God of Trash

The second the potential left his hand, the world authority vanished. Rhys looked up, startled, then slowly stood, his projection the only remaining spot of light in Luc’s decaying body.

“Bast?”

No reply.

He dragged in all his impurities, then took Luc’s body for good measure and retreated back through the filaments, sucking them in as he went. Back into Bast’s core, drawing out all the impurities he’d used there and all the impurities Bast had built up over his life, then back into his body, sucking the mark away as he left. He stepped back physically, releasing his friend for the first time since the start of battle.

Bast didn’t react. He stood frozen, completely unmoving.

He put a hand to Bast’s forehead, gently searching inside of him. The world authority continued to wage war within Bast, fighting to steal his potential away. He wasn’t meant to have it. It had been spent, and he couldn’t regain it. Bast fought, but it was a losing battle. He wasn’t going to win this.

Rhys took a deep breath, then bared his teeth. Here he was, higher realm, more powerful, just standing by to watch his friend fight? No! Never! Bast should fight his own battles; Rhys agreed with that. But for him to not intervene when he had so much ability to tip the scales, to knowingly hand his friend a losing state, to set him up for failure? That, he couldn’t accept. That, he refused to do!

He tightened his grip on Bast. “This isn’t a battle you can fight alone. I’m coming!”

Without hesitation, he dove back into Bast’s mental space, only to find it the location of a fierce battle. From the outside, the world authority looked a bit like a net or a grid, a neatly-ordered expanse of intersecting lines of golden light that distorted only enough to try to crush Bast to death. The world authority pressed in on him from all sides, just like it had done for Rhys, but instead of chasing it away with impurities, Bast stood and fought. He slashed and attacked with his sword, forcing the world authority to retreat through the raw might of his martial prowess.

For a moment, he simply watched, amazed. So this was Bast’s path. This was what it looked like to follow the way of the sword. He could only imagine the blood, sweat, and tears that had gone into the man’s perfectly toned body and impeccable sword strikes, each one calculated to use the minimum energy to deliver the maximum effect. His sword gleamed as it forced back the golden net of light, then dashed to another point to slash back the net again. Rhys could barely follow his footwork, and his swordwork was a mystery to him. Once, they had sparred together in the dirt as brothers; now, he wouldn’t even raise his sword before Bast would kill him a dozen ways to Sunday.

He smiled. Pride welled up in his chest at seeing Bast come so far, and progress so much. There was nothing quite like seeing a friend succeed; the warmth, the contentment. Once, he’d battled jealousy, the fear of being left behind and outstripped by someone who’d once been his equal, and the sadness of the abandoned, but now he was older, wiser, and so, looking at Bast warmed his heart, and nothing else. Besides, although he couldn’t come close to Bast’s strength with the sword, if he brought his impurities into the equation, he had no fear that he’d be able to stand his ground—and honestly, just win, right now, against this weakened version of his friend. Of course, once he restored Bast’s potential and the man had some time to level up, that would be a totally different equation.

But first, he had to help restore Bast’s potential. Right now, he was stronger than his friend. It was time for him to step in and help, even if the advantage was only temporary.

That… and in the momentary respite he’d had, he’d realized something. Something that made his intervention necessary, not for Bast’s sake—as much as he’d like to be that kind of altruistic, true-good hero—but for his own. A revelation he could only make here, under these circumstances!

He darted in, appearing beside Bast in his mental world. Bast jumped. “Rhys? Weren’t you—”

Rhys lifted his hands, using his impurities to block an attack from the world authority. “Focus! I’m here for my own sake, not yours, so don’t you start slacking now!”

In his head, he added: lines every otaku wants to say, number 1275. It was the cool guy’s “I…I didn’t do it for you, b-baka!” but at the end of the day, it was still a cool guy’s line, and that was the important part.

“Ah… is that it?” Bast chuckled. Shaking his head, he whirled and blocked another attack. “Then in that case, I’d better show you how strong I really am.”

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Gods damn we’re so cool, Rhys thought to himself.

Bast fended off the net as best he could. Just to check, Rhys quickly scanned him. Bast’s potential was slowly absorbing back into him, just as if it were real, and Bast’s body was healing to match the restored potential. For now, he was still keeping it into shape with his trash skills, but before long, he wouldn’t have to worry about that at all. The only problem was fending off the world authority until then… or scaring it off so badly it wouldn’t dream of touching him or Bast again.

It's time to put my insight into action.

As the world authority descended for another attack, Rhys jumped in front of it, taking the blow right on his body—no, on his soul. The world authority surged forward greedily, excited at the opportunity. It rejected him, deleting him from the world entirely.

“Rhys!” Bast shouted, startled.

Rhys laughed. The world authority had just rejected him. It had just… thrown him out.

In this moment, this shining, beautiful moment, the world itself had denied him, which meant the world had acknowledged him as trash. The world itself had acknowledged his path! He was truly, in the eyes of the world itself, nothing more than an undesirable lump of garbage! His power surged. Less Is More awakened from a long slumber and activated on his core, empowering the small amount of trash left in his star in an endless, self-feeding loop. He was tiny compared to the world. This amount of garbage was nothing. And since it was nothing, it could be More.

His entire body strengthened, over and over and over again. The world authority, shocked, rejected him more strongly, trying to delete him faster, but that only made him even more powerful. That bottleneck he’d been stuck behind shattered entirely, and he surged forward, as Less Is More redoubled his trash in his star over and over again, as his entire body, trash star, and filth-mana concentration grew stronger and stronger as the world rejected it more strenuously.

This was the bottleneck he'd been stuck behind for so long! He’d grown strong; even he had to acknowledge that. His body was powerful enough that mages would kill to attain it, and people envied his strength. It wasn’t possible to call himself trash any more, at least not with the full-hearted, full-throated belief he’d had when he was a child. Even when he considered himself trash, it was a form of self-delusion, turning his mind’s eye inward and pretending not to notice the way the world looked at him.

But now? Now the world itself rejected him. Now the world itself categorized him as trash. He didn’t need any self-delusion, or to pretend not to notice the world around him. He could earnestly, honestly, from the bottom of his heart, declare himself trash and not only personally mean it, but have the world itself—the world itself—agree with him!

The more the world rejected him, the more it labeled him trash, the more he was able to apply his own path to his body and therefore strengthen himself. The world authority stripped his flesh away, his skin, his blood, taking inch after inch of muscle off his body, but he refused to break. He pushed more mana into his regeneration to fight back, but even so, it was a losing battle—not that he cared. He would stand any amount of pain and loss if it meant he could grow stronger; strong enough to have the right to reject this world!

As his body was torn apart, his power redoubled over and over again. The trash star grew larger and larger under the might of his original skill and the world’s rejection, bigger and brighter in his core until even his rapidly-strengthening body could hardly keep up with it. Bigger and bigger—so he shoved it down, forcing it inward. That only doubled its strength again, only for the world to reject it, which fed it with power from his path, which grew it larger, which let him shove it down harder, in a harmonious loop that pushed his strength toward the barrier between Tier 4 and 5, then through it, hurtling upward and upward all at once.

Bast stared, slack-jawed. The world authority was no longer bothering to attack him at all, instead putting all its effort into stopping Rhys. He shook his head in amazement. “No way.”

Abruptly, the world authority retreated. The pain stopped, and his body quickly regenerated. Rhys looked at it, confused. Where was all that energy it’d had a moment ago?

And then he realized: it didn’t want him to use it to continue to level up, especially when it was trying to reject him and failing. It retreated from him, just to whirl about and redouble its attack on Bast.

But I’m not done leveling up yet. His power was still rocketing up. If he let the world retreat now, he’d miss out on the potential growth he could gain by continuing to challenge the world authority!Rhys’s eyes shone with greed and determination, and he lunged forward and threw himself in front of the world authority before Bast could even raise his sword. Once again, the gold net closed in around him and began to tear into his body, and once more, Rhys used the power of being thrown away to hurtle higher. The instant he started to gain more power, the world authority tried to flinch away, but this time, Rhys grabbed it with both hands and dragged it down. He still had levels to go! He still could grow stronger! “Bast! Don’t let it get away!”

“You got it!” Bast dashed in and beat on the world authority. Every strike of his sword was meant to weaken it so Rhys could hold onto it more easily. A bit of the world authority tried to dash away, but Bast chased after it and, with a swing big enough that every muscle in his back stood out against his robes, he sent the glob of world authority back toward Rhys, just as he’d asked.

The trash star continued to compress and compress until at last it collapsed in on itself, all the trash crushing down into an event horizon. The trash star became a trash black hole, an inescapable void in the center of Rhys’s corespace. It sucked in greedily, just as greedily as Rhys usually sucked up garbage. Rhys suddenly found himself fighting a battle on two fronts: his newly-formed trash black hole, which wanted to devour him, and the world authority, which wanted to delete him, all while his power continued to rocket up.

I can’t get out now. Argh, dammit! I’ll just have to beat them both!