The God-Level Scavenger

The Voice on the Other Side

"You cannot bury a scavenger," I said into the radio.

The speaker static-hissed as I squeezed the black plastic casing. Tariq did not reply. He cut the connection from his end, leaving me in the flashing red light of the emergency alarm. The heavy steel barrier had slammed completely flat against the stone floor, sealing the cave entrance with six inches of solid metal.

I walked over to the barrier and pushed my hands against it.

D-rank Iron Skin activated.

My palms took on a dull, metallic sheen as I shoved the steel wall. I grunted, straining my back, but the barrier did not budge. The gate was connected to the core power grid of Sector 4. To open it, I would need a strength score over two hundred, or a high-grade plasma explosive.

"Great," I spoke to the empty room. "Burying me alive is your best trick."

The two fainted guards lay in the mud behind me, breathing slowly. They were safe from the monsters, but they were also stuck here until someone came to open the gate from the outside.

I looked up at the red alarm light. The high-pitched noise was starting to hurt my ears. I needed to find another way out, or I would be trapped here while Tariq forced Amina into that binding ceremony. The thought of her sitting next to him, pretending to be his loyal partner while her heart broke inside, made my stomach turn. She was playing a dangerous game with the most powerful family in the city, all to keep my family from being killed.

Suddenly, a strange sound came from the blue status screen floating next to my shoulder.

The standard notification tone changed. The blue light flared bright, and a clear text message appeared right across the center of my vision.

[System error cleared.]

[Core logic connected.]

[Voice interface activated.]

"Can you hear me, Kofi?" a voice spoke from the screen.

I jumped back, my hand instantly flying to the hilt of my dragon scale blade. The voice did not sound like the loud, buzzing alarms or the cold mechanical beeps from before. It was smooth, soft, and carried a rhythmic warmth that made me freeze. It felt like a song I used to hear when I was a very small child in the orphanage, before the hard work turned my hands rough.

"Who is there?" I asked, looking around the dark corners of the cave. "Are you a monster?"

"I am the SSS-Class Extraction System," the voice replied from the floating screen. "But I am not an enemy. I am the tool you built from your own desire to sort the world. You are currently thirty meters below the surface. The main gate is locked, but your F-rank sorting skill still lives inside my database."

"My sorting skill?" I asked, looking down at my hands.

"Yes," the voice said. "Look at the rock wall to your right. What do you see?"

I turned my head toward the rough stone. I focused my mind, activating the old F-rank power. Instantly, the faint green outlines appeared under the surface of the rock. But this time, because my stats were higher, the lines cut deep into the solid mountain.

Structure Analysis: Hidden tunnel path located behind three feet of loose granite. Material value: Low copper veins, high structural instability.

"There is a cave behind this wall," I said, a sudden spark of hope rising in my chest.

"Then use your new strength to break it," the system voice said. "But be careful. Every time you extract a high-tier power, a small piece of your memory is consumed as fuel to convert the energy. That is the price of the god-level system."

My breath caught in my throat. "What do you mean, memory loss?"

"To change your F-rank soul into an SSS-rank god, the system needs massive emotional fuel," the voice explained softly. "It takes what you do not need to give you what you want. If you fight the entire city army, you might lose the things that make you who you are."

I looked down at the silver capsule containing Amina's letter. If I kept using this power to grow strong enough to destroy Tariq, would I forget her face? Would I forget why I was fighting in the first place?

"I don't care about the price," I said, my teeth clenched tight. "If I don't get out of here, she dies anyway."

I raised my dark dragon scale blade, focusing all forty-five points of my strength into my arms. I stepped forward and drove the heavy blade straight into the center of the green lines on the stone wall.

The stone cracked with a loud boom. Chunks of loose granite exploded outward, flying across the cave floor. The wall collapsed, revealing a narrow, pitch-black tunnel that sloped upward toward the outer walls of the city.

A rush of fresh air hit my face. It came from the surface.

"Good luck, Master," the system voice said before the blue screen faded back into a small icon in the corner of my eye.

I scrambled through the broken opening, holding my sword tight. The tunnel was small and steep, requiring me to crawl on my knees through the wet dirt. I climbed for twenty minutes, my muscles working hard until I saw a faint ray of moonlight ahead.

I pushed through a thick cluster of heavy thorny bushes and emerged outside.

I was standing on a grassy hill overlooking the lower slum sector. The giant steel walls of Sector 4 towered over the small wooden houses below. But something was wrong.

A column of thick black smoke was rising from the very street where my family lived.

Ten black armored trucks, all bearing the golden badge of Tariq's family guild, were lined up along the dirt road. Dozens of guild soldiers holding torches were dragging people out of their homes into the center of the square.

Over the distance, a loud voice boomed from a truck speaker. "Kofi the scavenger has committed treason against the Young Master! By order of the guild, his entire family sector is being cleared tonight!"