Darkness.

Cold.

Defeat.

I wanted to scream in a rage, but I had no mouth.

I wanted to take a deep breath to stave off the panic, but no lungs.

I wanted to flail around the darkness, but no arms or legs.

I almost wanted to cry, but I ain’t no bitch. But, theoretically, if I could cry, and if I was a bitch, I'd imagine that I would want to. But I didn't.

I was too alpha to cry.

After I cooled my racing mind, I started to take stock of my situation. The Royal Slut had turned me into a garbage can, but the only thing I could see was darkness--or maybe it was the lack of eyes that did that.

Really the entire experience was new to me. The closest thing I could remember was that time I was swallowed by the Black Demon of Intercorsica, and all I needed to do was just teleport out.

Of course!

"Return: Home."

Nothing happened. Even though I had no mouth to utter the spell, the intention alone should’ve been enough to finish the cast.

Then, the familiar cold voice faded in. "Action not yet learned."

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This was bad. Very bad. If I had a heart, it would've stopped beating, but I didn't have a heart. I was a garbage can. Garbage cans don't have hearts.

"Scan: Self."

"Unnamed Recycler, Level 1."

Ah, that was what she did. The wayward turd-nugget had turned me into no ordinary trash can, but into a recycler class. It might've had something to do with her specific magic skill and the fact that Recyclers were entities in their own rights and not just inanimate objects. Well, they were inanimate objects, but with just a little bit more utility.

The hope died as quickly as it came. My levels and class and skills had all been reset with the polymancy spell. I could level up somehow and gain power, but no matter how much I leveled up, I would still just be... a trash can.

And I had no idea how recyclers even worked. Never cared to know, really, as that type of blue-collar work was far beneath me.

+1 Dirty Napkin

What? Did someone just... throw garbage inside me? I felt violated! And not in a good way. I saw it in my mind’s eye--a bundled white scrap of a napkin, smeared with red and yellow sauces and bits of moist crumbs. I didn't even know what I should've been doing with this thing. Didn't these recyclers automatically... recycle the junk that got tossed in?

"Review: Abilities."

"Abilities: Craft, Smelt, Recycle."

Ah. It was called Recycle. Of course. But something stood out to me--Smelt. Using my great alpha wisdom, I figured that I had the ability to smelt metal rubbish into ores or ingots or whatever. It never occurred to me that people would throw away things like swords or iron bars or whatnot, but cans and trinkets might happen.

Regardless, if I were to get anywhere closer toward my revenge, I would need to learn as much as I could about my new predicament.

"Scan."

"Dirty Napkin. Contains trace amounts of ketchup and mustard."

"Recycle."

A glow of warmth flashed into my soul for a split second, then vanished into the infinite black.

+6 Earth Element

+28 XP

And that was how it worked. Instead of recycling trash into raw raw materials, recyclers could somehow manafy it into one of the alchemical elements. It was simple, effective, and saved a lot of headaches.

Now I was making progress.