God of Trash

BANG!

The cauldron exploded. Red-hot metal shards hurtled through the air. Rhys threw himself backward, covering his head with his hands as he hit the floor. The shockwave hit him and pushed him further, and he slammed into the rock below. Hot metal seared into his back and sizzled through his sides. He gritted his teeth and hissed rather than scream in pain.

But there was no time to wait. On the floor, he activated Trash Body and whipped around to face the remnants of the cauldron. The potion still hung in the air, though it rapidly plummeted. He thrust his hand out and called the potion to him. The black sludge twitched in the air, then flew toward him.

Shit. Vial, vial… The one he’d been holding was lost to him, tossed out of his hand by the shockwave. The dangerous goo flew his direction with nothing to protect him from its imminent impact, seething with thick impurities. Rhys scrabbled in his robes and pulled out a vial just as the sludge reached him. He called it into the vial and quickly capped it.

Exhausted, bleeding from a dozen cuts, Rhys examined his prize. The goo slurped slowly in the vial, thick and disgusting. He could sense its potency from the far side of the glass. It was truly horrifying how vile it was. A single drop of the potion was worth an entire cauldron of ordinary goop. Somehow, he’d strengthened the potion while hew as concentrating it—not that he was complaining. He grinned, then grimaced as the pain finally caught up to him. Reaching over his back, he slowly pulled the chunks of metal out of his body. He put the filth potion away and drew out an ordinary potion. A quick sip, and he began to heal. He kept pulling metal shards out as his body did its best to shove them out on its own.

Now he had his filth potion so he could keep training impurities, and he could keep fighting with Ev to strengthen his martial prowess, as well. He waited while he healed, occasionally taking sips of the potion to speed things along. Slowly, the pain faded. Rhys climbed to his feet and dusted off his robes. A part of him wanted to rush right off to Ev, but he held back. First, he needed to make sure he could handle the potion. It would really suck if he got there, only to find out the potion overwhelmed him, and then get beaten up by Ev while he was struggling to not die to the potion at the same time.

He pulled out the sludge. Staring at the vial, he hesitated. Was it just him, or had the glass decayed a little from the inside out? The inner layer of the vial looked a little corroded, the surface cracked—only at the hairline level, but enough to be worried, nonetheless. Rhys tipped his head, then shrugged. It wasn’t like it would make the potion less toxic.

“Time for some plasticsmaxing. Or glassmaxing, I guess,” he muttered, and took a tiny sip of the potion.

The potion burned. His whole mouth felt like it was on fire. He tasted acid, then electricity, then nothing at all as his mouth went completely numb. There was only pain and numbness, the two fighting one another for dominance. He quickly swallowed. It burned all the way down and roiled in his stomach, eating away at him from the inside out.

My body might not be able to handle this, he thought, and then the impurities slammed into him, and there was no more time for thinking.