Perhaps it was because classes were in session during the day, but as Everlearn walked through the street, he couldn't help noticing how much quieter the night was.

Apart from the occasional group of new hoverboard riders moving through the night to practice when the roads were free, there were almost no students walking around.

But that wasn't a complaint. No, it only made things more perfect.

After all, dirty deeds were better done in the dark.

Branching into a side alley, he brought out his device and unlocked it, a map bubbling out.

One quick eye scan, and he confirmed the location before stepping out of the alleyway and continuing his walk.

Dark hoodie.

Dark face cap.

No one could recognize his face, and the passing students on hoverboards only frowned at the sight of the suspicious figure before continuing on their way without a care in the world.

After about forty minutes of walking, Everlearn finally arrived at his destination.

A big wall, acting like a dead end.

There was nobody around here. Just a couple of pole lights, and the closest building was twenty-five kilometers away.

║You sure about this!? While I don't think it was specially included in the rules. I still believe this is... illegal.║

The system panel flashed as Everlearn's eyebrows twitched.

'Hey, I've already come this far. It's too late to whisper the thoughts of giving up in my head at this point.'

He looked up, sizing the wall.

It was about two hundred meters high.

A really tall height, but for Everlearn, not a problem.

Taking a couple of steps backward, he ran before jumping up.

His foot slammed into the side of the wall as he quickly began lifting himself upward.

Running straight, he would fall back, so he ran sideways instead, scaling the wall in a spiral motion.

He reached one hundred and seventy meters high, but before he could tumble to the ground, he pushed forward with one last stretch, his hands reaching as high as they could.

Just before he was dragged down by gravity

He grabbed it!

The edge of the wall.

He remained silent, waiting for a shout from anyone who had noticed him, but there was none.

He pulled himself up, crouching atop the wall.

Giving one last look at the academy behind him, there was still nothing.

Everlearn hummed slightly before jumping off the wall, falling to the other side.

Unknown to him, there was a red dot on one of the side pole lights that illuminated the place.

It had accurately locked onto Everlearn, recording his jump out of the academy.

The red dot blinked three times before quieting down, fading as if it never existed.

_________

"This… this is paradise!"

Everlearn had always reasoned:

The Corer Academy was a Corer school, right?

And it even had a branch for Mech Designers.

Anything related to Mech Design or Corers usually involves mechanical gadgets.

And the thing about gadgets was that most of them turn bad, with no chance of recycling.

Some weren't even worth repairing at all, as you would spend much more trying to fix one than simply buying a new one.

And in this violent academy where there were lots of students and lots of fights, there were definitely a lot of gadgets being destroyed daily.

So, Everlearn had reasoned there had to be a place where all these useless gadgets were being disposed of.

He had looked at the map on his device but never found a place labeled Wasteland.

Most likely, the academy thought it was irrelevant to list it for students.

But after running the map through an architectural overlay on his monitor, it had given him three possible safe spots where the Wasteland could be structured, and here it was.

Right before Everlearn were heaps upon heaps of dirt, most of which consisted of discarded gadgets.

Most were broken, some reduced to scraps, and really, all they were was trash.

But to Everlearn?

His eyes were shining with light as he ran toward a pile of junk with both arms wide open.

[Hey, you're out of the academy's jurisdiction for students.]

[They might not include that in the rules, but anyone with a brain can tell it's illegal.]

[So maybe be quick and get off your belly!]

The system hissed quietly as Everlearn hummed before rising to his feet.

Giving a quick check at his device, he saw the time: "10:21."

It was already approaching morning.

He needed to be swift.

Everlearn rose and quickly began his pillaging.

He paid no attention to the heaps of ordinary metal and steel.

He would have liked to take them and form some more durable things; after all, the spear he had used earlier was made from a tree branch, yet it had helped him survive the jungle.

But those materials were too big, and all he had was a simple bag.

The last thing he wanted was to be stopped on his way back and be banned forever from this paradise on his very first night here.

So he dug deeper and deeper into the trash, quickly gathering some good finds.

Some were batteries, tiny, yet each with about 3 megawatt-hours of stored energy.

They might be small, but that amount of energy would have no problem powering a small neighbourhood, even as tiny as they looked.

They were defective, of course, but Everlearn packed them up.

Some gadgets he found were broken attack and defense gadgets, with defense modules like lasers or net stingers whose energy had already been exhausted and hence were thrown away.

He packed them up, too.

The pillaging continued for about thirty minutes before he ran into a problem.

His hands, roughing through deep trash, feeling for some good trash, grabbed something… strange.

It was fleshy.

"A flesh-oriented gadget!?" he thought, eyes flashing with disbelief.

Those things were almost hypothetical, and immediately, Everlearn began pulling at it.

Hell's sake, the thing was tough to pull, almost like it was trying to pull away from Everlearn.

The harder he pulled, the stronger it resisted.

"No way I'm letting a real gold off!" Everlearn gritted as his second hand reached into the garbage, and he grabbed the object with both hands.

Veins bulged all over both arms as he yanked back with all the force in him and finally,

BOOOOOM!

The heap of trash was sent flying as an object came tumbling out, dangling in Everlearn's hands.

"Got you!"

But when he saw what he was holding, he quickly lost his smile.

It was a tail.

And looking down from there, he found not two, but four rays of crimson light shining over his face.

"Oh-oh."

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