God of Trash

Tam and Den crawled back to the orphanage by nightfall, covered in filth and bites, and none the happier for their stint in the depths of the pit. They glared death at Rhys, and Rhys ignored them. Tam tried reporting what had happened to the matron, but she gave him as much time as she’d given Rhys, and simply clapped him on the ear for not listening to her when he wouldn’t stop whining. Injured and filthy, Tam tried to get back at Rhys in the usual petty ways. Rhys came back to a filthy bed one night, full of food scraps, and all the kids in the orphanage laughing and pointing as if he’d soiled the bed. Instead of reacting, he’d simply nodded at Bast. Bast carried Tam into the filthy bed, while Rhys claimed Tam’s clean sheets.

After that, no one laughed and pointed any more. The message was clear: the balance of power had shifted. No longer was Rhys everyone’s butt monkey, and Tam the feared school bully. Now it was Rhys who was feared, while Tam was derided as little more than a paper tiger.

But children’s politics were the least of Rhys’ concern. Instead, all his energy was focused on the tournament, coming up at the end of the week. He scrubbed his clothes, and Bast’s too, making sure they were as clean as possible, replaced all the miscolored patches with matching-color ones, and even shone their shoes. With the sword, he managed to give Bast’s unruly mop a bit of shape, though he refused to let Bast try cutting his hair.

In between his efforts, he chatted with Bast about mana. Bast had a slightly better grasp on the stuff than him, though his grasp seemed to be entirely instinctual. Most of their conversations ended with Rhys mulling in frustrated silence, while Bast displayed the results of his instinctive mana gathering through punching the bark off trees or blasting a brick into dust with a kick. Still, their conversations weren’t fruitless for Rhys. Slowly, he was starting to understand how to manage his mana, and circulate it without breaking a fever. He could handle three drops at once, now, and his face barely flushed when he used it to strengthen his body. He couldn’t punch the bark off trees or obliterate bricks, but if Tam tried to get physical revenge on him now, he could simply laugh it off. Under the influence of mana and not having to sacrifice parts of his meal to the older boy, he began to build muscle on his malnourished body, as well.

And of course, he didn’t stop visiting the trash heap, either. His twenty pennies grew into thirty-five. Bast followed him around everywhere, and thus figured out what Rhys was up to in the trash heap. Rather than trying to take his money or strongarm his way into controlling the operation, though, Bast simply fell in and helped him gather bottles.

“Why didn’t you take control? You’re stronger than me,” Rhys pointed out one day.

Bast simply shrugged. “You’re the brains of the operation. I never would have thought of this if you didn’t do it first. I could steal this from you, but what would that get me? I’d end up in hell, like Tam. Instead, aren’t I better off sticking at your side and continuing to benefit from your future plans?”

Rhys could find no fault in that logic, so he nodded and went back to gathering potions.

Between the two of them, only Rhys had the fine motor skills required to tease drops of potions from the bottom of vials, so it fell to him to continue filling his health and mana potions. He offered Bast a drop of the mana potion one day, half out of curiosity, to see what someone who instinctively gathered mana would think of its quality. Bast had licked his lips, then frowned.

“That’s… hmm. Like an hour’s worth of gathered mana? Are you really practicing on that little? You should try absorbing mana from the air instead.”

An hour’s worth of gathered mana was enough to fill his core? Three hours, now, but still! Rhys managed a fake smile, a little embarrassed. He really was reincarnated with trash stats, wasn’t he? Though, to be fair, he didn’t know the full effect of Less is More. Maybe it doubled the effect of the potion, though even with a doubled potion, that still meant two hours of mana gathering was more than enough for him to start out with. He shook his head at himself. No, he couldn’t let Bast know. He wasn’t bothered to learn his stats were as trashy as he’d thought, but he didn’t want the other boy knowing. Bast might not be as appreciative of trash as Rhys was.

He did follow Bast’s advice and attempt to gather mana from the air. Doing it like Bast, by simply walking and breathing, was outright impossible for him, but when he laid in bed at night and focused on nothing else, he could guide a tiny scrap of mana into his core. It wasn’t much, not even comparable to one drop of the potion, but it was better than nothing. Any extra mana counted in his book.