Chapter 1:
Episode 1: The Discarded Blade of Destiny
Appraisal Master: Zero to Zen
"Sorry, Tooru. But as of today, you're fired."
The words didn't just fall; they collided with me, colder and sharper than the torrential rain drumming against the reinforced glass of the Guild Bar. We were huddled in a corner booth of 'The Rusty Wyvern,' a dimly lit dive where the air was a thick, choking soup of cheap malt ale, unwashed leather, and the lingering, metallic musk of monster gall. It was a place for those who lived on the fringes of the dungeon economy, but today, I was being pushed off the edge entirely.
Koji Gouda, the leader of my party, Brave Sword, slammed his pewter mug onto the scarred wooden table. Amber foam sloshed over the rim, soaking into a map I had spent six hours hand-drawing during our last raid. He didn't notice. He didn't care. He sneered at me with a visceral disgust, his eyes scanning me as if I were a particularly stubborn piece of filth stuck to the tread of his combat boots.
"...What?" I managed to stammer, my voice sounding thin and brittle, like dry parchment.
"You heard me, kid. You're out. Kick rocks. Scram. Do I need to translate it into Loser-speak for you?" Gouda barked, his thick neck veins bulging as he drained the rest of his beer in one rhythmic, disgusting gulp. He wiped a trail of foam from his lip with the back of a calloused hand, his expression hardening into something predatory.
"Can I... can I at least ask why?" I asked, my fingers trembling beneath the table. "I've been your porter for two years, Gouda. I've carried three times my body weight through the Black Ant caverns. I've mapped out the subterranean labyrinths of the Sector 7 ruins when the GPS crystals failed. I've given everything to this party."
THUD!
Gouda's massive fist descended like a hammer, silencing the low-level chatter of the nearby explorers. The entire bar went still. Men in reinforced plate armor and mages in silken robes turned in their seats, their faces illuminated by the flickering magi-lamps. They were all watching now—smirking, whispering, enjoying the free entertainment of a pathetic F-Rank loser getting the boot.
"Why? You want to know why, Tooru?" Gouda leaned in, his breath a foul mixture of fermented grain and malice. "Because you're dead weight. You are an anchor dragging us down into the mud. Next month, Brave Sword is taking the B-Rank promotion exam. Do you have any idea what that entails? We're going to be facing High-Ogre Chieftains and Frost Wraiths. We need raw firepower, specialized utility, and elite synergy. We don't need a glorified backpack who trips over his own shadow."
He reached out and poked a thick, blunt finger into the center of my chest, right over my thin, patched-up leather vest. "I'm hiring a professional heavy-lifter with a Strength stat of at least 150 for the gear, and I've already put a deposit down on a high-spec mapping drone from the Sumitomo Tech Division. It's faster than you, it doesn't need to eat, and it doesn't complain when the floor gets slippery."
He leaned back, crossing his massive arms. "Tell me, Tooru... what exactly do you bring to the table that a machine can't do better? Your only unique skill is [Appraisal], right? It's a toy. A literal garbage skill. Why would I waste a percentage of our mana pool and a share of the loot on a guy whose talent is essentially being a living barcode scanner? A guild kiosk can do your job for free in three seconds."
I bit my lip so hard I tasted the metallic tang of blood. He wasn't entirely wrong, and that was the part that burned the most. In a world where 'Awakened' individuals were judged by the destructive scale of their abilities, my skill, [True Insight], was the laughingstock of the Tokyo Exploration Hub. It was a passive ability that functioned like a broken telescope. It displayed the names of items in a hovering blue window, but that was it. No rarity indicators, no stat modifiers, no hidden elemental effects. Just... names.
Iron Sword. Minor Healing Potion. Rusty Key.
I was a walking encyclopedia of the obvious.
"Get your gear and vanish before I decide to charge you for the oxygen you've wasted tonight," Gouda spat, turning his back on me. "And don't bother asking for severance pay. You've eaten more in rations than you've earned in finders-fees this quarter."
As the party rose to leave, Suzu Sakai, the healer I had foolishly considered a friend, lingered for a moment. She had always been the 'kind' one, the one who patched up my scrapes after a rough haul. But as she leaned in, her eyes weren't filled with pity—they were dancing with a cruel, sharp amusement.
"Thanks for the hard work, Tooru-kun," she whispered, a tinkling, melodic giggle escaping her lips. "Oh, and just so you know, I'm deducting the cost of those three broken mana-potions from your final cut. You really should have been more careful while you were acting as our bait—I mean, our 'vanguard'—during that goblin ambush. It's so expensive to keep the boys topped up, you know?"
I wanted to scream. I wanted to tell her that the potions only broke because Gouda had physically shoved me into the path of a hobgoblin's club to buy himself time to sheath his sword. I wanted to tell her that I was the one who went without a meal for two days so she could afford that new enchanted staff. But my throat was a desert, tight with the agonizing weight of humiliation. They walked out of the bar without looking back, leaving me with a split bill for the drinks I hadn't even touched—a bill I knew I couldn't pay.
Ten minutes later, I was standing on the curb of Shinjuku's main thoroughfare. The sky was a bruised, sickly purple, weeping a cold, relentless rain that soaked through my rags in seconds. My leather armor was a patchwork of shame, and my only weapon—a cheap, mass-produced dagger—was so chipped and dull it was practically a serrated bread knife.
With trembling fingers, I pulled out my phone. The screen was a spiderweb of cracks, held together by sheer willpower and a bit of adhesive tape. I opened my banking app, the loading circle spinning with agonizing slowness.
[Available Balance: 1,280 Yen]
"I can't even afford a convenience store bento and a bus ride home," I whispered to the rain.
Without a party, an F-Rank explorer like me was a ghost. In this society, if you weren't clearing dungeons or selling high-grade loot, you didn't exist. I was a statistical error, a casualty of a system that valued 'Efficiency' over 'Humanity.'
Across the street, a colossal LED screen wrapped around a skyscraper broadcasted a live press conference. It was the return of Jinguuji Seira, the 'Sword Saint' of the Eastern Alliance. She was a global S-Rank celebrity, a woman of such overwhelming power and beauty that she looked like she had been sculpted from moonlight and diamonds. Even through a pixelated screen, her aura of divine grace was suffocating.
"The monsters in the Deep were formidable," she told the swarm of reporters, a faint, elegant sigh escaping her lips. "But the real problem I face is technical. My equipment is failing me. There isn't a blade currently on the market—not even the masterworks from the German Dwarven Guilds—that can keep up with my mana output anymore. They shatter like glass after a single True Strike."
I looked at her, then down at my own hands, which were caked in dried mud and shaking from the cold. We lived in the same city, breathed the same air, and walked the same streets, but we existed in different universes. She was searching for a god-tier weapon; I was searching for a reason to take the next breath.
Driven by a cocktail of desperation and hollow hunger, I wandered away from the neon lights and into the 'Graveyard of Scraps'—a massive back-alley junkyard where the guild dumped 'Dungeon Trash.' These were items deemed too damaged to repair, or stones that had been drained of their mana until they were nothing but pebbles. It was a cemetery of broken shields, rusted iron, and forgotten dreams.
"Maybe there's some scrap metal I can sell to the recycling plant for a few coins..."
I began to dig through the cold, wet filth. My [Appraisal] skill, which I usually kept suppressed to save mana, flickered lazily in my peripheral vision, highlighting the mundane misery around me.
[Scrap Metal]
[Broken Shield]
[Wooden Stick]
[Rusted Bolt]
"Just trash," I laughed, a dry, hacking sound that turned into a sob. "Just like me. Surrounded by the things no one wanted."
I reached deeper into a pile of oily sludge near a rusted shipping container. Suddenly, a searing, white-hot agony exploded in my right eye. It felt as if a molten needle had been driven through my pupil and twisted directly into my prefrontal cortex. I collapsed into the mud, clutching my face, my lungs seizing as my vision flickered and strobed like a dying television set
" System Synchronization Error... Overridden. "
" Evolution Criteria Met: Absolute Despair & Genetic Resonancy. "
" Unique Skill [True Insight] has Awakened. "" Hidden Parameters [Structural Restoration] and [True Market Value] Unlocked. "
The voice in my head wasn't human. It was cold, crystalline, and echoed with the authority of an ancient machine. As the blinding pain began to recede into a dull, rhythmic throb, I forced myself to look up. My vision had changed. The world was no longer gray and muddy; it was overlaid with shimmering gold ley-lines and floating data streams.
There, half-buried in the black sludge and rusted iron, was a hunk of metal. It was a hideous, reddish-brown mass of oxidation, looking more like a discarded construction stake than a weapon. It was ugly, heavy, and seemingly worthless.
But through my new eyes... it was screaming. It was radiating a golden light so intense it made the surrounding trash look like shadows.
With trembling fingers, I reached out and brushed the grime away from what appeared to be a hilt. The moment my skin made contact with the cold metal, the static in my vision cleared instantly. A holographic window, far more elegant and detailed than anything the Guild's S-rank equipment could produce, manifested in the rainy air.
====================
[Item Name]: Holy Sword Excalibur (Sealed/Degraded)
[Rank]: National Treasure / Divine Class (SSR)
[Condition]: Severe Oxidation (98%) / Cursed Binding Seal
[True Potential]: Absolute Severance. Ignores all physical and magical defenses. Massive Mana Amplification (x500).
[Restoration Path]: Possible. Step 1: Apply commercial-grade acidic solvent to remove surface oxidation.
The words didn't just fall; they collided with me, colder and sharper than the torrential rain drumming against the reinforced glass of the Guild Bar. We were huddled in a corner booth of 'The Rusty Wyvern,' a dimly lit dive where the air was a thick, choking soup of cheap malt ale, unwashed leather, and the lingering, metallic musk of monster gall. It was a place for those who lived on the fringes of the dungeon economy, but today, I was being pushed off the edge entirely.
Koji Gouda, the leader of my party, Brave Sword, slammed his pewter mug onto the scarred wooden table. Amber foam sloshed over the rim, soaking into a map I had spent six hours hand-drawing during our last raid. He didn't notice. He didn't care. He sneered at me with a visceral disgust, his eyes scanning me as if I were a particularly stubborn piece of filth stuck to the tread of his combat boots.
"...What?" I managed to stammer, my voice sounding thin and brittle, like dry parchment.
"You heard me, kid. You're out. Kick rocks. Scram. Do I need to translate it into Loser-speak for you?" Gouda barked, his thick neck veins bulging as he drained the rest of his beer in one rhythmic, disgusting gulp. He wiped a trail of foam from his lip with the back of a calloused hand, his expression hardening into something predatory.
"Can I... can I at least ask why?" I asked, my fingers trembling beneath the table. "I've been your porter for two years, Gouda. I've carried three times my body weight through the Black Ant caverns. I've mapped out the subterranean labyrinths of the Sector 7 ruins when the GPS crystals failed. I've given everything to this party."
THUD!
Gouda's massive fist descended like a hammer, silencing the low-level chatter of the nearby explorers. The entire bar went still. Men in reinforced plate armor and mages in silken robes turned in their seats, their faces illuminated by the flickering magi-lamps. They were all watching now—smirking, whispering, enjoying the free entertainment of a pathetic F-Rank loser getting the boot.
"Why? You want to know why, Tooru?" Gouda leaned in, his breath a foul mixture of fermented grain and malice. "Because you're dead weight. You are an anchor dragging us down into the mud. Next month, Brave Sword is taking the B-Rank promotion exam. Do you have any idea what that entails? We're going to be facing High-Ogre Chieftains and Frost Wraiths. We need raw firepower, specialized utility, and elite synergy. We don't need a glorified backpack who trips over his own shadow."
He reached out and poked a thick, blunt finger into the center of my chest, right over my thin, patched-up leather vest. "I'm hiring a professional heavy-lifter with a Strength stat of at least 150 for the gear, and I've already put a deposit down on a high-spec mapping drone from the Sumitomo Tech Division. It's faster than you, it doesn't need to eat, and it doesn't complain when the floor gets slippery."
He leaned back, crossing his massive arms. "Tell me, Tooru... what exactly do you bring to the table that a machine can't do better? Your only unique skill is [Appraisal], right? It's a toy. A literal garbage skill. Why would I waste a percentage of our mana pool and a share of the loot on a guy whose talent is essentially being a living barcode scanner? A guild kiosk can do your job for free in three seconds."
I bit my lip so hard I tasted the metallic tang of blood. He wasn't entirely wrong, and that was the part that burned the most. In a world where 'Awakened' individuals were judged by the destructive scale of their abilities, my skill, [True Insight], was the laughingstock of the Tokyo Exploration Hub. It was a passive ability that functioned like a broken telescope. It displayed the names of items in a hovering blue window, but that was it. No rarity indicators, no stat modifiers, no hidden elemental effects. Just... names.
Iron Sword. Minor Healing Potion. Rusty Key.
I was a walking encyclopedia of the obvious.
"Get your gear and vanish before I decide to charge you for the oxygen you've wasted tonight," Gouda spat, turning his back on me. "And don't bother asking for severance pay. You've eaten more in rations than you've earned in finders-fees this quarter."
As the party rose to leave, Suzu Sakai, the healer I had foolishly considered a friend, lingered for a moment. She had always been the 'kind' one, the one who patched up my scrapes after a rough haul. But as she leaned in, her eyes weren't filled with pity—they were dancing with a cruel, sharp amusement.
"Thanks for the hard work, Tooru-kun," she whispered, a tinkling, melodic giggle escaping her lips. "Oh, and just so you know, I'm deducting the cost of those three broken mana-potions from your final cut. You really should have been more careful while you were acting as our bait—I mean, our 'vanguard'—during that goblin ambush. It's so expensive to keep the boys topped up, you know?"
I wanted to scream. I wanted to tell her that the potions only broke because Gouda had physically shoved me into the path of a hobgoblin's club to buy himself time to sheath his sword. I wanted to tell her that I was the one who went without a meal for two days so she could afford that new enchanted staff. But my throat was a desert, tight with the agonizing weight of humiliation. They walked out of the bar without looking back, leaving me with a split bill for the drinks I hadn't even touched—a bill I knew I couldn't pay.
Ten minutes later, I was standing on the curb of Shinjuku's main thoroughfare. The sky was a bruised, sickly purple, weeping a cold, relentless rain that soaked through my rags in seconds. My leather armor was a patchwork of shame, and my only weapon—a cheap, mass-produced dagger—was so chipped and dull it was practically a serrated bread knife.
With trembling fingers, I pulled out my phone. The screen was a spiderweb of cracks, held together by sheer willpower and a bit of adhesive tape. I opened my banking app, the loading circle spinning with agonizing slowness.
[Available Balance: 1,280 Yen]
"I can't even afford a convenience store bento and a bus ride home," I whispered to the rain.
Without a party, an F-Rank explorer like me was a ghost. In this society, if you weren't clearing dungeons or selling high-grade loot, you didn't exist. I was a statistical error, a casualty of a system that valued 'Efficiency' over 'Humanity.'
Across the street, a colossal LED screen wrapped around a skyscraper broadcasted a live press conference. It was the return of Jinguuji Seira, the 'Sword Saint' of the Eastern Alliance. She was a global S-Rank celebrity, a woman of such overwhelming power and beauty that she looked like she had been sculpted from moonlight and diamonds. Even through a pixelated screen, her aura of divine grace was suffocating.
"The monsters in the Deep were formidable," she told the swarm of reporters, a faint, elegant sigh escaping her lips. "But the real problem I face is technical. My equipment is failing me. There isn't a blade currently on the market—not even the masterworks from the German Dwarven Guilds—that can keep up with my mana output anymore. They shatter like glass after a single True Strike."
I looked at her, then down at my own hands, which were caked in dried mud and shaking from the cold. We lived in the same city, breathed the same air, and walked the same streets, but we existed in different universes. She was searching for a god-tier weapon; I was searching for a reason to take the next breath.
Driven by a cocktail of desperation and hollow hunger, I wandered away from the neon lights and into the 'Graveyard of Scraps'—a massive back-alley junkyard where the guild dumped 'Dungeon Trash.' These were items deemed too damaged to repair, or stones that had been drained of their mana until they were nothing but pebbles. It was a cemetery of broken shields, rusted iron, and forgotten dreams.
"Maybe there's some scrap metal I can sell to the recycling plant for a few coins..."
I began to dig through the cold, wet filth. My [Appraisal] skill, which I usually kept suppressed to save mana, flickered lazily in my peripheral vision, highlighting the mundane misery around me.
[Scrap Metal]
[Broken Shield]
[Wooden Stick]
[Rusted Bolt]
"Just trash," I laughed, a dry, hacking sound that turned into a sob. "Just like me. Surrounded by the things no one wanted."
I reached deeper into a pile of oily sludge near a rusted shipping container. Suddenly, a searing, white-hot agony exploded in my right eye. It felt as if a molten needle had been driven through my pupil and twisted directly into my prefrontal cortex. I collapsed into the mud, clutching my face, my lungs seizing as my vision flickered and strobed like a dying television set
" System Synchronization Error... Overridden. "
" Evolution Criteria Met: Absolute Despair & Genetic Resonancy. "
" Unique Skill [True Insight] has Awakened. "" Hidden Parameters [Structural Restoration] and [True Market Value] Unlocked. "
The voice in my head wasn't human. It was cold, crystalline, and echoed with the authority of an ancient machine. As the blinding pain began to recede into a dull, rhythmic throb, I forced myself to look up. My vision had changed. The world was no longer gray and muddy; it was overlaid with shimmering gold ley-lines and floating data streams.
There, half-buried in the black sludge and rusted iron, was a hunk of metal. It was a hideous, reddish-brown mass of oxidation, looking more like a discarded construction stake than a weapon. It was ugly, heavy, and seemingly worthless.
But through my new eyes... it was screaming. It was radiating a golden light so intense it made the surrounding trash look like shadows.
With trembling fingers, I reached out and brushed the grime away from what appeared to be a hilt. The moment my skin made contact with the cold metal, the static in my vision cleared instantly. A holographic window, far more elegant and detailed than anything the Guild's S-rank equipment could produce, manifested in the rainy air.
====================
[Item Name]: Holy Sword Excalibur (Sealed/Degraded)
[Rank]: National Treasure / Divine Class (SSR)
[Condition]: Severe Oxidation (98%) / Cursed Binding Seal
[True Potential]: Absolute Severance. Ignores all physical and magical defenses. Massive Mana Amplification (x500).
[Restoration Path]: Possible. Step 1: Apply commercial-grade acidic solvent to remove surface oxidation.
Step 2: Break the 'Cursed Binding' by injecting 10 units of the owner's mana.
[Estimated Market Price]: Incalculable (Auction Floor: 1,500,000,000 Yen)
My heart didn't just skip a beat; it stopped entirely.
1.5 billion? Billion?
I fell back into the freezing muddy water, gasping for air as if I had just surfaced from a deep-sea dive. This rusted piece of junk... this thing that had been thrown away by some high-ranking party who couldn't recognize its value... was a God-tier artifact. And the 'System' was telling me I could fix it with a ten-dollar bottle of rust remover from a local hardware store?
I looked at the sword, its golden glow reflecting in the rain-filled craters of the alley. Then I looked toward the glowing guild building in the distance, where Gouda and the others were likely laughing over expensive steaks about how they finally got rid of the 'trash' appraiser.
A cold, sharp, and dangerously calm smile crossed my face. The humiliation that had been choking me for two years began to transform into a focused, icy resolve.
I tucked the heavy, rusted blade under my tattered cloak, securing it against my chest. I didn't feel the cold anymore. I didn't feel the hunger. I had the ultimate weapon, and more importantly, I had the only eyes in the world that could see the truth.
I turned away from the guild district and began to sprint toward my cramped, decaying apartment. The world was about to learn a very expensive lesson. I didn't need a party, I didn't need a leader, and I certainly didn't need their pity.
I was going to enter the D-Market—the dark-web auction site for the world's elite—and I was going to set the global economy on fire.
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