Leaving the auction house, Sebastian navigated the dirt roads of Novice Village #109.
His mind was already working out the next phase of his survival strategy.
The five Divine-tier Potions of Knitting were sitting in the global auction house, marinating in a hundred-gold starting bid that would soon turn the game's economy completely upside down.
But until that auction closed, he was still a broke Level 1 Drifter with twenty-five copper coins to his name.
In the apocalypse, passive income was great, but immediate liquid assets were better.
He needed raw experience, and he needed it faster than the system intended.
The logical next step was the Level 10 grinding zone. Dead Man's Gorge.
The walk toward the village outskirts tested his patience greatly.
The streets were choked with players who treated the Ethereal Plane like a digital vacation.
They were jumping on market stalls, trying to clip through NPC geometry, and shouting obnoxious jokes into the localized voice chat.
Sebastian looked at them and sighed, shaking his head. "Idiots."
In exactly three hundred and sixty-four days, ninety percent of these laughing and carefree gamers would be violently digested by Phase Spiders or turned into rotting husks.
He didn't feel pity. Pity was a luxury for people who hadn't already died once.
He finally reached the eastern border of the beginner zone.
The rolling green plains ended abruptly at a massive and yawning chasm.
A single and wide cobblestone bridge spanned the dizzying drop, connecting the safe tutorial fields to the jagged and ash-grey landscape of Dead Man's Gorge in the distance.
Normally, players would casually stroll across the bridge to test their mettle against the undead.
Today, however, traffic was entirely backed up.
A crowd of about two hundred low-level players was gathered at the edge of the bridge, murmuring angrily.
Standing side by side across the entrance to the stone span were twenty players wearing matching red bandanas tied around their arms.
They were fully kitted out in Level 5 iron armor, holding polished broadswords and heavy shields.
They looked like a legitimate military unit compared to the rabble of noobs in starter cloth.
Floating above the head of the man standing front and center was the name tag.
[System: Player Identified]
[Viper - Level 6 - Guild: Crimson Skull]
THUD!
"I don't care if you have a quest, you whiny little brat!" Viper sneered, kicking a Level 2 Rogue in the chest and sending him tumbling back into the dirt.
"This bridge is under the jurisdiction of the Crimson Skull guild. We're locking down Dead Man's Gorge for our core members to farm without you rats stealing our aggro."
"If you want to cross, you pay the toll. Ten silver pieces. Per person."
"Ten silver?!" A female Cleric in the crowd shrieked, clutching her wooden staff.
"The game literally just launched! No one has ten silver! Are you shitting me?! You're just trying to block the server!"
"Then go back to the forest and farm slimes, sweetheart." Viper laughed as he rested his iron broadsword on his shoulder.
His guildmates chuckled along with him. CLANG! CLANG! They banged their weapons against their shields in a synchronized and intimidating rhythm.
"The strong take what they want. That's the rule here. Learn it, or log out."
Sebastian stood at the back of the crowd, his hands buried deep in the pockets of his ragged Drifter trousers.
He let out a slow, tired sigh. Guilds. It was always the damn guilds.
In his past life, the Crimson Skull had grown into a massive military organization that ended up hoarding medical supplies during the First Calamity, letting thousands bleed to death while they fortified their own real-world mansions.
Viper himself had mutated into a grotesque and blood-drinking warlord before Sebastian had personally caved his skull in during year three of the apocalypse.
It seemed some things never changed.
Sebastian didn't have ten silver. He didn't even have ten copper.
But more importantly, he didn't have the time or patience to entertain the fragile egos of digital bullies playing at being mobsters.
He stepped forward, pushing his way through the crowd.
He didn't say excuse me. He simply walked with a heavy momentum that made the other players instinctively part ways.
Viper noticed the movement.
He raised an eyebrow, his smirk widening as Sebastian emerged at the front of the pack.
Viper's eyes scanned Sebastian's avatar. Standard and un-dyed cloth tunic. Leather boots with zero stat bonuses.
And no visible weapon, save for a rusty hilt poking out of a crude belt loop.
"Well, well, well. Look at this guy," Viper mocked while gesturing toward Sebastian.
The Crimson Skull members erupted into laughter.
"What's your plan, buddy? You gonna aggressively tailor me a new shirt? Back of the line, trash. Or pay the toll."
"You're in my way, man," Sebastian said.
His voice wasn't a shout. It was just a normal, exasperated tone.
Viper's smirk faltered for a fraction of a second, unsettled by the sheer lack of fear in the Drifter's expression.
But the guild leader quickly recovered, puffing out his armored chest.
"Are you fucking deaf? I said it's ten silver. If you take one more step onto this bridge, my boys are going to camp you until your durability hits zero and your gear breaks into dust."
"Huh," Sebastian muttered, sounding completely unimpressed.
He didn't draw a weapon. He didn't take a combat stance. He just kept walking.
"Alright boys, make an example out of this idiot!" Viper barked, gripping his broadsword with both hands and stepping forward to execute a basic downward strike.
As Viper swung his blade, Sebastian activated his newly acquired Conceptual Law.
[Skill Activated: Void Walk]
VWOOM!
The world instantly leached of color, snapping into a muted and monochromatic spectrum of greys and blacks.
The roaring cheers of the Crimson Skull and the gasps of the crowd vanished, replaced by the heavy and muffled silence of the parallel dimension.
To Viper, and to the hundreds of players watching, Sebastian didn't dodge.
He simply ceased to exist!
SWISH! Viper's heavy iron broadsword cleaved through empty air, the momentum throwing him slightly off balance.
He stumbled forward, his eyes wide with sudden panic.
"What the fuck? Did he log out? Did the coward just combat log?!"
In the Void, Sebastian casually walked right through the swinging arc of the iron blade.
The metal passed through his translucent and violet-tinged body without the slightest bit of resistance.
He stepped past Viper's heavy iron shield, moved directly behind the guild leader, and stood at his back.
With a mental flick, Sebastian dropped the skill.
Color and sound violently crashed back into his senses.
The ambient wind howling through the gorge and the confused murmurs of the crowd all returned in an instant.
Sebastian pulled the Rusty Iron Dagger from his belt.
The weapon was a joke. It had 2 durability, dealt a pathetic 2 to 4 points of physical damage, and looked like it would snap if used to cut a block of hard cheese.
But Sebastian also had the God-Slayer's Edge.
[Passive Triggered: God-Slayer's Edge]
[Effect: Ignore 100% Defense.]
A passive conceptual law that stated, with mathematical certainty, that his blade ignored one hundred percent of all physical and magical defense.
Viper was just turning his head, shouting to his guildmates.
"Where did he..."
Sebastian tapped the rusty dagger against the back of Viper's neck, right where the heavy iron helmet met the chainmail collar.
"I'm right here."
He didn't thrust. He didn't stab. He just applied a tiny ounce of pressure and drew the rusted edge horizontally.
The physics engine of The Ethereal Plane experienced a catastrophic logic error!
The game registered a Level 1 weapon making contact with Level 5 Iron Armor. It tried to calculate a deflection.
Then, God-Slayer's Edge forcefully injected its conceptual law into the server code.
[Critical Hit!]
[-9,999 (True Damage)]
The armor value was instantly overwritten to zero.
The damage multiplier expanded infinitely to bridge the gap between absolute defense and absolute lethality.
SQUELCH! CRACK!
There was a sickening and wet slicing sound that echoed unnaturally loud across the cobblestone bridge.
Viper's head completely detached from his shoulders!
The localized force of the physics glitch sent the helmeted head rocketing straight up into the air like a champagne cork, trailing a massive and geyser-like spray of pixelated crimson blood.
The headless avatar stood there for a full two seconds, blood continuing to fountain into the sky, before the system finally processed the death and the heavy armored body collapsed into a heap of clattering metal and gore.
[System: You have slain Player 'Viper'.]
[Loot Dropped: Iron Broadsword, 12 Silver Coins.]
Absolute and horrified silence fell over the bridge.
Two hundred players, and nineteen Crimson Skull members, stood entirely paralyzed.
Nobody breathed. Nobody blinked.
They just stared at the headless corpse leaking digital blood onto the cobblestones, and then at the unassuming Level 1 Drifter standing over it, casually wiping a rusty and jagged dagger on his plain cloth trousers.
One-shot.
A Drifter. Using a starter knife. Had one-shot a fully armored Level 8 Warrior.
"Must be server lag," Sebastian said dryly, breaking the silence.
He bent down, scooped up the 12 silver coins and the Iron Broadsword, and shoved them into his inventory.
"Anyone else want to donate their gear?" Sebastian asked, looking directly at the nineteen remaining players.
No one dared to speak.
He then turned and continued his walk across the bridge, heading toward the desolate and ash-grey lands of Dead Man's Gorge.
Not a single member of the Crimson Skull moved to stop him.
They parted like the Red Sea, pressing their backs against the stone railings, their digital avatars trembling.
It wasn't until Sebastian was a tiny and fading speck on the horizon that the crowd finally erupted into absolute chaos!