The fire had burned low—just a flicker now, twitching in its little metal cradle of melted slag and busted pipe ends. Ash drifted lazily through the forge room, curling in the still air like smoke signals from a dream too stubborn to quit. I was sprawled flat on my back, one arm over my eyes, the other still loosely gripping my pipe weapon like it might grow legs and wander off if I let go. My breathing had finally slowed. Tired. Bruised. But breathing. So comfortable I didn't notice the tiny squelching nearing closer to me. It was faint. Wet. Curious.

  Whatever it was, it slithered closer in slow, sticky pulses—shhplk… shhplk… shhplk—leaving behind a glistening trail that immediately started dissolving bits of leftover rust and dirt. It paused just outside the firelight, like it was sniffing the room without a face. Then it crept forward. A glossy little blob—maybe the size of a golf ball—wobbled its way into the center of the room. Its skin shifted colors like oil in a puddle, flickering between metallic purple and translucent blue. Inside it, faint pulses of light glowed in sync with the glyphs still humming faintly on the chamber wall.

  It sniffed the air. Not with a nose. Just… sensed.

  Blood.

  And me.

  It scooted closer, inch by inch, then with a gurgly little blurp, it hoisted itself up onto the edge of my tarp-bed. It wobbled once, slid forward, and plopped onto my chest like a soggy cat looking for a nap.

  I stirred with a groggy groan. My fingers tightened around the pipe. “...Nnh… don’t… chicken legs…”

  The blob squeaked.

  My eyes snapped open.

  “WHAT—!”

  I bolted upright, nearly brained myself on a hanging bracket. The blob wobbled in place on my chest, its surface rippling. It blinked—actually blinked—then formed a tiny little mouth and said, very gently:

  “Hi.”

  I stared. Down at the goo. At the mouth. The eyes.

  It raised one stubby pseudopod and waved.

  “Hi?” it said again, quieter. Almost… hopeful.

  I squinted at it. “THE FUCK? You’re the blood-drinking, little snot-gobblet that was stuck to my pants. From the chicken room.”

  The blob bounced once. Enthusiastically.

  “You followed me here?”

  Another bounce.

  I stared at it for a long beat, still half asleep, half pissed, and wondering if this was a concussion hallucination or just the afterlife being real weird. “You’re not gonna eat my face while I sleep, right?”

  The blob tilted like a confused puppy. “No. I like your face.”

  “Oh. Great.” I laid back down slowly, pipe still in hand. “Just don’t get clingy.” The thing squished its way up to my shoulder and let out a happy little warble, like a kazoo trying to apologize for existing.

  I sighed. “Fantastic. I already regret this.”

  It snuggled a little closer.

  I adjusted my elbow into a makeshift pillow and fell right back asleep.

  I woke up to the sound of wet chewing. Not the kind you hear in some cozy breakfast montage—this was the kind of slurping that made you think something was enthusiastically devouring a tire. I cracked one eye open and, sure enough, Glub was bouncing around the forge like a toddler on espresso. It rolled across the floor, slurping up soot, rust flakes, even what looked like melted chunks of mauler core. Every so often, it would pause, let out a sharp burp, and emit a puff of black smoke like it was proud of itself.

  I sat up with a groan, joints popping in protest. “You ever hear of letting a guy wake up before cleaning the apocalypse?”

  Glub turned, mid-slurp. “I was helping. You were sleeping in filth.”

  “It’s my filth.” I said in mock outrage.

  “It was making noise.” Glub said pointedly.

  “You’re making noise!” I yelled for the sake of yelling, releasing a small chuckle afterwards.

  Glub paused to slurp down a half-dissolved bolt, then giggled like it just ate a forbidden snack. “I’m efficient.”

  I rubbed my face and stood up. The forge actually… looked better. Cleaner. Somehow. The floor wasn’t sticky anymore, and I couldn’t smell death or burnt coolant in the air. The clutter was gone. What had been a post-battle hellscape now looked like a place where a guy could maybe work on something without needing a tetanus booster. I gave Glub a long look. “You’re actually useful.”

  “I get that a lot.”

  “You sure?”

  “From myself.” Glub said proudly.

  I snorted and dragged my salvage pile over to the workbench—clean now, thanks to the blob currently gurgling down a tangle of wires in the corner. I started laying out copper wiring, plating fragments, cracked core bits. Glub rolled over, happily devouring the scraps I tossed aside. Somehow, it only ate the junk. Never the good stuff. “Okay,” I muttered. “Seriously. How are you not screwing this up?”

  “I have taste.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “I do! I only eat things that taste like death.”

  “Oh. So I’m on the menu?”

  “You taste like blood and bad decisions.”

  I squinted at it. “Alright, smartass.”

  We fell into a rhythm. I sorted. Glub cleaned. It was kind of nice. Until I caught it mimicking something. It had shifted its form—rounded itself out, sprouted four stumpy legs, and started growling at a charred bone on the ground.

  I froze.

  “You… the fuck was that?”

  Glub looked up mid-growl. “What?”

  “That. That thing you just did. With the legs. And the teeth.”

  “Oh! That was one of my favorite bodies.”

  My stomach dropped. “..hold on..was?”

  “Yeah,” Glub said, puffing up with pride. “I was a poodle.”

  My soul left my body.

  “You’re the tiny shit-head, demon-dog that tried to chew my legs off in the tunnel?”

  Glub wobbled side to side like it was wagging a tail. “Yep!”

  “You tried to kill me!”

  “I didn’t know you were you!”

  “You latched onto my shin and barked like a rage gremlin!”

  “Technically,” Glub said, “I gnawed.”

  I stared at it, pipe halfway raised in disbelief. “You little bastard.”

  “I mean, yeah,” it said, absolutely not sorry. “But look how far we’ve come!”

  “You bit me.”

  “And now I clean for you! That’s called growth, Doug!”

  I ran a hand down my face. “This is the worst friendship I’ve ever had.”

  “You don’t have many, do you?”

  I opened my mouth, then shut it again. “You’re not wrong...ugh.”

  Glub bounced up beside me, a proud blob of gelatin and chaos.

  [Companion Affinity Increased – Glub: +1] - You now have someone who gives a shit.

  I blinked at the notification. Glub tilted upward and smiled, all squish and mischief.

  “You’re welcome,” it said.

  I groaned, picked up my loot sled, and headed for the workbench. “I hate this.” Although, in fact, I didn't hate this. I dragged the loot sled over to the workbench and cracked my knuckles. The bench was still ugly, half-melted on one side, but now it was usable. Functional. Mine. Time to build something that didn’t suck. I laid everything out—scrap wire, busted plating, gear teeth, rusted mesh, even part of the Mauler’s elbow joint. Glub slithered up beside me and perched like a squat assistant manager, watching intently as I began to sort.

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  [Workbench Active – Manual Crafting Mode Engaged]

  No System blueprint. No tutorial. Just instincts and muscle memory. First up: chest armor. I took two semi-matching plates, hammered out the warps against a slag anvil, and strapped them together using scavenged cable line and bolt clamps. Not elegant, but it covered my ribs and wouldn’t rattle if I moved fast.

  I held it up. “I dub thee: ‘Scrap-Tarp Mark I.’”

  Glub clapped with tiny pseudopods. “Very stab-resistant. Probably.”

  I moved on to my boots next. My feet were raw from walking on gravel, gear teeth, and the occasional psycho-chicken skull, so I needed something to protect them before I lost toes. I found a pair of mostly-intact steel-toe shells, cleaned them out with a scrap of tarp, then added a layer of carbon-fiber plating to the front. For cushioning, I shoved in some shredded insulation foam from the melted pressure tank. Finally, I rigged a pair of shock springs inside the soles—salvaged from what I think used to be a knee joint. They looked like something a drunk mech pilot would wear to prom.

  I slipped them on, wiggled my toes, and took a step.

  Sproing.

  I bounced.

  Not high. Just enough to feel weird.

  “Okay. Not terrible,” I muttered, shifting my weight. “Might even give me a little extra lift.”

  I crouched, took a breath—and leapt forward.

  It worked. Too well. I launched.

  Sailed right over my loot pile, hit a beam with my shoulder, and landed in a clatter of parts and shame. A gear bounced off my forehead like a judgmental coin toss.

  Glub oozed over, peeking into the pile. “So... the springs work.”

  “I hate you,” I groaned.

  “No you don’t.”

  “...Maybe a little.”

  “You flew! Like a dumpster bird!”

  “Don’t call me that.”

  Glub did a celebratory wiggle anyway.

  With the boots mostly doing their job—and by that I mean they hadn’t launched me into orbit again—I limped back to the workbench and eyed my pipe. It was dented, scuffed, and one end was starting to curl like a banana. But it was mine. I’d used it to kill rats made of knives and survive a punch from a furnace-powered deathbot. It deserved an upgrade. I grabbed one of the Mauler’s gear rings and jammed it onto the business end. Took a little hammering, a lot of cursing, and a few sparks, but eventually it wedged on tight. Then I wrapped the grip in melted wire insulation and lashed the whole thing together with a leather strap I peeled off a busted welding glove.

  It looked… aggressive.

  “Alright,” I said, holding it up. “Scrappy. Ugly. Possibly tetanus-inducing.”

  Glub bounced in approval. “What’s its name?”

  I thought about it.

  “Smashpipe.”

  “Nope. Try again.”

  “Bashbar?”

  “Getting worse.”

  “Smashstick.”

  Glub paused. “Now that has trauma potential.”

  I grinned, gave it a spin, and promptly smacked myself in the shin with the spiked end.

  “FUCK—!”

  The Smashstick clattered to the ground. I hobbled backward, clutching my leg while Glub howled with laughter. Actual laughter. It sounded like someone gargling tinfoil in a blender.

  “I think I hit bone!”

  “You built a club that hates you,” Glub wheezed.

  I glared at it. “I’m gonna build you a little muzzle next.”

  “You’d have to catch me first, dumpster bird.”

  I sat back down and inspected the weapon. A little blood on the gear teeth. My blood. Fantastic. Still, it felt good in my hands. Balanced. Heavy. Mean.

  [Improvised Weapon Created – “Smashstick”]

  Damage: Moderate | Effects: Blunt, Bleed, Humiliation

  I gave it a test swing—gently this time—and the impact against the anvil rang like a gong. “Alright. That’s more like it.”

  “Just don’t let it taste your blood again,” Glub warned, half-serious. “Weapons get ideas.”

  With my boots dialed in and the Smashstick mostly no longer trying to kill me, I turned to the final piece of my early-game survival loadout: a shield. Well—what I had was a shield. Technically.

  It was the front door of an old furnace. Bent, rusted, covered in soot and exactly two handprints that definitely weren’t mine. But it was thick. Heavy. Still held together at the hinges. I heaved it up onto the bench and gave it a once-over. “Alright, let’s see if I can make you less… explodey.”

  Glub peeked up from inside my gear pile. “Are you going to put spikes on it?”

  “No. I’m not a barbarian.”

  “But you could be.”

  “...Not helping.”

  I pried off a couple loose bolts, reinforced the backside with a slab of Mauler plating, and scrounged up a solid mounting bracket to serve as a forearm grip. Took me a minute to strip some wiring from a busted conduit panel, but eventually I wired in a thermal vent plate I’d salvaged—one of those emergency heat-dump systems designed to release built-up pressure when a forge overheated.

  I stared at it.

  It stared back.

  “Well, you might deflect a sword. Or... turn into a war crime.”

  I gave the vent a test tap. A faint hiss puffed out of the side, accompanied by a whiff of scorched copper and something that smelled like burnt battery acid.

  Glub recoiled. “It farted.”

  “Yeah, and it might do that mid-fight.”

  “Doug... I love it.” the glob said with heart-bubbles in it's eyes.

  [Improvised Shield Created – “Furnace Fang”]

  Durability: Moderate | Weight: Chunky | Feature: Flame Vent (10% Chance on Impact)

  Warning: May discharge unpredictably when dropped or yelled at.

  I strapped it to my arm and tested a few defensive stances. The weight pulled a bit to the left, but it felt solid. “It’s ugly as shit,” I muttered.

  “It’s beautiful,” Glub corrected.

  We high-fived—well, I high-fived and he flopped a gooey limb into my hand—and I took a step back to admire the full setup: boots, chest plating, Smashstick, and now this ironclad slab of heat-rage strapped to my arm.

  “Alright,” I said, grinning. “Time for the main event.”

  Glub’s goo shimmered with anticipation. “The chain?”

  “The chain.”

  I took a few test swings with Furnace Fang—low guard, side block, up-angle catch. It wasn’t elegant, and it definitely smelled like scorched regret, but it was sturdy. Solid.

  And it hissed.

  Randomly.

  Like it was angry about being awake.

  I shrugged. “Same.”

  Glub gave me a slow, approving nod. “You look like a twelve year old playing in a junkyard .”

  “Close,” I said with a chuckle, turning to the last thing on the bench. “Now let’s finish strong.”

  The chain.

  It lay there like a coiled serpent, half-forgotten since the fight with the Mauler. I’d grabbed it in the heat of battle, used it like a flail, but now… it was humming. Not vibrating, not pulsing—humming. Like it was quietly remembering violence. I lifted it. The links were warm, veined with coppery lines that glowed faintly when I got near the glyph wall. My brain pinged something familiar. System tech did this. Back before I fell, when I still had a loadout and a party. Only Jacob had a rare, magical item he had gained in his tutorial. A magical cloak that ignited like these runes in the chain. His cloak would fire up when infused with mana and give me him a crazy speed boost. Now, down here, I found my first magical item. The chain.

  [Item Identified: Chain of Echoed Reach – System Bound]

  Feature: Bind-Link (Unstable) – Arc Activation Possible

  “Oh, you’ve got secrets,” I muttered. “And I’m gonna yank them out of you.” I rolled the chain across the bench, grabbed a cracked length of tubing, a ratchet spindle from the Mauler’s elbow, and half of a broken pressure gauge. I began crafting like a man possessed. Twenty minutes later, I had a contraption that should not have worked. A bracer made of scrap steel and reinforced tarp straps, a spool embedded on the forearm with the chain fed through, and a busted push-button wired to what looked like a chewed-up starter coil. It looked like I’d mugged a maintenance robot for its lunch money.

  But it felt right.

  I aimed at a busted pipe across the room and hit the switch.

  THWIP—CLANG.

  The chain shot out, wrapped around the pipe, and yanked my arm forward with enough force to nearly dislocate my shoulder. I stumbled into a support beam with a loud grunt.

  “OH hell—!”

  Glub zipped out from under the table. “You okay?!”

  “Fine,” I wheezed. “Definitely didn’t just punch myself in the lungs.”

  [Weapon Mod Installed: Junklash Grappler v0.1]

  Range: Short | Style: Reckless | Damage: Mostly to the user

  Cool Factor: Extremely High

  I rubbed my shoulder and reeled the chain back in. The ratchet clicked, the tubing groaned, and the whole thing somehow stayed in one piece.

  I looked at Glub. “I’m a trash ninja.”

  “You’re a very dangerous man, Doug.”

  “Damn right I am.”

  I aimed again and fired.

  The chain missed completely, bounced off the ceiling, and THWAPP'ed me in the face on the way down. It knocked me completely unconscious.

  Glub sighed. “I take it back.”

  I came to with the taste of metal in my mouth, a small electrical hum in my ears, and something buzzing on my forehead.

  I groaned.

  Glub was perched dead center on my skull—elongated upward like a slimy, twitching narwhal made of static cling and poor decisions. Every few seconds, a pulse of light flickered through his jelly-skin, and tiny sparks crackled off his sides.

  “Don’t move,” he said, voice dead serious. “You’re buffering.”

  “What—what the hell are you doing?” I asked, wincing as I sat up.

  “Signal boosting.”

  “I swear, if you turn me into a WiFi tower I will scream.”

  Glub twitched. “Too late. You're very signalable.”

  A bright chime went off in my head, sharp and electric. Then another. And another. My HUD flashed, blinked, and—

  Boom.

  [System Signal Boost Detected – Glubform Acting as Resonant Amplifier]

  Sync Progress: 70%

  Class: Junkyard Scrapper – Loadout Rebuilding In Progress…

  The static cleared like someone wiped a dirty windshield. My HUD snapped into focus, and with it came a backlog of notifications I hadn’t seen before:

  [ XP Gained: Psycho-Chickens (x3)] + 2640 XP

  [ Level Up: Level 18 Reached]

  [ XP Gained: Rattlegrit Swarm (x18)] + 9880 XP

  [ Level Up: Level 25 Reached]

  [ XP Gained: Gearbound Mauler (Elite Construct)] – +24950 XP

  [ Level Up: Level 37 Reached]

  [Loot Acquired:]

  - Copper Wire x64

  - Scrap Battery (25% charge)

  - Plating Fragment x32

  - Rattlegrit Cores x27

  - Chain of Echoed Reach [Rare Item] [Bound]

  - Furnace Door (Modified: Furnace Fang)

  - Improvised Weapon: “Smashstick”

  - Unknown Core Fragment [WARNING: Inert/Volatile]

  - Broken Plasma Igniter

  I stood slowly, blinking at the flood of data pouring in across the right side of my vision. There was color now. Weight. Context. My class info finally had form again. "Holy SHIT! Those XP & level gains have to be bugged." I said in bewilderment. "There is no fuckin' way I hit level 37 already. I came in here at level 15." I continued to go over the stats and notifications. It more so seemed like the XP gain was boosted. But why? And how? I instinctively checked my class tab.

  [CLASS: Junkyard Scrapper]

  - Loadout Status: Salvage & Scavenge – INCOMPLETE

  - Skill Tree: LOCKED (Fragments Required)

  - Perks: Improvised Efficiency [+5% crafting success], Trashlash Adaptation [UNSTABLE]

  - Inventory: [CORRUPTED – System Link Incomplete]

  - Map: LOCAL ROOM SYNC – Active

  - Companion: Glub – Synced

  I scrolled through the details with cautious fingers. Everything was still partially fried, but now the system recognized me. The mineshaft "dungeon" recognized me. Hell—I was starting to recognize me.

  And then I caught sight of my reflection in a half-polished chunk of carbon plate. Glub had stretched upward in a perfect, wobbly spike. He was still humming. Sparkling like yellow reflections in green water.

  Pulsing.

  On my head. Like a very proud antenna.

  “Glub,” I said quietly, watching the light shimmer off my makeshift armor. “What are you doing?”

  “Maintaining optimal uplink.”

  “You look like a lightning rod with abandonment issues.”

  “Do I look majestic?” he asked, puffing slightly.

  I sighed.

  “Great,” I muttered, deadpan. “I’m a fucking unicorn.”

  [Title Unlocked – “Signal Boosting Dazzling Beast”]

  Congratulations. You’re majestic now. Deal with it.