The Recycling System: From Scrap Collector to Billionaire

Chapter 9: Lucky Draw

"Recycle."

Jake aimed the command at the pile of scrapped appliances in front of him. A wave of light swept through, the pile vanished, and his points counter started climbing fast.

It shot past nine hundred almost instantly.

Might as well round it up over a thousand, Jake thought, rubbing his nose. He had a mild streak of perfectionism, and stopping on an awkward number like nine hundred and something bugged him more than he cared to admit.

Let's clean out everything else in the house too.

He made up his mind and started feeding old wine bottles and other junk lying around into the system. The points return on genuinely useless trash was pathetically small, though.

Still a dozen or so points short. Jake eyed his battered old cart sitting in the yard and hit recycle on it without a second thought.

Still not quite there...

He was just a hair under a thousand points. Jake scratched his head, dug through every drawer and cabinet in the house, and fed anything remotely disposable into the system.

Standing in the now half-empty house, he let out a helpless breath. His place really was that bare.

999. Jake stared at the number, genuinely pained. One single point away, and there was nothing left in the house to sacrifice.

He rubbed his nose and let his gaze drift, with some guilt, toward the old study desk his sister used for homework, a piece of furniture so old nobody even remembered where it came from. He'd never gotten around to buying her a new one to save money.

"...You'll do."

The desk vanished, and the counter ticked over to 1,000.

[Ding! Congratulations on reaching 1,000 points in a single day, you've unlocked two Lucky Draw attempts!] The system's chime rang out crisp and clear. Jake froze for a second, then felt a rush of pure excitement.

So that's how the draw feature works.

Without hesitation, he opened it up. A colorful spinning wheel materialized in front of him, packed with slots, though every single one was blurred beyond recognition. Below it read: Draws remaining: 2.

"Spin."

The wheel whirred into motion. Please let it be another strength capsule, Jake silently prayed. He'd felt the benefits firsthand, he wasn't looking to pick fights, but there was no downside to being stronger.

The pointer slowed, and finally landed on a still-blurry entry.

[Congratulations, you've won a stealth item: one Basic Invisibility Cloak!]

Basic Invisibility Cloak: Invisible to everyone except the user. While worn, the user becomes completely undetectable. Duration: 5 minutes.

Are you kidding me, the system actually has stuff like this? Jake muttered under his breath. Sure, he'd fantasized about something like this as a kid, though he wasn't about to admit out loud that his childhood dream had involved sneaking into the girls' locker room.

More practically, five minutes was barely enough time to do anything useful. Jake shook his head, and a shimmer of light left a thin, nearly transparent cloak resting in his hands.

Not much use for this right now, he thought, and that's when he noticed a new tab had appeared on the interface: Inventory.

With a thought, the cloak vanished from his hands and settled into storage instead, he could feel it sitting there, cataloged and waiting.

That's actually pretty handy. One more spin, please, not a tank or something insane.

He tapped the wheel again, a little more hope creeping into his chest this time. If the system could produce something as absurd as an invisibility cloak, there had to be more where that came from.

The wheel spun down and stopped, and the chime followed almost immediately.

[Congratulations, you've won a stealth item: one Basic Impact-Resistant Suit!]

Basic Impact-Resistant Suit: Invisible to everyone except the user. While worn, the user becomes an unstoppable human shield, no strike lands, no damage taken. Stops standard handgun rounds. Duration: 10 minutes.

Jake didn't even have words left for this one. Is the system trying to build me into some kind of pervert with a death wish?

An invisibility cloak good for sneaking into the girls' locker room, and a bulletproof suit that would come in handy the second someone caught him doing it, the pairing was almost too on-the-nose.

Might as well keep them. Never know when they'll be useful, he decided, stashing both away in inventory. What actually thrilled him most, though, was unlocking the daily thousand-point threshold for two free draws. Even if today's prizes were useless for now, he was already looking forward to what else might show up down the line.

Next up: renting the storefront. Jake checked the time, nearly noon. He wondered if Nicole was free. He'd already scoped out the shop thoroughly; it was time to lock it in.

He sent her a text first. She replied within minutes, saying she actually needed his help with something and asking him to come straight to her place.

Jake cleaned himself up and headed over.

It wasn't far, and he got there quickly. The front door stood wide open, so he let himself in and found Nicole in the middle of packing.

"Nicole? It's me. What's going on?"

"This place is too big, I'm not used to living alone in it. I'm moving out. Actually meant to ask for your help yesterday." She was dressed down in athletic wear, her face bare of makeup, the fitted outfit tracing her figure without any effort at all.

"You need me to line up a vehicle? Where are you headed?" Jake asked, glancing around the increasingly empty rooms. Something about the house, vast and hollow now, gave him a flicker of sadness on her behalf. Living alone in a place this size sounded genuinely lonely.

"Yeah, that'd help. I figured I didn't have much to move, so I skipped hiring a moving company. You know anyone with a truck? A small van would do fine." She set down what she was holding and poured him a glass of water.

Jake nodded and was already reaching for his phone when it rang first. Tyler, of all people.

"Hey, Jake I'm at your place but nobody's home. You said yesterday you had something you needed help with. I brought a few guys with me. What's the job?" Tyler's voice came through cautious, almost meek. Beside him stood four or five of his usual crew, all local kids, watching him make the call with visible nerves.

None of them wanted to risk setting Jake off again after last time.

Truth was, this whole crew had always just been bullies who folded the second someone stronger stood up to them. Jake had beaten that lesson into them personally, and it had stuck.

"Right, you've still got that van, don't you? Perfect timing, I'm helping a friend move. She's over in the gated community across from my place. Just drive in, I'll come meet you at the gate."

Jake had genuinely forgotten about Tyler until the call came in. He'd meant to have the crew help fix up his new storefront, but a moving job worked just as well for now.