God of Trash

Rhys sectioned off a portion of the trash that felt more-or-less equivalent to one of his impure potions, piling the rest to the side to add on later. He wanted to push his limits, but not too much. The first impure potion sip had almost gone too far, and now he was a little more wary of carelessly shoving up the upper limit of impurities he took in at one time. He didn’t want to almost kill himself again. Better to be a little more cautious and approach this one step at a time until he could take on massive amounts of this upper-peak trash.

Looking at his pile of trash, Rhys grinned. Activating stalker mode! He dug into it. One piece at a time, he went through everything he’d gathered so far, searching for any interesting letters or tidbits of paper. The rare organic trash he set aside, for making yet richer fertilizer later. He hadn’t forgotten how much Sorden had paid him for those herbs. If he grew herbs with the fertilizer from the upper peak, would they increase in quality yet again? He wasn’t sure, but he was game to try.

As expected, the trash that had flown this far had been out here for some time. The paper was weathered, the ink all but washed away. What little he gleaned was only what he already knew—that the Infinite Constellation School was a poor, small school, with few connections and little power. It owed large debts to nearby schools, which it slowly paid off, but which were often leveraged to force Aquari or the other teachers into tasks that they had no desire to complete. Rather than a noble mage of great standing, their Schoolmaster, Aquari, was more like the bullied kid who could only bow her head and act as a gofer for the more powerful Schoolmasters. From what he read, she was at the absolute lower limit one could be to qualify as a Schoolmaster, and consequently, she wasn’t able to act freely very often. Instead, she was bossed around and treated like trash.

Well, I knew that.

There was nothing, however, about the upcoming ‘guest teacher,’ or even an indication of what school he’d be from, or what Tier he was. To find out that kind of thing, he’d need much fresher trash than the long-lost dregs that had fluttered through the woods to the edge of the barrier. It wasn’t that surprising, in all honesty, that he didn’t find anything out yet. It was fine, too. He planned to pick up every piece of trash on the upper peak. He’d find out eventually.

He set the trash he wasn’t going to burn to the side, nearby enough that he could reach for it and add it on later. With all his pre-treatment done, it was time to get down to business and burn some trash. Rhys clapped his hands and rubbed them together eagerly. Here we go!

He touched a match to the pile. Fire crackled, quickly growing. The familiar dark smoke leaped up, and Rhys breathed it in.

It was powerful. Mana flowed into him, and with it, impurities. Fewer of them, but with each one individually more powerful than any impurity he’d felt before. He breathed deep, excited.

The smoke poured in. It was powerful, but his limits had expanded from his early days. He had enough mana to send it into the compost, but that was it. His limits weren’t stretched. He was simply able to take in this much mana.

Hold on. That’s no good! Rhys grabbed a hunk of nearby trash and threw it on the pile. The mana flowing into him grew stronger, but the smaller amount of impurities flowing in with the mana meant that only his mana limits were pressed. The impurities, too, were stronger, but they didn’t possess the piercing qualities of the hyper-concentrated impurities from the potions, or even a corrosiveness that exceeded that of ordinary impurities. Or rather, they were more corrosive, far more corrosive, but there were so many fewer of them that Rhys still had a good handle on keeping them in check.