The adrenaline that had fueled Alex's desperate escape from the Silent Hollow dungeon site evaporated the moment he turned into the labyrinthine alleys of the Gray District. It was a place where the sun never truly reached, a gutter for the city's forgotten souls.
Suddenly, the world tilted. His vision, which had been razor-sharp just minutes ago, blurred into a chaotic mess of colors. The silver light of [Divine Sight] in his eyes flickered like a dying candle and then died completely, replaced by a searing, rhythmic throb behind his temples that felt like a hot needle being driven into his brain. A low, guttural groan escaped his throat as he slumped against a damp brick wall, his knees buckling under the weight of his own body.
[Warning: Attribute Rejection detected.][Current Constitution (18) is insufficient to stabilize Scavenged Attributes: Strength (+25), Agility (+18).][Warning: Muscle fiber tearing in progress. Internal temperature rising: 40.5°C.]
"D*mn it... not now..." Alex hissed, clutching his stomach as a wave of nausea washed over him.
It felt as though he had swallowed shards of heated glass that were now trying to cut their way out of his midsection. His muscles were twitching uncontrollably beneath his skin, dancing to a frantic, discordant rhythm. The stolen power of the Iron-Hoofed Behemoth and the high-grade gear he had stripped from Victor's team were clashing within his veins like feral animals locked in a small, iron cage.
This was the hidden sting of the SSS-Rank Scavenger talent—he could take everything, he could harvest the world, but his mortal vessel wasn't yet a god's forge. It was a fragile container of flesh and bone. If he didn't find a way to stabilize the "digestive" process, the very power he craved would liquefy his organs from the inside out, turning him into a puddle of high-energy sludge in a nameless alley.
He gritted his teeth so hard he feared they might crack, forcing himself to stand. His skin was flushing a deep, feverish red. He needed a sanctuary, and he needed a stabilizer. He needed someone who dealt in things that shouldn't exist.
He dragged his leaden feet toward the heart of the slums, where the air smelled of ozone, cheap grease, and desperation. Nestled beneath a collapsed, pre-Collapse highway overpass lay "The Scrap Yard"—the city's largest and most dangerous underground black market. It was a place where stolen mana-crystals were traded for rusted engine parts, and where no one asked why a boy was covered in monster gore and radiating enough heat to cook an egg.
Alex pushed through a heavy curtain of hanging, rusted chains that served as a door. He stepped into a dimly lit workshop overflowing with mechanical junk, piles of discarded armor, and the overwhelming scent of stale ale and burnt copper.
"We don't buy scrap on Tuesdays, kid. Scram before I use you for target practice," a gravelly voice echoed from the shadows of the back room.
A man sat on a high stool behind a counter made from the turret of a salvaged main battle tank. He was draped in a grease-stained trench coat that had seen better decades, a half-empty bottle of cheap, stinging whiskey in one hand and a humming soldering iron in the other. This was Old Jack, a man rumored to be older than the System itself.
Alex didn't leave. He couldn't. He stumbled toward the counter, his skin radiating a faint, sickly heat that distorted the air around him. Every step felt like walking through deep mud.
Old Jack squinted through the haze of cheap tobacco smoke, his lazy, bloodshot eyes suddenly sharpening as they landed on Alex's trembling hands. He set the bottle down with a heavy, deliberate thud. The soldering iron went cold.
"Kid," Jack said, his voice dropping an octave into a dangerous register. "You're eating faster than you can digest. A little bird told me someone made a mess in the Hollow today, but I didn't think it was a starving pup like you. Keep this up, and you'll explode before you can even spend those attributes."
Alex froze, his hand gripping the edge of the turret-counter. "You... you can see it? The System... it says..."
"I don't need a System to tell me when a boiler is about to blow its top," Jack muttered, leaning forward until Alex could smell the whiskey and iron on his breath. "I've spent forty years looking at broken things, kid. Usually, they're made of steel and mana-circuits, but you? Your internal circuitry is screaming. You've got the raw strength of a bull and the skeletal frame of a twig. That's bad math, kid. Fatal math."
Alex reached into his tattered, blood-soaked bag. He didn't pull out gold or credits. Instead, he placed a jagged, pulsing shard of bone on the counter. It was the core of the Behemoth's iron hoof, still radiating a faint, oppressive pressure that made the mechanical parts on Jack's shelf rattle.
"I need a stabilizer," Alex gasped, the sweat dripping from his chin and sizzling on the hot metal counter. "And I need a place to stay. Somewhere quiet. Somewhere the Enforcers don't look."
Old Jack's eyes widened to the size of saucers. He picked up the bone shard with a mechanical prosthetic hand, the sensors on his brass fingers clicking and whirring with frantic speed.
"This... this isn't just a drop. The essence is still bound. It's warm," Jack whispered, more to himself than to Alex. "Only a Master-Rank Stripper or a high-level Necromancer could have pulled this out so cleanly without shattering the mana-matrix. Who the hell are you, kid?"
Jack looked at Alex, then at the shard, then back at the boy's violet-flecked eyes. A slow, calculating grin spread across his weathered, scarred face—the look of a man who had just found a winning lottery ticket in a pile of ash.
"The basement behind the furnace. It's lead-lined and damp, but it'll keep the Syndicate's sensors off your trail," Jack said, sliding a small vial of thick, murky green liquid across the table. "Drink that. It's a mana-neutralizer. It'll dull the pain and slow the rejection, but it won't fix the problem. You're a scavenger, right? Then you know the rule: you don't just own what you take. You have to conquer it."
Alex grabbed the vial, his hands shaking so much the glass clinked against his teeth. He downed it in one go. The cooling sensation was instant and violent, like ice water hitting a wildfire. The screaming in his muscles subsided into a dull, manageable ache.
"Why help me, Jack?" Alex asked, his breath finally leveling out, though his chest still felt like it was being squeezed by a vise. "In this district, people kill for a shard like that. They don't give out rooms and medicine."
"Because," Jack said, returning to his whiskey and picking up his soldering iron as if the conversation was over, "I've always wondered what happens when a scavenger stops picking up trash and starts picking up the pieces of the world. Consider this an investment in the chaos to come. The Drake Syndicate has been comfortable for too long. They need a reminder that even the kings of the mountain can be eaten by the things living in the dirt."
Alex nodded, not having the strength for more words. He grabbed his bag and disappeared into the shadows of the basement. He had his secret lab. He had his time. Now, he had to survive the very power he had stolen before it turned his heart into charcoal.