The Chrome Sweeper
By @john1208
In the neon-lit tiers of the Al-Zafir Spire, Awakeners are worshipped, and Cleaners are the dirt beneath their boots. Zirak Qadir is proud, abrasive, and stuck sweeping up battlefield debris. But as he scrubs the hospice floor beside the dying President of the Vanguard Association, Zirak’s ridiculed class reveals its true nature. To his system, 'Dust' includes molecular metal. By 'cleaning' the lethal metallic plague from the President's blood, Zirak not only saves the man's life but absorbs the toxins, forging his own bones into unbreakable alloy. Suddenly, the trash-tier Cleaner has an infinite loop of biomechanical evolution. Zirak's meteoric rise catches the eye of Laleh, a fiery prodigy who goes from mocking his broom to covering his back in quiet, tender moments between battles. But as Zirak’s metallic upgrades scale out of control, the Axiom System itself begins issuing emergency patches and algorithmic hit-squads to erase his existence. Worse, his gentle mentor has been secretly engineering these plagues all along to harvest Zirak's newly forged core. Can this grumpy underdog sweep away the Spire's corruption before the universe deletes him entirely?
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