Chapter 313: Casting Unit?

The Black Snake Gang's interest had been dealt with, but her student loan debt was due in five days. Even if she took on other part-time jobs, she probably wouldn't be able to fill that hole.

Once she failed to repay that money, she would be ruthlessly kicked out of school.

Expulsion meant she would never again have the qualification to test for a magical girl license in this lifetime.

And there was the rent on Peace Street, which was far from cheap.

And food expenses.

She still wanted to buy potions, still wanted to increase her magic power, and even... she still wanted to get the interface surgery.

After all, in two and a half months, it would be time for that test.

"......"

She had dreams too.

Vivi bit her lip, a faint taste of blood spreading through her mouth, and her gaze suddenly turned resolute.

Even if she kept searching here, there was a high chance she'd run into other scavengers or Cat Claw Gang patrol members...

But Herth's explosion had caused high-value scrap to be dumped into the landfill. An opportunity like this didn't come every day. In fact, after all these years of picking through garbage, this was the first time Vivi had ever seen something like it.

You could say it was a once-in-a-lifetime chance.

Fuck it!!

She took a deep breath, lowered her body, and continued to grope her way forward through this area full of danger and opportunity.

Fearing someone might discover her tracks, she observed carefully while searching, and began to search the next garbage mountain.

Suddenly.

A faint, abnormal glimmer of light pierced through the layered piles of trash and fell into her eyes.

Vivi's heart skipped a beat.

Glowing...

Something with magic power?!

The next moment, she lightened her footsteps, held her breath, and quietly crept closer.

In the dip of that slope, something with an unfamiliar shape lay quietly.

A pure silver sphere.

Its entire body was sealed, opaque metal, with a gorgeous orange-yellow gemstone set at the top that emitted a faint fluorescent glow, and below it, a row of complex connection ports was exposed.

Vivi's breathing instantly stopped. Her orange-yellow eyes stared directly at that gemstone, almost the same color as her own eyes, and she couldn't look away.

What... is this?

Something this conspicuous had to have just fallen.

It had clearly plummeted from a thousand meters in the air without any buffer, smashing into the garbage pile, yet the surface of that alloy sphere and that gemstone didn't have a single scratch on them.

Even the dust around it couldn't cling to the surface!

This absolutely meant its outer shell had undergone extremely expensive special coating treatment.

Even if it was hollow inside, just this layer of shell alone could sell for an astronomical price!

What was even more critical was that when she looked at that orange-yellow gemstone, an intense attraction beyond words tightly seized her heart.

It was utterly inexplicable.

Vivi ran through all the knowledge she'd learned in school, but not a single thing could explain this feeling.

She could only be certain that it had to be because of magic power fluctuations.

...Wait?

Vivi's eyes widened in an instant, and her mind exploded with a hundred thousand "holy shits."

Could this thing be a casting unit?!

Those things similar to staffs used by caster professions, sometimes they were also installed in high-grade transcendental equipment, or in legendary magic matrices, Apocalypse Armaments, and things like that... To her, those magical technology things used by the upper class were simply like myths. She'd only ever seen pictures of them in class or online!

If this thing was intact, how much would it be worth?

How many zeros?

Even if it was damaged, taking it to a scrap dealer would definitely fetch a very, very good price!!

Vivi suddenly recalled a saying she didn't know who had said:

Every stroke of bad luck is storing up good luck for the future.

Vivi had always scoffed at that saying.

Since birth, she had always been unlucky.

Abandoned right after being born, the orphanage was inhumane too, secretly colluding with organ traffickers, forcing her to flee into the streets at age six and claw her way through life.

As an abandoned infant, being able to grow up normally and even attend a private middle school wasn't because she was lucky, it was only because she was ruthless enough, willing to mortgage everything she had to gamble, to do things her peers wouldn't even dare dream of.

Along the way she'd suffered too much, witnessed all kinds of people with no way out, and now she too was about to become like those people.

If bad luck could really be accumulated to exchange for good luck, then where had all the good luck she'd been accumulating gone? Why hadn't it come back to her even when she was about to die?

But at this moment.

With the brilliance of that gemstone reflected in her eyes, Vivi suddenly felt that saying was somewhat believable again.

Was her good luck finally about to arrive?

She could hardly hold herself back, about to burst out from cover.

However.

Out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of an uninvited figure.

On the other end of the slope, a Cat Claw Gang thug carrying an assault rifle was slowly patrolling over.

Judging by his straight path of advance, in less than half a minute, his line of sight would be just right to see that dip.

And the orange glow of that gemstone was far too conspicuous in the dimness. It would absolutely be discovered!

Vivi instantly shrank back behind the metal plate, and then fell into an intense inner battle.

The rifle was certainly terrifying, but the biggest difficulty wasn't that. It was how to leave this landfill with the thing.

She was a regular at the landfill, and many of the thugs recognized her. Once her identity was exposed, the Cat Claw Gang would absolutely drag out this rule-breaking troublemaker and kill her as a warning to others.

This area was fairly central, with their patrols all around...

But...

That treasure, suspected to be a casting unit, was very likely her only chance to completely turn her life around and change this mud-pit of an existence!

If she just watched it fall into the Cat Claw Gang's hands, she might never have another chance in her entire life.

Fuck it!

A flash of ruthlessness crossed the girl's eyes.

Vivi quickly opened her shoulder bag and pulled out a fist-sized round ball.

Orange-yellow magic power flickered briefly on her hand, activating it. Then, using all her strength, she hurled it far toward the thug's rear flank.

Bang, crack!

The instant the black ball hit the ground, it let out a muffled explosion.

Huge amounts of thick, black, pungent smoke instantly burst forth, like a breached dam's tide rolling in all directions, completely blocking the line of sight in that area.

"*Cough cough*... Shit! What the hell is this?!"

The female thug had inhaled a big mouthful of black smoke without any warning and was sent into violent coughing, raising her gun and cursing in panic.

In that precious gap when sight was blocked, Vivi shot out like an arrow loosed from a bowstring.

She slid down the slope in two or three strides, snatched up the heavy alloy sphere with one hand, swiftly wrapped its orange glow, which was quite conspicuous in the darkness, tightly in a ragged piece of clothing she'd picked up on a whim, then turned and ran.

The other's furious voice erupted behind her.

"You wanna die!!"