Stellar Slacker: I Thought This Was an Idle Game!

Felix woke up from his afternoon nap with a throat as dry as sandpaper.

He sat up on the edge of his cot, coughing twice and smacking his dry lips.

”Ugh,” Felix rasped, rubbing his neck. ”My mouth feels like cotton. I need some hot water.”

He shuffled out to the tiny kitchen in his frayed straw slippers.

Under the table, the Sovereign Heart Seal held the front leg completely rigid.

Up on the ceiling beam, Barnaby the clockwork owl watched him with glowing brass eyes, muffled clicks vibrating behind his black rubber stopper: ”Mmph. Grrr-mmph.”

”Morning, bird,” Felix mumbled, ignoring the fact that it was nearly four in the afternoon.

Felix checked the battered iron kettle sitting on the cold stone hearth.

Empty.

Starting a fire in the hearth meant chopping kindling, striking flint, and waiting twenty minutes for the coals to catch. That required way too much physical effort.

”Zero chance,” Felix muttered. ”Chopping wood is a beginner fetch-quest. I am not grinding chore exp just for a cup of tea.”

He remembered seeing thick plumes of fragrant purple and red smoke constantly drifting from the western peak.

The Alchemy Pavilion.

The alchemists down there ran giant roaring furnaces and spirit-coal cauldrons day and night. They had more fire and boiling water than the entire imperial capital combined.

”Free hot water dispenser,” Felix nodded to himself. ”Work smarter, not harder.”

He opened his storage inventory and pulled out a small black teapot he had received from a daily AFK reward crate three days ago.

The pot was forged from matte obsidian iron with nine tiny dragons carved along the rim. It felt cool and smooth in his hands, completely unassuming.

A translucent system HUD blinked into his view:

【Item: Mythic Nine-Dragon Teapot】 【Grade: Primeval Dao Artifact / Kitchen Tier】 【Description: Forged from ancient abyssal void-iron by a bored celestial blacksmith. Possesses passive thermal absorption: when opened, it consumes all ambient elemental heat and mana within fifty miles to boil water in 0.3 seconds.】 【Inspector Note: A high-end tea kettle designed for lazy immortals who don’t want to wait for the stove. Guaranteed rapid boil. Keep away from sensitive magical ecosystems.】

Felix didn’t bother reading the small print.

”Rapid boil kettle,” Felix said, smiling in approval. ”Modern convenience in a fantasy sandbox. God bless lazy developers.”

He tucked the small black teapot under his arm, pushed open the wooden cottage door, and strolled down the winding mountain path.

Outside in the front yard, the golden Sun-Lotus Cabbage fluttered its glowing leaves in the breeze, soaking in the sunlight.

Felix walked down the stone stairs with his hands tucked into his loose hemp sleeves, his 1.0-Earth-Mass stellar core purring like a warm hearth in his chest.

* * *

The Alchemy Pavilion was a sprawling five-story pagoda constructed from heat-tempered bronze and volcanic stone.

The interior was hotter than a summer sauna. The air was thick with the pungent aroma of roasted dragon-ginseng, crushed spirit-mushrooms, and sulfurous coal smoke.

Five hundred bronze and brass cauldrons sat arranged in concentric circles across the massive hall floor.

At each cauldron, an alchemist channeled their internal fire mana, maintaining delicate thermal balances to brew high-grade pills.

Overhead, grand arrays of cooling talismans glowed blue along the ceiling beams, barely preventing the entire building from melting into molten slag.

Grandmaster Ignis, the Supreme Pill Master of the Radiant Dawn Academy, stood upon the central iron observation bridge.

He was a stout man with a fiery red beard that crackled with actual ember sparks. He held a brass timer in one hand and a carved dragon-horn measuring scoop in the other.

”Maintain the pressure, disciples!” Grandmaster Ignis bellowed, his voice booming over the roar of five hundred furnaces. ”The Tier-Seven Dragon-Marrow Elixir is reaching its critical fusion threshold! If the temperature drops by a tenth of a degree, three months of imperial herbs will turn to ash!”

The author’s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

”Yes, Grandmaster!” hundreds of sweating disciples chanted in chorus.

Spiritual flames of every color danced across the hall.

Blue ghost-fires, golden solar flames, and violet earth-core fires roared beneath the cauldrons, shaking the heavy bronze foundations with terrifying elemental power.

Down near the rear delivery entrance, the service door squeaked open.

Felix stepped inside, blinking against the bright furnace glow.

”Man, they keep the heating cranked up way too high in here,” Felix muttered, fanning his face with a loose sleeve. ”Must be hell on the utility bill.”

He glanced around the bustling hall.

Everyone was sprinting between workstations, shouting pill formulas and tossing dried herbs into cauldrons. Nobody paid any attention to a slouched disciple in pajamas holding an empty teapot.

Felix walked over to a stone basin where clean mountain spring water flowed from a brass dragon spout.

He held the Nine-Dragon Teapot beneath the spout until cool water filled the chamber to the brim.

”Step one complete,” Felix whispered. ”Now for the boil.”

He set the teapot on a flat iron table near the outer rim of the hall.

Felix reached out with his right index finger and thumb, gripping the small brass dragon-knob on the lid.

Then, with a gentle click, Felix lifted the lid open.

* * *

For half a second, nothing made a sound.

Then, the laws of physics shattered into powder.

A silent, invisible vortex of absolute void-gravity exploded outwards from the open rim of the small black teapot.

VUUUUUUM.

The vortex expanded faster than light, ripping across the room, piercing through the bronze walls, and sweeping across fifty square miles of sky and mountain stone in less than three heartbeats!

Every particle of elemental fire, thermal energy, and active mana in the atmosphere was yanked violently toward the tiny teapot opening!

Inside the grand hall, five hundred roaring spiritual flames instantly snuffed out.

Fwump. Fwump. Fwump.

The golden solar fires vanished. The violet earth-core fires evaporated into thin air. The blue ghost-fires collapsed into cold wisps of gray smoke.

The five hundred heavy bronze cauldrons stopped humming.

The bubbling, molten concoctions inside them froze instantly, solidifying into brittle blocks of glassy stone.

The sweltering, hundred-degree heat of the pavilion plunged into Arctic freezing temperatures in the span of two seconds!

Crack! Crack-crack!

Thick sheets of white frost surged across the stone floor tiles. Icicles two feet long sprouted from the edges of the bronze observation bridges!

Disciples fell backward onto their bottoms, gasping for breath as their internal fire mana was ripped clean from their meridian networks!

”My... my flame!” a third-year pill apprentice shrieked, staring at his frozen fingers. ”The True Yang flame in my dantian was completely extinguished!”

”The cauldrons!” another cried in pure panic. ”All five hundred pill furnaces have frozen solid! The fire-vein beneath the mountain has gone dead!”

Up on the observation bridge, Grandmaster Ignis stood frozen like a bronze statue.

His fiery red beard, usually crackling with bright sparks of primordial flame, was now coated in white rime and frozen solid into stiff, frosty whiskers.

His brass timer dropped from his numb fingers, shattering into frozen shards on the icy floorboards.

”An Absolute Mana Suppression Field...” Ignis whispered, his teeth chattering so violently his words slurred into a terrified whistle. ”Fifty miles... an absolute zero-magic domain! Only a Primeval Void Sovereign descending from the upper realms could swallow fifty square miles of elemental fire in a single breath!”

Ignis slowly looked down from the bridge, his bloodshot eyes scanning the frozen, mist-covered hall.

”Where is the beast?!” Ignis croaked, tears of terror freezing onto his cheeks. ”Where is the void fiend that has devoured our mountain’s ancestral flame?!”

In the back corner of the frozen hall, standing by the water basin amidst thick clouds of swirling white vapor, stood Felix.

The small black teapot in his hand let out a cheerful, high-pitched whistle:

Weeeeee-shhhhh.

Felix peeked inside the open lid.

The water was rolling with clean, vigorous boiling bubbles, releasing plumes of piping-hot steam into the freezing cold room.

”Nice,” Felix said, nodding with deep satisfaction. ”Under one second. That’s what I call premium optimization.”

He slapped the brass lid back down onto the teapot with a crisp clack.

The moment the lid clicked shut, the terrifying suppression field instantly vanished, leaving only a freezing room filled with five hundred shivering, catatonic cultivators.

Felix pulled a chipped ceramic teacup from his pocket.

He tipped the black teapot, pouring a steady stream of steaming hot water into the cup. He blew gently on the surface, took a cautious sip, and smiled.

”Perfect temperature,” Felix sighed. ”Hits the spot.”

He looked up and realized that every single person in the hall was staring directly at him.

Grandmaster Ignis, hanging over the observation railing, was trembling so hard his frozen beard was shedding white ice chips.

Dozens of elite pill masters were kneeling in the frost, clutching their talismans and staring at Felix’s loose hemp robes with bulging, horrified eyes.

Felix blinked.

He glanced down at his cup, then over at the frozen cauldrons, and finally back at the terrified old men.

”Uh...” Felix said, scratching his ear with his free hand. ”Is the kitchen closed for lunch prep? Sorry to intrude. I just needed some hot water for my tea.”

Silence.

Dead, frozen silence.

”You guys can keep cooking,” Felix added politely, giving them a small, awkward wave. ”Don’t let me interrupt your class.”

Without another word, Felix tucked the Mythic Nine-Dragon Teapot back under his arm, held his steaming cup of hot water, and strolled casually out the rear delivery door.

Grandmaster Ignis collapsed onto his knees on the frosted observation bridge.

He watched the young man in straw slippers disappear down the sunlit mountain path, his mind reeling in absolute, shattering shock.

”He... he used a Ninth-Tier Void Artifact...” Ignis wept, his voice cracking into a ragged sob. ”He used a weapon capable of plunging an entire empire into an eternal ice age... just to brew a cup of morning tea!”

”Grandmaster!” a trembling elder crawled up the stairs. ”Who was that entity?! What god walked among us?!”

Ignis raised a shaking, frostbitten hand toward the heavens, his voice filled with religious awe.

”The dweller of Solitude Spire,” Ignis whispered, tears carving clean trails through the frost on his face. ”The Peerless Sovereign who commands the celestial void... and he was merely thirsty.”