A skinny young man walks down a provincial road. His name is Rick Treeg. This name is not the name given to him at birth, but it is the name on his current identity card. He wore a dark brown mage robe, the edges of his sleeves open after long wear and tear. There were also many spots on it from the perm of the potion, which were hidden by the background color of the garment, which was almost like a stain. His short black hair was messy and excessively long, and his bangs believed his uncomfortable sharp gaze. Due to the frightening whiteness of the skin, the black hair is even more abrupt in comparison. He was twenty years old, but he looked far older than he really was.

He is a mage and has a mage license issued by the Rod of Light, the country's mage authority.

Carrying a large red suitcase with paint off, Xi Ke limped forward step by step. He felt like the soles of his feet were burning.

He spent two months trekking along the provincial road to his new place of work. He couldn't afford a ticket or money to pay for room and board on the trip, so he had to work on the floor, eating weeds and "furry sewer dwellers" to make a living along the way.

He received a notice from the Wizards Practitioners Board that there was a vacancy for a waste decomposer at Incinerator No. 4. The fourth incinerator has a special position among the country's many garbage incinerators, it is a special incinerator for "magic waste", which is not under the jurisdiction of the Environmental Protection Agency, but under the jurisdiction of the Magic Court. It burns scrolls, amulets, popular magic weapons, and other objects that contain magical energy. If these things are disposed of by ordinary incinerators, the energy released from the items can have unpredictable consequences, such as when the garbage sorting is not done enough, and there have been incidents where the shadow of a human face appears on most light bulbs within a kilometer radius of the incinerator.

Seeker has seen the usual incinerators under the jurisdiction of the Environmental Protection Agency, and the buildings are so beautiful that you forget that they are garbage disposal facilities. Pure white or off-white facades, light blue glass, brightly colored explanatory posters, bright green turf that look like people can roll on it, and the themed painted chimneys that can be seen in the distance seem to be the symbol of the amusement park. There is also a heated swimming pool that is open all year round using the heat generated by burning garbage, regardless of the season.

Although he never swims, the pool sounds very classy!

So when Rick found out about this vacancy, he had considerable expectations. He didn't think at the time that there must be something wrong with a grassroots job that would allow him to spend two months on foot. It wasn't until he was almost there and started looking for the names of nearby roads that he realized something was wrong.

Normally, landmarks like this will have their own street signs pointing to the road here outside several intersections, but Rick didn't see any of them. When he finally found one, the sign was bent, apparently pulled down in a rough way and thrown on the garbage heap by the roadside.

When Xike finally walked to the front of the fourth incinerator, what he saw made his heart sink all the time.

The asphalt road in front of the door was potholed, and there was not a single grass on either side where it should have been grass, and the soil was mixed with tattered plastic bags and paper ashes, and in many places it was covered with paint that had been splashed haphazardly. The walls that were supposed to be white were covered with limescale and spray-painted swearing.

The glass at the main entrance has disappeared and been replaced with flattened cardboard boxes, making the words "Double Door Demon Refrigerator", "Old Yuzu", and "Money-saving Express" appear on the important façade.

Rick looked up at the towering chimney, unmaintained and stained, rust brushing the pattern along the water. After getting so close, Syk can finally deduce from the details that the painted theme of this place should be a girl wearing a cute dress with a sunflower. And no matter how he looked at it from a distance, he thought it should be a zombie holding a mass of intestines, dripping blood instead of a gown.

It's not strange when this kind of dilapidated place collapsed, it should be said that it should have collapsed a long time ago, and it's strange that it hasn't collapsed yet.

If he doesn't go in again, the sun will go down. Although Xike is at the bottom of the job market, and no one wants to jump off the building to auction off the unsalable, he doesn't want to work in a place where the ceiling can fall down at any moment.

He looked down at the door and saw a tree spirit wearing a reflective vest with the words "Fourth Incinerator" on it, holding a broom and a dustpan, sweeping egg wash and eggshells on the grass without grass. Due to the inefficiency of using a broom against this kind of thing, it looks more like beating eggs on the ground. He looked at it for a few seconds before he was sure that it wasn't a tree spirit, but an old man who looked like a tree spirit. He wears thin clothes that make the edges of his skeleton more pronounced, and his thin limbs, which have no flesh at all, resemble tree branches. The whole body is wrinkled, especially the face is more wrinkled than that of a pug, and the eyes and mouth are buried in the skin, leaving only fine slits. He shivered slightly as he shuffled his feet. Because of the hunchback, the height of the head is less than the height of Xike's chest.

Rick's stomach was growling. He lived months without food, and the "furry sewer dweller" was not suitable for filling his stomach. It's dinner time, and the work bag is all about to eat, and Rick decides that he'll have to eat at least one meal before leaving.

"I'm sorry, but I'm a waste decomposer who came to report. Rick bent down to match the height of the old man with the dryad.

The old man did not respond, and continued to shake and sweep the floor.

Xi Ke reached out in front of the old man with a dry spirit, blocked between him and the broom, and waved it twice, but the old man still did not react. Rick began to suspect that he had read it wrong, that it was neither an old man nor a tree spirit, but a simple tree.

But a tree can put on a vest and hold a broom, but it is impossible to move slowly while shaking. Xi Ke crossed his hands on his hips, thinking about whether to go directly to find someone else.

After ten seconds, the old man suddenly hit his back hard, his chin retracted violently, and he made a motion to dodge the object in front of him, and said loudly in a slow speed of about two seconds, "Xi-vulgar-even-. He tossed the broom and dustpan in his hand, beckoned to him casually as if he hadn't seen it and didn't care, and walked to the gate of the Fourth Incinerator Park.

Rick followed behind the old dryad with his suitcase. The state of the hall is as good as the outside. Overhead, the tubes were almost all black, and the broken partitions hung in midair. None of the floor tiles are complete, and the missing corners are normal, and there are many pieces of cement that are missing. The lid of the pipeline access port is missing, leaving a hole.

Rick feared that the old tree spirit would trip over the uneven ground and make it impossible to get up. But the old man knew the place well, and he didn't even look down at the road, he stepped on the level all the way to the back of the counter. Instead, it was Rick who hit the bottom of the suitcase and stuck on the toe of his shoe.

The old man removed a tile from the wall behind the counter, revealing a combination lock safe. The box was shiny and intact in appearance, and it didn't fit in with the dilapidated scene around it. Rick felt that there must be something very important in it.

After the old man entered the seventeen-digit code, the safe opened, and inside was a pair of dentures soaked in cleaning solution.

The old man tucked his dentures into his mouth, moved his chin, and said clearly, "That's—it's—it's much better. He slapped Rick on the shoulder with an unimaginable strange force from an old man, waking him up from a stunned Nick and asking him, "Is there a problem?"

Kick raised his fist with one hand, and he had a very important question: "Where's the food?"

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The old man led Cy Ke to the staff cafeteria. Judging from the size of the staff cafeteria, the number of users in this place should have been more than 50, and the total number of employees in the fourth incinerator should be even more. Now the tables are dusty, and the empty self-service bar is covered with cobwebs, which have not been used for a long time.

The old man took Syk to the only clean table and told him to sit down. Then the old man went to the back kitchen, and brought out food one after another to fill the table. Xi Ke didn't say a word, buried his head in eating, and for a moment he couldn't see anything but food in his eyes. He waited until there was only soup left, and then it occurred to him that it might not be a food for one person.

Xi Ke looked around, but didn't see the old man with the tree spirit. He bit his chopsticks, and his voice was all mushy: "Is anyone there?"

It was about fifteen seconds before he heard a voice from the left, "Is there something wrong?"

Xi Ke looked over suspiciously. The old man sat in his seat near the wall, with a small plate of hot vegetables and a small half bowl of rice on his table. There shouldn't have been anyone there when he first looked at it, right?" "Do I need to leave some for someone else?" asked Rick.

"Eat it. The old man paused for a moment, as if thinking about something, and then said, "Seeing you like this reminds me of the old days—the restaurant used to be full of young people all day long, eager to go back to work, and the cooks often scolded them for not even knowing what they had eaten, but happily added food to them—in the past, only the best mages could come in, and every year when new blood was recruited, it was a grand scene, it was crowded—and there would be people thrown up when the list was released." Now, it's nice to see new people. Before I retire as an old man—when I was very young—"

Syk was shocked to see that the old man was going to start talking about him as a young sprout, and talk all the way until he became crumpled. Nick hurriedly stopped him from telling the history of the Treant's growth, and asked, "Are there any other employees here?"

"And the weird head. The weird head roared—"

Nick heard information that could not be ignored, and he interrupted the old man again, asking, "Only two employees?"

"Five people were supposed to report for duty today, but two of them suddenly had something to do at home, and two of them were sick and couldn't get near the incinerator. It's good that you came, so you have three people. 」

It turned out that Xi Ke ate food for five people, no wonder the portion was so large. Those people probably fled the moment they saw the chimney.

"Today's young people roar, don't come and don't say a word, let others wait in vain, if I don't have a way to see-"

Rick asked urgently, "Can three people handle the work of fifty people?"

The old man grinned and bared his dentures, and said, "It's just a pair of hands. 」

Xi Ke took Zuihou's slices of meat and rice into his mouth and chewed them carefully. He ate food for five people, and he didn't know how many people he was going to do?