“What are you doing?” Carlos asked as I spat on the wall and began walking over to the other side of the lecture hall.

“Ask him,” I said, pointing at Simon the [Alchemist]. I wasn’t in the mood to explain and work at the same time.

Everyone looked over to Simon, who was shocked to suddenly be put on the spot and asked to explain how [Workshops] worked.

“Oh, right,” Simon said, pausing to buy himself a second to think. “Vincent is setting up his [Workshop]. To set up a [Workshop], an [Alchemist] needs to mark the four walls of a room with his bodily fluids.”

“Gross,” Carlos said with a smile.

Simon continued. “I assume that Vincent hasn’t previously set up a [Workshop], since it takes a minimum of twelve hours for the magic maintaining the [Workshop] to wear off, and you can only have one at a time.”

I did not know that. If I had spent more time reading the rules surrounding the [Workshop], I probably would have picked that up. I would have to keep a mental note that it would take me half a day to move my [Workshop].

A moment after Simon was done explaining what I was doing, I finished marking the perimeter of my [Workshop]. As I expected, the System sent me a notification.

[WOULD YOU LIKE TO SET UP YOUR WORKSHOP HERE?]

WOULD YOU LIKE TO SET UP YOUR WORKSHOP HERE?

With a quick movement of my index finger, I selected the [Yes] option.

[WELCOME TO YOUR WORKSHOP: VINZADIR]

WELCOME TO YOUR WORKSHOP: VINZADIR

“My [Workshop] is all set up. All right, we need to work fast. System. Empty everything out of my [Inventory].”

About a thousand units of ore and seven units of pure Starsteel were dumped on the ground. Simon and Claire jumped at the sound of hundreds of pounds of steel crashing against stone. They must have not yet figured out the [Inventory] system.

“Why do we need to work fast?” Claire asked meekly.

“You didn’t tell them?” Liz said, glaring at Carlos.

“It didn’t really come up,” Carlos said.

“What didn’t?” Simon asked.

As I began organizing the ore on the ground, I answered Simon’s question. “A continent-sized object just crashed into the Atlantic Ocean.”

I didn’t speak the next sentence out loud. Simon and Claire were smart enough to reach the obvious conclusion themselves.

“No way,” Simon said.

“Check the ISS live stream or any forum on the internet. I’m sure they’re talking about it.”

I figured the shockwave had already made landfall by that point. New York City and most of the United Kingdom were probably gone already. As I turned back to the pile of glistening steel on the ground, I saw that Simon and Claire were checking their phones for proof of my statement.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

“Deconstruct,” I said, putting my hand on one slab of ore.

The slab fell apart into a pile of steel cubes. I touched the remaining slabs one by one and reduced all of them to raw material. When I was done, a textbox informed me of how much raw material I had retrieved from the ore.

[STARSTEEL ACQUIRED: 893]

STARSTEEL ACQUIRED: 893

I noticed that about 10% of material was lost in the deconstruction process. Was [Deconstruction] inefficient, or was the ore just impure? Either way, a significant amount of material was lost.

“Carlos, empty out your [Inventory] so that I can start deconstructing your ore.”

As Carlos walked up and deposited several hundred pounds of steel on the ground, I heard Simon shout in surprise.

“Holy shit!” Simon swore loudly.

“See? I was right,” I said, assuming that Simon’s exclamation was the result of him seeing evidence of the crashing continent.

“It’s huge! It’s completely blocking out the sun in this livestream.”

No, that was impossible. Simon must have been mistaken. Any landmass in a position to be eclipsed by the continental starship would have already been destroyed by the shockwave. The video watched by Simon must have been a recording from before that landmass was destroyed.

“Where’s the ‘livestream’ from?”

As I spoke, I navigated to the [Crafting] page and clicked the button to create a Sarcophagus Ship. A steel casket appeared at my feet, and a notification appeared in my vision.

[QUEST COMPLETED! +200 EXP]

[EXP TO NEXT LEVEL: 60]

“The Azores.” Simon answered quickly, not picking up on the disbelief in my voice.

Yeah, the Azores were definitely gone. That small island chain in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean would be destroyed immediately by the shockwave.

“You’re not looking at a livestream,” I said with complete confidence.

“I’m pretty sure I am,” Simon said. “Here, look.”

I turned away from the starship sitting on the floor of the lecture hall. I wasn’t sure if I should be offended or confused by Simon’s statement.

I walked up to Simon and looked at his phone. The video on his screen showed a gargantuan black object that blotted out the sky. A small sliver of blue could still be seen on the horizon, though the surrounding landscape was cast in the shadow of a moonless night.

“Look,” he said, pointing to the chat box on the right side of the screen. The live chat matched the chat box in the video, implying that the stream was live. Simon wrote the word “TEST” in all-caps, and I saw his message float by.

There was a disconnect there somewhere. One of my assumptions must have been wrong. If that livestream was real, then one or more of the premises I was relying on were false. When I saw that landmass over the Atlantic more than an hour ago, it wasn’t that far up. Based on any sane understanding of physics, it should have crashed into the ocean by now.

“That should be impossible,” I said.

“Why?” Simon asked.

“It’s been there for more than an hour,” I said. “Either that’s a recording, or that landmass doesn’t follow the laws of physics.” I spoke with the intent to make the second option seem utterly absurd, but the possibility became more and more likely with every word I uttered.

“That wouldn’t be the most insane thing to happen in the last two hours,” Carlos said with a shrug.

“I found a livestream from Cork, Ireland where the object can be seen on the horizon,” Claire said. On the recording, a giant foreboding object could be seen floating in the sky to the west. It seemed completely stationary.

Over the next minute, we all searched on our phones for evidence of the continent floating over the Atlantic Ocean. After seeing more than a dozen livestreams from places that shouldn’t still exist, I came to the conclusion that the continental starship was there, but it was not crashing. It was merely floating to the ground, and there would be no planet-destroying shockwave.

I let out a sigh of relief, and several of the others almost fell to their knees when they realized the planet wouldn’t be destroyed in the next few hours.

“It looks like we’re safe,” I said.

“You scared us,” Carlos said with a smile, lightly punching me on the shoulder.

“I didn’t take ‘magic’ into account when I was calculating the impact force of that thing. Sue me.” I scratched my chin. “In hindsight, I probably should have taken magic into account.”

The students laughed, but their laughter was cut short by a deafening, bone-shaking blast. I was immediately knocked on my back, and the others fell to the ground or steadied themselves on a nearby object.

On the ground, I opened my mouth and spoke, even though I knew no one could hear me over the ringing in all our ears. “Safety is relative, I guess.”