The rusted dagger vanished from Leon's hand.
For a moment, nothing happened.
He frowned at the empty space in front of him. The system had responded instantly before, clean and mechanical, without hesitation. This time it lingered just long enough to put him on edge. Not by much. A second, maybe two. Still enough to feel wrong.
Then the air above his palm rippled.
Something dropped into his hand.
The difference hit him at once.
The old dagger had been light in the worst way, all cheap balance and corroded metal. This one settled into his grip with quiet weight, the kind that came from proper craftsmanship rather than bulk. Its blade was narrow and dark, not black exactly, but deep enough that the light sliding across it seemed muted. Faint silver lines ran near the base of the weapon, thin and clean, like veins pressed into steel. The handle was wrapped in black leather, fresh and tight, and the guard curved back in a restrained shape that made the whole thing look elegant rather than ornate.
Leon looked down at it without moving.
A new window opened.
[Blackveil Dagger]
Rank: Legendary
Attack Power greatly increased
Armor Penetration against light defenses increased
Agility when wielding daggers increased
Below that, several other lines remained dim.
Bond Unformed
Additional Effects Locked
Insufficient Level
Insufficient Attributes
Leon read the rank once.
Then again.
Legendary.
His eyes stayed on the word for a second longer than the rest.
Not rare. Not epic. Straight past both.
Legendary.
He turned the dagger slightly, watching the edge catch a thin line of light. There was no mistaking it. Even without the system window, the weapon carried the kind of presence only expensive things had. The sort people noticed immediately, even if they didn't know why.
His grip tightened.
This wasn't a good class.
It wasn't even a ridiculous class.
It was worse than that.
It was the kind of ability that got people followed, cornered, recruited, threatened, and buried depending on who found out first.
Leon lowered the dagger at once and glanced around the plaza. The Awakening ceremony was still going on. Most eyes were elsewhere. Another class had probably been announced already. Good. He slid the weapon beneath his coat as naturally as he could, forcing his shoulders to stay loose.
'Right,' he thought, expression flattening. 'So if anyone sees this, I die.'
Leon did not head home.
That was the first thing he discarded.
The Awakening Plaza still thundered behind him, full of cheers, applause, and all the noise people made when they thought the world had finally looked at them and smiled. He left it at his back and moved along the outer lanes of the grounds, past the decorated sections and the guarded approach routes, until the stone gave way to the less polished side areas where workers stored crates, damaged supplies, and everything no one important wanted in sight.
That part, at least, felt honest.
Power in the center. Waste at the edges.
He slowed near a line of open boxes stacked beside a canvas-covered rack. Most of it was junk left from the ceremony or old training stock no one had bothered to replace properly. Split practice weapons. Leather straps with the buckles torn out. Rusted fasteners. Chipped canteens. The kind of things people stopped seeing once they believed they were meant for better.
Leon crouched and started sorting through it with quick, quiet movements.
A few minutes ago, this would have been pathetic.
Now it looked like a vein of raw ore.
'So this is the joke,' he thought, fingers moving through cracked wood and cold metal. 'They hand out classes, divide the world in one morning, then throw half the value aside because it looks ugly.'
His hand stopped over a small glass vial wedged between a torn pouch and a dented metal cup. The liquid inside had gone cloudy, and the cork looked like it had been forced back in after drying out.
He focused on it.
Damaged Minor Recovery Potion
Grade: Common
Condition: Poor
No one in their right mind would rely on that in a fight. No one with options would even bother carrying it.
Which made it perfect.
The window appeared the moment he willed it.
Sell this item to the system?
Leon accepted without hesitation.
The potion vanished. A second prompt followed at once.
Choose Return Mode:
Quantity Return
Quality Return
He chose Quantity Return.
This time the system responded immediately.
One vial dropped into the crate.
Then another.
Then three more in quick succession, glass tapping against glass in a clean, bright series of clicks that made Leon's eyes narrow. By the time it stopped, the bottom of the crate was lined with potions.
He picked one up.
Minor Recovery Potion
Grade: Common
Condition: Excellent
Another.
Same.
Another.
Same again.
Leon sat back on his heels, staring at the small pile.
The first return had looked absurd enough already. This made the shape of it clearer.
Quality turned garbage into something worth hiding.
Quantity turned garbage into supply.
A slow understanding settled over him.
He did not need to chase treasures. He did not need to compete with idiots throwing themselves at dungeons for scraps of glory. Let them fight over what looked valuable. Let them bleed for it.
He would take what they threw away after.
Broken weapons. Failed potions. Cracked cores. Torn skill pages. Damaged gear. Dead stock. Bad lots. Anything cheap enough to be ignored.
The world produced waste constantly.
And for the first time since the class had appeared above his head, Leon felt the shape of a future open instead of close.
'Keep the shiny stuff,' he thought, setting the potion back down. 'I'll make a fortune off what you idiots can't see.'
Leon closed the crate, then stood and let his eyes move across the side grounds again, slower this time.
Now that he understood what he was looking at, the whole place had changed shape. It was no longer a forgotten corner full of leftovers from the ceremony. It was inventory. Poorly guarded, badly sorted, and dismissed by people too busy staring at the center of the plaza to notice how much had already been thrown aside in the span of a single morning.
The system window still hovered at the edge of his vision.
Primary Functions: Appraisal of discarded items. Recognition of salvage value. Trade compatibility with damaged goods.
A few minutes earlier, those lines had looked like a sentence. Now they looked more like instructions.
Leon glanced toward the main square, where another burst of applause rolled through the air. Someone else had awakened something flashy. Good for them. By nightfall half of those idiots would be drunk on attention, surrounded by recruiters, family members, and every parasite who smelled rising value from a mile away. The rest would be trying to pretend their classes were not as mediocre as they looked.
He had no interest in either side.
His eyes dropped to a broken spear shaft leaning against the side of one crate, then to a pile of split leather straps, a dented metal guard, a chipped flask, a cracked training blade. Cheap things. Damaged things. Things no one wanted to carry home.
He crouched again, this time not to test the class, but to sort.
What was too broken to matter. What still counted as an item. What had enough integrity for the system to accept. What might return better in quality, and what would be more useful multiplied. The thinking came fast once he started. Damaged potions for supply. Broken weapons for upgrades. Torn manuals, if he could find them, might be worth more than anything else. Cracked monster cores. Defective armor. Ruined tools. The city would be full of them. Training yards. pawn stalls. guild clear-outs. dead stock warehouses. places where value went to rot because it wasn't pretty enough to display.
A shadow crossed the ground beside him.
Leon looked up.
One of the plaza workers stood a few steps away, older, broad-shouldered, carrying a coil of rope in one hand. His gaze moved from the crate to Leon, then to the stack of junk beside him.
"You taking that?" the man asked.
Leon straightened a little. "If no one important wants it."
The worker snorted once, uninterested already. "Then take it. Saves me the trouble."
He walked off without another word.
Leon watched him go, then looked back at the pile in front of him.