Chapter 18: One Hour of Trash
The air tasted like ozone and rust.
Kael stood in the middle of his workshop, chest heaving. The silver spear that had just missed his head by an inch was still embedded in the wooden floor behind him. The wood was smoking.
He didn’t have time to breathe.
"One hour," the examiner said again. His voice echoed off the walls. Cold. Final. "Starting. Now."
The heavy iron door slammed shut with a sound like a coffin closing. _CLANG._
A red light blinked above it. Locked. Sealed. No one was getting in or out.
Kael was trapped.
For a second, everything was silent.
Just him. The trash. And the ticking in his head.
_Thump. Thump._
The *Trash Core* in his chest pocket. It was beating faster. Panicking. Just like him.
"Shit," Kael whispered. His voice cracked. "Shit, shit, shit."
He wasn’t a fighter. He was a crafter. A garbage collector. The System had given him the worst class in the world and now it wanted him to pass a C-Rank trial in one hour?
He looked down at his hands. They were shaking. Cut up. Burned from three days of non-stop forging.
This was impossible.
The examiner’s voice came from the other side of the door. Muffled, but clear.
"I’ll be back in 60 minutes, Kael of the Dump. If you’re not strong enough, you go back to the trash. Forever."
Footsteps. Walking away.
Kael sank to his knees. The concrete was cold against his palms.
He could quit. He could open the door in an hour and say he failed. Go back to collecting bottles. Live a quiet, shitty life.
The core in his pocket pulsed. _Thump._
And he remembered.
Chapter 1. Waking up in the dump.
Chapter 5. Crafting his first knife from a spoon.
Chapter 12. Killing a D-rank wolf with a spear made of pipes.
Chapter 16. Saying "I will be C-Rank."
He clenched his fists. The cuts reopened. Blood dripped onto the floor.
"No," Kael said to the empty room. "No way."
He stood up. Slowly. Then faster.
"ONE HOUR?!" he yelled at the door. "THAT’S MORE THAN ENOUGH!"
The fear was gone. Replaced by something else. Anger. Determination. Madness.
He turned and looked at his workshop.
It was a mess. Always was.
Piles of scrap metal to his left. A mountain of broken electronics in the corner. Rusted pipes. Shattered glass. The fang of that D-rank beast hanging on the wall. A dead mana crystal, cracked and useless, sitting on a shelf.
Trash.
All of it was trash.
And trash was all he had.
"Alright," Kael muttered, rolling up his sleeves. "Let’s see what you can do."
*Minute 59:00*
He started with the core.
It was still warm. Still pulsing. _Thump. Thump._
He laid it on the workbench. The blue light from inside made his face look like a ghost.
The System had said "Trash cannot hold mana."
The System was wrong.
Kael grabbed copper wire. Thin. Brittle. He started wrapping it around the core. One loop. Two loops.
The wire burned his fingers. He didn’t stop.
"Come on," he hissed. "Hold together. Please."
Sparks jumped. The core vibrated.
[System Warning: Instability at 80%]
"I know!" Kael snapped back. Sweat was dripping into his eyes. He wiped it with his forearm and kept working.
*Minute 50:00*
He needed a body. Something to carry the core.
He grabbed a broken fan. Ripped the blades off. Bent the frame with his bare hands until it was round. Rough. Ugly.
He jammed the core into the center.
It fit. Barely.
The whole thing wobbled. It looked like a child’s toy.
"Pathetic," Kael laughed to himself. "Absolutely pathetic."
But it was flying. A few inches off the bench. Wobbling, but flying.
*Minute 40:00*
Weapons. He needed weapons.
He couldn’t make a sword in 40 minutes. Not a real one.
So he didn’t.
He grabbed nails. Screws. Broken glass. Bottle caps.
He tied them to thin strings and attached the strings to the drone frame.
A swarm.
He wasn’t going to fight with one big attack.
He was going to fight with a thousand small ones.
The drone buzzed. The strings tightened. The trash rattled.
*Minute 30:00*
His mana was half gone. His vision was blurry.
He drank water from a dirty bottle. It tasted like metal.
He looked at the time he’d scratched into the wall. 30 minutes left.
Too slow. He was moving too slow.
Kael grabbed the beast fang from the wall. The one from the D-rank wolf.
It was sharp. It was angry. It still had traces of mana in it.
He drove it into the center of the core.
The workshop screamed.
The lights flickered. The walls cracked. The drone shot up to the ceiling and slammed back down.
[System Notification]
*Warning! Foreign Material Detected!*
*Instability: 95%!*
*Risk of Explosion: CRITICAL!*
Kael put his hand on the shaking machine.
"Shut up," he whispered. "I know what I’m doing."
He didn’t. But he had to pretend he did.
*Minute 20:00*
The drone was done.
It was 2 feet wide. A circle of bent metal and wire. The Trash Core glowed in the middle like a heart. Nails and glass hung from it like teeth.
It was ugly.
It was unstable.
It was perfect.
Kael named it in his head.
"Scrap."
He lifted it with both hands. It was heavy. Hot.
*Minute 10:00*
He could hear the examiner outside. Pacing.
Kael could hear his own heartbeat now. Louder than the core.
He stood in the center of the workshop. Trash was floating around him. Pulled by the drone’s field.
Five minutes left.
The drone beeped. Once.
[System Notification]
*Creation Complete: [Trash Drone - Grade E]*
*Ability: [Scrap Swarm] - Controls up to 200 pieces of nearby debris*
*Duration: 5 Minutes. Then self-destruct.*
Five minutes.
Kael smiled. It was a broken, bloody smile.
"Five minutes is all I need."
*Minute 05:00*
The door shook.
_BOOM._
The examiner was testing it.
"30 seconds!" his voice boomed.
Kael took a deep breath. He held Scrap up in front of him.
The core pulsed one last time. _THUMP._
And then the door exploded.
Wood and metal flew into the room. Dust filled the air.
Standing in the smoke was the examiner. Silver armor. Tall spear. No expression.
He looked at Kael. Then at the hovering mess of garbage.
"...Is that it?" the examiner asked. Disappointment dripping from every word. "That’s what you made?"
Kael didn’t answer.
He raised his hand.
The trash behind the examiner lifted off the ground.
Bottle caps. Nails. Screws. A broken pipe. A shard of glass.
All of it pointed at the man in silver.
The examiner’s eyes widened. Just a fraction.
Kael grinned.
"Welcome," he said, voice hoarse. "To my C-Rank Exam."
Scrap shrieked and dove forward.
The swarm followed.
To Be Continued...
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