"I'm finishing a recipe," Liam said. "There's a difference."
The Golem, apparently offended by being ignored, pulled back its fist and brought it down on Liam like a falling building.
The sound it made on impact was not the sound of a person being hit. It was the sound of an unstoppable force meeting a body that had quietly opted out of the laws of physics. The shock wave blew out every window in the surrounding block and cratered the cobblestones in a perfect ring around Liam's feet.
Liam hadn't moved. Hadn't bent his knees. He was using the Golem's glowing red fist as a work surface.
"Perfect," he muttered, pressing the purple liquid against the Golem's knuckles with practised efficiency. "The surface temperature is exactly right for a quick reduction."
The Golem tried to lift its arm. It couldn't.
It tried the other fist. Liam absorbed that one too without looking up, the bottles in his hands never wobbling. It tried kicking him. It tried breathing fire directly onto his head. His white hair shifted slightly in the updraft, the fluffy ears atop his head flicking once in mild annoyance like a cat being misted with water.
"A bit more carbonation," he said to himself, pouring the water over the Golem's glowing thumb.
[System: You are using a Field Boss as a Kitchen Tool.]
[The Gods are watching in stunned silence.]
[Goddess Hestia has covered her face with both hands.]
"There." Liam held up the finished bottle of Grape Soda, shook it once, and checked the colour against the light. "Recipe complete."
"YOU ARE ANKLE DEEP IN LAVA," Elizabeth shouted from fifteen feet away, where she had been standing this entire time, unable to leave because her legs had made a decision without consulting her brain.
Liam looked down. He was, in fact, ankle deep in molten slag. The Golem was sagging badly, its stamina bar nearly empty after forty-seven hits that had done nothing measurable to its target. Liam's HP had not moved.
He looked up at the Golem.
"You finished?" he asked.
The Golem wheezed steam.
"Good." Liam put the soda away and looked at the Golem's chest, where the core pulsed white-hot through cracked obsidian like a heartbeat. He tilted his head.
"If I can eat monster parts to unlock recipes," he said thoughtfully, mostly to himself, "does that apply if the monster is technically still alive?"
"LIAM!"
Elizabeth's pitch cracked on the second syllable. He glanced back at her. Pink hair wild, pink gaze blazing, both hands white-knuckling her oversized sword like she was debating whether to hit the Golem or him.
[Warning: Environmental temperature 1,200°C.]
[User Resistance: 50,000%.]
[Result: Feels like a warm bath.]
His hand closed around the core.
"Hey Elizabeth," he called back over his shoulder, red gaze catching the magma's glow, hand wrapped around a white-hot elemental heart. The light carved every line of his jaw, every cord of muscle in his forearm.
"Do you think lava cake is supposed to be crunchy or chewy?"
Her mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. Nothing came out.
In the sky, the giant Eye narrowed. The gods had sent a culling event, and they had accidentally sent a grocery delivery.
Liam pulled.
The sound that followed was the Golem's chest tearing open and also, simultaneously, the complete structural failure of the starter iron set, which had been holding on by increasingly desperate margins since the appearance sync and had now encountered a load it could not survive. The chest plate departed at speed. The greaves gave up entirely. Every buckle, strap, and joint that had been fighting a losing battle against his actual proportions surrendered at once.
What remained was a barefoot six-foot-six man standing in a pool of liquid rock holding a pulsing volcanic core, wearing what could generously be described as Armour-adjacent debris. The firelight painted every ridge of muscle across his torso, steam curling off pale skin, white tail swaying low and heavy behind him. He smelled like char, hot iron, and grape syrup—a combination that had no business making anyone's mouth water.
[System: Durability of Starter Iron Set has reached negative 5,000%.]
[Equipment size mismatch is generating a Presence debuff in all nearby observers.]
[Goddess Hestia has logged off to scream into a pillow.]
Elizabeth had stopped shouting. Both hands pressed over her mouth, green gaze wide, the sword forgotten on the ground beside her. Her ears were trembling. Her face was the exact shade of her hair.
She was staring at his chest. Then his shoulders. Then the cut of muscle that ran from his hip down below what was left of the waistband. Then back to his chest. Then very deliberately at the sky.
Liam looked at the core, looked at the sky, looked at the Eye that had started this whole thing, and took a bite.
[CALAMITY-GRADE INGREDIENT CONSUMED.]
[10,000x BUFF ACTIVATED.]
The multiplier hit the raw elemental energy of a world boss ingredient, and the result was not subtle. A pillar of white light erupted from Liam and punched straight up through the clouds, through the Eye, and apparently through whatever server infrastructure was hosting the gods' observation feed, because the Eye flickered, glitched, turned to static, and went dark.
[System Error: Event log corrupted.]
[Reason: Unexpected graphical anomaly.]
[The Culling has concluded]
[Result: Unknown.]
The plaza was still except for the cooling hiss of slag and the distant sound of the last fleeing players stopping at the gate because the threat notification had disappeared.
Liam swallowed, considered the flavour profile for a moment, and reached for his notebook.
Crunchy, definitely crunchy. Notes for next time: needs salt.
He heard her footsteps. Slow, uneven, picking through the cooling rubble toward him, he turned.
Elizabeth was close. Closer than she usually stood. Her hands hung at her sides, fingers curling and uncurling. She still had pink cheeks, ears, neck, all the way down past her collar. Her breathing was unsteady. She was looking at his collarbone like it had personally insulted her.
"You just," she said, and stopped. Started again, her throat bobbed.
"You ate the raid boss."
"Field boss," Liam corrected.
"You ate it while it was hitting you while your armour exploded. While the gods watched."
"I also finished the soda recipe," Liam said. "It was a productive afternoon."
Elizabeth looked at him for a long moment, at the steam rising off his bare shoulders, at the cooling lava around his feet, at the notebook he was now writing in with complete calm.
She sat down on a piece of rubble.
"I need a minute," she said.
"Take your time," Liam said. "I still need to find a shirt," he said, straightening up.