Although he grumbled to himself, he still had to go in. With a huge, fluffy backpack that looked cheap slung over his shoulders, Feng Xue followed the crowd into the Garbage Dump. This time, though, he'd arrived late, so when he entered, he didn't see the dump just after the gangs had finished sorting through it but before the hordes of scavengers had swept it clean.
After finally squeezing through the dense crowd and reaching a more open area, he found nothing but chaos wherever he looked. There were plenty of motorcycle wrecks, many of them bearing the marks of scavengers stomping them flat.
And scattered among all this stuff that was obviously worthless were a few scraps of paper.
Hmm...
Feng Xue suddenly remembered the Item Cards mentioned in the Novice Guide. He hurried over, only to find that the bits and pieces scattered on the ground were nothing more than ordinary playing cards. Even under his Golden Finger's appraisal, most of them had only the Trait [Toy]. Just a few had the Tag [Gambling Tool].
"So this is some kind of world like Kaiji: Ultimate Survivor or Kakegurui? But that still doesn't explain the Transportation Tools!"
After confirming that nothing nearby had any Traits worth his attention, Feng Xue had no reason to stick around. He immediately took off toward the center of the Garbage Dump.
Thanks to the speed boost from his Boots of Silence, Feng Xue left behind some of the people still searching intently as soon as he got moving. He kept going until an element appeared in his field of vision that nearly made him choke—
[Perpetual Motion Machine]
"Well, damn. What kind of divine Trait is this?"
Feng Xue slammed on the brakes so abruptly that he stumbled over a bicycle handlebar at the roadside. He didn't even notice the scrape on his shin as he scrambled over to where the Trait was. There, before him, was a...
Motorcycle?
"Holy crap, it's a D-Wheel! A D-Wheel!"
Feng Xue recognized it instantly. The bike was badly damaged, but what else could it be besides a D-Wheel, with a Duel Disk mounted in front of the seat? It couldn't be that Shadowverse had started having people play card games on motorcycles in its third season, could it?
"No wonder it has the Perpetual Motion Machine Trait. It runs on Burning Yuusei Particles... Wait, could that gem be a Crystal Beast?"
Feng Xue grinned and picked up an iron rod from the ground, then started taking the bike apart.
There was no choice. The whole thing was too big for him to carry, and since the Trait was still there despite how badly damaged the bike was, he should only need to remove the engine.
Normally, Feng Xue wouldn't have had the expertise for this, but the D-Wheel was already in such rough shape that he managed to pry open the casing without much effort. As for figuring out which part housed the [Perpetual Motion Machine] Trait, he could just use his Golden Finger to check.
About ten minutes later, Feng Xue carefully pulled out a few hoses and removed the fifty- or sixty-pound "metal barrel" from the D-Wheel.
He stuffed it into his backpack. Though it had gone out, the engine still had two incredibly powerful Traits: [Perpetual Motion Machine] and [Evolution]. The [Speed] Trait was a bit of a nuisance, but the odds were two to one. Surely he wouldn't be that unlucky.
Without realizing it, he'd jinxed himself. Still, Feng Xue didn't pay it any mind. If he'd found one D-Wheel, that meant the world connected to this Garbage Dump must include the Yu-Gi-Oh! world. If so, there couldn't possibly be only one D-Wheel.
Ten days ago, a forty- or fifty-pound load would have taken up seventy percent of his carrying capacity. But after unlocking the Carrying Entry, Feng Xue's endurance and strength had improved by leaps and bounds. Carrying a mere motorcycle engine on his back felt like carrying a power bank. At this point, he was more worried about the size of his pack than its weight.
"If I have to, I'll just steal a handcart." With that somewhat dangerous thought in mind, Feng Xue stood up again. He'd been so excited by the appearance of the [Perpetual Motion Machine] Trait that he'd overlooked everything around him. Now he finally noticed that the scattered cards had turned into classic Yu-Gi-Oh! cards.
"Teacher Crowler... No, Pot of Greed." Feng Xue made a joke that no one would get, then immediately tossed away the card that had been banned for ages. He couldn't help it. The card didn't have a single Trait on it; it was nothing but a string of Garbled Code.
"No wonder the Novice Guide said that no matter how powerful a card used to be, it's just scrap paper now... At least that 'Thunder God' or whatever gauntlet from earlier was pretty powerful as long as it had enough [Shi] to draw on."
He shook his head, a little disappointed. He had no interest in checking the identity of every single card anymore, so he simply activated his Golden Finger's appraisal and went back to searching for treasures by their Traits.
Still, the cards weren't completely useless. Feng Xue figured he could grab a stack on his way out and see whether binding them together might make them suitable material for a skill book or something.
Scavenging was a contradiction. If you moved quickly, you might miss something important. But if you searched carefully, someone else might get to the important stuff first.
Feng Xue hadn't spent much time searching, but taking apart the D-Wheel had eaten up some of it. By the time he set off again, his surroundings had become even more of a wreck.
He flipped open a car door with "Fujiwara Tofu Shop" written on it. He couldn't be bothered to check whether it was a knockoff; he just reached beneath it and picked up the card with the [Destruction] Trait. But it wasn't a Yu-Gi-Oh! card—or rather, it didn't belong to a trading card game. It was a...
"Why is there a Greed Island card here too?" Feng Xue tucked the card, titled [Killer Bullet] (destroys one designated card) and numbered 1029, into his backpack. He'd gained a new understanding of what this Landfill Area contained. Of course, given that this was a dump, it could just be a knockoff piece of merchandise...
"So anything that's a card could turn up here? But what do cards have to do with Transportation Tools?"
Feng Xue figured he'd never be able to make sense of it. Or perhaps the two things had nothing to do with each other in the first place. Considering the gem he'd found, he wouldn't even be surprised if he came across a Horadric Cube.
But soon, Feng Xue had no time to worry about questions that didn't matter much either way. An element appeared in his field of vision that filled him with excitement—
[Destiny]
"Well, damn. Destiny says I'm fated to reach heaven, huh?" Feng Xue's eyes lit up. With this, even if he couldn't combine the Traits into Za Warudo, he could still make Made in Heaven, right? And if not, King Crimson would do!
The moment the thought occurred to Feng Xue, his body sprang into motion. After a few strides, he was already near the Trait. Covering it was a block of... ice?
"This doesn't look like thousand-year-old ice." Feng Xue confirmed that the ice had nothing on it but a string of Garbled Code. He assumed its not melting was just one of the Garbage Dump's peculiarities. But just as he reached out to pry the ice open, an intense sense of danger suddenly welled up inside him.
Without a moment's hesitation, Feng Xue rolled aside. Pain flared as the uneven ground scraped against him, but he planted one hand on the ground and quickly righted himself. When he looked toward the direction the danger had come from, he saw a man in a gray shirt and jeans holding an iron rod, apparently surprised that Feng Xue had managed to dodge...
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