Chương 7: The Price of Better Trash

Meno dragged the head rig on. The strap caught his hair, and as he jerked free, the cracked hinge creaked open. The apartment vanished. Marble, smoke, and auction-house noise slammed into place. Meno spawned beside the listing terminal where he had logged out, still wearing starter clothes that looked worse under capital lighting. The crowd had thickened. Players packed the hall in clumps: crafters arguing material purity, guild buyers holding private bids. His stream resumed. Viewers: 1, 121.

Lower than the mythic peak. Absurd for him. Both facts landed badly. HE'S BACK auction results did u get fleeced check core Meno stepped to the terminal.

"Moment of truth," he said, then hated that it sounded like content. [Auction Complete: Dustbound Core Fragment x1] [Winning Bid: 4 Gold 12 Silver] [Auction Complete: Weathered Stone Shard x1] [Winning Bid: 1 Gold 3 Silver] [Auction Complete: Weathered Stone Shard x1] [Winning Bid: 98 Silver] [Auction Complete: Weathered Stone Shard x1] [Winning Bid: 95 Silver] [Net Proceeds Added: 7 Gold 8 Silver] Meno stood still. Seven gold.

Seven gold and eight silver, after fees, sitting in his pouch instead of turning into a lesson about underpricing. The number had weight. It was repairs. Supplies. A real weapon choice. Breathing room. Enough money to make the old broke part of him reach for it with both hands. Then his brain started cutting holes in the floor. A guild cornering the weapon market before he bought. A stupid mistake on a road. A PKer seeing the gold count in a clip and deciding his corpse had a payout.

Relief lasted maybe three seconds.

"Okay," he said.

"We don't spend like idiots." 7g early is huge still wearing pajama armor repair sword idiot buy Uncommon buy food buffs First priority was the gate pass. Not because he planned to walk into the next zone immediately. He was dumb, not completely decorative. But locked roads became problems later, and problems later became time loss. He asked three NPCs before a clerk finally pointed him toward the military quarter, with the dead-eyed patience.

The military quarter sat above the market district behind a broad set of stairs and two rows of posted notices. The air changed before the buildings did. Fewer vendor calls. More boots. Guards at corners. Recruitment boards covered in stamped paper. Armor inspections under awnings. Players lined up before sealed offices and got turned away in quick batches. An NPC soldier glanced at Meno's starter clothes and immediately looked past him for someone more worth disappointing.

"I need clearance for restricted roads," Meno said.

"Which road?"

"Emberhollow steel gate. Fortress choke point. Commander Dask said capital pass." The soldier's eyes came back to him, slower this time.

"Level."

"Ten."

"Equipment." Meno touched the sword at his side.

"Functional."

"Inspection says otherwise."

"It killed something."

"Many things die from embarrassment. That does not make your blade roadworthy." Chat loved him. adult NPC detected DO THE QUEST Meno's teeth pressed together.

"What are the requirements?"

"Filed purpose, sponsor, gear rating, and combat review."

"Purpose: I was there."

"Then you know why casual transit is suspended." A second guard leaned on the doorway behind him. Older, tired, and less amused.

"People keep thinking one loud deed is sufficient." That hit close enough that Meno's shoulders tightened.

"I triggered the event."

"Then you have already contributed." The older guard pointed back down the stairs.

"Contribute to public safety by not becoming our problem." The office door shut. The capital had procedures, locks, soldiers, and people whose job was to turn miracle stories into stamped denials. Meno walked back toward the market with chat spamming flower jokes and hated every step because the rejection smelled like a quest chain. The pass could wait. His sword could not. He stopped at a weapon vendor first because optimism sometimes needed to be murdered by price tags.

Rows of Common I to Common III weapons sat in racks under clean labels. Nothing glowed. Nothing hummed. Nothing wanted to change his life. The vendor watched him with a face that said every customer thought they were the first to discover swords. Meno tested options by weight and recovery. A two-handed weapon had reach and damage. It also dragged through the air with commitment written into every swing. Great for people who hit once and meant it.

Terrible for a class that needed clean contact again and again before the monster got bored and killed him. Daggers were fast enough to make his hand itch. Stack-building potential, sure. Also no reach. Against a boar, maybe. Against an elemental torso, a tall humanoid, anything with spacing, he would be hugging murder. Axes hit harder. The balance wanted arcs, not touches. Recovery felt like arguing with gravity. Maces made sense against stone and armor. The impact would matter. The rhythm would suffer.

Each swing asked for a follow-through he could not always afford. He came back to one-handed swords. Not perfect. Familiar. Enough reach. Enough speed. Enough control. He knew the length in his body now, and knowing anything in this game had value. The vendor set a plain iron sword on the counter. [Common III Balanced Iron Sword] Damage: Low++ Durability: 55/55"Fifty silver," the vendor said. Meno stared at the tooltip.

After Titan I, Mythic Design Credit, a raid event, and a million-view clip, his actual usable upgrade was a slightly better boring sword.

"I will think about it," he said. He walked away without buying it yet. Seven gold made people stupid. Meno had spent enough life broke to know sudden money could vanish faster than a good spawn. He headed toward the crafting quarter, where smoke and hammer noise rose between tight streets. Forge halls spilled heat onto cobbles. Leather tents stank of oil and hides. Alchemy courtyards smoked in colors that made him step wide.

Inscription stalls flashed with tiny rune failures and curses from people who had expected crafting to be a menu. Players hauled sacks, bones, ore, weeds, and arguments. Guild signs hung over the best stalls. NPC trainers answered the same beginner questions with expressions losing mercy by the minute. He almost turned into an alley to avoid the polished blue bow. If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. Too late. She saw him.

She stood near a private forge awning in better leathers than before, the gold accents subtler and more expensive for it. Her bow had changed too; still blue, now with a cleaner curve and silver thread along the grip. Her party waited around her. Meno inspected them before his pride could stop him.

[Aurelia | Class: Rift Archer — Level 9 | Ability: Spatial Marksmanship] [MendMira | Class: Threadmender — Level 9 | Ability: Triage Weaving] [BulwarkBram | Class: Iron Bulwark — Level 9 | Ability: Shieldline Method] Level 9. Meno tried very hard not to enjoy that. He enjoyed it anyway. Aurelia smiled like she had caught him stealing dessert and was deciding whether to call it charming.

"Meno," she said.

"Titan I. Mythic designer. Still dressed like the gate forgot you." Chat recognized her instantly. GOLD WOMAN drama farming party invite rematch"Aurelia," Meno said.

"Still buying personality upgrades in bulk?" MendMira, the healer, took a sip from a metal cup.

"Good. They're both like this." BulwarkBram folded his arms. He was broad enough that the movement had a weather system, but his eyes stayed on Meno's sword.

"That blade needs a coffin."

"I'm aware." Aurelia stepped closer.

"Congratulations. Truly. What you did was reckless, inefficient, and very difficult to ignore."

"Frame that. Put it above your bed."

"I might." Her smile thinned.

"You proved your class has value under pressure. My offer stands one final time. Join us for structured progression. Better gear access. You would stop wasting your ceiling on mud and bad decisions." It was a good offer. Meno looked past her at the forge, the party, the clean repairs, the calm readiness. He pictured himself standing behind Bram while the tank held a monster still and Aurelia called his damage window like he was a strange pet they had purchased after seeing a clip.

"No." Aurelia blinked once. Small. Real.

"You did not hear terms."

"I heard enough. I'm not joining the first rich party that noticed my numbers."

"It is not charity."

"Obviously." Her fingers tightened on the bow grip.

"You prefer wasting time?"

"I prefer not being your weird damage pet." Mira coughed into her cup. Bram looked away like the nearest wall had become important. Aurelia's face changed. The perfect cool surface cracked, and under it was something younger, sharper, and much less used to being refused by people with bad shoes.

"You think refusing help makes you the man of the people?" she said. Meno's eyes narrowed.

"Private content, private forge, private party, private contracts. What does that make you?"

"Prepared."

"Owned." Her jaw set. Bram said, low, "Aurelia." She ignored him.

"The next time I see you outside safe walls, Meno Varsh, I will kill you myself." The forge noise seemed to dip around them. It probably didn't. Meno's pulse just made room for the sentence. He smiled.

"Go ahead and try." Chat became useless. PK DECLARATION RICH GIRL CRASHOUT safe zone saves him Meno why Bram knows they're idiots clip clip clip Mira sighed.

"Wonderful. Now she'll be obsessed." Bram gave Meno a flat look that said both of you are expensive problems. He did not apologize for her. He did not endorse her either. Aurelia turned and walked away before the composure she had left could leak out in public. Her party followed, Bram last. He glanced once at Meno's sword again.

"Repair before your next date with her. I hate drama." Meno resumed hunting for crafting help with his dignity bleeding in different places. Near the main forge hall, he stopped an NPC with a white beard and a leather apron.

"How do players learn crafting?" Meno asked. The old man closed his eyes for a heartbeat.

"Any player may learn one crafting profession," he said.

"One. You prove worth to a trainer. Tasks, materials, time. Advanced work requires reputation, tools, facilities, recipes, and fewer questions shouted while I am holding hot metal."

"So quest chain."

"Training," the man snapped.

"Quest chain with a hammer." The old man pointed tongs at him.

"Call it what you like. The metal still waits for work." Meno stepped back before the tongs became a teaching aid. Crafting personally was a trap. Without guild-fed materials, he would fall behind immediately. Crafting was not free money. It was another treadmill, and the rich players already had better shoes, assistants, spreadsheets, and people carrying ore. No real-money currency buying, sure. The system blocked direct cash into coin. Great. Wonderful. Legalistic purity with holes around every edge.

Guild houses, hired analysts, feeder parties, off-platform coordinators, sponsorship staff, private crafter contracts, and whispered proxy offers had already shown where money leaked in. The game banned buying a mythic design and still had to write the rule after people tried in the first hour. Meno tried player blacksmiths anyway. One player with soot on his cheeks never looked up from a blade.

"Guild queue only."

"I have gold."

"Nice." Another crafter in a leather cap inspected Meno, then his stream overlay, then smiled too fast.

"Streamer rate. Two gold craft fee, mats extra, no guarantee on roll."

"For Uncommon I?"

"Nah. Still on Common III." A third player offered a contract that gave Meno the sword at cost if he wore the crafter's watermark overlay for six hours. The watermark preview covered a quarter of the screen and pulsed. Meno walked away before chat could vote. NPC crafters were available because the game expected guild bottlenecks. NPCs were also expensive because they were not grinding skill for exposure. A blacksmith with arms like tree roots offered an Uncommon I one-handed sword for four gold plus materials.

Meno wanted it enough to get angry. Four gold plus materials was possible now. That was the trap. Possible did not mean sane. He still needed repairs, bandages, death-padding, travel costs, maybe a pass later, maybe armor if he ever accepted reality. Spending most of his first real money on one weapon with unknown future costs was how the game turned a windfall into a funny clip. Then the real mistake arrived. He should not have auctioned the Dustbound materials for cash. He should have traded them for access.

Guilds. Crafter time. A custom weapon. Material-for-service, not material-for-money-then-money-back-into-a-market designed to punish solos. Rare launch materials were leverage. He had turned leverage into coins because coin was the only kind of value a broke man trusted quickly. That was not bad luck. That was a bad read. His face went hot.

local broke man learns economy still up gold tho buy common III and move viewers 947 people leaving during shopping arc The viewer count slipped while he stood in the forge smoke being mad at himself. He bought the Common III sword. Fifty silver left his pouch with a pain out of proportion to the amount. [Common III Balanced Iron Sword] Damage: Low++ Durability: 55/55 He equipped it. Then he paid to repair the Common II Plain Iron Sword and stored it as backup. That felt better than it should have.

The red durability terror left his side and moved into his inventory, where it could wait to disappoint him later. He bought bandages next. Fifty silver worth. Ten compact field bandages, cheap and clean enough for road use. Food and drink buffs sat in the next stall, promising minor health regeneration, focus, heat tolerance, cold tolerance, and other little advantages organized people would stack before important pushes. Meno skipped them. Food buffs vanished on death, and dying was apparently his signature move.

"Bandages only," he said. dying removes buff true streamer nutrition debuff He still needed junk. Capital junk, it turned out, had become expensive. Players were weird. Launch players were worse. Every trash vendor he found had either been stripped by experimenters, hoarders, crafters testing dismantle systems, or people who had seen his junk-drop strategy clipped and decided broken buttons were the next market. One stall offered cracked beads at three silver each. Meno stared at the price.

"The bubble has reached garbage." He left the capital. The road to Rillpost took longer than buying junk should have, which was why the junk mattered. He moved through known roads without picking fights. Capital outskirts into forest. Forest into farmland. Farmland past mobs that once would have demanded attention and now barely registered unless they stepped into his path. A Needlecry Finch dove at him from a branch. He ducked, kept walking, and let it scream behind him. Progress existed.

The leaderboard did not care, but the road did. At Rillpost, the lazy-eyed junk dealer looked up from a crate of cracked crockery and stared for a long moment.

"Well," the man said.

"The scarecrow returned with coin."

"Trash," Meno said.

"Bulk. Stackable. All of it." The dealer's good eye narrowed.

"All."

"All."

"You waging war on birds?"

"Yes." The man's face softened in a way that made Meno uncomfortable.

"I knew this day would come."

"Don't make it weird." Chat crowned him immediately. TRASH BARON PRAYER BEAD GOD Junk King of Rillpost The dealer pulled out crates with reverence. Broken loom pegs. Cracked prayer beads. Bent spoon heads. Dead buttons. Chipped clay saints with missing noses. Useless festival tokens from a holiday no one had bothered to explain. Bundles of string that had, in the dealer's words, "lost their ambitions." Meno paid one gold for the lot. The dealer wiped his eye with a sleeve.

"My wife said no one would ever appreciate the back shelf."

"They serve a higher purpose."

"Recognition comes in many bins."

"Stop." Meno packed the stackable junk until his inventory looked like a disaster market had vomited into rows. He refused to acknowledge either title chat gave him, which made them use both harder. With the Common III equipped, Common II repaired and stored, bandages bought, and inventory padded with enough garbage to make death negotiate, he started back toward Emberhollow. The Zubra Launch Array had been one-way.

Venk had mentioned forward launches might be unlocked later once the system was considered safe, or once some guild completed the prerequisites, or once the Zubras stopped making goats into examples. Meno filed that under someone else's problem. The overland route felt different now. The farmlands still had players, but fewer in starter panic. Some were harvesting. Some were arguing over guides already outdated by the hour.

Furrow Rats and Threshvine Clumps moved through the fields with threat tags that no longer made his pulse twitch. He crossed the river carefully anyway. Hookjaw Pike still lurked under the surface, and getting complacent near water was how the universe collected blooper reels. One snapped at his boot. He stepped aside, smacked its snout with the flat of the Common III sword, and kept moving without giving it a real fight. The mountains rose ahead.

At the edge of the orc valley, Meno dropped behind a boulder and watched the first camp. Smoke curled from firepits. Redscar banners hung from poles. Raiders moved in pairs, sometimes threes, and the shamans stayed near the inner rings with bone staves and green sparks crawling between their fingers. The same zone that had been pure death at Level 5 had gained edges he could see. He inspected from cover.

[Hostile: Redscar Orc Raider | Type: Humanoid Warrior | Threat: High | Trait: Pack-Aggressive] [Hostile: Redscar Bone Shaman | Type: Humanoid Caster | Threat: Lethal | Trait: Hex-Projectile] Meno had planned to keep going. Return toward Emberhollow, scout the event edge, maybe figure out what the capital pass actually required when he stopped pretending quests were contagious. Then his thumb brushed the hilt of the new sword. Hundredfold Cleave sat unused in his technique list. Requires Chain 100+.

Normal mobs died too fast. Boars definitely died too fast now. Field pests would evaporate before the chain mattered. The elemental had been perfect for building stacks and awful in every other way. Orcs presented a worse, more interesting problem. Groups. Enough health, maybe, if he chose the right target. Multiple hostiles close enough for medium-range payoff. Humanoids smart enough to spread, call, cast, flank, and punish him for pretending they were terrain with opinions.

A shaman would ruin him if it got clean casts. Raiders would not line up politely for a sword commercial. The idea formed anyway. Build the chain on a durable target. Pull the pack into medium range. Trigger Hundredfold Cleave. Spend the entire chain in one ugly release. An awful plan. An actual plan. His inventory was full enough that the death table would need to chew through a flea market before it reached anything useful, assuming the observed pattern held. Still an assumption. Still a risk.

Below, a Redscar Raider broke from patrol to shove another orc away from the fire. They argued in harsh syllables, the larger one jabbing a finger toward the outer rocks. The shaman turned its skull-staff toward them, and both raiders shut up immediately. Meno smiled, and it felt like the wrong part of his brain had taken the meeting.

"We need something," he said, "that lives long enough to regret standing near friends." The orc camp kept moving below him. Meno crouched lower behind the boulder and began counting patrol steps.