The crunch-crunch sound behind me didn't stop.
It was Miri, finishing off the door of a family sedan. It chewed through steel and window glass as if they were shrimp crackers. The sound was excruciating, like a fork scraping against a ceramic plate, but to me, it was the sound of a machine at work.
I walked down the gridlocked highway. The sun began to set, painting the purple sky with streaks of dirty orange. The city was burning. Black smoke billowed from skyscrapers downtown, creating a jagged, pathetic silhouette. Sirens wailed in the distance, but no fire trucks were coming.
My steps were heavy. My right thigh throbbed in rhythm with my heart. Every step was a negotiation between willpower and pain. My Stamina was in the orange zone. My Mana was absolute zero. I needed rest. I needed food—not electricity or iron, but human calories.
But I couldn't stop. Stopping in the open meant death.
[Miri Status]
[Iron Consumed: 12kg / 50kg]
[Growth: 24%]
It was growing fast. Its body, once the size of a cat, was now the size of a chubby bulldog. Its soft black skin now had a permanent metallic sheen, reflecting the firelight from burning buildings.
Every time it swallowed a chunk of iron, I could see glowing red veins beneath its skin. Heat radiated from it. The asphalt beneath its feet softened with every step.
It wasn't just a gluttonous monster anymore. It was like a walking nuclear reactor with a leaking cooling system. Unstable. Dangerous.
It tried to bite a car tire.
"Don't eat the rubber," I scolded without looking back. "That's junk food. Doesn't add to your defense stats. Focus on the chassis."
Miri hissed, spitting out the rubber chunk with disgust, then went back to biting the wheel rim. It was starting to understand its manager's taste.
We passed a row of luxury cars abandoned by panicked owners.
On the sidewalk, I saw the corpse of a man in an expensive suit. He was face down, his back torn open by Goblin claws. In his stiff right hand, he still clutched the keys to the red sports car next to him. As if in his final second, he thought the car could save him.
I crouched beside him.
His leather wallet peeked out of his suit pocket. Thick. Probably full of platinum credit cards or a stack of cash.
I ignored it. Paper and plastic were worthless now. Inflation had hit infinity in an hour.
My eyes fell on his wrist. A skeleton mechanical watch. Gears made of white gold and titanium.
I grabbed the stiff hand. Cold. Rigor mortis setting in. I had to break the thumb slightly to remove the watch.
Crack.
Sorry, Mr. CEO. You don't need time anymore.
Then I opened the car trunk. There was a set of titanium golf clubs. Light, strong, expensive.
"Raw materials," I muttered.
[Forge].
The golf clubs and the watch vanished. My Grimoire stored them as [Titanium Alloy Bar - Rare] and [Precision Gear - Uncommon].
I didn't need to play golf. I needed the materials for future fusion.
Others saw tragedy. I saw commodities scattered on the street. The market was 100% off.
We reached a large intersection.
Here, the reality of the apocalypse was clearer.
An emergency Safe Zone had formed in the courtyard of a half-collapsed mall. Barricades were haphazardly made from stacks of café tables, concrete flower pots, and forcefully pushed cars.
There were about fifty people there.
The atmosphere was heavy. Children crying. Elderly people mumbling prayers. The sharp smell of sweat, urine, and fear.
They held makeshift weapons—kitchen knives, chair legs, bricks, mop handles. They huddled near a bonfire made from a pile of bookstore books.
As Miri and I approached, the atmosphere went silent instantly.
Miri was dragging a car bumper in its mouth. The sound of metal scraping asphalt broke the night's silence. Scrape... scrape...
Fifty pairs of eyes stared at us.
They saw my jacket covered in dried black blood and oil stains.
They saw the dirty bandage on my thigh seeping blood.
They saw the metallic black monster chewing iron at my feet, steam venting from its mouth.
A large man—wearing a security uniform too tight for his gut—stepped forward behind the table barricade. He held a rubber baton. His hands shook.
"Hey!" he barked. His voice cracking at the end. "Take that animal away! There are civilians here!"
I stopped.
I scanned the man.
[Security Guard - Lvl 1].
Gear: Uniform (Common). Weapon: Rubber Baton (Junk).
Then I looked at the crowd behind him.
Average Level 1. Full HP, but Mental shattered.
Some people were holding white cards (Common) in their hands—probably drops from Goblins that happened to die—but they held them like they were holding bombs, confused and afraid.
"Relax," I said. My voice hoarse and tired. "It doesn't eat meat. It only eats iron. Put your weapons away, and you're safe. Point your weapons, and it'll consider you a snack."
"We don't trust you!" a woman screamed hysterically. "Leave! You bring danger here!"
I could have left. Too lazy to deal with mass panic.
But my eyes caught something in the corner of the plaza, outside the circle of firelight.
On a blue tarp, there was a pile of "trash" they had collected.
Mutated rat carcasses. Goblin skin scraps. Wolf teeth. Blood pooling underneath.
It smelled rotten, swarmed by flies.
They piled it there out of disgust. They considered it disease waste. Enemy corpses to be disposed of.
My eyes lit up. My fatigue vanished a little.
They were throwing away Experience. They were throwing away Materials. They were throwing away Money.
I walked closer to the barricade. The security guard stepped back as Miri growled low, thin smoke drifting from its nose.
"You don't know how to use that pile?" I asked, pointing at the blue tarp.
"Those are monster corpses," the guard said, cold sweat running down his temples. "We... we're going to burn them tomorrow morning so they don't cause a plague."
"Burn them," I repeated. My heart ached hearing it. Criminal waste of assets.
I vaulted over the café table barricade. The guard flinched, but didn't dare hit me. Miri's predatory aura was too strong.
I walked to the pile of corpses. The stench was piercing, but to me, it smelled of opportunity.
I picked up a large rat carcass from the pile.
"This system is transaction-based," I explained briefly, loud enough for the people in the back to hear. "You kill, you get a corpse. Corpses aren't trash. Corpses are currency."
I placed my hand on the carcass.
[Forge].
Slurp.
The rat carcass vanished, sucked into black smoke.
The crowd gasped. Horrified whispers erupted. "Magic?" "Is he a Necromancer Class?"
A card appeared in my hand. [Bone Spike].
I held the card high.
"See this? This is a weapon. Sharper than your kitchen knives. Lighter than a brick. And won't break when you hit something."
Then, I made an investment.
I threw the card at the security guard's feet.
"Free. Promotional sample."
The guard hesitated. He looked at the white card, then at me.
With trembling hands, he picked it up.
"Activate," I ordered.
He mumbled, "Activate."
Flash.
A half-meter long bone spike appeared in his hand, replacing his rubber baton.
His eyes widened.
He felt the small stat boost (+2 Strength). His posture changed. His back straightened. The fear on his face slowly turned into... intoxication.
It was the taste of Power. Pure dopamine for people who felt helpless.
And not just him.
Everyone there stared at the bone spike hungrily. Their fear of my monster vanished for a moment, replaced by greed.
They were sheep surrounded by wolves. And I had just shown them that I could sell them wolf teeth.
"You... can make more?" asked a young man holding a bent golf club.
I smiled thinly.
The bait was taken.
"I can. But the next ones aren't free."
I pointed at the pile of carcasses on the blue tarp.
"I will take this 'trash' as payment. I will clean this area of disease. And in exchange, I will teach you how to survive tonight."
They looked at each other.
To them, it was a stupid deal that benefited them. I became the garbage man, and they got protection.
They thought they were scamming me.
They didn't know that one rat carcass in my hand, once fused, was worth ten times my security service.
"Agreed," the guard said quickly, gripping his new weapon tight. "Take it. Take it all."
I nodded.
I sat in the corner of the plaza, far from the crowd but close enough to watch my new assets.
Miri lay at my feet, back to chewing the car bumper it carried.
I opened my status panel.
[Name: Rax]
[Level: 4]
[Soul Capacity: 18 / 25]
[Assets: 45 Common Cards, 3 Uncommon Cards, 1 Rare Card (Unusable), 1 Epic Core]
I looked at those people. Level 1. Zero Gear. Zero Knowledge.
I was Level 4. I had a weapons factory in my pocket.
I didn't need to explain the chasm between us.
The way they looked at me—a mix of fear and need—explained everything.
Suddenly, the ground shook gently.
Plastic cups on the ground trembled.
Not the vibration of a normal monster's footsteps.
This was tectonic vibration. Deep and heavy.
People in the Safe Zone screamed in panic. "Earthquake! Another earthquake!"
Children cried. Table barricades rattled.
I looked up, toward the city center.
Between the burning buildings, where the black smoke gathered thickest... something was rising.
A giant shadow blocked out the remaining light of the afternoon sun.
Its size was nonsensical. As tall as a thirty-story building. Roughly humanoid in shape, but made of bridge concrete, road asphalt, and building steel frames fused together.
[World Event: The Siege Golem Awakens]
[Raid Boss detected in Sector 1]
The monster took a step.
BOOM.
One footstep flattened a residential block into dust. The shockwave was felt even here, two kilometers away.
System sirens blared across the city sky, deafening.
The people around me shattered mentally.
The guard dropped his bone spike, his face deathly pale. "We're going to die... God, everyone is going to die..."
They saw the apocalypse.
I stayed seated.
I rubbed Miri's head. It stopped eating. Its iron hackles stood up. It hissed, animal instinct knowing that was an untouchable apex predator.
But I wasn't afraid.
I narrowed my eyes, staring at the 300-meter tall Golem.
I didn't see a natural disaster.
I saw millions of tons of Reinforced Concrete Material.
I saw a Core the size of a truck.
I saw a walking Mythic card.
Of course, I couldn't kill it now. I was just an ant to it.
But a patient ant knows how to wait for the elephant to fall.
"The market is undergoing a massive correction, Miri," I whispered.
I picked up a rat carcass from the pile next to me.
[Forge].
One more card. One more asset.
Others prayed to be saved.
I was accumulating capital to buy that salvation.
"The night shift has just begun," I mumbled.