God of Trash

Chapter 99. Vital Tomatoes

Rhys passed out the second he returned to his room. This wasn’t a sleep like the sleep he’d had the past few days, a sleep for pleasure or for ordinary exhaustion, but a deep, all-consuming sleep. He surrendered to it and didn’t wake up until late into the next day, and still felt groggy and exhausted afterward. Sitting up, he stretched, frowning a bit, but it only took him a short while to realize what it was.

He drew out his tomatoes to confirm it, scanning them with his mana. As expected, they had the same energy signature as he himself did. This confirmed his suspicion that he hadn’t truly gained Trashomancy—the skill hadn’t popped, in any case—but instead merely found a way to revitalize objects on a more true, deep level using some form of Aura and Intent. However, it still wasn’t a true revival. He’d forcibly fed the tomato seed his own vitality, and therefore fed the fires of whatever tiny spark of life remained in it. The ones that had burst, had burst because there was no life left at all. This one had still been some tiny bit alive; not enough that it could have grown the ordinary way, if he’d put it in dirt and fed it water, but enough that when he merged it with his own mana and vitality, that tiny spark was able to burst back into life. To prove that it wasn’t true trashomancy, it had died the second he stopped forcibly feeding it vitality and mana, with no ability to grow or survive without that tether. The tomatoes remained because they had matured enough, while the original plant was on life support, that they could survive on their own. It was like a far less disgusting version of keeping a woman or female animal alive for long enough for their baby to be born; he couldn’t keep the original seed, already on the verge of true death, alive without the constant feed of energy, but once he got the tomatoes from the vine, they were no different from any other tomatoes, except that they were full of the thing that had fed them: namely, his vitality.

Curious, Rhys took a bite of tomato. It tasted like a tomato, like he’d expected it to, but he almost spat it out in surprise when a gush of vitality slammed into his body. He pitched forward, clasping a hand to his mouth to keep himself from vomiting. No, no, push it down, push it down—he swallowed, and sat back, closing his eyes and crossing his legs to focus on his internal energies. The rush of vitality struck him, all massed up in one place. Rhys drew it out of his stomach and circulated it around his body. His exhaustion alleviated, and the low-grade headache he’d been feeling since he woke up diminished. One bite at a time, circulating his energy carefully, Rhys ate the tomato. The vitality he’d been missing, the excess he’d pushed into the tomatoes, came back to him as he ate this tomato. At the time, the mana had been too much, and he’d had excess mana, which he had converted to vitality to grow the tomato without realizing it. He’d put a little too much vitality into the tomatoes when he’d grown them, and ended up at a deficit, but the excess mana that he’d turned into vitality to grow tomatoes was so extreme that eating the tomato meant he not only regained his missing vitality, but gained more than he’d had to begin with. Basically, he had transformed an excess of mana into an excess of vitality.

Vitality coursed through him. This was the same energy that healing potions contained, and now, unrestrained by a carefully measured potion, it raced through him. Hidden injuries and aches healed away under the rush of powerful vital energy. As his body healed, it also strengthened as the vitality reinforced his muscles and organs. Before, he’d rebuilt his body from the cells up, but that was just fixing his physical state. Now, with vital energy, he tied his body to the magical force known as vitality, therefore transmuting his mortal physical body to something inherently magical. He felt his natural regeneration rate increase, and as he did so, got a surprising message:

Self-Regeneration: 35 > 55

His brows shot up. Twenty whole levels? How—but no, it wasn’t because he’d practiced the skill, or anything mundane like that. It was because he’d discovered a new insight into regeneration, and reforged his body to fundamentally regenerate far faster than it had before. It reinforced the message he’d been learning this whole time, that grinding skills was far inferior to

Yeah, but it’s so cool, a little voice whispered in his head, the same little voice that wanted to read trashy manga all the time, and Rhys nodded. The little voice had a point. It was so cool to hop down from windows. If only there were telephone poles to perch atop, or skyscrapers to look down from the corners of… ah, for all the poses he’d never get a chance to do in this world. At least the window hop was still open to him. Decided, he hauled his leg up and hopped down from the window.

“Where’s the banquet happening?” Rhys asked. He could wander the city until he found it, but he didn’t know. He was sure they’d given the other contestants information on where to go at some point in the last few days, but the other contestants hadn’t been hiding out in the dump ever since the tournament. Purple Dawn’s messengers still hadn’t found the dump, or rather, they had no reason to suspect anyone would be hanging out in there, and Mouse evidently hadn’t spilled the beans to them, so he’d gotten by without any invites or other annoyances.

“There’s a hall at the center of the castle,” Az offered nonchalantly.

Rhys nodded and set forth for the center of the school. It was time to attend a fine banquet, but first, time to discover whatever it was Az was strongly hinting he should discover. I hope it’s a hint about Straw, but with all the events happening in the world, a thousand different ideas came to mind. It could be about Bast, or the Empire, or Purple Dawn, or even Ernesto’s petty revenge on Infinite Constellation School after Rhys had beaten his champion fair and square—a thousand different things, all of them potentially devastating. All he knew, was if Az wanted him to know, then he definitely wanted to know. The cat wasn’t the type to get excited over nothing.

A little nervous, a little excited, he rushed toward the banquet hall.