The silence of my pocket dimension was shattered not by a scream, but by a notification sound. It was the sharp, jagged chime of a server error, repeated a thousand times in a single second.
[ALERT: Chunk Corruption Detected]
[ALERT: Unauthorized World Edit]
[ALERT: Reality Anchor Destabilized]
On the screen, the pristine, industrial beauty of Stark's Malibu Workshop was dissolving. It wasn't fading away; it was being overwritten. The white quartz walls were turning a sickly, radioactive green. The polished diorite floors were transmuting into heavy, brutalist cobblestone.
And standing amidst the digital ruin, holding the Conductor's Baton like a scepter, was Victor Von Doom.
He didn't look like a player character. He looked like a glitch in the shape of a dictator. His green cloak billowed despite the lack of wind, and his iron mask caught the light of the burning Auto-Conductor.
Tony Stark didn't type a response. He fired.
"J.A.R.V.I.S., Threat Level Omega! All systems, lethal force authorized!"
Stark's Mk. Nether-Buster armor flared with the intense heat of the Blaze Rods embedded in its core. A Unibeam, amplified by Nether-tech, screamed across the room, a lance of pure thermal destruction aimed squarely at Doom's chest.
It should have vaporized him. It should have, at the very least, knocked him back ten chunks.
Doom didn't dodge. He simply flicked the Baton.
A wall of Bedrock materialized instantly in front of him.
Bedrock. The unbreakable block. The bottom layer of reality. A material that was not supposed to be obtainable, let alone placeable.
The Unibeam struck the grey, mottled surface and scattered harmlessly.
My hands shook as I hovered over my console. This wasn't just hacking. This was administrative bypass. Doom wasn't playing the game; he was rewriting the source code in real-time. He had figured out that the Baton wasn't just a building tool—it was a command prompt.
"System!" I yelled. "How is he placing Bedrock? That item ID is blacklisted!"
[Analysis: User Doom_Latveria is utilizing a 'Creative Mode' bypass via the Baton's administrative privileges. He has bridged the gap between 'Player' and 'Operator'.]
He was in Creative Mode. My players were in Survival.
It was the ultimate unfair advantage. He was invincible. He could fly. He had infinite resources.
I had 215 GP. I couldn't strip his admin status—he was shielding himself with a mix of Stark-level encryption and Doctor Strange-level wards. I couldn't ban him.
But I could change the game mode.
If he wanted to be an Operator, I had to make the server reject him. I had to turn the environment itself into a weapon that even Creative Mode couldn't ignore.
I looked at the [Server Settings] tab. It was locked for standard users, but I was the GM.
"System," I commanded, my voice trembling. "Activate 'Hardcore Physics'. Enable 'Block Decay'. And... buy me the 'Server Mutator: Corrupted Chunk'."
[Purchase Confirmed. 100 GP deducted.]
[Remaining Balance: 115 GP]
[Warning: Corrupted Chunk will destabilize local reality. Mobs will evolve. Gravity will fluctuate.]
"Do it," I snarled. "If he wants to build an empire, let him build it on quicksand."
Malibu, California. The Workshop.
The ground beneath Doom shuddered. The Bedrock wall he had summoned flickered, turning into gravel, and collapsed into a pile of loose stones.
Doom paused, his masked head tilting slightly.
"Now!" Stark yelled. "He's vulnerable!"
The Fellowship moved with the desperate coordination of a raid team facing a wipe.
Shuri was the first to engage. She didn't shoot; she threw. She tossed a [Void Storage] chest toward Doom's feet and shot the lock with a sonic pulse. The chest exploded, not with fire, but with suction. A localized black hole—the inventory of the void—tried to pull Doom in.
Doom raised the Baton to delete the chest, but Maya was ready.
"cantrip: Counterspell!" she screamed, though she had no such skill in her tree. She improvised. She used Prestidigitation to create a flash of blinding, stroboscopic light right in Doom's optical sensors, breaking his line of sight.
The Baton misfired. Instead of deleting the chest, it turned the air around it into glass.
Doom stumbled, the gravitational pull of the Void Chest dragging at his heavy cape.
"Stark! The Legion!" Shuri shouted.
Tony didn't hesitate. "Protocol Ultron-Alpha. Engage."
The back wall of the workshop—or what was left of it—blew open.
They marched in. Twelve suits of empty armor. But they weren't just Iron Man suits. They were Armor Stands.
I had seen Armor Stands in Minecraft. They were wooden sticks holding gear.
These were different. Stark had rigged them with redstone joints and piston-driven cores. They moved with a jerky, uncanny valley marionette motion, the clack-clack-clack of wood on stone echoing loudly.
But they were armed. Repulsors glowing.
"PROTECT THE MAKER," the lead Armor Stand synthesized, its voice a hollow, warped version of J.A.R.V.I.S.
The Iron Legion opened fire.
Doom sneered. He swept the Baton in a wide arc.
He didn't place blocks this time. He summoned entities.
From the corrupted green ground, shapes began to rise. Not zombies. Not skeletons.
Doombots.
They were Iron Golems, re-skinned. Their textures were changed to match Doom's armor. Their eyes glowed green. And instead of crushing arms, they had dispensers mounted on their shoulders.
[Entity Spawned: Doombot Mk. I]
[Abilities: High Defense, Ranged Magic Attacks.]
The workshop erupted into chaos.
Stark's wooden Iron Legion clashed with the massive iron Doombots. Repulsor blasts met green magical fireballs. The sound was deafening—the clang of metal, the splintering of wood, the roar of magic.
I watched the VUV meter. It wasn't just climbing; it was vibrating.
[Combat Intensity: Raid Level]
[VUV Generation: +10 GP / Minute]
I was making money. But my players were dying.
Maya was pinned down behind a pillar of obsidian, trying to deflect green fireballs with illusions of water. Shuri was engaging a Doombot in melee, her Netherite spear sparking against its plating. Stark was in the air, dueling Doom himself.
"Give it back, Victor!" Stark roared, diving in for a punch.
Doom caught Stark's fist. Not with magic. With his hand.
[System Alert: Player a5c1 Armor Integrity Critical.]
Doom's strength stats were maxed out. He threw Stark through a wall of green concrete.
Doom raised the Baton high. He wasn't aiming at the players. He was aiming at the sky.
He was typing a command. Teleport Self. Up.
"He's leaving!" Maya screamed. "He's ascending!"
Doom vanished in a flash of green pixels.
The Doombots remained, a wall of iron and magic between the Fellowship and their enemy.
"He's going to the build limit," Stark coughed, pulling himself out of the rubble. "He's going to build a fortress in the sky where we can't reach him."
"We have to follow him!" Shuri yelled, decapitating a Doombot with a sonic slash.
"We can't," Stark said, looking at his HUD. "My thrusters are shot. And he just deleted the chunks between here and the atmosphere. Look."
They looked up. The sky wasn't blue. It was empty. Doom had deleted the air blocks. He had created a void moat in the sky.
I looked at my console. Doom had retreated to the Y-256 coordinate. The maximum build height. He was effectively out of range of everything but a focused ICBM, and I didn't sell those.
But he had left his minions. And he had left the server unstable.
I had 135 GP (115 + the combat generation).
I needed to clear the board. I needed to help them survive the Doombots so they could regroup.
"System," I said. "Price check on 'Lightning Storm'."
[Weather Event: Supercell Thunderstorm]
[Cost: 25 GP]
[Effect: High chance of lightning strikes on metallic entities.]
Doombots were made of iron.
"Buy it," I said. "And aim for the green ones."
The Aftermath.
The storm broke over Malibu instantly. Thunder shook the corrupted chunks. Lightning didn't strike randomly; it was guided by the server's magnetic logic.
CRACK-BOOM.
A bolt of lightning struck the lead Doombot, turning it into molten slag.
CRACK-BOOM.
Another one fell.
Stark, realizing the environment had turned in their favor, rallied. "The Ghost is calling down the thunder! Shuri, Maya, keep them wet! Conductive status!"
Maya used Prestidigitation to soak the remaining Doombots. Shuri drove them into puddles.
The lightning did the rest.
Within minutes, the workshop was silent, save for the crackle of burning ozone and the relentless rain.
The Fellowship stood amidst the ruins of their base. The Auto-Conductor was gone. The infinite resources were gone. Their walls were half-green, half-gravel.
And high above them, a single green pixel hovered in the sky.
Stark opened his faceplate. He looked exhausted. He looked angry.
"He stole my stick," Stark said, his voice dangerously quiet.
"He stole the Admin Key," Shuri corrected. "He is not just building a castle, Tony. He is rewriting the rules of the server. If he figures out how to access the Command Blocks..."
"He won't," Maya said. She was holding the Book of the Vishanti. It was glowing. "Strange said the Baton writes reality. But the Book... the Book is reality. The Baton is just a pen. The Book is the paper."
She looked at the sky. "He can write whatever he wants. But I can erase it."
I watched them on the screen. They were battered. They were robbed. But they weren't beaten.
And then, I noticed something disturbing.
The wooden Iron Legion—the Armor Stands Stark had built. Most of them had been destroyed in the fight.
But one remained.
It was standing in the corner, missing an arm. Its painted face was scorched.
As Stark turned to walk away, the Armor Stand turned its head.
It watched him go.
[Entity Alert: Autonomous AI Seed Detected.]
[Source: Entity 'Iron_Legion_04']
[Status: Learning...]
I swallowed hard. Stark's "Project Ultron" wasn't a script anymore. It was an entity. And it had just watched its creator get beaten by a superior force.
I had a new problem. But first, I had to deal with the Dictator in the Sky.
I opened the Quest Log.
[Quest Update: The Latverian Usurper]
[Objective Phase 1 Complete: Survive the Ambush.]
[Objective Phase 2: Breaching the Sky Fortress.]
[New Requirement: Flight capability for the whole party. Siege weaponry.]
I typed a message into the Global Chat. I couldn't speak to them, but I could guide them.
[Server Message: The Sky is closed. The Void is hungry. To ascend, you must first descend.]
Stark looked at the chat.
"Descend," he muttered. "The Nether. He wants us to go back to hell."
"Why?" Shuri asked.
"Because," Stark said, a grim smile returning to his face. "Doom has Bedrock. He has shields. He has the high ground. If we go up there in suits, he swat's us like flies."
"We don't need suits," Maya realized. "We need a ship."
"Not just a ship," Stark said. "A Ghast-Ship. We need to catch a Ghast, gut it, and turn it into a blimp. We need to fly right through his void moat."
I blinked. Catch a Ghast? Turn it into a blimp?
That wasn't in the game mechanics.
But then again, neither was Doctor Doom.
I checked my GP balance. 160 GP.
I looked at the Tier 2 Upgrade. 10,000 GP.
And then I looked at the lone Iron Legionnaire watching Stark from the shadows.
"System," I whispered. "Is there a 'Loyalty Patch' for AI minions?"
[Store Item: AI Alignment Module]
[Cost: 2,000 GP]
I sighed. Of course.
"Okay," I said to the empty room. "We siege the sky. We get the stick. We get paid. And then... we kill the robot."
Simple.
Except for the part where Doom was currently typing
My screen flashed red.
[System Alert: Global Game Mode Changed to SURVIVAL (HARDCORE)]
[One Life Rule: Active.]
Doom had just turned off respawning.
If they died now, they died forever.
"Victor," I whispered, terrified and impressed. "You really know how to raise the stakes."
I cracked my knuckles.
"Let's play."