God of Trash

Rhys awoke to sunlight and the chattering of birdsong. He jumped to his feet, startled. Two days in a row of sleeping? That was… that was…

Absolutely luxurious! He laid back on the floor and stretched, feeling the warmth of the sunshine on his face. True, the mattress was still wet, so he couldn’t enjoy the incredible luxury of sleeping on a bed, but for his mage body, the floor might as well be equivalent.

He hadn’t only slept last night, of course, but since he’d focused on absorbing as much of the trash pit as he could and refining his body with trash stars, he hadn’t had to spend the rest of it awake making potato chips. It was a waste not to sell them at the finals, but to be honest? He hadn’t expected to make it to the finals. Now that he was here, he wanted to give them as good a showing as he could manage, and that meant focusing his all on his current strength and raising it as high as he could, rather than focusing on making money. Oh, sure, he wanted to make money, don’t get him wrong, but he had enough money right now that it would be irresponsible to try to make more, vice shore up his strength with the hardest battle so far dead ahead of him.

He'd also brewed up replacement filth potions and taken care to fill his body almost full of impurities, so that he could ignite them in the middle of battle without having to scramble over the field. He’d done the right thing day one, but forgotten day two, and paid the price against Florian. True, he’d been able to bear that price, but now that it was semifinals? His opponents wouldn’t give him the opening to mess around with gathering garbage. Especially not if he faced Bast in the finals… not that he expected to. At the end of the day, he was still trash, and it would be a sad tournament if trash made it all the way to the end.

As for the other tiers, they were progressing well. Ev had made it to the semifinals of the Tier 3 tournament, as had Anabel, his costuming sugar mama, and Rhys didn’t know who to root on more. On one hand, he’d learned so much from Ev, but at the same time, she’d beaten the crap out of him repeatedly. On the other hand, Anabel was soft and sweet and gave him things for free… but she was the enemy, from a different school. He compromised and decided he would cheer on Ev, and Rina would cheer on Anabel.

He didn’t recognize anyone in the Tier 1 battles, not that he’d expected to; that is, except for Ernesto’s students. Hono got pushed out early when she was unable, or unwilling, to use her curse powers in a sanctioned duel, Victor had apparently not made the qualifiers—which didn’t startle Rhys—and Mia put up a good fight, but dropped out before the semifinals. Only Walter remained, and from the confused looks he shot Rhys’s battles every now and again, he didn’t quite understand why he wasn’t facing Rhys in the semifinals.

Guess I’d be confused too, if I was on the brink of reaching Tier 2, and yet some trash-tier talent ascended to Tier 2 before me, Rhys thought with a shrug. That wasn’t his problem. Walter had to cope with that, not him. He could just laugh at Walter from over here in the Tier 2 battles, and there was nothing Walter could do about it.

He’d gotten up early enough this morning, and hopped out the window of his own volition. He scanned the ground to make sure no back-watching was required, but it seemed Florian and Cassian really had given up on their petty revenge. To be fair, he had almost ruined Cassian’s magehood altogether, so he got it, but he really hadn’t expected the impurity potion to frighten them to that extent. It was just a little bit of impurities. He could drink that much for fun. Hell, it was barely enough to be worth burning, nowadays. Were his impurity potions really that potent, that a Tier 3 mage would call him a poison master?

He thought back to Infinite Constellation School, where Sorden had warned him not to use his buffing impurity potion against another student. She’d mentioned something about being a potion master… no, a poison master in a low-level school with the kind of impurity potion he’d brewed. True, this was a lesser potion, one that didn’t threaten to eat the glass of the container that held it (too much, anyways), but it was still a lot of impurities for an ordinary mage, it seemed.

He glanced at the potions in his storage ring, then shook his head. He’d only use them if he had a good reason to, if his life or the life of someone dear to him was in danger. They were too dangerous to use randomly, not just because of their horrific effectiveness, but also because of the threat of random backers popping up to demand to know why their bloodline’s talent had been ruined. Cassian was a great example of this, showing up to attack Rhys after Rhys bullied his son a little. If Cassian had had someone behind him yet more powerful, and Rhys had left Cassian and Florian crippled, then how would he fare against someone at the Tier 4 or 5 level? Putting aside whether the potions would work on them, he was pretty sure he couldn’t possibly move fast enough to strike a Tier 4 or 5 with a stick, which meant he’d never be able to apply the potion in the first place.

It was a sobering thought. He should treat the potions like guns. Unless he wanted his opponent dead, and he was a hundred percent sure his opponent didn’t have a buddy with a sedan with stolen plates and the willingness to swing a driveby on Rhys, then the potions should only be used as a last resort, and swiftly removed from his opponent afterward. In the semifinals, he wouldn’t use them. And in the finals, well, there was absolutely no way Bast wasn’t in the finals, and he had absolutely no interest in harming his friend, so the potions were right out.

But that was fine. He wasn’t a potion master, and he had plenty else in his arsenal.