Global Apocalypse: My System Is Always AFK
Chapter 17: One Yawn, One Dead Monster

Chapter 17: One Yawn, One Dead Monster

The Hollowed Warden did not appreciate being called a delay.

Whatever passed for intelligence behind that single glowing red eye registered the boy’s dismissive tone as an insult worth answering, and the massive crystal frame reared back, cracks of white light spreading through its joints as it pulled in mana for what Meera’s fighters recognized, with sinking dread, as a full charge attack.

"It’s winding up!" one of her fighters shouted, voice hoarse. "Full offensive stance, everybody back, BACK—"

"The boy is still in range!" Meera snapped, already moving again despite the burn in her legs, despite knowing full well she wouldn’t reach him in time. Twenty meters. He was twenty meters from a boss about to unleash everything it had left, and he was just standing there, rice bag under one arm, rolling his neck like he was stretching before a light jog.

The Warden’s charge built with a low, grinding hum that vibrated through the cavern floor, crystal cracks along its body glowing brighter and brighter until the whole massive frame looked less like a golem and more like a bomb with a very short fuse. Its single eye fixed on Ethan with what almost looked like focused hatred, and then it surged forward — three stories of crystal and bone moving with a speed that shouldn’t have been physically possible for something that size, closing twenty meters in under a second, both massive arms drawn back for a strike meant to end everything in its path.

Ethan yawned.

It wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t a performance. It was a genuine, honest, bone-deep yawn — the kind that happens when a nineteen-year-old has been awake for a normal amount of time and is standing in a boring cave that has, so far, produced zero eggs and an increasingly irritating amount of monster interruptions. His jaw cracked, his eyes watered slightly, and somewhere in the middle of that yawn, his body shifted its weight — not a dodge, not a conscious tactical decision, just the small, unconscious lean a tired person makes when they stretch.

His shoulder moved maybe two centimeters to the left.

The Hollowed Warden’s charge connected with that exact spot in the air Ethan’s shoulder had occupied a fraction of a second earlier, both massive crystal fists driving forward with the full, devastating momentum of its entire built-up charge — and met absolutely nothing but the passive pressure of Ethan’s Void Aura, radiating outward from a body that had, without any conscious effort at all, become the single densest, most immovable point in the entire cavern.

What happened next didn’t look like combat. It looked like a special effect malfunctioning.

The Warden’s momentum, all of it, the full charge that had been powerful enough to crater solid stone twice already, hit that immovable pressure field and had nowhere left to go except back into itself. Cracks spiderwebbed outward from the point of impact at impossible speed, racing up both arms, across the shoulders, over the blank crystal face, faster than any eye in that cavern could track. For one suspended half-second, the entire three-story golem simply hung there in the air mid-charge, glowing white light bleeding out of every crack at once.

Then it came apart.

Not exploded, exactly — disintegrated, the whole massive frame converting into a fine, drifting mist of red-tinged crystal dust that hung in the shaft of sunlight from the cavern ceiling like something out of a slow-motion film, sparkling faintly before beginning its long, silent drift down to the cavern floor. No sound. No shockwave. No dramatic final roar. One moment there was a boss capable of leveling a formation of elite hunters, and the next there was a fine red haze settling gently over the wreckage of the battle it had nearly won.

The cavern went completely, utterly silent.

Ethan finished his yawn, wiped a small tear from the corner of his eye, and blinked at the drifting red mist with mild, distracted confusion, like a man who’d just noticed the TV had changed channels without him touching the remote.

"...huh," he said. "Did it just. Do that on its own?"

[BOSS DEFEATED: THE HOLLOWED WARDEN, CORRUPTED]

[RANK: S (ANOMALOUS SPAWN)]

[CAUSE OF DEATH: KINETIC FEEDBACK VIA PASSIVE DEFENSIVE AURA]

[METHOD: USER MOVED 2 CENTIMETERS]

[EFFICIENCY RATING: THE SYSTEM DOES NOT HAVE A CATEGORY FOR THIS]

[LOOT ACQUIRED: 1x WARDEN’S HEART, 1x CRYSTAL CORE, 1x TITLE — "ACCIDENTAL CATACLYSM"]

Ethan read the title with genuine, delighted offense. "’Accidental Cataclysm.’ That’s — okay, that’s actually a little rude, but also fair, I’ll allow it."

Across the cavern, Meera Kapoor stood frozen mid-stride, one boot still raised from her aborted sprint toward a boy who no longer needed rescuing, staring at the drifting cloud of red crystal dust that used to be the most dangerous thing she’d encountered since the apocalypse began. Behind her, what remained of her formation — the ones still conscious — had gone equally still, weapons lowered, faces slack with an expression that sat somewhere between awe and existential crisis.

"He—" one of her fighters started, voice barely a whisper. "He yawned."

"I saw it," Meera said, though her voice came out thinner than she intended.

"The Warden was rated S-anomalous. It took out four of our people. It nearly took out you. And he—" the fighter gestured helplessly at the drifting dust, at the boy now crouching to pick something out of the settling mist with the casual curiosity of a man checking if a coin had rolled under a couch, "—he yawned and it died."

Ethan, oblivious to the small crisis of faith he was causing twenty meters away, plucked the Warden’s Heart out of the settling debris — a fist-sized crystal that pulsed faintly with residual red light — turned it over once, decided it wasn’t food, and tossed it lightly into his void inventory without further ceremony.

[ITEM ACQUIRED: WARDEN’S HEART]

[RANK: S]

[VALUE: EQUIVALENT TO ONE SMALL COUNTRY’S ANNUAL ENERGY BUDGET]

He didn’t read that last line. He was already scanning the cavern for the exit, groceries still tucked securely under one arm, mentally recalculating how much longer this dungeon detour was going to eat into his afternoon.

Meera finally found her voice again, forcing her legs to carry her the remaining distance across the cavern floor, stopping a respectful few paces from the boy who’d just casually erased an anomalous S-rank boss with a stretch.

"Excuse me," she said, and was faintly annoyed at how unsteady it came out. "I need to know — who are you? What guild, what rank, what—"

"Unemployed," Ethan said, without looking up from his phone, where the avatar feed had just posted a fresh notification about clearing Floor 45. "And I’m just trying to find the exit. Is there, like, a shortcut, or do I have to go back through the rat tunnel?"

Meera opened her mouth, closed it, and looked past him at the drifting last remnants of red dust settling over the cavern floor — the physical evidence of a boss fight that should have taken her entire elite squad hours and dozens of lives to even attempt, resolved in less time than it took her to finish a single sentence.

"There’s a shortcut," she said finally, faintly, pointing toward a smaller passage on the cavern’s far side. "That way. Leads straight back to the surface, near Market Street."

"Perfect," Ethan said, already walking, rice bag swinging gently at his side. "Thanks. Good luck with the rest of your — whatever this was."

He disappeared down the passage without a backward glance, leaving Meera Kapoor and the remains of the Ashen Talon’s elite formation standing in stunned silence amid a fine layer of red crystal dust, each of them quietly, privately certain that the world had just handed them proof of something none of their training had prepared them to understand.