Uprising

Outskirts of the City of Dena, Principality of Carter. *Crack—!* "Get to work!" "You unregistered scum! Beasts!" The sharp crack of leather whips, furious shouting, and the crisp clinking of workers striking ore intertwined. In the dim mine tunnel, begrimed miners labored strenuously while overseers brandished leather whips, monitoring the wretched souls. Above the head of one miner, however, floated the username "Spark." Clearly, he was a player—or what the natives called a Starfallen. "These damned bastards..." "Sooner or later, I'm going to off them all. And I have to find a way out of here." He swung his pickaxe with all his might, but the gaze he cast toward the overseer was exceptionally dangerous. Spark was also a somewhat famous player, but compared to speedrunning, he preferred experiencing lore and uncovering secrets within the game. Therefore, rather than choosing the most popular Northwind Keep start, he had opted for the little-known capital of the Principality of Carter—the City of Dena. He had wanted to experience a different side of the Northlands. Yet Spark's luck was rather dismal. Right after spawning in the City of Dena, he had been seized by the city's garrison for lacking identification papers. Immediately afterward, he was sold to slave traders by military bosses colluding with the criminal underworld. After countless twists and turns, he ended up an unfree slave laborer, toiling away in an underground mine for some northern noble. Such occurrences were all too common in the realms of the Northlands. Serfdom was deeply entrenched across the northern nations, having endured for centuries. In the eyes of the northern nobility, slaves were not even of the same species. They were merely cheap consumables, lowly "gray cattle." Such collusion and slave trafficking had long enjoyed tacit consent from all parties; even local peace officers turned a blind eye. After all, these were just undocumented drifters. Rounding them up might even improve public order—and how could that compare to the gold coins used to bribe officials by the slave merchants? Beside Spark was an unfamiliar slave laborer—thin and dark-skinned, who seemed freshly captured. His mining movements were still unpracticed, frequently earning him lashes and curses from the overseer. Spark patted the slave's shoulder and asked in a low voice, "What's your name?" The slave paused his work, wiped sweat from his face with soot-covered hands, lowered his head, and smiled sheepishly. "I don't have a name. My former master called me Kindling." *Crack!* "Lazy beast, get back to work!" At merely a moment's rest, the overseer's whip arrived again. Kindling braced himself, trembling all over from the blow as yet another deep bloody welt was added to his already scar-covered back. Faced with such pain and humiliation, he seemed accustomed to it; he remained silent and raised his pickaxe once more. Spark, however, did not get beaten. His master had specifically instructed that this rare, strong slave be used efficiently to prolong his utility and extract the maximum value from him. Spark lowered his voice and said to Kindling, "They treat you like this—don't you hate them?" Kindling didn't dare stop swinging his pickaxe for a second. Hearing such "treasonous" words terrified him into speechlessness, leaving him to stammer out, "N-No, of course not. They were sent by the noble lords." Spark sighed helplessly. "Just say what's really on your mind. I won't tell the overseer." Kindling's mind, however, flashed back to those companions who had been flayed alive and put on display for defying their master, to the dignified, exalted appearance of those noble lords, and to the warnings of an elder from his past. He subconsciously shuddered and shook his head repeatedly. "N-Not in the slightest." "Those are noble lords. Their houses have more grain than they can ever eat and more gold than they can ever spend. Who would dare hate them?" With Kindling's limited worldview, this was all he could fathom. Spark glanced around, and seeing that no one was paying attention, continued to guide him: "All this gold and silver was dug up by us, and the grain was grown by us. Why does all of it end up in the hands of those nobles? Are they born nobler than us?" "O-Of course," Kindling replied cautiously. To him, this seemed a bizarre question. Nobles were higher than slaves—wasn't that just the natural order of things? Even the priests at the estate had said that slaves were lowly creatures made of mud, while nobles were god's creations forged of gold and spring water. Spark asked again, "Then what about those overseers? Are they nobler than us too, so they get to trample all over us?" "Probably... y-yes? The overseers were sent by the noble lords. If the noble lords are made of gold, maybe the overseers are made of silver?" Kindling pondered for a moment and answered with uncertainty. He felt the person before him was truly strange—daring to ask such rebellious questions and even questioning the northern nobility. Yet Spark's words had planted a seed in Kindling's heart. "What are you two whispering about over there?" "Who gave you permission to talk? Get back to work!" The overseer's furious roar came from nearby once more; his anger seemed perpetually unquenchable. Kindling hurriedly swung his pickaxe with all his might, not daring to stop even when his hands went numb from the impacts. This time, however, Spark did not obey the command. Instead, he stepped forward a few paces and looked around at the slave laborers. Those laborers who had toiled in the mine for so long seemed to harbor a long-suppressed emotion in their eyes. In unison, they stopped working. Under this eerie silence, even Kindling paused instinctively. "Damned beasts! Swine! Are you trying to rebel?!" With his absolute authority shattered, the overseer's face turned hideous. In an extreme fit of rage, disregarding even the master's orders, he lashed his whip toward Spark—the most prominent figure among the crowd—hoping to break the slaves' defiance with this tried-and-true method. *Crack.* The whip was caught firmly in a hand, though it left Spark's palm dripping with blood. Yet Spark disregarded his wounded hand entirely. Wrapping the whip around his hand a few times, he yanked it away with raw force. The overseer collapsed to the ground. Looking up at the fierce glint in Spark's eyes, he scrambled backward in terror, stammering, "I... I was sent by the lord count! I am..." Yet behind him, dozens of slave laborers blocked his path. They even pinned him firmly to the ground, rendering him unable to budge. "What do you think you're doing?!" "Damned animals, do you have a death wish?! I was sent by the lord co—" The overseer struggled and screamed incessantly on the ground, but there were far too many slaves; he could not break free in the slightest. "The one who should die—" "—is you, goddammit!" Spark threw his entire weight into the swing, veins bulging along his arms. He brought the pickaxe down violently onto the overseer pinned to the ground, just as he had struck ore countless times before. The force was so immense that the sharp pickaxe punched through fat and muscle, smashed through hard bone, and reduced the brain within to a pulpy mess. *Thud!* Blood splattered, and bits of brain flew. Even in death, the potbellied overseer retained his dumbfounded expression. Never in his wildest dreams had he imagined that he would be killed by the very slaves he despised the most, the lowest of the low. "Yes!" "Well killed!" "Kill this beast!!" The surrounding slaves erupted with excitement, rushing forward to trample and tear at the corpse, venting the resentment built up over so many days. Yet a sliver of dread also lingered deep in their hearts. An overseer was dead. Just as he had said before dying, once the noble lord found out, he would spare no expense in hunting them down. However, recalling Spark's promise, a flicker of hope rekindled in their hearts. This "strong slave laborer" held quite an unusual position in the mine. Over these dozens of days, he had often told them novel stories they had never heard before—stories about overthrowing old powers and turning the world upside down. Though it sounded like a fairy tale, they had no other choice. Holding the overseer's dripping head, Spark turned to look at Kindling with a gratified grin. Word by word, he said, "I told you. They were never nobler than us." Kindling stood frozen where he was, his legs shaking uncontrollably. Yet deep within his heart, a faint flame began to burn.