Successful Devouring, Triggering a Hundredfold Return!

In the Ash Layer, Lu Chen kneels in the sewage. Before him lies the companion who scavenged alongside him just yesterday, now mutated into a writhing mass of flesh that reeks of Cthulhu's corrupting influence. Lu Chen clutches the bloodstained shard of his nemesis. Swallowing it means admitting that he betrayed the other to stay alive. The shard slides down his throat, but the System announces: “Devouring successful. Hundredfold return activated!” His spirit core surges, awakening a talent: devour any nemesis shard and receive a hundredfold return in power. When the upper-class families dump corrupted shards as waste, Lu Chen devours them in a frenzy in the Ash Layer, and the hundredfold return purifies the entire slum. When the Divine Descendants District sets him up to devour a poisoned shard, he turns the hundredfold return against them, and the poison mutates the whole laboratory until it collapses. He uses his cunning to find every crack in the system: guards at the ascent elevators can be bribed with corruption, and waste from spirit mines can be refined into awakening potions. He fights his way from being an unregistered outcast to the Divine Descendants District, only to discover that the companion he betrayed is now standing in court, waiting to settle the score. Lu Chen smiles. Cunning is his only weapon, and humiliation is his finest stage. This time, he will show the entire megacity that the people of the Ash Layer will never kneel.