The wreckage of the FNS Goliath, an Aegis-Class Destroyer from the Consolidation Wars, loomed over Ren like a mountain of dead gods. It had been stripped of its valuable mana engines and weaponry centuries ago, leaving behind a hollow, rusting carcass the size of a city block.
It sat in a crater of its own making, half-buried in toxic sludge.
Ren stood at the base of the hull, his neck craning back to see the top. The metal was cold, thick, and covered in barnacles of hardened chemical waste. To a normal Scavenger, this was just scenery—too heavy to cut, too rusted to sell.
To Ren, it was a banquet.
"If I eat this..." Ren muttered, his voice trembling with a mix of fear and anticipation. "If I eat this, I won't just be strong. I'll be a monster."
He checked the timer on his retina.
[Touch of The Grey King]
Time Remaining: 21:14:03
He had plenty of time. He wiped his sweaty left palm on his pants. He took a deep breath, filling his lungs with the acrid air of the dump.
He stepped forward and pressed his right hand against the thick plating of the hull.
"Consume."
GROAAAAN.
The sound wasn't the soft hiss of the car disintegrating. It was a deep, tectonic groan, as if the earth itself was complaining. The Goliath shuddered.
A web of grey cracks, glowing with eerie necrotic light, shot out from Ren's palm. They raced up the side of the ship faster than lightning, branching out, covering the massive hull in a spiderweb of decay.
One second. The rivets popped.
Two seconds. The structural beams turned to ash.
Three seconds.
BOOM.
The sound of ten thousand tons of military-grade durasteel collapsing at once was deafening. It didn't fall down; it fell apart. The massive ship simply dissolved. A cloud of grey dust, so thick it looked like a solid wall, erupted outward.
Ren didn't run. He stood in the epicenter, arms spread wide.
The dust didn't settle. Driven by the Forbidden Skill's logic, the mountain of particulate matter began to spin. A vortex of grey steel essence formed around Ren, howling like a banshee.
It slammed into him.
"ARGH!"
Ren screamed as the torrent entered his pores, his nose, his mouth. It wasn't a gentle rush like the car. This was violent. It felt like molten lead was being poured into his veins. His bones creaked and snapped, reforming instantly, denser and harder than before. His muscles tore and knitted together, the fibers thickening into steel cables.
[System Alert: CRITICAL OVERLOAD]
[Absorbing Ancient Warship Essence...]
[processing...]
The notifications scrolled by so fast they were a blur.
Strength +10
Strength +15
Vitality +20
Defense +12
Constitution +18
The storm raged for a full minute. When the last mote of dust vanished into Ren's skin, the crater was empty. The Goliath was gone.
Ren fell to his hands and knees, gasping for air. Steam rose from his skin. His uniform was in tatters, shredded by the force of the vortex, revealing a body that was no longer that of a starving teenager. He was lean, but his muscles were defined and hard as rock.
He felt... heavy. Not sluggish, but dense. Like a tank compressed into the shape of a human.
He pulled up his status.
Name: Ren
Class: [Sanitation Worker] (Level 2)
Strength: 185 (Average Knight: 50)
Agility: 94
Vitality: 160
Mana: 45
Passive Acquired: [Iron-Bone Structure (Low)] - Your bones are as hard as low-grade steel.
"One hundred... and eighty-five," Ren wheezed, staring at his hands. He clenched his fist. The air popped audibly from the pressure.
He was stronger than a Level 20 [Barbarian]. He was tougher than a Level 20 [Tank]. And he was technically a Level 2 garbage man.
WEE-OOO! WEE-OOO!
Red lights began to sweep across the scrapyard. The collapse of the ship had triggered the seismic sensors.
"Sector Breach Detected," a mechanical voice boomed from the sky. "Unauthorized salvage operation. Security Units deployed."
Ren looked up. Three drones were descending rapidly, but these weren't the small surveillance ones. These were [Enforcer Drones - Mark IV]. They were size of small cars, armed with mana-gatling guns and stun cannons.
[Target Locked. Subject: Unidentified Male. Threat Level: Analyzing...]
The lead drone spun its barrel.
Ren's instincts screamed. Before tonight, he would have frozen in terror. Now? The world seemed to move in slow motion. He could see the drone's barrel rotating. He could calculate the trajectory.
"I need to go," Ren said.
He didn't wait for them to fire. He kicked off the ground.
CRACK.
The concrete beneath his feet shattered into a spiderweb crater. Ren launched himself forward like a cannonball. The acceleration was so sudden it blurred his vision.
RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT!
Mana bullets chewed up the ground where he had been a split second ago.
Ren sprinted through the maze of trash piles. He wasn't running; he was flying low to the ground. He vaulted over a stack of crushed buses, clearing twenty feet in the air with ease.
One of the drones flanked him, cutting off his path. It hovered ten meters in front of him, charging a blue stun-cannon.
"Halt or be terminated," the drone buzzed.
Ren didn't stop. He couldn't stop. He was moving too fast.
"Move!" Ren roared.
He leaped, closing the ten-meter gap in a heartbeat. He didn't use a skill. He just swung his right hand—the hand of the Grey King.
He slapped the drone.
It wasn't a punch. It was a backhand slap.
His hand connected with the drone's reinforced ceramic plating.
[Touch of The Grey King Activated]
The drone didn't just break from the impact (though with 185 Strength, it would have). It instantly aged ten thousand years. The metal casing turned to dust mid-air. The circuitry rotted. The mana core disintegrated.
Ren flew through the cloud of dust that used to be the drone, absorbing it as he went.
[Agility +2]
[Intelligence +1]
He landed in a roll and kept running, leaving the other two drones confused, scanning a cloud of dust where their squadmate used to be.
Ren made it back to his apartment complex just as the sun began to hint at rising behind the smog. He climbed up the fire escape, scaling the twelve stories in seconds, leaping from balcony to balcony like a shadow.
He slipped through his window and collapsed onto his bed.
His heart was hammering, but not from exhaustion. He wasn't tired at all. His Vitality was so high he felt like he could run a marathon and not break a sweat.
He stripped off his ruined clothes and went to the tiny shower. He scrubbed the grime off his new body. Looking in the cracked mirror, he barely recognized himself. The hollow cheeks were gone. His eyes were sharper, brighter.
"Day one," Ren whispered, gripping the edge of the sink until the ceramic groaned. "And I'm already this strong."
He looked at the clock.
23:58:00
Two minutes left.
He sat on his bed, waiting. The thrill of the night was fading, replaced by a nervous tension. What if the next skill was bad? What if it was a curse?
The red text of the Forbidden System bubbled up in his vision.
[Time limit reached.]
[Removing: Touch of The Grey King...]
Ren felt the strange vibration leave his right hand. The power he had gained—the stats—remained, but the ability to turn things to dust was gone. He felt a pang of loss. That skill was incredible.
[Calculating Karma...]
[Chaos Roll Initiated.]
The bone-and-shadow roulette wheel appeared again, spinning with a heavy, grinding noise.
Clack... clack... clack...
It slowed down. Ren held his breath.
Click.
[Congratulations!]
[Daily Forbidden Skill Obtained:]
Skill Name: [The gluttony of the Void (Legendary)]
Duration: 24 Hours.
Description: Your stomach is now a portal to a pocket dimension of infinite storage. You can eat anything that fits in your mouth, regardless of material or hardness. Eating matter restores HP and Mana.
Active Effect: You can "Spit" anything you have eaten back out as a high-velocity projectile.
Forbidden Twist: You are now inflicted with [Endless Hunger]. Normal food will not satisfy you. You must eat at least 10kg of non-organic matter every hour, or you will begin to lose 1% HP per second.
Ren stared at the screen.
"I can eat... anything?"
His stomach let out a monstrous growl. It wasn't the rumble of a hungry boy. It sounded like a tiger trapped in a cave.
Ren looked at his wooden nightstand. Before he realized what he was doing, he grabbed the corner of the table and bit down.
CRUNCH.
The wood splintered like a cracker. He chewed and swallowed. It didn't taste like wood. It tasted like... texture. Just pure mass.
[Consumed: Treated Pine Wood.]
[Stored in Void Stomach.]
[Hunger Satiated: 1%]
Ren chewed, blinking. "I have to eat ten kilos of trash an hour?"
He looked at the wall of his apartment. Then he looked at his door.
"Well," Ren stood up, buttoning a fresh shirt. "Good thing I'm a sanitation worker. I'm going to be the most efficient garbage disposal this city has ever seen."
But then, a thought struck him. The skill said he could spit things back out as projectiles.
He looked at the iron dumbbells he hadn't eaten yet.
If he ate a cannonball... could he become a human cannon?
A wicked grin spread across his face. The Forbidden System was chaotic, yes. But it was giving him options.
Just then, his phone buzzed. It was a message from the Sanitation Guild.
[Work Order: Sector 9 Sewers. Slime infestation reported. All rookie personnel report to entrance 4B at 0800.]
Ren checked the time. 7:00 AM.
"Sewers," Ren said, rubbing his stomach. "Lots of metal pipes down there. And maybe... some monster cores."
He grabbed his gear. It was time for breakfast.