air in this void is terribly crisp. Ram-san and sleeping Rem-san could surely use a source of warmth.”
It was a flawless, logical deduction. A knight was meant to anticipate the needs of his allies. Since he could no longer call upon his spirits to cast a warming spell or melt the ice, he would use the physical elements provided.
"Do not worry, Subaru." Julius whispered to himself with a noble, confident smile. "I shall prepare the catalysts for you."
Julius gracefully stepped away from the chest. He placed the cubic block of ice down on the grass, right next to the trench Subaru had just started planning out.
Then, with the elegant, practiced motion of a knight pouring tea at a royal banquet, Julius tipped the iron bucket.
The glowing, molten lava spilled out, spreading across the grass in a flat, blindingly bright square. The intense, radiating heat immediately washed over the floating island.
"Oh, it's nice and warm now." Emilia noted pleasantly, pulling her white cloak a little closer.
The heat hit the block of ice.
In the real world, ice melts slowly, turning into a puddle of water. In the Domain of the Absolute Grid, block updates wait for no man.
The ice block registered the adjacent heat source. With a sharp, crystalline CRACK, the ice shattered, instantly spawning a cubic source block of flowing water.
Before Julius could even blink, the rushing water collided head-on with the still-spreading source block of lava.
There was no epic magical clash. There was no grand explosion of mana.
There was only a brutally loud, heavily compressed, ear-piercing sound of steam.
HSSSSSSSSSSSSS!
A massive cloud of pixelated white smoke erupted into the air, momentarily blinding everyone.
Subaru froze. The stick fell from his trembling hands. Every single muscle in his body locked up. He knew that sound. It was the sound of a hundred ruined childhood weekends. It was the sound of ultimate, irreversible failure.
Slowly, agonizingly, Subaru turned around.
The steam cleared.
The lava was gone. The water was gone.
In their place, sitting innocently on the green grass, was a pitch-black, impossibly dense, purple-tinted block of Obsidian.
For a moment, nobody spoke. The silence of the Void was deafening.
Ram was sitting on the ground, holding Rem's head in her lap, staring blankly at the black rock. Emilia covered her mouth with her hands, sensing the catastrophic shift in the atmosphere. Eridna, sitting on her knees by the chest in her fluffy white hat, leaned forward with her hands in her lap, completely mesmerized by the chemical reaction. Meili stood nearby, casually balancing the giant dirt block on one hand, looking bored. Beatrice just sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose.
And there stood Julius Juukulius. The Greatest of Knights. He was holding an empty iron bucket, staring down at the obsidian block with a look of profound, academic fascination.
Julius adjusted his collar, a small, intrigued smile playing on his lips.
"Peculiar." Julius observed calmly, his sophisticated voice echoing across the tiny island. "It instantly turned into a solid object."
Something inside Subaru's soul snapped. The fragile thread of his sanity, already stretched thin by the Watchtower, the amnesia, and the fall into the Void, finally broke completely.
Subaru leaped to his feet. He grabbed fistfuls of his own black hair, his eyes bulging out of his skull, his mouth opening wide enough to unhinge his jaw.
"JULIUS YOU HAVE DOOMED US ALL!" Subaru's scream ripped through the heavens, startling a flock of square birds that were rendering in the distance.
Julius blinked, looking up from the obsidian, genuinely taken aback by the hostility. "Subaru? I merely applied thermodynamic principles to assist your ritual. The ice required melting."
"IT WAS MAGIC ICE, YOU PURPLE-HAIRED MENACE! IT DIDN'T NEED MELTING!" Subaru shrieked, falling to his knees and slamming his fists onto the pixelated dirt. "WE DON'T HAVE A DIAMOND PICKAXE! WE CAN'T BREAK IT! THE LAVA IS GONE! THE COBBLESTONE GENERATOR IS DEAD! WE ARE ALL GOING TO STARVE ON THIS DIRT PATCH BECAUSE YOU WANTED TO PLAY ALCHEMIST!"
"Barusu, calm down before you burst a blood vessel." Ram chided, though she looked slightly concerned at the sheer level of despair radiating from him. "It is just a black rock. Can you not simply use your whip to move it?"
"IT'S TIER-FOUR MATTER, RAM! IT HAS A BLAST RESISTANCE OF TWELVE HUNDRED! IT TAKES FOUR MINUTES TO MINE WITH A BARE HAND, AND EVEN THEN IT DROPS NOTHING!" Subaru was hyperventilating now, clutching his chest. "We failed step one... of fifty... We haven't even been here five minutes!"
"I suppose Betty's contractor is having a breakdown, in fact." Beatrice noted dryly, patting Subaru's shaking shoulder.
"My deepest apologies, Subaru." Julius said, placing a hand over his heart, finally realizing the magnitude of his error, even if he didn't quite grasp the physics behind it. "I acted out of turn. If this 'Obsidian' is truly our downfall, I shall take full responsibility."
"Responsibility doesn't spawn cobblestone, Julius!" Subaru wailed, curling into a fetal position on the grass. "I'm going to jump into the void. Someone punch my bed so I don't respawn."
Eridna chuckled softly, tapping the indestructible black block with her knuckle. "Well, Natsuki-kun... it seems your Great Sage Flugel has bested us on the very first move. Shall we see if there is any other way to fulfill his 'achievements', or shall we prepare ourselves for starvation?"
Subaru lay in the pixelated dirt for a full minute, contemplating the sweet release of the Void. But the survival instincts of a gamer, forged through countless hours of grinding and respawning, slowly began to override his despair.
He pushed himself up. "Okay. Okay, fine. Flugel is a troll, and Julius is a hazard to society. But there has to be a backup. A hidden chest. A glitch. Something."
Subaru pointed a shaking finger at the indestructible black rock. "Julius, Eridna, Beatrice. Use your terrifying magical intellects and stare at that Obsidian. See if you can break it with sheer willpower. Meili, don't punch anything else. Ram, keep doing what you're doing."
"You are commanding us to simply look at a rock?" Julius asked, though he dutifully knelt beside the obsidian block, observing it with intense guilt.
"Yes! Just... don't touch anything!" Subaru ordered, dropping onto his stomach and army-crawling toward the edge of the dirt island.
If this was a true Skyblock map, there had to be more than just this starting platform. He hung his head over the edge, carefully looking past the roots of the tree and into the endless blue expanse.
Nothing. Just void.
He crawled to the next edge. Nothing.
He crawled to the third edge, squinting his eyes against the blindingly bright, square sun. Wait. There, floating in the distance, barely rendering on the horizon... was that yellow?
Subaru gasped. It was another island! About fifty blocks away, suspended in the sky, was a tiny platform made of sand. He could just barely make out the green, spiky shape of a cactus and the silhouette of another wooden chest.
"Yes! There's a desert biome!" Subaru cheered, a spark of hope igniting in his chest. "If we can just build a bridge out of wood and dirt-"
Suddenly, the temperature around his ankle dropped to absolute zero.
A hand, colder than the ice Julius had just destroyed, wrapped around his leg with a vice-like grip.
Subaru’s breath caught in his throat. The vibrant blue sky seemed to dim, replaced by a suffocating, oppressive aura. He knew that feeling. He knew that bone-chilling cold. The shadows beneath the dirt block were squirming, expanding, defying the geometric laws of the grid.
“No.” Subaru panicked, his heart hammering against his ribs. “No, no, no! Not here! Not now!”
A mass of pure, pitch-black darkness began to ooze upward from the side of the dirt block, forming the unmistakable silhouette of a woman wrapped in a shadowy veil.
Satella. The Witch of Envy.
Subaru’s mind raced with absolute terror. “She followed me into the server! She's going to crush my heart! She's going to see Emilia and Ram and swallow the entire Skyblock into the shadow realm! It’s game over! The server is getting wiped!”
He squeezed his eyes shut, bracing for the agonizing pain in his chest, ready to scream for the others to run.
Clank.
A heavy, metallic sound echoed right next to his ear.
Subaru flinched, but the pain never came. The suffocating aura of envy hadn't spread to the rest of the island, it was entirely localized right next to his face.
Slowly, hesitantly, Subaru opened one eye.
The Witch of Envy was hovering just off the edge of the island, veiled in her usual terrifying shadows. But she wasn't reaching for his heart.
Instead, sitting neatly on the grass directly in front of his nose, was a brand-new iron bucket. It was brimming with glowing, bubbling lava.
Right next to the bucket, floating slightly above the grass, was a small piece of parchment. Drawn onto the paper was a simple, perfect 2x2 square grid. A personal crafting menu.
Subaru stared at the lava, then at the grid, then up at the most feared entity in the history of the world.
Satella's shadowy veil shifted. The darkness forming her arm morphed, extending toward him. Subaru flinched again, but the shadowy hand simply balled into a fist, extending a single, supportive thumb upward.
“Did... did the Witch of Envy just give me a thumbs up?” Subaru thought, his brain completely flatlining.
The shadowy figure offered a gentle, almost cheerful wave of her hand. Then, with a soft whisper of "I love you." that sounded suspiciously like "Good luck on your run." the darkness melted away, sinking back down into the void and leaving the bright blue sky exactly as it was.
Subaru lay there for a long time, blinking at the bucket of lava.
"Hey, Subaru!" Emilia called out from the center of the island. "Did you find anything? Julius is trying to apologize to the black rock, and it's making Ram very uncomfortable."
Subaru slowly pushed himself up. He picked up the piece of paper with the 2x2 grid, stuffing it into his jacket pocket, and grabbed the handle of the lava bucket. It was warm. It was real.
His yandere stalker was apparently a server admin who just smuggled him contraband.
"Uh... yeah!" Subaru called back, his voice cracking slightly. He turned around, holding the bucket up like a holy relic. "I found a spare! The Great Sage is merciful!"
"Fascinating." Eridna tilted her head, observing Subaru closely. "I did not see a second bucket in that chest. Where did you procure such an item, Natsuki-kun?"
"It, uh... it was a mob drop!" Subaru lied smoothly, sweating profusely. "A very stealthy, shadow mob! Don't worry about it! The cobblestone generator is back in business!"
Subaru marched back to the center of the island, clutching the bucket of contraband lava like it was his own newborn child. He glared at Julius.
"Step back, Juukulius." Subaru ordered, pointing a finger at the very edge of the island. "At least ten blocks away. Oh wait, the island is only three blocks wide. Just... go stand behind the tree and don't breathe on anything."
"I shall observe and learn from my previous miscalculation." Julius agreed with a solemn nod, retreating to the designated time-out corner behind the oak tree.
Subaru knelt beside the "L" shaped trench he had designed earlier with Meili. He carefully, meticulously tipped the bucket, pouring the glowing orange magma into the shallowest hole. The lava slowly flowed, stopping exactly one block before the one-voxel-deep drop off. Perfect.
"Alright, half the equation is done." Subaru muttered, wiping his brow. But then, a chilling realization hit him.
He stared at the empty space on the opposite side of the trench.
“Wait. Satella gave me lava... but she didn't give me water! The ice block Julius melted is gone!”
Panic began to rise in his chest again. A cobblestone generator needed flowing water. Without it, the lava was just a fancy floor heater. He scanned the tiny island, his eyes darting frantically, until they landed on the silver-haired half-elf who was currently watching him with an expression of mild concern.
"Emilia-tan!" Subaru gasped, scrambling to his feet and running over to her. He grabbed her hands, staring deeply into her eyes. "I need you! I need your magic!"
Emilia blinked, slightly flustered by his sudden intensity. "M-My magic? I thought this 'Absolute Grid' prevented mana from flowing naturally?"
"It does, but you were able to spawn an ice block when we were falling, right?" Subaru asked, his voice full of desperate hope. "Are you still able to do that? Can you create a perfect, cubic block of ice right now?"
Emilia concentrated, a faint glow emanating from her fingertips. "It feels... very strange. Like the mana is being forced into a very strict box. But... yes. I believe I can make an ice block."
"You are an angel! A literal angel!" Subaru cheered, throwing his hands in the air. "Okay, come here. Look at this trench."
He guided Emilia to the empty spot opposite the flowing lava. The heat radiating from the magma made her silver hair flutter slightly.
"Okay, see this empty dirt square?" Subaru pointed. "I need you to cast your ice magic right there. Make a block of ice exactly one meter by one meter. Can you do that?"
"I can try." Emilia said, stepping up to the edge of the trench. She extended her hands. "El Huma!"
Instead of a jagged, crystalline spear of ice, the air simply shimmered, and a low-resolution POP sound occurred. A perfectly cubic, translucent block of blue ice materialized in the dirt hole.
"Yes! Perfect!" Subaru pumped his fist. "Okay, now for the tricky part. Emilia, do you think you can break the ice? Just crack it enough so it shatters, but don't damage the dirt underneath."
Emilia looked confused. "Break it? But I just made it. Why do we want it broken?"
"Because in this world, broken ice turns into flowing water." Subaru explained, his eyes fixed on the trench. "And we need that water to hit the lava."
"If you say so, Subaru." Emilia nodded. She summoned a small icicle to her hand, using it like a chisel. She tapped the top of the cubic ice block.
CRACK!
The ice block vanished. In its place, a cubic source block of water appeared, immediately rushing forward into the trench. It flowed down into the one-block deep hole, and then...
The tip of the flowing water touched the edge of the flowing lava.
Subaru held his breath, his heart stopping. “Please. Please don't be obsidian. Please don't be obsidian.”
HSSSSSSSSSSSSS!
A cloud of steam erupted from the collision point.
Subaru squeezed his eyes shut. When he opened them, the steam was clearing.
Sitting perfectly in the trench, nestled between the flowing water and the bubbling lava, was a rough, grey, textured block.
Cobblestone.
"Yes!" Subaru screamed, falling to his knees and throwing his arms around Emilia's waist, burying his face in her cloak. "We did it! Emilia-tan, you're a genius! You saved us! We have stone!"
"W-Waah! Subaru, wait!" Emilia blushed furiously, patting his head awkwardly. "I just made some ice! You're the one who knew the ritual!"
"Behold." Eridna murmured, leaning closer to inspect the grey block. "The creation of solid matter from opposing forces, stabilized by spatial geometry. It is crude, but undeniably effective."
"See? Master is a super genius!" Shaula cheered, jumping up and down.
Even Ram let out a soft huff of approval. "Hmph. So the fool managed to create a single rock. I suppose that is marginally better than creating nothing."
From his time-out corner behind the tree, Julius smiled, placing a hand over his heart. "A splendid display of leadership and elemental manipulation. You have my utmost respect, Subaru. And yours as well, Emilia-sama."
Subaru finally let go of Emilia, his chest heaving with triumphant breaths. He looked at the single block of cobblestone. It was just one block. But to him, it was a mansion. It was a fortress. It was the first step on a fifty-step journey back home.
"Alright." Subaru said, pulling the 2x2 crafting grid paper from his pocket and looking at the oak tree. A manic, determined grin spread across his face. "Shaula? I'm going to need you to punch that tree."
