"To rise above others while lifting no weight is the true art of the slacker. Let others build your throne while you marvel at its craftsmanship, sipping on the rewards of their toil." – The Te of Slacking, Book 3, Verse 12.
I woke up with a start, blinking at the ceiling, and, for a disorienting moment, I didn’t know where I was.
For several awful heartbeats, I was back on Earth. Back in my shitty little flat, where the damp patch on the floor wasn’t just spreading—it was a sentient blob hell-bent on annexing the rest of the room. Back to the life where even the mould seemed to have more ambition than I did.
And the day ahead unfolded in my mind like a middle-class horror show.
First, there would be a home visit by my Probation Worker—a woman with a relentlessly judgmental smile and a vocabulary that included phrases like “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” used wholly unironically. She’d sit there, clipboard in hand, radiating disappointment, and once again invite me to join her Bible study group.
“James,” she’d say, leaning forward to try, once again, to hand me the keys to salvation, “have you ever thought about letting God into your life?” And I’d have to mumble something vaguely polite while doing my best not to scream, Lizzie, I won’t even let the guy who reads the gas meter into my flat, so I’m sure as hell not inviting some omnipotent voyeur to critique my wanks. And my wallpaper.
After that, there would be the standard – thrilling - TV lineup to look forward to—Homes Under the Hammer, followed by Bargain Hunt, where middle-aged strangers haggled over chipped vases with the intensity of Cold War negotiators. And if I was feeling particularly spicy, maybe I’d round off the afternoon with a bit of Judge Judy, watching her annihilate some poor schmuck over $50 and a parking dispute.
Truly, my cup of entertainment was poised to floodeth over . . .
Of course, at some point in the day, I’d have to catch the bus out to Washwood Heath. Not because I needed to go there – no one ever needs to go there – but because it was the safest spot to avoid bumping into my ex and whatever new cock-bearer was keeping her busy that week.
And then we’d been into the evening—pizza for one, maybe a beer if I felt flush, and the endless scroll through TV channels in search of something, anything, that didn’t make me want to scream. All capped off by lying in bed, staring at the water-stained ceiling, wondering if life was meant to feel like the slowest-loading screen in existence.
Then a massive slew of cascading notifications dropped down my vision and I remembered the whole isekeid into a new world thing.
Considering it had been two weeks since that particular event, you’d have thought my subconscious might have caught up by now.
Idle XP Gains: 8 hours of inactivity detected.
Progress: 74% towards Level 19. (Progress multiplier active due to Passive XP Buff.)
Nothing like rising and shining with a side of incremental godhood.
Loot Leech Activated: Buffed due to extended non-collection.
Gold gained: 350 coins (*3 multiplier applied)
Items collected: 8 random resources (*3 multiplier applied)
Special Reward: Platinum Idle Loot Crate (8-hour extended bonus).
I shifted the resources straight from my inventory over to the Marketplace, Although I didn’t have much use for the random crap that kept spilling into my inventory—seriously, how many Chipped Goblin Teeth does one person need?—it seemed there was an endless queue of people out there who couldn’t get enough of it.
After a couple of upgrades, the Marketplace in Lazytown had turned into a proper trading hub, complete with stalls, magical bulletin boards, and creepy merchants who rotated in and out like clockwork.
Scar had automated the whole thing, which meant I didn’t have to haggle, barter, or even interact with the outside world. Resources went in, gold came out, and somewhere in the middle, the universe translated my rubbish into someone else’s treasure.
And oh, they loved my garbage. Need five bundles of “Damp Wolf Fur” for some obscure crafting recipe? Boom, sold. Want a half-broken dagger with questionable bloodstains? Gone in seconds. Even the stuff I considered truly worthless, like “Suspicious Trolley Tokens” and “Discarded VHS Porn Cases,” vanished the moment I listed it. Seriously, someone paid top gold for “Sticky Page Fragments.” It was like this world had a collective hoarding problem, and I was their dodgy car boot dealer.
Occasionally, I’d see messages pop up about how someone had used one of my castoffs to craft an epic weapon or brew a legendary potion. Apparently, my random crap was an indispensable part of this world’s crafting economy, and Lazytown’s Marketplace had become the go-to spot for bargain hunters and ambitious crafters alike.
Scar had even started charging “Marketplace Tax,” funnelling a percentage of every transaction into the Village’s coffers. It wasn’t much, but given the volume of sales, Lazytown was rapidly becoming one of the richest settlements in the region—all thanks to the sheer volume of junk I was too lazy to carry.
Honestly? It was kind of beautiful. I was single-handedly driving an entire economy by doing nothing but existing. Truly, the Freeloader Class at its finest.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
And my morning notification ritual didn’t stop there.
Idle Hunter's Cache: You’ve received additional battlefield debris due to prolonged inactivity.
Items added: Iron Dagger (+3 Dexterity), Enchanted Linen (+2 Luck crafting potential).
Because nothing says "you earned this" like finding weapons and magic cloth while you’re drooling on a pillow.
Freeloader’s Slumber Bonus: Your knack for gaining rewards while doing absolutely nothing has reached new heights.
Effect: All passive buffs increased by 5% overnight.
At this point, I was honestly more curious about how much better I could get at sleeping.
Would I start levelling up my dreams next? Become a literal sleeping giant? I wondered what that might look like—receiving nightly notifications like “Dream Achievement Unlocked: Fantasized About Lia for the Fourth Consecutive Night. +2 Charisma”.
Not that it was all that kind of dream, of course.
Sometimes, it was just helpful stuff, like Lia casually offering advice on how to not trip over my own stats or how to weaponise sarcasm more effectively. Other times... well, let’s just say those dreams probably weren’t improving my standing in the celestial hierarchy. “Achievement Unlocked: Misused Imagination. -5 Morality Points.”
Still, if I could level up while sleeping, I figured I might as well put some effort into it. Or, you know, as much effort as dreaming about Lia in her lingerie would allow.
The final notification popped up with a flourish:
Special Achievement Unlocked:"Well Rested Overlord"
Congratulations on reaping maximum rewards for zero effort!
I let out a snort, rubbing the sleep from my eyes as I sat up.
Maybe today was going to be a good day after all.
***
It had been—relatively speaking—a fairly chilled few weeks.
Relations with the Empire and the Rebels remained firmly in the Belligerent category, but we hadn’t seen hide nor hair of them since what the locals had rather dramatically started calling The Battle of Lazytown (Part 1).
Likewise, the Crusade of the Eternal Flame had downgraded their aggression to a passive-aggressive leafleting campaign. Granted, their flyers were less “Have you heard the good news?” and more “You’re all going to burn in the eternal fires of damnation, but do have a blessed day.” Still, as far as existential threats went, it was manageable.
And not that any of this deterred the flow of new people coming to live here . . .
Once word got out that there was a village where you could be free to slack off, escape the tyranny of ambition, and start fresh in a place where expectations were not only low but actively frowned upon, immigration into Lazytown went through the roof.
People flocked to our gates in droves, desperate to escape a world that seemed to be lurching towards the apocalypse. The war between the Empire and the Rebels wasn’t just endless; but it was cruel in ways that went beyond swords and blood.
The fighting hollowed people out and left them imitations of themselves. Stories of entire families drafted and marched to slaughter because some distant lord wanted to redraw a line on a map. Of fields burned and crops stolen, not out of strategy, but spite. Of sieges so long that people forgot what it felt like to eat something that didn’t come out of a rat.
The dudes and dudettes that showed up at our gates were escapees from a world that had forgotten how to do anything but consume itself. They brought tales of armies killing for fun, of commanders so deranged they’d order their own men executed for daring to die too soon.
The kind of horror that left scars in places no healer could reach.
And boy, did they come.
They came because Lazytown, apparently, offered something the rest of this world seemed incapable of providing: the promise of not being relentlessly awful. No ambitions, no drafts, no banners to die for—just a chance to sit down, breathe, and maybe not wake up to find your neighbour has stabbed you for looking at his bread funny.
Sure, the Crusade of the Eternal Flame liked to tell everyone we were damned, but apparently, eternal hellfire was a risk people were willing to take for five minutes of bloody peace.
The truth was, the world outside our gates seemed to be so fucked that a village like Lazytown, built on slacking and freeloading, somehow felt like a beacon of sanity. It wasn’t a utopia, but compared to what they were running from? It might as well have been paradise.
I yawned and jumped out of bed, enjoying the feel of plush carpet beneath my feet.
It was so thick and luxurious it felt like my toes were sinking into an especially cooperative and fluffy cloud. My house, the Lofty Perch, was like that.
I stretched, wandering over to the enormous windows that lined one wall of my bedroom—yes, multiple walls of windows, because privacy is for peasants, apparently.
The view outside was as absurd as the mansion itself.
Over the last fortnight, Lazytown had transformed into a sprawling hive of activity, buzzing with people, Pixel Workers, and construction crews everywhere you looked. I stared for a moment, trying to reconcile the bustling town below with the scrappy little village I’d built, literally, on top of a magic well.
But before I could get too lost in the scene, the ridiculousness of my surroundings – as it did every morning –pulled me back.
The Lofty Perch didn’t just have carpets thick enough to drown in—it had everything. Chandeliers bigger than some of the huts down in the village, tapestries that depicted epic battles I hadn’t fought, and furniture so ornately carved I was half-afraid to sit on it in case it decided to eat me.
Silent servants flitted in and out of sight, tidying up things that didn’t need tidying, adjusting curtains that were already perfectly draped. Somewhere in the mansion, there was a room filled entirely with cushions, because apparently someone thought that was a priority.
The place was absurdly over the top, but it wasn’t without its charms.
Like the enchanted bath that filled itself with steaming water at the perfect temperature, complete with floating, glowing bubbles that smelled like expensive soap and faintly of cinnamon. Or the kitchen that seemed to produce every meal as if it had been prepared by a team of gourmet chefs, even though I hadn’t seen a single cook.
I wandered down one of the winding hallways, each one lined with doors that led to rooms I hadn’t even explored yet. There was a library filled with books I’d probably never read, a game room that looked like a medieval soft-play, and a balcony that offered the perfect vantage point over the town below.
Scar had been clear that the bonuses Lazytown received for having me living in this place were substantial and, you know what, if it helped my people thrive, living in this place was a sacrifice I was willing to make.
By the time I reached the lounge and sank into one of its impossibly deep chairs, I was feeling pretty perky considering the early hour.
Which was the perfect segue into . . .
Only three days left until the apocalypse, child, the Great Slacker intoned in my head. Don’t you think you’d better start doing something about it?