Pain.
That was the first thing. Cold, sharp, and smelling of rust.
Ren gasped, his lungs dragging in air that tasted like sulfur and old blood. He tried to sit up, but his body refused to cooperate. It felt heavy, disconnected, like he was piloting a suit of armor three sizes too big.
Where...
He blinked. His vision was a static-filled mess. For a second, the world appeared as gray wireframes, flickering in and out of existence. Then, color snapped back in.
He was not in a hospital. He was not in his apartment.
He was lying on a mountain of garbage.
Broken swords, shattered shields, twisted metal plates, and bones, thousands of bones, stretched out as far as the eye could see. The sky above was a bruised purple, choked with thick, swirling clouds that blocked out any sunlight.
Ren pushed himself up, his hand slipping on something slick. He looked down. He was gripping the hilt of a sword. The blade was snapped in half, the metal pitted with orange rust.
But as his fingers brushed the corroded steel, a text box; obnoxious, bright blue, and translucent, popped into the air.
[Item: Broken Iron Sword] [Durability: 2/50] [Properties: None] [Hidden Data: Rust (Texture Layer)]
Ren stared at it. He squeezed his eyes shut, shook his head, and opened them again. The box remained, hovering stubbornly over the junk.
"Hallucinations," he said, his voice raspy. It sounded wrong. Higher pitched. Younger. "Concussion. Has to be."
He tried to stand, his legs trembling under the effort. He looked down at himself. He wore rags, burlap sacks stitched together with twine. His arms were thin, malnourished sticks. These were not his hands. His real hands had calluses from typing and soldering irons. These hands were soft, weak, and caked in filth.
Transmigration.
The word floated to the surface of his mind. He would read the novels. He hated them. Illogical fantasies for people who could not handle reality.
And now he was in one.
He looked around the trash pit again. If this was a game, he had spawned in the worst possible zone. No tutorial. No weapon. Just trash.
Growl.
The sound didn't come from his stomach.
Ren froze. The sound came from behind a pile of twisted scrap metal ten meters away.
A wolf stepped out. But calling it a wolf was generous. It was the size of a pony, its fur matted with oil and blood. Its jaw hung open, revealing rows of teeth that looked like serrated knives. Its eyes glowed with a dull, hungry red light.
[Entity: Scavenger Wolf (Tier 0)] [Status: Starving] [Threat Assessment: Lethal]
Ren's heart hammered against his ribs. Lethal. Yeah, no kidding.
He scrambled backward, his boots sliding on loose gravel. The wolf lowered its head, a low rumble vibrating in its throat. It was not in a rush. It knew the prey was cornered.
Ren's hand grasped blindly for a weapon. He found a stick. A piece of rotted wood, maybe a handle from a broken shovel.
[Item: Rotted Wood Shaft] [Durability: 1/10] [Damage: 0]
Useless.
The wolf lunged.
It was not a cinematic leap. It was a blur of dirty fur and teeth. Ren threw himself to the side, instinct taking over. He rolled over a pile of sharp metal, feeling something slice his cheek. The wolf crashed into the trash where he had been standing, its jaws snapping shut on empty air.
Ren scrambled to his feet, adrenaline flooding his system. He needed a weapon. Anything.
His eyes darted around. Broken shield? Too heavy. Bent spear? Too far away.
His gaze landed on a shard of glass sticking out of the mud near his foot. It was green, jagged, likely from a broken potion bottle.
[Item: Glass Shard] [Property: Sharpness (Level 1)] [Durability: 1/1]
He grabbed it. The glass bit into his palm, drawing blood.
The wolf turned, snarling. It crouched, muscles coiling for the second jump.
Ren held up the glass shard. It was tiny. A joke. If he stabbed the wolf with this, it would shatter instantly. The wolf's hide looked like leather armor.
Think. You are an engineer. Think.
The text boxes hovered in his vision. [Rotted Wood Shaft] in his left hand. [Glass Shard] in his right.
He saw the data. The glass had the property [Sharpness]. The wood had... nothing. But the wood had reach.
A crazy idea sparked. It was not magic. It was a cut-and-paste job.
Ren focused on the glass shard. He didn't imagine a spell. He imagined a cursor. He mentally clicked on the property [Sharpness].
He felt a strange sensation in his brain, like a muscle twitching deep inside his skull. The blue text over the glass shard flickered.
[Extracting...]
The glass turned gray. It became dull, smooth, harmless. It was no longer sharp.
Ren slammed his right hand onto the wooden stick in his left.
[Imbuing...]
Paste.
[Error Check: Material Compatible.] [Success.]
The rotted wood didn't change shape. It didn't glow. It didn't look magical. But to Ren's eyes, the data changed instantly.
[Item: Rotted Wood Shaft] [Property: Sharpness (Level 1)]
The wolf launched itself at him.
Ren didn't swing. He didn't have the strength to swing. He simply held the stick out like a spear, bracing the end against his hip, pointing the blunt wooden tip directly at the wolf's open mouth.
The wolf didn't even try to dodge. Why would it? It was a stick. It would snap against its hide.
The wooden tip met the wolf's chest.
Logic dictated the wood should break. Physics dictated the blunt surface should bounce off.
But the Property dictated otherwise.
The wood sank into the wolf's flesh as if it were made of mono-molecular steel. It sliced through skin, muscle, and bone without resistance.
The wolf yelped, a high-pitched, confused sound, as its own momentum skewered it. The stick punched straight through its heart and burst out of its spine.
The beast crashed into Ren, the weight knocking him backward into the filth. The wolf twitched once, twice, and then went still.
Ren lay there, pinned under the stinking carcass, his chest heaving.
[Target Eliminated.] [Experience Gain: 0 (System Error)]
He shoved the heavy body off him and scrambled away, gasping for breath. He looked at the stick in his hand.
It was covered in blood. It was still just a piece of rotted wood. But the edge where it had entered the wolf was perfectly clean, as if cut by a laser.
Ren let out a dry, hacking laugh. He wiped the blood from his cheek, looking up at the purple sky with a cold, calculating hunger.
"Ctrl-C," he said. "Ctrl-V."
He could work with this.