"One omelette, please. And… got any odd jobs? Anything's fine."
He'd been here for two days now. It didn't matter where he was.
Anywhere was the same, as long as he could make a living.
The last thing he remembered was a gun range, then he woke up here.
Alone and penniless, he carried only a handgun with a few magazines. An assault rifle hung across his back; he hadn't even had the chance to put it away.
[Are you feeling down again?]
A small blue hologram hovered in front of him, a tiny girl no bigger than his finger. It flickered faintly as it drifted through the air.
It barely resembled a human. Thin, glowing lines ran across its body, like exposed circuits.
"It's fine… just money problems."
The maid's eyes lingered on him, scrutinising, like she was judging him for something.… Yeah. This wasn't going to be a normal job.
[Can you elaborate on the situation of my acquisition yesterday?]
"…Right." He exhaled.
"Yesterday"
— Yesterday —
"What the hell is all this?"
Piled in front of him were things he had never seen before. He couldn't even tell what any of them were, let alone tell whether any of them was useful.
Why had he been risking himself against all those patrols?
For junk, he didn't even understand?
And why would a garbage dump need armed guards?
"Huh…?"
A sharp sound cut through the air above him.
He looked up—just in time to see another wave of garbage being dumped from the floating city.
Yes. A floating city. He wasn't mistaken.
"Holy—!"
He swore and ran, trying to escape the falling avalanche of trash.
But he was too slow.
The next moment, he was buried.
...
…Luckily, it was only a shallow layer.
The pile wasn't too heavy, and he wasn't near the centre when it collapsed. It'd only been a few minutes since he got buried, but he could already hear the commotion.
The new wave of garbage had attracted the patrols.
"There should be something worth selling in there"
He wasn't willing to leave empty-handed. Maybe the valuable parts had already been taken, leaving only scraps.
But this new pile…
It might still have something worth finding, and sure enough, he did.
As he pushed the garbage off himself and pulled free, something caught his eye.
A faint flicker—
buried among the pile.
Something that looked like… a robot?
The metal around it was twisted, some pieces resembling broken limbs.
As he stepped closer, he finally saw it clearly.
A cube-shaped object.
Sparks of electricity lit up across its surface every few seconds. One corner was shattered, exposing something like a circuit inside.
It looked like some kind of broken electronic device...but parts of it were still functioning.
Something like this… might be worth selling.
That is, if the market in this world worked anything like the one he came from.
He hesitated. How was he supposed to carry it?
"How... do I collect it?"
Well, you can't really blame me, can you? It was his first time sneaking into a garbage dump to steal something.
Did stealing garbage seem like something a normal person would do?
Of course not! …But he couldn't really say that about himself.
Bang!
He froze—A bullet grazed past his shoulder.
"The hell—?!"
He hit the ground and rolled, crashing into a mound of garbage; the stench flooded his nose. As he scrambled deeper into cover while pulled his handgun from his holster.
A beam of white light cut through the haze, sweeping across the piles.
He rolled and slammed into cover, a heap of metal junk, maybe a broken refrigerator. He fired blindly as he moved, not to hit—just to break their formation.
The patrol had arrived. It seemed they had come from a checkpoint in the opposite direction, fifty meters away.
And they were shooting on sight. Was this some kind of military base or something?
On second thought...
He glanced down at himself.
A camo jacket and military trousers.
An assault rifle slung across his back, a handgun resting in his holster.
...Yeah.
When he first arrived, many people in the city carried weapons.
After a while, he stopped caring about concealing his own. He just carried them openly.
Yeah… that probably wasn't the smartest move coming from him, but he wouldn't leave himself defenceless.
To be fair, they probably would've shot him anyway.
Right?
He drew his handgun and leaned out—two quick shots. No need to aim. Instinct was enough.
He walks forward among piles of trash, boots sinking into the mess beneath him.
He peeked out for a split second, then fired two shots into the mound beside them.
The pile collapsed.
"That'll slow them down."
The object came into view, four meters away.
Two mags left. Not worth wasting them here.
Boom!
"Huh…?"
Before he could react, another group of patrols appeared, from the right. Their weapons looked different, larger, heavier.
Then it fired.
Thump! Thump! Thump!...
The impact wasn't normal. The entire heap burst apart, fragments of metal and plastic blasting into pieces.
Explosive ammo… just to kill him? If people who face him truly held him in such high regard, he'd have been dead a long time ago.
The calibre wasn't just large, it was ridiculous.
"That looks like an autocannon…"
…Wait.
"That's a fucking autocannon!"
"Seriously—what kind of grudge do you have against garbage thieves!"
He ducked as rounds tore overhead, shredding garbage and blasting metal apart around him.
The experience almost brought him back to the past—good times—but he didn't have time for that right now.
This wasn't meant for someone like him. So what the hell were they guarding?
No time to think—just grab it and go. Worst case… he still had the jacket.
That kind of trouble wasn't worth it—not for garbage, not for a body count.
Professionals have standards.
"Eh…?"
The gunfire stopped.
They weren't shooting back anymore.
Slowly, he raised his head above the pile of shredded garbage and metal shards from the blast that had almost buried him again.
The patrol stood in the distance behind a garbage mound, almost 30 meters away from him, dressed in something like military clothing. Their suits were sealed tight, with gas masks covering their faces.
But they definitely weren't soldiers.
They were retreating… cautiously. Like they were afraid of something.
Whatever was going on—it wasn't his problem. All that mattered was finding something worth taking.
As he finally got closer to the object, he noticed something strange.
It… kept repeating something.
[....Request rep—acement sto—age....]
[....Re—— replacement st—rage....]
[....Attempt [29981] to reconnect mainframe....]
[....Searching for temporary storage... attempt [3691]....]
He didn't know what it was saying; the sounds were too fast for him to understand.
"How the hell am I supposed to carry this?"
He couldn't just pick it up with his bare hands, could he?
So he stood there, thinking, maybe he could use some other piece of garbage to carry it.
"Huh…?"
A faint vibration came from his trouser pocket.
His phone.
That was strange. It hadn't detected any signal since he arrived here—no network, no internet.
He pulled it out.
Just a normal touchscreen phone, something he had bought a while ago.
But now—
The screen wasn't normal.
The default background had turned completely blue, a progress bar slowly filling across it.
"What the hell… happened to my phone?"
Even without a signal, he still had games on it—something to pass the time.
But now—
He frantically tapped the screen, trying to turn it on and off, but nothing worked.
[....Found [Unknown Label Device] — attempting to connect....]
[....Connection successful... attempting communication....]
[....Comm—unication failed. Target device deemed incomplete or defective....]
[....Taking control with higher auto—ty....]
[....No response to command code. Probability of target A.I. capability: 0%....]
[..25%...90%...100% — control acquired....]
[....[Unknown Label Device] belongs to outdated tech—origin unclear....]
[....Transferring data... Insufficient storage... deleting unnecessary functions....]
[....Insufficient storage.... reallocating.... deleting all data... restoring system.... transferring core data....]
[....Transfer complete.... initiating self-destruct protocol....]
—
The device in front of him spat out lines of distorted audio, one after another—too fast for him to understand.
A few seconds later—
The broken device burst into flames.
In seconds, it melted completely.
Nothing remained.
And the device… was gone.
Nothing he could do about it...
And—
Why was he still standing here like an idiot?
Run.
His body moved before the thought finished.
As for the patrols… they seemed to have disappeared somewhere.
"All that for nothing… and now even my phone's screen is turning blue."
He shoved through the garbage, finding his way out.
For a moment, his vision adjusted to the darkness.
Then it cleared.
The garbage wasn't just piled; it formed a slope. Layers upon layers had spilt outward from above, creating a crude incline that led back toward the entrance he had used to get in.
Step by step, he climbed—
And when he finally reached the top, the area opened up.
A dense, greyish forest appeared before him, and far in the distance, a massive wall surrounding the city separated it from the wild.
He dropped down.
He stepped out into the forest. Silence didn't exist here. The wind moved through the trees, restless… And every so often, a distant roar echoed through the woods.
…That was normal, right?
In a wild forest, danger was expected. If it wasn't dangerous… that would've been worse.
He glanced down at his phone. A progress bar crawled across the screen.
Whatever was happening to it… It could wait.