I stood in a desert.

Vast. Featureless. Dunes and valleys of golden sand and decomposed garbage.

I looked around. No one was here. Only the whispering wind to keep me company.

Behind me, in the far distance, I could see a mountain range--the only landmark in sight--but it was so incredibly far that it wasn't even an option to explore.

I eased myself to sit on the ground, and the sand was hot against my thighs.

I wasn't bothered. My mind was elsewhere. I was still parsing the memories still fresh in my mind. The lingering memories leftover in this vessel I inhabited. Marianna's body.

This was just a copy, sure, but her brain was now my brain, and while I hadn't somehow absorbed her identity, I did get to experience her past much more than I had any patience for.

I shook my head. Marianna. So that was why.

I rubbed my face with my hands and leaned back into the sand--the sand was hot and gritty against my bare skin--and I tried to cloud watch, but there were no clouds. The sky was empty.

I had lost. Just as she had.

Was it over now? Marianna had killed the Grand Magi, the goddess, and she forced the death of all worlds, but--

Where was I? Why was I even alive? Was there really nothing else here? Had it happened already? What happened to my friends? Was this even the same world, or was this a different one?

A passing gust of wind threw dust in my face, and I coughed and shielded my eyes.

I remembered that I had a status screen, and with some new muscle memory, I swiped the air in front of me with my finger, and a blue holographic square appeared.

Unnamed Human

Level 1.

XP: 0

HP: 1000/1000

Mana: 100/100

I groaned to myself and gripped my face with my hands. This was hopeless. Literally the worst. I was reborn with no skills, no power, and in a frail and weak female body. A body that needed to be fed and watered like some disgusting meat creature. UGH.

I wondered how my friends were fairing. I hoped they would've returned home as victors. Maybe they saw me as a martyr. That would be cool. Maybe they'd build statues of me. Stone expressions of a heroic little trash can, right in the city center. Jenna would've been sad, but I'm sure she'd get over it. She was strong enough.

But.

I was getting ahead of myself. There was no guarantee that anyone was alive.

Fuck.

The thought drove me up the wall that my friends could still be in danger. They could be fighting against whatever entropic bullshit was going on in the multiverse, and I wasn't there to at least be blamed for it.

I couldn't sit around moping all day. I had to do something. Anything.

"Cassandra," I said. "Where am I?"

There was no answer.

I was alone. Completely and utterly alone. The reality of it plunged deep into my gut, and I felt... lonely. Cassandra had always been there for me. Was she gone forever now?

I felt my human body trying to tear up like some sappy bitch, because somehow I missed a little AI shit talker, but I shook the thoughts away.

I needed a solution, and I couldn't rely on anyone else to help me.

First, I had to take stock of the situation.

I was standing in a desert, butt-ass naked with my tits hanging out and the soles of my feet burning in the hot sand.

There wasn't shit around except for the mountains way the fuck out there. There were no other features besides them being mountains, but going there could give me a vantage point of the world around.

I felt a little empty inside. Hunger, I think it was. Not debilitating, but enough to be really annoying. I wasn't thirsty, but I knew that if I didn't find water by the end of the day, I'd be in a lot of trouble.

I opened my status screen. My pathetic stats stared back, but I opened the details tab, and my eyes widened at what I had found.

Unnamed Human

Level 1 Recyclemancer.

XP: 0

Skills:

Recycle 1

I was still a recycler. Or something like it. Maybe because I was no longer a machine, the rulesets forced me into a new class. A recyclemancer. Maybe I was a mage who just... recycled shit. But how would that work?

I scooped up a handful of sand, and I focused on the skill.

-30 Mana

+450 XP

The sand seemingly turned to ash and disintegrated, and I felt an aura grow around me. It was thin and invisible, but I could sense it. It was similar to a regular protective mana shield that most magic-users had, but it was... different somehow.

I tried again, and I scooped up a double handful of dirt and flashed it.

It was as though I were drinking the dirt from my hand, and with each swallow, my aura pulsed like a heartbeat, growing just a little more.

-60 Mana

+1100 XP

Level up!

You are now level 2.

You have gained an additional skill point.

I opened my skills tab.

Reuse

1

Create raw resource

2

Create from recipe

3

Manipulate from resource

4

Create from memory

Reduce

1

Manual recycle

2

Touch recycle

3

Ranged recycle

4

Flash recycle

5

Aural recycle

6

Master recycle

Efficiency

1

20% Reduction Efficiency

2

40%

3

60%

4

80%

5

100%

Recycle

1

Material to Mana

1

Mana to Material

Mana

1

Mana Cap+

1

Mana Regen

Okay, this was good. I had options now. It wasn't quite the same as being a trash can, but at least I could recycle things and hopefully make a pair of goddamn pants because the last fuckin thing I needed was goddamn sunburn on my lady parts.

I wanted to rush to be able to create things from memory--like, you know, clothes--but I knew that would be inefficient. From the start, I needed to max my reducing efficiency and thus my XP gain.

Efficiency 1 unlocked.

Now reducing at 20% efficiency.

I reached my hands into the sand and gripped. The bulk seemed to vanish from my grasp, and the ground above sank in to fill the gap.

-60 Mana

+2200 XP

Level up!

You are now level 3.

You have gained an additional skill point.

And to keep the momentum, again.

Not enough mana.

Damnit. Having an actual mana cap was killing my progress.

I saw that there were indeed skills--oddly under the Recycling tree--that I could invest in to raise my mana cap, but at this low of a level, it seemed to regenerate fast enough.

I had a skill point that needed spending, and I wanted to drop it into efficiency, but by this time, I was getting thirsty.

Reuse 1 unlocked.

Create resource enabled.

I cupped my hands together and cast the spell.

"Create resource: water."

I felt my material mana drain from the cast, and water filled the bowl of my hands. I dug my face in, spilling most of it, but just the freshness of cool water against my skin was welcome.

Hell, any sort of good bodily feeling was welcome. I had been a trash can for so long that I had forgotten these little pleasures.

But I was still hungry.

"Create resource: food."

Nothing happened.

"Create resource: meat."

Nope.

"Create resource: bread?"

No.

It looked like I would need to level my Reuse skill a bit more before I could make food.

Until then--

-60 Mana

+2200 XP

Level up!

You are now level 4.

You have gained an additional skill point.

Efficiency 2 unlocked.

Now reducing at 40% efficiency.

Fantastic. The base efficiency was at 10%, meaning 90% of the material--and the XP--got wasted. With each increase in efficiency, my XP gain would increase dramatically.

-60 Mana

+4400 XP

Level up!

You are now level 6.

You have gained two additional skill points.

Efficiency 3 unlocked.

Efficiency 4 unlocked.

Now reducing at 80% efficiency.

-60 Mana

+8800 XP

Level up!

You are now level 8.

You have gained two additional skill points.

Efficiency 5 unlocked.

Now reducing at 100% efficiency.

Reuse 2 unlocked.

Create from recipe enabled.

I swiped open my screen again and checked my recipe list.

Recipes: 0

Goddamnit.

I looked around. There were bits of trash scattered about. Old faded newspapers and plastic bags, and what looked like mostly-decayed television screens. Most of all the trash around seemed to be in the process of somehow sinking into this sea of sand, so I stepped over and dug around for something interesting.

Crumpled aluminum? Lame.

Old candy bar wrapper. Sticky and gross.

An old fork. Okay.

Like, 15% of a lamp. Not even the full lamp. Why not?

I kept digging around, finding more marginally useful things until I found--

Aha! Cloth! It was some frayed garbage cotton trash, but it was enough.

+14,500 XP

+10 Recipes

Level up!

You are now level 10.

You have gained two additional skill points.

Reuse 3 unlocked.

Manipulate from resource enabled.

This was some real geomancer shit. Making dirt walls and ice knives and stuff. Typical mage shenanigans.

Reuse 4 unlocked.

Create from memory enabled.

"Create from memory: T-Shirt."

A ball of cloth manifested in my hands, almost growing outwards like some kind of expanding foam, and when I held it out, the T-shirt unfolded.

A man's T-shirt.

I tried to put it on. It... fit, but it was a bit too big, so I Reduced and Reused it into a smaller size. It came out much better and much more form-fitting.

My boobs, while a decent D-cup size, still had this bad habit of flopping around when I walked, so I needed to fix that.

"Create from memory: Bra."

Might as well do the whole outfit.

"Create from memory: Shorts."

"Create from memory: Pants."

"Create from memory: Hooded Cloak."

"Create from memory: Foot wrappings."

"Create from memory: Aluminum Hair Clip."

By the time I was done, I had looked just like a regular scavenger. Patchwork clothes with a hooded cloak, hair pinned back, and the sun now off my skin.

But I still needed food.

"Create from memory: Food."

A hotdog appeared in my hands.

I took a bite, and my mouth refused to close. I gagged. It had the exact texture that one would expect from a hotdog made out of fucking sand. Just a mulchy, gritty mess that tasted less like a hotdog and more like the worst mudpie of the century.

What a waste.

I looked back at the mountain range. It seemed roughly 10 kilometers out. I checked the sun. About 8 hours left of daylight, depending on the season.

I would need to hurry if I had any hope of eating. If I could find something like wood or grass, maybe I could use that as a food filler, but I would need to search on the way.

I looked back around. In the far distance, a wall of black. They looked like storm clouds like a sandstorm painted black. It didn't appear fast-moving, and it was probably 30 kilometers out there, but I didn't want to fuck around and get caught in it.

So I hurried over toward the mountains, over the slippery dunes, and through the sea of decayed garbage, reducing and reusing as necessary.

-60 Mana

+11,000 XP

Level up!

You are now level 11.

You have gained an additional skill point.

Reuse 2 unlocked.

Reduction by touch enabled.

This enabled me to just slide my hands along the sand for continuous reduction.

-100 Mana

+18,300 XP

Level up!

You are now level 13.

You have gained two additional skill points.

Reduce 3 unlocked.

Ranged reduce enabled.

This enabled me to basically just point at a target, and a handful-sized amount of it would recycle. I could drop endless points in this to buff it, but for now, I'd focus on finishing my skill trees.

Reduce 4 unlocked.

Flash reduce enabled.

This enabled me to channel my reduction to instantly reduce a larger-sized object in order to preserve the recipe. I had this problem in the past where if something was too big, and I tried to use mining lasers at it, I could only recycle it piece by piece. This solved that issue.

-100 Mana

+18,300 XP

Level up!

You are now level 14.

You have gained an additional skill point.

Reduce 5 unlocked.

Aural reduction enabled.

That material aura that had been growing around me could now reduce anything it touched. It drained mana quickly to use, but it was lightning fast. Just a test dropped my mana to zero immediately, but I reduced all the sand around me--even beneath my feet.

-100 Mana

+18,300 XP

Level up!

You are now level 15.

You have gained an additional skill point.

Reduce 5 unlocked.

Master reduction enabled.

This enabled me much greater control over how I could reduce using my material aura. I could aim directionally and outward, or I could make wide horizontal swathes.

It was still limited by my mana cap, so my XP per mana spent was still about the same.

-100 Mana

+18,300 XP

Level up!

You are now level 16.

You have gained an additional skill point.

Recycle 3 unlocked.

Mana Cap increased to 150.

-150 Mana

+27,500 XP

Level up!

You are now level 17.

You have gained an additional skill point.

Recycle 1 unlocked.

Material to mana conversion enabled.

Seemed simple enough. Maybe it could be useful in an emergency.

-150 Mana

+27,500 XP

Level up!

You are now level 18.

You have gained an additional skill point.

Recycle 2 unlocked.

Mana to material conversion enabled.

Excess mana is now automatically converted to material.

Sounded kind of useless, but at this point, I didn't care. I was almost done. The entire recyclemancer skill tree nearly finished in just a few hours of molesting sand. Whoever balanced this class was obviously drunk, but I didn't mind. And, to be fair, it's not like it was particularly useful right now.

The mountains by now were still roughly... far as fuck away, and I looked back at the storm and saw it had made alarming progress in my direction. This was the opposite of good news. Bad news. This close, the storm looked almost like a dark void, eerily black clouds with outlines of grey, and deep within, I could detect lightning strikes and muffled thunder.

It didn't look like I would even make it to the mountains in time.

For now, I'd need to seek shelter. A cave or something. Maybe I'd even dig a hole.

"Manipulate from resource: Rock Pillar."

Beneath me, a column of hyper-impacted stone rose out of the ground and pushed me skyward, and the rolling dunes of the desert began to shrink beneath me, and soon--

I found it.

A city.

But not just any city.

The shape of it. The old buildings there. The organization of the roads and the way the entire area was cradled by a dry river, a mountain range, and what looked like a stretch of dead grass. Yes. It had to be.

This was Lambston.