Chapter 312: Is This Really Enough?

This place not only had an exceptionally harsh environment with frequent dangerous magic power leaks, but also fierce competition among fellow scavengers.

Vivi was only E-Rank, utterly ordinary among the hundreds of scavengers. Even though she had come here often to pick through garbage before, she had never seen anything valuable. At best, she could scrape by with just enough to eat.

In their eyes, her coming here was nothing more than a desperate gamble. Not to mention she had bought a spot in District 44, a peripheral zone where it was absolutely impossible for anything good from Herth to fall.

Vivi didn't argue. She simply silently pulled open the zipper of her shoulder bag and drew out a crudely constructed homemade handgun.

Amidst magic power fluctuations, an extremely unstable faint orange glow flickered from the seams of the gun's body, accompanied by a faint buzzing, as if it would misfire at any second and send both the wielder and everyone around her straight to the afterlife.

The female gangster's expression shifted slightly. She wisely shut her mouth, said nothing more, and tossed a green signal device marked with "44" into Vivi's arms.

Vivi caught the signal device, clipped it onto her collar, turned, and squeezed out of the crowd.

On the way to District 44, she had to cross hill after hill piled high with discarded metal and scrapped magic-mechanical parts.

Along the way, she could see many scavengers in thick white protective suits, heads bowed, rummaging through the debris.

This landfill occasionally mixed in hospital medical waste, even biochemical poison weapons secretly disposed of by large corporations. A single careless moment could lead to infection, so many people, even though it pained their wallets, would spend a hefty sum to get a protective suit.

But Vivi didn't.

Because she had no money.

She wore only that set of yellowed old clothes, running and weaving freely through the mountains of garbage that reeked of rust and chemical acid.

Her movements were extraordinarily nimble, each step landing precisely on stable debris, her black tail swishing back and forth as she moved.

Before long, Vivi reached the designated area, found a hidden spot behind a metal sheet, and crouched down, waiting quietly.

Not long after, a dull engine rumble came from high above.

One after another, massive magic-powered airships blotted out the sky like dark clouds.

Beep—

At the same time, the signal device on Vivi's chest received a signal from the Cat Claw Gang, and its indicator light turned a steady green.

From this moment on, if she left this area for more than thirty seconds, or if the signal device detected it had been removed from her body for over a minute, it would immediately send an alarm to nearby patrolling Cat Claw Gang members.

To leave the landfill, you had to press the button on the signal device and honestly wait for a Cat Claw Gang member to come and escort you out.

Vivi looked up and saw the massive hatch at the bottom of an airship slowly opening. Countless pieces of waste poured down like a torrential downpour from a thousand meters above, crashing onto the garbage mountains with a deafening clang of metal.

Judging by the direction the airships were coming from, District 44 where Vivi was located was at the peripheral position.

Those airships, when passing over the popular areas ahead, had already dumped most of the garbage from their bellies.

By the time they lazily drifted over her head, only a few scattered scraps mixed with dust fell down, pitifully meager.

At this rate, she probably wouldn't be able to scavenge anything. Forget paying off tomorrow's debt, she wouldn't even make back the fare for the return trip.

Yet Vivi's expression didn't change much.

Because... she had expected this all along.

Number 44 was the periphery. How could the periphery possibly have anything good?

She had bought this number, first because it was a lucky number, and second because it was cheap, only 5 credit points.

She had merely bought the cheapest ticket in.

After confirming there was no one around, Vivi eagerly opened her bundle and fished out a small flathead screwdriver and a few other disassembly tools from her shoulder bag, then dug out a palm-sized homemade decoder with a screen covered in cracks from the bottom of the bag.

After doing all this, she removed the green signal device from her chest, deftly pried open its casing, then pulled a thin data cable from the decoder and plugged it into the internal port of the signal device.

A stream of green data immediately flashed across the decoder's worn-out screen, and the removal countdown froze instantly.

But that wasn't enough.

She had to make this signal device convincingly fake normal operation for a long time, and then be able to restore it without the Cat Claw Gang discovering anything afterward. This required completely cracking the signal device, without a single flaw.

This was a job that could cost you your head. If discovered, Cat Claw Gang members would immediately come over, and there would be no escape.

Even if an ordinary person had the ability to do it, they probably wouldn't have the guts.

After all, no one could guarantee whether the Cat Claw Gang had upgraded the protective software inside the signal device. If the cracking failed or a hidden protocol was triggered, the alarm would immediately sound.

But Vivi merely stared intently at the decoder with those orange-yellow eyes, her face taut, without the slightest waver.

, She had already steeled her resolve completely.

After about forty seconds, green light finally flashed on the decoder's screen.

Vivi let out a soft breath, her expression easing slightly.

High risk often comes with high reward.

With this forged static signal, she could move freely throughout this vast garbage mountain without regional restrictions.

This was exactly why she had chosen District 44 without hesitation.

Not only was it cheap, it let her avoid the trouble of fighting and competing with other scavengers, and it provided a sufficiently quiet and safe environment for her to crack the device.

Vivi put away her tools, stuffed the modified signal device into her pocket, then, like a nimble cat, using the cover of the garbage mountains, carefully crept toward the neighboring area that had more to offer.

After crossing two abandoned metal hills, the situation indeed improved considerably.

New garbage began appearing in her field of vision, like treasure chests waiting to be opened, exhilarating.

She wore a pair of worn anti-cut gloves and forcefully pried open several heavy metal plates. Her eyes fixed on the bottom of the waste residue below, and suddenly lit up.

A roughly half-meter-long and half-meter-wide old-model servo magic-conduction motor, its casing slightly damaged but its internal core seemingly still mostly intact, with several coils of high-purity magic power conducting wire stained with oil wrapped beside it.

Valuable goods!!

Vivi's heart leaped with joy. She quickly pulled these things out and swiftly disassembled them with her tools, identifying the contents.

Magic power conducting wire... tidal capacitor... magic-patterned copper coin... transistor...

Her fingers were deft as she stripped off all the most valuable parts and stuffed them all into her shoulder bag.

Just these things alone, if sold at a scrap shop, would probably fetch fifty or sixty credit points.

Pick up a few more random things, add the little money left in her own wallet, and paying off this month's debt and overdue fees to the Black Snake Gang would absolutely be more than enough. The heavy mountain weighing on her heart suddenly shifted aside by half.

However, the next moment, Vivi's gaze began to struggle once more.

...Is this really enough?