Global Apocalypse: My System Is Always AFK

Devraj Malhotra had never once, in his twenty-three years of life, been told no.

He was the only son of Malhotra Heavy Industries’ founder, a pre-apocalypse conglomerate that had pivoted, with impressive speed, into manufacturing salvaged weapons and armor for the surviving hunter guilds. That gave the Malhotra name weight even now, three weeks into the end of the world, and Devraj had spent every single one of those weeks reminding people of it, backed by a personal retinue of six hired hunters and an ego that had never once been forced to confront its own limits.

He’d heard about the Void Sword the same way everyone eventually heard about anything remarkable these days — through the market grapevine, growing larger and stranger with every retelling, until the version that reached him described a blade capable of splitting the earth itself, wielded by an unregistered nobody who’d apparently turned down guild leadership, political appointments, and every other form of legitimate recognition anyone had offered him.

That last part bothered Devraj more than the sword itself.

”He’s turned down everyone,” he said, pacing the length of his family’s fortified estate — one of the few buildings in the district still running on a private generator — while his retinue leader, a grim-faced man named Sanjay, stood at parade rest near the door. ”Anika Reyes, Priya Malhotra, the regional council. All of them. Do you understand what that means, Sanjay?”

”That he’s not interested in politics, young master?”

”It means nobody’s actually offered him the right thing,” Devraj said, waving that off. ”Everyone’s tried to recruit him. Nobody’s tried to simply buy what he has. Money speaks a language recruitment offers don’t.”

Sanjay’s expression flickered with something that might have been doubt, quickly suppressed. ”With respect, young master, the reports suggest this individual is—”

”I don’t care what the reports suggest,” Devraj snapped. ”I’ve seen a hundred ’unstoppable hunters’ fold the moment real leverage gets applied. Assemble the team. We’re paying him a visit.”

They found Ethan exactly where the neighborhood grapevine said he’d be — outside the market, mid-afternoon, negotiating with a fruit vendor over the last of a crate of mangoes with the same focused seriousness he brought to genuinely important matters.

Devraj arrived with all the subtlety of a man who’d never learned the concept, flanked by six armed hunters in matching gear, his own outfit gleaming with enchanted accents that had clearly cost more than most people’s entire apocalypse survival budget.

”Ethan Verma,” he announced, loud enough to draw the attention of half the market. ”I’ve been looking for you.”

Ethan glanced up from his mango negotiation, unbothered. ”Do I know you?”

”Devraj Malhotra.” He said the name like it should mean something, and when Ethan’s blank expression made clear it didn’t, his jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. ”Malhotra Heavy Industries. I understand you’re in possession of a rather remarkable sword.”

”I’ve got a sword, yeah.” Ethan handed the vendor a small handful of monster cores, accepted his mangoes, and turned to leave. ”It’s not for sale, if that’s where this is going.”

”Everything’s for sale,” Devraj said, stepping into his path, six hunters fanning out behind him in a loose, deliberately intimidating formation. ”You simply haven’t heard the right offer yet.”

Ethan glanced past him at the armed hunters, then back at Devraj, and let out a small, tired sigh — the specific sound of a man recognizing a familiar, exhausting pattern before it had even fully started.

”Look, man, I’m just trying to buy mangoes.”

”I’ll offer you ten million in salvaged currency,” Devraj said, undeterred, gesturing toward one of his hunters, who produced a heavy case and set it down with a deliberate thud. ”Plus full manufacturing rights to any equipment my company produces for the next five years. That sword is wasted on someone who won’t even use it properly. In my hands, it becomes a symbol. A weapon of order, restoring stability to this district.”

”It’s a sword. It cuts things. That’s the whole use case.” Ethan tried to step around him. Devraj shifted to block the path again, and his expression hardened.

”I wasn’t finished,” he said, voice dropping into something colder. ”This is a generous offer, Verma. I’d advise you not to insult me by refusing it in front of witnesses.”

The market had gone quiet around them by now, vendors and shoppers alike drawing back to watch, several people recognizing Ethan and exchanging nervous, knowing glances — the specific look of people who understood exactly how badly this confrontation was about to go for the young master, if he pushed it any further.

Ethan, for his part, just looked mildly annoyed, the same expression he wore for slow internet connections and empty cracker boxes. ”I already said no. Politely, even. You want to try asking a third time, or are we good?”

Devraj’s face flushed with the specific fury of a man who had genuinely never heard that word directed at himself twice in a row, let alone with this much indifference behind it. ”You clearly don’t understand who you’re speaking to,” he said, voice rising. ”My family controls half the salvage manufacturing in this district. I could make your life very difficult, Verma. Cut off supply lines. Turn every guild against you. You think that sword makes you untouchable?”

”Kind of, yeah,” Ethan said, honestly. ”But that’s not even the point. The point is, I don’t want to sell it, and you keep asking like the third time’s gonna be different.”

”Show him,” Devraj snapped at Sanjay, temper fully unraveled now. ”Demonstrate what happens to people who waste my time.”

Sanjay hesitated — a flicker of genuine reluctance crossing his face, the look of a professional who’d clearly gathered enough intelligence to know exactly how catastrophic this order might turn out to be. But orders were orders, and hired retinues didn’t get paid for hesitation. He drew his blade and stepped forward, aiming a strike meant purely to intimidate rather than injure — a warning shot across Ethan’s shoulder, close enough to draw a flinch.

It didn’t get anywhere near him.

The blade met Ethan’s passive aura a full foot from its target and simply crumbled — the same fine metal dust Deshu’s group had watched their own weapons dissolve into weeks earlier, scattering harmlessly across the market pavement.

Sanjay stared at his empty hand, then at the boy who hadn’t so much as flinched, holding a bag of mangoes in one hand like the entire exchange was beneath his notice.

”...young master,” Sanjay said slowly, backing up a step, ”I believe we should reconsider this approach.”

Devraj, still riding the momentum of his own fury, didn’t hear the warning in time. ”This is unacceptable — I demand—”

”You demand a lot of things,” Ethan interrupted, mildly, ”for someone who can’t even keep his own weapons in one piece near me.”

He shifted the mango bag under one arm, glanced at the six hunters now standing very still, very carefully not making any sudden movements, and gave Devraj a last, almost pitying look.

”I’m gonna go home now,” Ethan said. ”Nice meeting you. Don’t send anyone else with knives, it’s just gonna keep happening like that.”

He turned and walked off through the parting crowd, leaving Devraj Malhotra standing rigid with humiliation in the middle of the market, his retinue quietly reholstering weapons they’d suddenly become very reluctant to draw again, and an entire district’s worth of witnesses already preparing to spread the story of the young master who’d tried to buy the Trench Warden’s sword — and gotten nothing for his trouble but a lesson in exactly how little his family’s money meant to the one person in the city who couldn’t be bought, bullied, or impressed.