At three in the morning, the acid rain finally stopped.
The air was thick with a nauseating stench—a mix of engine oil, rust, and rotting organic matter. I dragged my exhausted body through knee-deep mountains of trash, every step producing a crunch that set my teeth on edge.
My stomach growled, as empty as a black hole. When was the last time I ate? Yesterday? The day before? I couldn't remember.
Dammit, I needed energy cells—not just to fill my belly, but for my "Scavenger" exoskeleton, which was practically falling apart. Its power indicator had been blinking for a full hour. If I didn't find a recharge soon, I'd have to haul myself back to that cold container I called "home" on my own two legs.
Just as I was beginning to lose hope, my eyes caught a glimpse of an unusual dark green.
It was a metal block half-buried in a pile of discarded cables, stamped with the Imperial Military's trident insignia.
A military-grade energy cell!
My heart skipped a beat, and I practically lunged for it.
I dug it out carefully, ignoring the grease coating my hands as I wiped the sludge from its surface. The casing had several obvious impact cracks, and the power output interface was scorched.
Any other scavenger would have cursed their luck and hurled it away.
But to me, it was different.
It was as if my vision could penetrate the heavy metal casing, seeing directly into its internal structure. The complex energy circuits unfolded before my eyes like a golden spiderweb. Most of the circuits were broken or scorched, reduced to a lifeless gray.
But in the core, small fragments of the circuit were still flickering with a faint, ghostly blue light.
It was still alive!
There was less than five percent of its energy left, but if I could bypass the fried interface and draw it directly from the core... it would be enough to power my exoskeleton for a week, with maybe even a little left over for my cutting torch.
Jackpot!
I stuffed the heavy treasure into the metal basket on my back and turned to head back.
Just then, the sound of rustling footsteps came from behind a nearby pile of junk.My body tensed instantly, and my right hand instinctively gripped the massive industrial wrench hanging at my waist. Longer than my forearm and engraved with a faded letter "G," it was the one thing I always kept on me.
"Hey, little wildcat, find anything good?" a greasy voice called out.
Three men stepped out from behind a pile of junk. They wore the insignia of the "Iron Rats"—crude armor cobbled together from scrap parts—and brandished welding torches and steel pipes.
Their leader, a one-eyed man, stared greedily at the metal basket on my back.
"Hand over what's in the basket," he said, pointing his steel pipe at me, his tone brooking no argument. "We can pretend we never saw a thing."
I stared at them coldly.
On Trash Planet 7's "Rust Belt," there was no law, only one rule: what you can take is yours. Only what you can defend is *really* yours.
"Piss off," I spat through gritted teeth.
"You stupid bitch!" The one-eyed man's face contorted. "Boys, teach her a lesson! Show her who's boss around here!"
The three of them fanned out, closing in on me.
I didn't back down. Instead, I took a step forward, the junk pile beneath me letting out an ominous crunch.
This was it.
My "Engineer's Eye" had already scanned the area. The massive heap of refuse beneath our feet was built around a scrapped crawler crane. It was buried under tons of junk, but its core load-bearing structure was severely corroded.
Three meters to my front-left, a critical hydraulic joint on the crane's boom was on the verge of snapping after years of acid rain erosion.
It was a perfect trap.
"Come on!" I beckoned them with a provocative finger. "You want it? Come and get it!"
"You're dead!"
The lanky man closest to me roared and charged, swinging his welding torch.
Ignoring him, I lunged to the left. My exoskeleton's joints groaned in protest, but they faithfully executed my command.
"She's trying to run! Cut her off!" the one-eyed man yelled.
Thinking I was making a break for it, they immediately pivoted and gave chase.
Nice. They took the bait.Just as all three of them stepped into the trap I'd set, I skidded to a halt, spun around, and poured every ounce of my strength into the wrench in my right hand.
My target wasn't any of them.
It was the hydraulic joint buried in the junk pile, flashing with a red stress warning!
*CLANG!*
A deafening boom!
The heavy wrench slammed into the rusted joint. In my vision, the golden line representing its structural integrity snapped instantly.
The next second, the whole junk pile convulsed!
"What?!"
"Agh—!"
The sneers on the faces of the three Iron Rats instantly twisted into terror. The mountain of trash beneath them began to heave and sink. With its key support gone, the massive, long-dead crane boom came crashing down.
Tons of metallic debris cascaded down like a flash flood, swallowing the three men in an instant.
Their screams lasted only a second before being cut off abruptly.
Silence returned.
From the edge of the collapse, my chest heaving, I stared coldly into the newly formed crater.
This is the Rust Belt, where a single miscalculation can be fatal. But for me, a calculation like that is as easy as breathing.
Without a moment's hesitation, I turned and wrenched something from the hand of a gang member who hadn't been completely buried.
It was a shimmering metal card, bearing nothing but the scrawled codename "Jinx" and a string of shifting, encrypted frequencies.
An info-broker? Interesting.
I shoved the card into my pocket and, with my precious energy cell on my back, started limping back to my "home."
My home is a salvaged shipping container, crammed with parts I've stripped down, the air thick with a smell of engine oil so permanent you could practically taste it.
I set the energy cell carefully on the workbench and collapsed into a battered chair.
Hunger and exhaustion washed over me like a tide, but I had no time for that.
My gaze drifted through a crack in the window toward the distant sky.
Against the eternally jaundiced sky, choked with industrial smog, a massive holographic billboard flickered nonstop, twenty-four hours a day.
It's an advertisement for the "Royal Interstellar League."On the screen, a magnificent, golden mecha elegantly brandished a beam saber, dismembering its opponent in an instant. Countless spectators cheered for it, screaming for its pilot—the Imperial Crown Prince, whose smile was as perfect as a mannequin's.
At the end of the advertisement, a line of massive digits flickered into view.
Grand Prize: Ten Billion Imperial Credits.
Ten billion...
The number hit me like a bomb, detonating in my mind.
With that kind of money, I'd never have to dodge acid rain in the trash heaps again. I'd never have to risk my life for a piece of moldy bread, and I'd never have to worry about my exoskeleton losing power at any moment.
I could buy an entire asteroid, build a house with nothing but floor-to-ceiling windows, a kitchen that always smelled of food, and... the best damn mecha workshop in the universe.
My gaze drifted from the billboard to a corner of the container.
There sat a locked, rusted metal chest—the only inheritance my parents had left me. I never touched it; I knew I hadn't earned the right to face those memories yet.
Survival was all that mattered.
But now, a wild idea began to take root in my mind.
They have perfect mechas worth three hundred billion?
I have eyes that can see every weakness.
They have elite teams and technical support?
I have the resolve of someone who crawled out of a pile of corpses, willing to do whatever it takes to survive.
I looked at the hideous mecha prototype on my workbench, cobbled together from tractor engines, then at the massive, mud-stained wrench by my side.
I couldn't help but smirk.
To hell with scavenging.
I'm finding a new way to live.
They think it's a competition?
No. To me, it's a massive market, stocked with all the expensive parts I can grab.