I open my interface.
[PLAYER STATUS]
Identity: Beno?t de Balzac Race: Human Age: 40
Class: Garbage Man Rank: None Ranking:None
[Attributes]
HP (Health): 130 / 130 (+30)
MP (Mana): 0 / 0
Attack: 8.3 (+2.3)
Magic: 0
Defense: 9 (+1)
Magic Defense: 0
Speed: 7 (+1) (26 km/h)
[Skills]
Observation of the Useless
Recycling
Public Nuisance
[PROGRESSION REPORT]
The body adapts to the trial.
+2.3 Attack (Slime combat)
+1.0 Defense (Hits taken)
+1.0 Speed (10km Tutorial)
+30 Max HP (Tutorial Survival Bonus)
“I gained 30 HP and a point of Speed just from the Tutorial’s forced march. My body’s toughened up. On the other hand, I killed 23 Slimes and only gained 2.3 Attack. That’s crumbs. The effort-to-reward ratio on weak monsters is dogshit.”
“Uncle Ben… Look at the tab next to it,” Chris says, his voice thin. “There’s a new ranking. The Tower Rankings.”
I click the tab. A red number displays in large print, flashing like a low battery alert.
[Tower Rankings]
[Current Position]: 3,102,405,899th
[Time Remaining]: 29 Days
[Status]: ELIMINATION ZONE
The air in the room suddenly drops a few degrees.
“We’re over the three billion mark,” Kim analyzes coldly. “That means three billion people hit the 2nd floor before us.”
“We lost too much time!” Chris cries, sounding like he’s about to hyperventilate. “Uncle Ben… if the month ends now, we’re dead! We get deleted!”
I scratch my beard, staring at the red number. “Calm down. This is the start of the race. The others sprinted like maniacs to clear Floor 1. That’s the ‘Rush’ strategy. We tried the ‘Farm’ strategy.”
I point at my disappointing stats. “Okay, this time it didn’t pay off much because the mobs were trash. We lost time. But we gained vital info. We know how the mechanics work.”
Before attacking the climb, I lean against the wall, simply waiting for the other two to be ready. There’s no way I’m running if they aren’t keeping up.
Chris shakes his shield. Thanks to his [Equipment Cleaning] passive, the green goo slides off it like water off a duck’s back, leaving no trace. It shines like it’s brand new. Kim checks her barrel’s overheat gauge and waits a few seconds for her mana bar to naturally tick up to max. As for me, I just check that my shovel’s handle isn’t bent. It’s solid.
“Alright, you two done primping?” I ask with a yawn.
Chris turns to us, hesitating. “How do we position for the climb?”
I jut my chin toward his shield. “You’ve got the metal slab, you go first. That’s Tanking 101. Kim, you stay behind him to provide DPS.”
“And you?” Kim asks, suspicious.
“Me? I’m bringing up the rear. I’m watching our six. It’s a crucial spot… and mostly it’s the furthest from the monsters coming from the front.”
We lock in the formation. It’s pure math. He’s the tank, I’m the broke support. He goes first. If there’s the slightest problem his shield can’t handle, my body will move before my brain does.
We climb the spiral stairs.
While climbing the steps, Chris breaks the silence, his voice echoing slightly in the stairwell. “Hey Kim, you mentioned ‘Sponsors’ earlier. What are those exactly?”
Kim nearly trips. She spins around, looking at us like we just confessed to a murder. “You… you don’t have a Sponsor? Really?”
“No,” Chris says with a shrug.
She shakes her head, incredulous, before switching to lecture mode. “It’s the basics of the System. As soon as we cross the starting line of the Tutorial, our ‘signal’ is broadcast across the multiverse. Powerful entities—deities, historical figures, mythological legends—are watching us live from their own dimensions. They’re GodRunners too, just like us.”
She pauses to catch her breath. “By choosing us as Representatives, they’re betting on our potential. If we progress, they gain rewards on their end. It’s a symbiosis. They give us coins and gear to help us survive, because our success is their success.”
The pieces click into place, and it’s not a pretty picture. Now I get it. Why is no one watching us? It’s obvious. It’s because of the glitch. We ripped up the starting slab to slam it down a few millimeters from the finish line.
“We finished the Tutorial in 0.001 seconds,” I say dryly.
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Kim frowns, clearly not grasping the implication. “Excuse me?”
“The broadcast time,” Chris clarifies, all smiles, thrilled to tell our story.
And that’s when it goes south. Before I can stop him, my nephew launches into a detailed explanation. He hides nothing. He mimes how we moved the slabs, explains the exploit, the record time, and even ends up blabbing about our hidden classes. I close my eyes for a moment. This kid has zero survival instinct when it comes to OPSEC, but I don’t interrupt him. After all, Kim is already involved.
“The stream didn’t have time to load,” I conclude. “The Sponsors didn’t even receive the ‘Stream Started’ notification before we were already out.”
Kim freezes mid-step. She’s looking at us like we’re aliens. “So that’s the explanation…” she whispers to herself.
“What is it?” Chris asks.
“My Sponsor told me to find you because you’re ‘anomalies’. That was his specific directive. I was wondering what the hell you’d done to deserve that title, but now… with this 0.001 second story… it all makes sense.”
She pauses, looking at us with a new kind of worry. “But wait… if you dodged the selection, does that mean no one gave you anything?”
She starts climbing again, her pace quickening as if she’s trying to outrun the idea. “You don’t realize what you’re losing. Sponsors are vital. Mine gave me several indispensable support items to maximize my chances. Without a Sponsor, you’re technically orphans facing the System.”
“And who’s your Sponsor?” Chris asks, curious.
Kim goes rigid for a split second. She looks away toward the top of the stairs. “That, I can’t say.”
“NDA clause?” I try.
“No, a matter of survival,” she snaps. “Sponsors have their own conflicts, their own wars up there. If I reveal his name, his divine enemies will know. And they won’t hesitate to send their own representatives—other players like me—to take me out just to weaken my Sponsor. Anonymity is my only armor against them.”
I narrow my eyes. Makes sense. We aren’t just pawns on a chessboard; we’re pawns in a celestial gang war.
We finally reach the landing.
When we emerge onto the second floor, the setting is completely different. No more claustrophobic stone corridors. We’re in a gigantic circular arena, under a fake blue sky painted on the ceiling that crudely imitates daylight. It feels like standing in front of the “Bliss” Windows XP wallpaper, but in low resolution.
The problem is the floor. “Is this a joke?” Kim says, adjusting her scope.
There’s tall grass everywhere. Yellowish, dense vegetation that comes up to the waist. In the distance, about 400 meters away, we can see the exit door, but between us and it, it’s nothing but savannah.
“Great, no line of sight,” Kim says. “I can’t see anything below three feet. If there’s stuff in there, they’ll be on us before I can even line up a shot. It’s a sniper’s nightmare.”
I kick the grass with my shovel. It’s thick, hard to push aside. “It’s the classic ‘ambush in the tall grass’ level,” I analyze. “The game design wants to force us to walk in blind to make us jump. The monsters are bound to be sneaky little shits—goblins, wolves, or velociraptors.”
“What do we do?” Chris asks, raising his shield. “Do we move in formation like in the movies?”
I watch the grass ripple slightly, even though there’s no wind. “No. If we go in there, we get surrounded and our ankles get chewed off. We’re gonna use the quiet way.”
I turn to Kim. “Get ready to shoot anything that pops up.”
I take a step forward, walking straight into the vegetation. Then, I focus. I activate my active skill, the one that made me look like trash thirty minutes ago.
“[Public Nuisance]!”
An invisible wave erupts from me. An absolute, concentrated stench—a mix of a dumpster in the high sun and a rotten egg.
Chris instantly slams his hand over his mouth, nearly puking on his shield. Kim backs up two steps, her eyes watering. “Damn it, Ben! What the hell is that!?”
“It’s Crowd Control,” I say, plugging my nose. “Watch the grass.”
A few seconds later, high-pitched sneezes and muffled yelps aggro from the vegetation. The grass erupts in a frantic wave, as if a colony of giant rats is panicking.
Five meters away from us, heads suddenly pop out of the tall grass, desperately searching for fresh air. “Kobolds,” I analyze coldly.
[MONSTER ANALYSIS] Name: Kobold | Level: 2
[Statistics]
- HP (Health): 75 / 75
- Attack: 7
- Speed: 5
- Defense: 6
[Skills]
- [Overdeveloped Scent] (Passive): Detects hidden enemies.
- [Ambush] (Active): Inflicts extra damage if the target isn’t looking.
They look like a shitty cross between a mangy chihuahua and a dried lizard, all with breath that’d make my work vest smell like Chanel No. 5. They’re barely four feet tall, rocking leather scraps held together by dental floss and miracles. Their daggers are so rusty they’d give you tetanus just by looking at them sideways. Freaks of nature armed with bone toothpicks.
“Yip! Yip! Skreeee!” they yelp, rubbing their snouts, eyes watering. They try to communicate, but my skill has broken their formation.
“Target practice!” I yell.
Kim doesn’t need to be told twice. Despite the tears streaming down her face from the stench, she fires one shot after another. Bang. Bang. Bang.
“This is disgusting,” Chris moans, trying to breathe through his elbow.
“It’s effective,” I correct him. “We’ve turned a deadly ambush into a shooting gallery. Welcome to the Garbage Man meta.”
Kim has no trouble lining them up. With their overdeveloped sense of smell, they’re taking the full hit right in the face. Unlike a real dog that’d love to roll in this filth, it’s an overdose for them. It paralyzes them completely. It’s a [Critical Debuff: Olfactory Asphyxiation]. They’re sneezing and scratching their snouts until they bleed, offering perfect static targets for Kim’s rifle.
But the numbers are against us. Pushed by the mass behind them, some Kobolds—likely the most enraged or the ones with stuffed noses—manage to break through the line of stench and charge while screaming.
“They’re getting close!” Chris yells.
He anchors his feet in the ground and raises his shield. A Kobold jumps, spear forward.
CLANG.
The shock rings out, but Chris doesn’t move a single millimeter. His Defense stats, boosted by the wheelbarrow training, are doing the work. He shoves the creature back with a brutal shoulder check, knocking it off balance.
It’s my turn. I grip my shovel by the middle of the handle, aim, and hurl it like a heavy javelin.
The flat iron of the shovel hits the Kobold’s forehead with a dull, satisfying sound. BONK! The creature collapses, stunned.
“Kim, finish it!” I order while running to retrieve my weapon.
A bullet whistles past my ear and explodes the monster’s skull on the ground before I can even reach it. “Target neutralized,” she says calmly. “Next.”
But there is no “next.” There’s a tide. The tall grass is shaking everywhere. Ten, twenty, fifty…
“Damn it, how many are there?” Chris panics while parrying two simultaneous dagger strikes.
“At least a hundred and fifty!” I estimate, seeing health bars pop up everywhere in my field of vision. “The spawn must’ve piled up while we were farming the first floor!”
The Kobolds emerge from the grass in successive waves, a literal flood of scales and piercing shrieks.
“Hold the line!” I yell, swinging my shovel in a wide arc to clear some space. “We don’t back down! This is home-delivered XP!”
The fight drags on. It’s trench warfare.
For every Kobold that falls with a crushed or perforated skull, two others burst out of the tall grass yelping. They’re small, vicious, and most importantly, they’re everywhere. We’re pinned in the center of the arena, drowning in a tide of claws and rusty spears.
My right arm is burning. My shovel, which felt light at first, now weighs like a sack of bricks. I strike, I parry, I push back, but my movements are getting slower, heavier.
“Reloading!” Kim screams, frantic.
She drops her rifle with one hand, grabs a blue vial from her belt, and downs it in one go before tossing the empty glass to the floor. A blue glow runs along the barrel of her weapon, materializing new ethereal bullets in the chamber.
Her rifle crystallizes her pure Mana into deadly projectiles. It’s inexhaustible… as long as she has Mana. Except right now, her movements are frantic.
“Shit,” she whispers, seeing her rifle’s gauge flickering.
She taps her pockets. Empty. Empty. Empty. She shoots me a terrified look, the pro-gamer cool vanishing from her face for the first time. “That was the last one, Ben. I’m dry. No more potions, no more Mana.”
Her rifle emits a sad beep and the blue glow in the barrel dies out. She pulls the trigger. Click. Nothing comes out.
“I’m useless!” she screams, using her rifle like a club to push back a Kobold jumping at her. “I can’t shoot anymore!”
Chris, who’s the only one still standing without staggering thanks to his [Logistical Resilience], is starting to buckle under the sheer numbers. His shiny armor is dented and scratched. Blood is running down his leg.
“There’s too many of them!” he yells, pushing back three Kobolds with a shield bash. “I can’t block them all!”
I shoot a panicked look at my health bar.
[HP]: 52 / 130 (40%) | [Status]: Light Bleeding, Moderate Exhaustion.
“Shit…” I whisper, sweat stinging my eyes. “We aren’t moving anymore. We’re just stuck.”
The exit door is still two hundred meters away. An eternity. The tall grass is rippling frantically all around us, signaling the arrival of a new wave. If we stay here, we’re dead. The respawn is faster than our ability to kill. We’re gonna end up as lizard-dog food.
“Uncle Ben! Do something!” Chris cries, the hero act finally giving way to pure panic. “They’re gonna eat us!”
I don’t have an answer. For the first time since this nightmare began, I don’t have a plan.
Kim is screaming, holding her bleeding arm. Chris is on his knees, his shield cracked. We were surrounded, but by backing up under the pressure, we’ve ended up with our backs against the invisible wall of the arena. Now, the horde is massed right in front of us in a tight semi-circle.
But they don’t charge. They wait. I see them exchanging guttural yelps and signaling each other. They’re communicating. These little shits don’t want to kill us one by one. They’re synchronizing to launch a simultaneous attack that’ll be impossible to parry.
A sharp yelp gives the signal. The tide of scales moves as one to crush us.
The “Game Over” screen is flashing before my eyes. A spear grazes my shoulder.
Desperate, I open my skill interface with a frantic thought. I’m looking for a flaw, a hidden line of text, anything that could get us out of here. My eyes, burning with sweat and blood, scan the lines at high speed.
“Damn it, there’s nothing! I’m a garbage man, I’m built to pick stuff up, not to fight!” I rage internally.
I’m about to close the window and accept my fate when a tiny detail catches my eye. A tiny golden exclamation mark, pulsing in the corner of the tab.