All Chapters of Awakening In The Trash Pile{My System is Cosmic Scavenger}: Chapter 11
- Chapter 20
80 chapters
The Scavenger Forge
They dumped him just inside the Custodial Quarter gate, his torn robe tossed on top of him like a shroud. The world was a blurred tunnel of white-hot pain radiating from his back. He lay on the packed dirt, unable to move, listening to the retreating footsteps of the overseers.[Host status: Critical. Multiple lacerations contaminated with ‘Soul-Burn’ toxin. Systemic shock imminent.]The System’s words floated through the haze. He knew he was dying. The spirit-thorn poison was doing its work, creeping toward his heart and core.But something else was happening, too. That tiny, patched-together meridian cluster in his chest the ‘Lesser Heart’ conduit was still humming. It was pulling at the ambient energy, yes, but more importantly, it was actively tugging at the poison inside him. Not to expel it, but to process it.[Emergency salvage protocol active. Treating ‘Soul-Burn’ toxin as high-grade corrosive waste.]The grinding, industrial sensation returned, this time focused on the woun
The Price of A Second
The silence after Marcus left was thick with the smell of waste and fury. Kieran stood on shaky legs, the cracked crucible a cold, gritty weight in his hand. In the channel, Lars finally hauled himself out, vomiting onto the stones. He shot Kieran a look of pure, unhinged hatred before stumbling away, dripping foulness, to follow his master.Kieran knew he had about five minutes of grace. The time it would take for Lars to get to the baths, for Marcus to cool down from his rage and start planning. The beating he’d get if he was caught here would make the spirit-thorn whip feel like a memory.He had to move.Shoving the crucible into the large pocket of his work apron, he grabbed his hooked pole and shuffled away from the sluices, not toward the bunkhouse, but deeper into the service alleys. He needed a hole. Somewhere no one went.He found it behind the abandoned tannery a collapsed lean-to of rotten timbers, half-buried in years of blown leaves and dirt. It was a tomb of neglect.
The Devils Diet
The demon-flesh under his fingers didn’t dissolve. It unraveled. It was a thread of pure, concentrated malice, woven with corrupted spiritual energy. As the Cosmic Scavenger System pulled it apart, Kieran felt it not as a surge of power, but as a cold, whispering hatred flooding his veins. It was the antithesis of the lynx’s grief this was active, intelligent spite.[Salvage Complete. Yield: 22 Units of Primordial Essence. Secondary yield: ‘Trace of Ancient Grudge’ – Archived.][Warning: Emotional contamination risk elevated. Host stability: 92%.]Twenty-two units. From a single piece of clogged gunk. Kieran stared at his hand, then at the rest of the filter, caked with glowing sludge and jagged fragments. The air down here wasn't poison; it was thick, undiluted potential.He got to work. Not with the stiff brush Borin had left, but with his bare hands.He touched a shard of cursed metal from a broken dagger. It hummed with a forgotten murderous intent. Salvage. [+15 Essence. ‘Memory
A Choice Of Hells
The words hung in the toxic air. Hall Master Vex’s gaze was a physical weight, pinning Kieran to the spot. Borin stood frozen, the cudgel dangling from his hand, his earlier bravado gone under the elder’s presence.“Impossible,” Vex muttered, taking another step closer. His spiritual sense, far more refined than any outer disciple’s, washed over Kieran like a cold tide. Kieran felt it probing, inspecting the newly-repaired meridian cluster. It was like being examined under a spiritual magnifying glass. “The shattering was absolute. I witnessed the diagnosis myself.”“I… recovered, Hall Master,” Kieran said, the lie tasting thin. He kept his Qi circulation deliberately slow, weak, mimicking the barest spark of a 1st Stage cultivator.“One does not ‘recover’ from a complete meridian severance,” Vex stated flatly. His eyes narrowed, shifting from Kieran’s face to the dust-filled vat, then to the remnants of fear on Borin’s face. “A boy with a grudge against a rising disciple. A boy who
THE FEAST OF FORGETTING
The dust did not feel like dust. As Kieran plunged his hand into the cask, the iridescent powder flowed over his skin like cold, intelligent water, whispering directly into his mind.…so much to remember… let it go… just forget…It was the Spirit-Devouring Moth’s final, seductive promise: the bliss of oblivion. The dust sought his memories, his sense of self, the very connections that made him Kieran.[Initiating Full Salvage. Establishing counter-protocols.]The System did not fight the dust. It welcomed it. The moment the cognitive poison touched his spiritual pathways, the System treated it like any other high-yield waste a resource to be broken down.The process was not pain. It was erasure.Kieran’s knees buckled. He slumped against the cold cask as a tide of beautiful, silent nothingness washed through him. He forgot the weight of the steel bar in his hand. He forgot the smell of the sluice channel. The face of the lynx, the sting of the whip, the sneer on Marcus’s lips they al
No More Running
The air in the rotting library grew still. Marcus stood between Kieran and the only exit, his two friends, Lars and a taller disciple named Silas, fanning out to block the aisles. Liana stood frozen, trapped between her former friend and the boy who’d broken him.“Stay out of this, Liana,” Marcus said, not taking his eyes off Kieran. “This is between me and the trash who doesn’t know his place.”Kieran closed the ruined book and set it gently on a tilting shelf. The action was calm, deliberate. The muted emotions in his archive provided a cold, crystal clarity. Fear was just a data point. Anger, a fuel source. He assessed: three opponents. Marcus, 3rd Stage Qi Condensation, skilled. Lars, 2nd Stage, brute strength. Silas, 2nd Stage, unknown. Himself: 2nd Stage, but with a foundation of 1,447 units of Essence denser, stranger than theirs and a body reinforced by poison.The odds were bad. But for the first time, they were calculable.“There’s no disguise, Marcus,” Kieran said, his vo
The Wolf in Ruins
They advanced.Kieran’s back was to a damp, crumbling wall. The System analyzed the environment with cold speed.[Structural integrity of north wall: Critically low. Composition: Lime mortar, soft stone. Impact tolerance: Minimal.][Proposal: Redirect primary aggressor’s attack into structural weak point.]It was all or nothing.As Marcus stepped forward for the final grapple, Qi glowing around his fists, Kieran did something insane. He didn’t brace. He charged at Marcus.It was so unexpected that Marcus hesitated for a split second. That was all Kieran needed. He dropped into a slide at the last moment, going under Marcus’s reaching arms, and kicked out with both feet, not at Marcus, but at the rotten wall just behind him.His Essence-reinforced legs connected with the soft stone and ancient mortar.CRUNCH.The wall didn’t break. It gave way. A large section collapsed inward in a shower of dust and碎石, revealing not the outside, but another, pitch-black chamber behind it a forgotten c
The Taste of Stillness
The darkness in the sealed cellar was absolute and profound. The pathetic glow from Marcus’s palm-light was gone, snuffed out by the void-energy Kieran had drawn into himself. Now, only Kieran could see his System’s grid painting the room in cool, silent blue outlines. Marcus and Silas were blind.“Where is he?!” Silas’s voice was a panicked whisper somewhere to Kieran’s left. “What did you do, Sun?”“Shut up!” Marcus hissed, his voice tight with a fear he was trying to crush. He swiped a hand through the air where Kieran had been a moment before, grabbing nothing. “He’s just a rat. He’s hiding. Light a spark!”“I’m trying! My Qi… it’s sluggish. It’s cold in here!”It was. The ‘Root of the Hungry Earth’ technique had done more than give Kieran power. It had leached the ambient warmth and spiritual vitality from the chamber, leaving behind a sucking, silent chill. It was a power born of tombs and forgotten places.Kieran didn’t move. He stood still, the Codex held against his chest.
Before The Throne
Vex’s grip was like iron. There was no arguing, no running. The Hall Master’s Qi, dense and oppressive as a mountain, pinned Kieran’s own energy in place. Resistance was impossible.They didn’t walk through the main thoroughfares. Vex led him through a series of hidden, guarded passages Kieran never knew existed, deep into the heart of the Verdant Cloud Sect. The air grew richer with spiritual energy, cleaner, scented with incense and aged wood. They passed silent guards in finer robes, who bowed to Vex and eyed Kieran with blank curiosity.Finally, they stopped before massive doors of dark, polished ironwood, carved with clouds and soaring cranes. Two inner sect disciples stood guard here, their auras sharp and focused. They opened the doors without a word.The Sect Master’s chamber was vast, airy, and surprisingly simple. A wall of open arches looked out over mist-shrouded peaks. In the center, on a plain mat of woven spirit-grass, sat a man.Sect Master Jun looked neither old nor
The Crucible's Edge
The announcement rippled through the Verdant Cloud Sect like a shockwave. Posted on the main mission board, amidst notices for herb gathering and demon-beast subduals, was a simple, stark entry:SECT TRIALS – SPECIAL PARTICIPANT ENTRYName: Kieran (Custodial Corps)Cultivation: To Be AssessedNotes: Admitted by direct decree of Sect Master Jun.For a day, there was confusion. Who was Kieran? The name was vaguely familiar the cripple who’d survived the pit? The janitor who’d been flogged? Then, the stories merged. The cripple who worked in the poison vat and didn’t die. The one who’d been seen with Hall Master Vex. A special decree from the Sect Master himself.Confusion curdled into outrage, especially among the outer disciples who’d trained for years for a shot at the Trials.Kieran was given no time to train. He was returned to the Rendering Vat, but it was no longer a refuge. It was a cage where he was to be “prepared.” Borin avoided him entirely now, his fear replaced by a supers