Dr. Jackelope led me through the halls of what seemed like a cabin mansion. While the bedrooms were simple and homely, the rest of this place seemed almost as technologically advanced as that prison. The floors seemed chiseled stone and marble, and my little arms clicked and clacked as I carried myself along. I could nearly see my reflection.

There was a fancy kitchen. A luxurious living room. In the far back, I caught a glimpse of what appeared to be a workshop. In its center, a metal platform.

He stopped right at the front door, and beyond it, a vast flat landscape of green. It seemed an endless field beneath a vivid blue sky, marked only by small wood houses spaced thoughtfully apart.

"Now then," said Dr. Jackelope. "Besides the elders and the leaders of the resistance, the common villagers do not know fully your identity, but they are aware of your presence. Take care of your actions in their midst, as not to overcomplicate my work, if you will."

I said nothing.

"The mines are dug into the side of the mountain, the entrance of which will be found in the forest. There is an old path that leads there." He pointed left.

I started off, no longer rolling my body like some spinning trash can asshole, but now walking atop my tiny arms like a spider.

The door clicked shut behind me, and I felt the cool breeze of the Northern Plains pull swirling eddies of dandelion puffs across the green. The sun was warm against my metallic skin, the grass soft beneath my rim, and I felt a dozen eyes glance over to me.

Villagers walked lazily to and from wherever they were headed or going, some carrying pots of water, others baskets of flowers or bread. They stared not with hate or malice or even smiles or looks of approval. On their faces was just restrained curiosity. Glances pulled by force then away again.

Maybe it was because I looked like some trash can spider demon hybrid. Given the amount of sheer terror the prison guards experienced at the sight of me, it might've been a good idea to simmer my presence down a bit. Not because I cared what these village shits thought of me, but just to appease the doctor.

At least until I had my new body, whatever it may end up being.

I slurped in my arms and thumped into the grass, and no sooner than I hopped on my rim to roll away did I feel it.

+1 Leftover Sandwich

I looked over.

A toddler dusted his hands off, this blond little fella, and just as I shot out an arm and fanned out my hands to give him a little head pat for good luck, his mother hurried over to snatch him away.

Couldn't blame the kid. I was a trash can, after all.

I rolled off toward the forests, which began not too far from the edge of the little village--which was really just a few dozen houses--past the cautious stares of onlookers and stopping finally at the dark underbrush of the place.

The wind shook the trees gently, a nice, calming rustling sound, and it was quiet here. Dark from the canopy of leaves, some rays of light gliding through, and I found a thin footpath that traced further in.

I followed it.

When I was sure I was far enough, I shot my arms back out to clink around like a spider again, because honestly, it was faster, and I looked like a spooky badass doing it.

As I walked, I thought about the, you know, absurdity of all this. I had been polymorphed into a fuckin' trash can, now sent on little shitty noob quests that I hadn't done in literal centuries, and to be honest, it wasn't even that big a deal to me. Back when I was a max-level paladin, I would've been insulted should one of the dirty peasants so much as looked in my general direction, let alone ask me for a boring errand.

A stark contrast of my early levels as a young squire, hopeful at heart, yearning for adventure, doing whatever bullshit sidequest I could do just to level up and gain power. It was all worth it in the end, with the villa and the girls and the endless wealth and power.

But that was gone now. At least until I could get my body back. And save Jenna. And kill Marianna. Easy, surely.

After a brisk little walk, I found the entrance to the mines. It was dark, damp, spooky, and honestly what one would expect of an iron mine just stamped into the side of a mountain. Rocky and boring.

I wanted to knock this quest out fast so I could get my body built. Then maybe I would just fuck off from these nerds and head to the deserts. Killing a few spiders would be child's play.

Hmmmm-click.

+1 Torch

I yanked it out, and it flared alight.

I stepped inside, my arms and legs clinking along the walls and floors and ceiling, my trash can body hovering steadily as I entered the cave of this place.

It was a tunnel that led far, far into the darkness where my light couldn't reach, but it wasn't scary. I had done this hundreds of times.

I walked further in, heard a click, and I spun around.

Nothing.

Just my nerves. I was a little rusty.

The tunnel forked off. The left route seemed to be the correct way to go, but I went right. Always go right.

I stepped along.

Click.

I spun around.

Nothing.

I wasn't scared or anything, just ready. I was much too alpha and manly and strong to be scared of a little spider. They would be more scared of me than I would be of them. Of course.

I went further in.

Click.

My hands flicked into knives, and I yanked around, torch whiffing, my shadow pulling, and I found nothing.

Again, nothing. Probably just rocks chipping away. It was a mine, after all.

I turned back around.

A spider stared back.

A big, ugly, fucking huge, hairy, gnarly long-ass fangs the size of a man's forearm. Big. Really fuckin' big.

I shrieked and did what any self-respecting trash can would do in my situation--

I fuckin stabbed it, screamed again--a manly one--spun on my little trash can heels, and hauled ass outta there.

Fuck this dark-ass bullshit place, fuck no. No, sir. No.

As I ran on my thin metal legs, I felt the pounding of bulky spider feet sprint along behind me, the fangs of that hairy fucker nipping at me, and I turned the corner, went left--always go left--toward the light, faster, it was catching up to me, and I yelled, "Cassandra! Emergency power!"

"Activating," she said.

And I felt the strength surge through my arms, now taking huge leaps across the walls and ceiling and floors and finally launching out of the mines like a cannon--

and into a tree.

Thoomp.

Leaves trickled down on me.

The spider halted and cringed at the sunlight and stomped back in.

This was gonna be harder than I thought.

I checked my mana: 890/1000.

There was plenty left for me to use Flashstep if needed, so I knew not to worry. For now, I decided to better arm myself.

The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Hmmmmm-click-click-click-click.

+1 Wooden Bow (Common)

+2 Stone Spears (Common)

+1 Arrow

+1 Arrow

+1 Arrow...

I had about 8 arms. I figured I could use 2 to handle the spears, another two for the bow and to draw out the arrows, and the rest for mobility and the torch. Easy peasy. It had been probably decades since I last tried to use a bow, mostly because I had always thought of them as a coward's weapon--anything that wasn't an oversized two-hander being a coward's weapon--but I figured it wouldn't be too hard to wield around, and besides, at this point of my life trying new things seemed like a good idea.

Click.

When I was ready, I reached into my mouth and equipped my weapons. A dull, low howl came from the caves, and the dark mouth of it yawned at me.

Hmmmmm-click-click-click-click.

+1 Torch

+1 Torch

+1 Torch...

The dark wasn't scary, by no means, and I was far too brave to be scared by something so lame as a pitch-black-demon-spider-infested-cave, but it was still an inconvenience. That's why I hesitated. Of course.

After a few minutes of meditation and arming myself, I went back in.

I crawled along, slowly and carefully, senses tuned to the creepy tip-taps of spider legs, the clicks of their massive fangs, the glows of their eyes.

I drew out a torch and tossed it down the tunnel. The warm glow of it zipped and fluttered far, bounced on the chiseled cave floor, and slid to a stop at the far wall, where the fork was.

I aimed my bow and waited.

Nothing happened.

I crawled onward, made it to the fork, looked left--nothing, then right--nothing, the left again--spider!

It fuckin' hissed, coiled back with its huge fangs, and pounced at me.

There wasn't time to mess with the bow. I took both spears and thrust at it.

It dodged.

I fired the bow in a panic, and the arrow dug into its abdomen. It winced and recoiled, and in that short time, I thrust my spears again and ran it through.

It hissed out a sad, angry hiss and did that thing that normal spiders do when they die, and it just sort of fell on its back and curled its legs in.

And I stood there, dumbfounded, covered in smelly spider juices in a dark cave. This had to have been a nightmare. Surely.

I cut into it, just to be extra sure that little spider fuck was dead, and I just sort of... dug around.

"Imsi," Cassandra said.

"Yes?"

"Do you intend to fuck this spider?"

"What the fuck? No. God, no." I withdrew my arms from the spider's goopy body and flicked off the spider blood.

"Then I advise you to consume it. I speculate that you may possibly be able to unlock rare recipes that may prove useful in the future."

"Yeah. Sure. I guess."

I sighed inwardly as I stared at this deflating, bleeding, goopy spider demon carcass. Consuming it would mean putting this nasty shit in my mouth.

Cassandra continued. "Of course, Imsi, if you actually did wish to have intercourse with it, then by all means--"

"No, Cassandra. I'll eat it."

I shivered, flicked out out a knife-hand, then started cutting.

This thing was huge, and I knew that I needed to be picky with its parts. Filling my storage up with spider meat would probably not be too useful, so I knew to be picky.

+16kg Spider Leg

+2kg Spider Eye

+4.6kg Spider Fang

+1.2kg Venom Sac

Recipe Unlocked: Emulsification Poison, Lvl 5

Holy shit. This was more exciting than I expected. I kept going.

+1.4kg Spider Esophagus

+3.4kg Spider Spinneret

Recipe unlocked: Spider Silk, Lvl 10

Oh, hell yes. I could make spider webs now? A trash can spider web?

+4.1kg Spider Heart

Ability discovered: Molt

My mind was blown. I had no idea I could further unlock abilities by consuming creatures like this. Why had I not done this before? I had eaten another recycler core once, but I guess that didn't count. A few human hearts, maybe?

This was an incredible discovery. In my mind's eye, I looked over at my skill tree and found the ability.

Ability: Molt: Shed a thin layer of material from the skin of the caster's body while creating a new layer beneath.

This was useless, but the information is what was valuable.

Hmmmm.

+2616 Earth Element

+8633 Water Element

+392 Air Element

+130 Fire Element

+1308 Blood Element

+65,400 XP

+1 Level [Level 23]

+1 Class Point

Cassandra spoke. "Cataloguing new information... Good work, Imsi. I speculate no further recipes or abilities to be found. You may now proceed to begin intercourse with--"

"I'm not fucking that spider, Cassandra. Or what's left of it."

"I apologize, Imsi. According to my data, you are what is known as a sexual deviant, and so it would only make sense that--"

"Ugh," I whined. "Let's just... keep going."

I continued further into the mines, refocusing my mind into a battle mode.

At the end of the tunnel, another fork. I took a right. Always go right.

I tossed another torch.

It pinked on the far wall, and fuzzy blur dashed at it--spider!

I reared back a spear and hurled it like a javelin.

It plinked off the wall.

The spider wheeled over to me.

Shit.

It pounded over, the mines trembling, bits of rock and dust pulled from the ceiling, and I fired a bow--one shot, two shots, three--and it winced and hissed but didn't slow.

It was upon me!

"Flashstep!"

And I blinked in behind it, readied my spear, and shanked it in the back. It wailed and struggled, but I didn't let up. I shanked it again, again, once more, and it stopped.

It was dead, and with nothing else to do--no, I was not going to fuck it--I continued on.

It was just a single corridor that ran into a dead-end room. It looked like a place the miners kept their tools--rusted and ancient pickaxes, drills, food half-eaten on a table, overturned chairs, crates. I looked around, saw nothing of note, and turned to leave.

Then I paused.

What was in those crates?

I slid over and dug in, and my eyes lit with joy at what I'd found.

Long red cylinders. Explosives. They seemed caked with age and dust and probably wouldn't even light, but that's not what I needed them for.

I tossed them into my mouth.

+3 Dynamite Sticks

Hummmmm.

+203 Fire Element

+2 Earth Element

+23 Air Element

+1,140 XP

Perfect. I had used most of what little precious Fire Element I had to light those torches, but now I had enough to make something neat.

Hmmmm-click.

+1 Shotgun

With cackling, villainous laughter, I drew out the shotgun and admired it.

My work was improving, but it was still a simple design. A single-fire weapon, much like a musket that used a built-in primer, powder, and firing mechanism. The barrel was a bit short, but it flared out at the end, and I had used chunks of stone and rocks as the projectiles.

Not useful against armor, but against spiders? Overpowered.

I hummed as I started to churn out a few more to keep in stock, and I clacked my way out of the tunnel fork and back to the main hall, then down the left corridor.

I tossed a torch--the glow of it hurling down the hall--and it passed a flash image of a spider that yanked over to the sound.

I didn't even need to aim.

I raised my gun, pulled the trigger, felt the flash, the pounding, echoing roar of the blast, and drew out another.

The spider was dead.

An easy kill.

And so was the next spider that I found, and the next, and the next.

And by the time I found the next one, I had found a room filled with webs and eggs and several more of the fuckers.

Sweeping them with a barrage of gunfire put an end to them quickly, so that was a non-issue. The real issue now was that I needed to scoop some iron out of this place in order to satisfy the Doc, so I spent the rest of the time looking for iron veins.

Which was wasted time. Because I couldn't find any. Because I had no idea what iron veins actually looked like.

As I stood in the middle of the web-infested room, surrounded by the goopy, hairy, dead bodies of spiders and smashed eggs, something groaned behind me.

I swung over, ready to blast it.

And there, strapped to the web and wrapped in white spider's silk, was a dude. He seemed middle-aged, well-built, with a bushy mustache and thinning hair, but his face was as pale as death, and his eyes creaked open and gazed at me, not in fear or worry, but with begging eyes.

He would need to wait. I didn't come here to save unlucky miners; I came here to find iron.

So I dug around the room, flipping tables, cutting through webs, studying the markings on the walls looking for any hint of something that even vaguely looked iron-like, and found nothing.

I went back to the guy. He had been watching me. With great effort, he wiggled in the web--to no effect--and then nodded at a far box. I looked over and saw a bundle of fabrics.

He nodded again at it.

He probably wanted me to give him food, or maybe water, or maybe some tool so he could cut himself free since I obviously wasn't interested, and as annoyed as I was, I hurried over--metal arms wisping behind--picked up the crate, and hurled it across the room just to spite him. The contents flung everywhere.

And then I realized.

It was a box of iron ore chunks.

I was an idiot.

This alleged genius knew that I was looking for iron, and this was his way of bartering for his life. This was something I could respect. At least a little.

I scooped up the iron chunks and collected them.

+12.1kg Raw Iron

+7.4kg Raw Iron

+14.9kg Raw Iron

+19.4kg Raw Iron

I groaned from the added weight, but there was fuck-all I could've done about it. When I found all the missing chunks, I turned to leave.

And I paused.

The guy stared at me.

I didn't look at him.

It wasn't my fault he did something stupid and got caught by spider demon bastards, and it wouldn't be my fault if I left him to die here. Besides, the other miners would surely find him soon and carry him to safety. But then he would rat me out for leaving him stranded, so by that logic, I would just need to kill him here and maybe even eat him for his resources.

I turned to him, and one of my arms snapped to a knife blade.

I eased closer. He didn't react. Had he accepted his death?

I raised my knife--

and cut him free.

This way, the villagers might be a bit more accepting of my presence, so I could move as freely as I wished without their judgemental staring. Not because I cared about this dude. I was too alpha for such beta-male emotions such as caring.

He flopped to the floor with a groan.

And then I groaned inwardly at the sight of him. He couldn't walk. I needed to carry him.

With some spare arms, I wrapped his wrists and dragged him along the floor behind me.

And we exited the mines and back into the gentle breeze of the forest and the chirping of birds and the shaking of treetops--he still couldn't walk--so I drug him through the grass and leaves and up the narrow path, and into the warm light of day--still not walking--and finally, we made it back to the village.

And the villagers stared with a mix of horror and shock.

Using my arms, I helped him stand upright, dusted the dirt and grass off his face, and presented him to the world.

He blinked, then smiled. The villagers grinned and hurried over.

And that's how I became the friendly neighborhood trash can hero to a tiny little bullshit village that I didn't care about.

All that was left was to deliver the load, get my new body, then kill and eat everyone for their blood resources.

Easy.