Dev Whartz built anyway. Not to flatten everything, but to connect it. He carved clean connection roads from John's town to another town, smoothing turns and making the route make sense to travelers who wanted to move fast and not get lost.
Dev kept John's original road too. The messy stretch stayed, like a scar and a signature. To Dev it was respect: keep the old, add the new. To John it was betrayal, because his demand was not about layout, it was about being heard.
John saw fresh blocks cutting through land beside his work, like someone writing over his story while claiming they were helping. The connection roads looked neat, and that made it worse. Neat meant replaceable. Neat meant his pain could be edited.
He crashed out. Not a small argument, not a calm debate. He went at Dev in chat, angry and hurt, saying it did not matter that the old road stayed. You still built. You still crossed the line. You still proved the threat meant nothing.
Players tried to calm it down. Some defended Dev, saying the server needed real roads. Some defended John, saying you do not touch a man's grief project after he warned you. But grief does not compromise. It explodes, then it leaves.
John stood at the edge of the new connection, staring like it was a line he could not cross without losing the last thing he controlled. Then he did exactly what he said he would do: he quit the server. No ceremony. No long goodbye. Just gone.
The town remained: crooked houses, scuffed streets, strange turns, and roads that made sense only to the one who built them. The players turned the joke into a memorial. They founded JohnWeatherTMC, kept the rough style, and preserved it in his memory.