Cold water dripped from the rusted fire escape overhead, striking Ra'ay's temple like a succession of icy needles. He huddled deeper into the brick alcove, pulling his threadbare canvas jacket tight around his shivering frame. Hunger clawed at his stomach, a sharp, physical ache that had kept him awake for three straight days. In his trembling hand, he gripped a crumpled piece of parchment. It was his official Magi Cube registration, smudged with mud but still holding the faint gold seal of the city. New Haven didn't care about orphans unless they could fight the monsters pouring from the Void. Memories of a completely different life flashed behind his eyelids. Back on Earth, he had been Ray, a brilliant mechanical engineering student who lived for blueprints, gear ratios, and steam turbines. Here, he was just Ra'ay, an impoverished nobody discarded in the wet shadows of the upper city's brass walls. --- Soot-choked fog rolled through the narrow alleyways, carrying the scent of sulfur and rotting garbage. This was the lowest tier of New Haven, a place where the sun never fully penetrated the thick layer of industrial smog. Above him, massive brass pipes pulsed with the steam that powered the wealthy sectors, venting their boiling exhaust down onto the poor. Every day was a battle for survival, a constant scramble for moldy bread and clean water. His only hope of changing his fate rested on the standard-issue cube promised to every citizen of age. Even a low-tier combat summon could get him a job in the outer auxiliary squads, securing three hot meals a day. --- Boot heels clicked sharply against the wet cobblestones, breaking the heavy silence of the alley. Light from a brass-plated lantern cut through the gloom, casting long, distorted shadows across the brickwork. "Get up, rat," a voice sneered from the darkness. Ra'ay forced his stiff joints to move, pushing himself off the freezing mud. Standing before him was Kael, the assistant Cube Overseer for the lower district. Kael wore a pristine wool coat, untouched by the grime of the slums, and a smirk that made Ra'ay's blood boil. Two heavily armed guards stood behind the official, their breastplates gleaming under the lantern light. "Is this the brilliant mind the registry office warned me about?" Kael mocked, holding a heavy iron box. "An orphan who thinks he deserves a high-grade combat cube." Ra'ay kept his gaze lowered, though his jaw clamped tight enough to ache. Anger burned hot in his chest, a familiar fire that kept him from freezing. "I registered under the municipal act," Ra'ay muttered, his voice hoarse from the cold. Kael let out a sharp, barking laugh that echoed off the damp brick walls. Mocking him, Kael quoted, "The municipal act. You trash love your rules. Very well. Let it never be said that the registry doesn't provide." He unlocked the box with a heavy brass key, revealing a single, dull grey cube resting on velvet. Unlike the glowing blue or vibrant green cubes of the elite, this one was pitted and cracked. Dark, oily veins pulsed faintly across its basalt-like surface. Whispering, Kael said, "A Necro-cube. A defective one at that." Defective core issues prevented it from processing essence to level up. He picked up the heavy, cold object and dropped it directly onto the wet cobblestones at Ra'ay's feet. "Go on," Kael urged, stepping back and crossing his arms. "Summon your army, king of the gutters. Let us see the mighty force that will conquer the Void." --- Cold metal met Ra'ay's fingers as he scooped the cube from the mud. It felt incredibly heavy, vibrating with a low, discordant hum that sent a chill straight up his arm. His engineering brain instantly recognized the erratic pulse. It was like a motor with a broken flywheel, unbalanced and struggling to spin. Closing his eyes, he pushed his meager mana into the cracked core. Basalt surface flared with a sickly, bruised purple light. Slowly, the earth parted, and four figures began to crawl upward. They were skeletal, their bones wrapped in scraps of rotting grey cloth and decaying flesh. Suddenly, a sharp crack echoed through the alley. Without the stabilizing mana flow, the four zombies collapsed forward, faceplanting directly into the puddle. One lay flat on its stomach, its arm twitching uselessly against a discarded tin can. Another had its skull wedged under a rotting wooden crate. They looked less like terrifying undead warriors and more like a pile of discarded, broken mannequins. "Look at them!" Kael roared, clutching his sides as he burst into hysterical laughter. His guards joined in, their heavy armor clanking as they shook with mirth. Ra'ay stared down at his prone summons, his hands curling into tight fists. Humiliation washed over him, hot and suffocating, making his ears ring. For a second, the crushing weight of this unfair world threatened to break him. These elites controlled everything, reserving the functional cubes for their own children. They gave the defective trash to the poor, ensuring the social hierarchy remained locked in stone. He was expected to die in the next Void incursion, just another nameless casualty. Wait, Ra'ay thought, his eyes narrowing as he stared at the twitching hand of the nearest zombie. Zombie fingers were still moving, scraping the mud. It wasn't dead-dead; it was just structurally unbalanced. His analytical mind, trained in physics and mechanical design, began to break down the scene. Fractured core was defective because it couldn't channel enough magic to maintain the standing posture. But magic was just a force, like electricity or steam. If the magical engine couldn't provide the torque to keep them upright, then he just needed to change the mechanics. An engine didn't need to be powerful if the chassis was perfectly balanced and geared. These four zombies were free, tireless, and didn't require food or sleep. They were four biological frames waiting for a proper engineer. They could lift, dig, carry, and operate levers without ever complaining of exhaustion. All they needed were the right tools, some scrap metal, and a bit of structural reinforcement. Rainwater continued to pelt down, washing the mud over the pale, rotting skin of the faceplanted undead. Kael wiped a tear of laughter from his eye, stepping forward to kick the closest zombie's leg. Rotting flesh made a dull, wet thud, completely unresponsive to the insult. "A perfect match," Kael sneered, spitting near Ra'ay's boots. "Useless trash commanding useless garbage." Ra'ay did not look up. He kept his eyes glued to the twitching fingers of the third zombie. He was calculating. How much weight could those radius and ulna bones support if reinforced with steel splints? What was the tensile strength of decaying muscle fiber when treated with cheap industrial preservatives? Back on Earth, he had designed a pneumatic exoskeleton for a university competition. He had spent months studying lever systems, load distribution, and joint articulation. Human anatomy was just a machine of levers and pulleys. If the internal power source was too weak to actuate the joints, he could build an external rig. "You have three days to clear out of this sector," Kael said, his laughter dying down into a cold glare. Void shifts are intensifying near the outer perimeter, and the slums are the first to go. Relocated was a polite word for abandoned outside the secondary walls, left as bait for the incoming beasts. "I understand," Ra'ay said, his voice flat, devoid of the panic Kael clearly wanted to see. "Then enjoy your final days with your new friends," Kael smirked, turning on his heel. "Let's go. The air down here is starting to smell like rot." Their footsteps faded into the distance, leaving only the sound of falling rain and the soft splashing of the twitching zombies. Ra'ay knelt in the mud, ignoring the filth soaking through his trousers. He reached out, touching the cold skull of the zombie wedged against the crate. A small blue holographic prompt flickered to life in his vision. [Necro-cube (Defective)] [Summons: 4/4 Basic Undead (Grade: F)] [Core Status: Fractured (Evolution Locked)] [Summon Status: Critical Structural Failure (Insufficient Mana Output)] A standard summoner would see this as a death sentence. Without the ability to level up or evolve the summons, these skeletons would always remain weak. They would never grow larger, never develop magical attributes, and never gain combat skills. But Ra'ay saw a different set of variables. Locked evolution meant fixed parameters. Fixed parameters meant predictable tolerances. In engineering, predictability was a luxury. If a machine never changed its dimensions or material density unexpectedly, you could optimize it to the absolute limit. He grabbed the twitching wrist of the zombie and lifted it. Bone structure was solid enough, though the joints were incredibly loose due to the lack of magical tension. "You can't stand because your center of gravity is too high for your current joint torque," Ra'ay whispered. Simple physics dictates that an unsupported frame will collapse. If he lowered their center of gravity, or gave them external support, they wouldn't need magic to stay upright. He looked around the dark alley. Scrap metal, discarded pipes, rusted gears, and broken wooden crates littered the corners. Gritty slums of New Haven were a graveyard of industrial waste from the upper city. Rich folks saw garbage. To an engineer, this was a warehouse of free raw materials. Only simple mechanical modifications were needed to turn these sluggish corpses into efficient machines. He didn't need expensive magical runes or high-grade essence to make these undead dangerous. Armed with basic tools and some imagination, he could rebuild them. He began pulling the zombies out of the mud one by one. They didn't feel pain, nor did they resist his touch. Existence was their only state, waiting for commands they didn't have the power to execute. "Command: Crawl to the shelter," Ra'ay ordered, testing the basic mental link. Slowly, with agonizing friction, the four undead began to drag themselves forward. It moved like a slow, painful crawl, their fingernails scraping against the wet cobblestones. Pathetic as it looked, it was a start. He led them into his home—a cramped, abandoned basement beneath a collapsed bakery. Pipes ran across the low ceiling, dripping condensation onto a workbench piled high with salvaged tools. A single oil lamp flickered on a shelf, casting a warm, orange glow over his collection of gears and wires. This was his sanctuary. He had spent months gathering these tools, hoping to build something that could buy his way out. Now, he had the perfect test subjects. He ordered the first zombie to lie on the wooden table. Rotting flesh complied, its dull, empty eyes staring blankly at the ceiling. Ra'ay picked up a rusty caliper and began measuring the length of its femur. "Length: forty-five centimeters," he muttered, writing the numbers down on a scrap piece of slate with chalk. "Joint diameter: eight centimeters." He checked the range of motion of the knee. Magical binding was too weak to contract the tendons. By attaching a high-tension spring from the heel to the calf, he could assist the extension of the leg. Internal energy would only need to handle the flexion, effectively cutting the energy cost in half. It was basic mechanical assistance, the same principle used in early industrial prosthetics. He walked over to a pile of discarded metal coils he had scavenged from an old carriage factory. They were rusted, but a bit of oil and grease would make them functional again. He began to clean a pair of thick steel springs, his mind buzzing with formulas and diagrams. "If I reinforce the spine with a steel rod," he murmured, his eyes shining with excitement. "And mount a heavy-duty battery or a steam-piston on their backs..." Endless possibilities were stretching out before him. Who said summons had to rely solely on magic? He was going to build the world's first steam-powered, diesel-guzzling, steel-plated undead army. They didn't need to level up. He would just upgrade their parts. --- Hours blurred into a single, continuous stream of drilling, welding, and tightening bolts. Acrid smell of ozone, hot metal, and old grease filled the small basement. Ra'ay worked with a feverish intensity, his hunger completely forgotten. He had successfully bolted a pair of steel splints to the first zombie's legs. Steel coils were tensioned perfectly, holding the joints stiff but flexible. Securing the spine, he bolted a steel frame along its back. This frame would distribute any carrying load directly to the hips, bypassing the weak vertebrae. It was a crude exoskeleton, built entirely from garbage. "Let's see if the calculations hold," Ra'ay breathed, wiping sweat from his forehead. He stepped back and focused his mind on the mental link. "Command: Stand," he ordered. Faint purple magic flared briefly around the zombie's feet. This time, as the undead tried to rise, the steel springs contracted, pulling the legs straight. Rigid steel frame locked the spine in place, preventing the torso from collapsing forward. With a metallic clank, the zombie stood perfectly upright. It didn't wobble. Solid as a statue, it stood, its red, glowing eyes staring forward through the gaps of a crude iron faceplate Ra'ay had fashioned from a bucket. Ra'ay let out a breath he didn't realize he was holding. A wild, triumphant laugh bubbled up in his chest. This glaring defect was completely bypassed by simple, fundamental physics. He looked at the other three zombies waiting on the floor. Possibilities were endless as he stared at the piles of scrap metal, copper wiring, and rusted gears in the corner. There was so much more he could do. He could build pneumatic arms, mounted crossbows, steel-reinforced armor plates. Upper-city elites thought they had locked the poor out of power by controlling the magic cubes. They thought a defective cube was a useless curse. Arrogant elites had no idea what a desperate engineer could do with a pile of trash and four tireless workers. Outside, Kael's laughter still seemed to echo through the rainy streets, a reminder of the arrogance of the wealthy. But as the Overseer's laughter echoed, a faint, almost imperceptible grin flashed across Ra'ay's face as he realized just how perfect zombies could gain the cheap materials he needed to finally start engineering solutions...

Chapter 1: The Scavenger's Gift