Beaten to the Punch?

If one were to rank the moral standards of the various factions within the Legion, the civil official clique around His Excellency the Marshal would undoubtedly come out on top. While the Eastern Legion was still pondering how to wring the last drop of oil from indenture-bound slaves, the civil official clique had already drawn upon the Southern Legion's colonial administrative practices to devise a "systematic" method of converting indenture-bound slaves into debt slaves. Don't think this was some wicked deed. Set against the backdrop of the wasteland, transforming a human being from livestock into merchandise could definitely count as an "act of benevolence." The poor of the Bugra Free State might, at most, grumble that the ads played when opening the refrigerator door ran too long or that iris-scanning devices were utterly inhumane. Meanwhile, the slaves of Bolo Province, upon hearing their complaints, wouldn't just lack sympathy—they would ask, completely bewildered, what a refrigerator or an advertisement even was, and why wasting seventy-five seconds of one's life meant you didn't have to pay. In short, while the civil officials of Triumph City had not provided refrigerators for the survivors of West Sail Port, they had at least cracked open a window into their otherwise hopeless lives. First, these bureaucrats partnered with the nobles of Lion State, renting slaves from their hands at fifty dinars a month. Then, at the end of each month, they gave those slaves an additional "bonus" of fifty to one hundred and fifty dinars. How much they received depended entirely on their performance at work. Of course, this money was never stuffed into the slaves' pockets, but rather credited to their accounts. Once enough had accumulated, they could redeem themselves and their families. And after these slaves redeemed themselves, they became skilled workers, boasting not only rich work experience but also greater enthusiasm for labor. The Legion continued employing them, with the former bonus becoming their monthly wage. To the Wilantes, the wages paid to these workers remained unchanged, while saving the fifty-dinar monthly rent paid to the nobility—effectively hiring a more skilled labor force at a lower cost. To the nobles, how much work a slave performed had no bearing on their earnings. While losing a skilled worker was a bit of a pity, a redemption fee of one thousand dinars was hardly a loss—it amounted to cashing out twenty months of income in a single lump sum. Furthermore, they could turn a profit through the Labor Registry, a neatly packaged employment agency. The only losers were the freedmen. Previously, food and shelter had been provided on the nobles' estates; now, they were left entirely to fend for themselves... ... West Sail Port. Unlike the usual sweaty bustle of ordinary days, the atmosphere at the docks today was eerily peculiar. A dense sea of people crowded the port, jamming the entire road between the piers and the warehouses tight. Suppressed rage was written across every face. They were the earliest batch of laborers to arrive at West Sail Port. Every single brick of this port was forged from their blood and sweat, yet those above were not satisfied with merely treading on those bricks—they wanted to trample what little dignity and hope they had beneath their feet as well. Orisa was not the first coolie to die in West Sail Port, nor even the first freedman to drop dead on the job. Yet his death was the straw that broke the camel's back, unleashing the total, roaring fury of the port's freedmen! Why had they lived like donkeys, toiling without complaint? Was it not just to obtain that scrap of paper certifying them as freedmen? Man is a creature that feeds on hope; so long as hope exists, one can survive even on dirt. "Work diligently, and you shall earn your freedom" was the carrot dangled before them. For that carrot, and so their families could taste it too, they endured the overseers' whips and curses, racked up chronic ailments, and even broke their spines... Yet the masters of West Sail Port had violently yanked down that carrot and slammed their only sliver of hope brutally to the ground. So what if you obtained it? Did having that paper stop them from holding you by the throat? In the end, it was all the same. The only true free people in West Sail Port were those who never needed a slip of paper to prove it in the first place. No one ever demanded such a thing from a Wilante, nor from a noble. Even priests from Silver Moon Bay and merchants from the Southern Sea had no need for it, seemingly protected by certain agreements under the Slime Mold Consortium. Orisa had spent one thousand dinars to redeem himself, and heaven knew how much more to redeem his family, likely borrowing some from the Wilantes along the way. Yet his death compensation was a pitiful eight hundred dinars! Eight hundred! At the worst possible exchange rate of 1:5, that wouldn't even fetch two hundred silver coins! This sum could neither settle his debts nor sustain his family's livelihood for long. Once he was buried in the dirt, his family would either repeat his missteps or suffer the same fate. Or else— They could only sell themselves, starting yet another cycle of despair. If the fresh winds of the wasteland had never reached this place, the people here might have endured all this without complaint, perhaps realizing the truth only at the moment they entered the grave—and a single fleeting moment of agony might even have been a blessing. Unfortunately, merchant ships from the east brought more than just wealth and technology. They brought the ideas that ignited enlightenment. The freedmen standing here might barely be literate, but from the priests of Silver Moon Bay, they had learned of a settlement thousands of kilometers away named Boulder City and an Awakened named Boer. The power of a single person was tiny, but when five hundred thousand survivors united, even massive walls hundreds of meters high would tremble, and thousand-meter-tall towers would crumble! The survivors of West Sail Port were not merely five hundred thousand—they numbered a full million! Inspired by that example, those who once scattered at the sound of gunfire stood together once more... They had had their fill of lies. They would fight with their own hands for the rights that belonged to them. Facing the ever-growing throng, Naji broke into a cold sweat, yet summoned his nerve to bellow at them, "What are you crowding around here for?! Get back to work... Itching for a beating again, are you?!" The people said nothing, nor did they step forward to provoke the Wilante soldiers as they had last time. They merely stood there in silence, fixing their eyes on him. Chilled to the bone by all those staring eyes, Naji swallowed hard. His right hand clutching the whip trembled continuously, as if struck by muscle weakness, completely unable to strike. There were at least twenty to thirty thousand people gathered here—more than ten times the number from two days ago. Not only were they refusing to work, but they also blocked the road back to the warehouses so tightly that not even water could trickle through. Now the entire port was like a broken clock; loading and unloading had ground to a complete halt. If he couldn't get all the cargo off the docks before nightfall, both the Wilante ship captains and the local nobles would come after his neck! At the thought of that, cold sweat broke out across Naji's forehead, and he looked helplessly toward the port guards beside him. The guards were whispering among themselves, seemingly deliberating a response. "Should we disperse them first?" "We need them to work the docks." "Staying here only gets in the way." "And without them? Relying on those sluggish slaves, we won't finish by tomorrow." "The Governor ordered us to maintain productive order here... We have to find a way to get them back to their posts, and working obediently." The guard captain looked over the laborers, frowning deeply. He had underestimated these fellows before. Though timid as mice, they weren't entirely useless. For instance, they were cunning enough. Freedmen strikes had occurred in other Wilante colonies, but they usually arose when debt interest and income were entirely out of balance; they rarely took place in the early stage of transitioning indenture-bound slaves into debt slaves. This was supposed to be the honeymoon phase. Yet it was as if someone had told them where this scam was heading next; they had abruptly awakened from the illusory dream. And worse, they had picked up that most terrible habit of all: striking. They could drive these people from one cage to another at gunpoint, but they couldn't force any enthusiasm out of them. Whenever things reached this point, even the Wilantes had to weigh the pros and cons and make concessions. Unfortunately, the Governor had gone back to Triumph City for the New Year and was probably still drifting at sea. The guard captain strode up to Naji and said in an ordering tone to the pale-faced overseer, "...A standoff won't solve anything. Talk to them and see what it takes to get them back to work." Naji hurried back before the crowd, wishing to resume his usual tyrannical sneer, but he couldn't summon the vicious bravado for the life of him. In the end, he had to lower his stance and speak earnestly, "What's the point of just standing here? What do you actually want? At least give me a word!" Supported by his peers, a laborer stepped forward, eyes locked on him. "One of ours died: Orisa." Naji gritted his teeth. "We already paid compensation! What more do you want?!" The laborer shouted in fury, "...It's not enough! Eight hundred dinars isn't nearly enough for his family to survive in West Sail Port!" "Then go back to the countryside—" Naji opened his mouth to retort, but was furiously cut off. "Stop playing dumb! The fertile lands of Lion State are covered in plantations! Where is there any land left for them to survive on?!" This struck a chord with many, especially those who had originally worked on plantations. If they had truly had a choice, they wouldn't have come to this godforsaken place to sell their sweat. They knew how to farm, but had no land to till. "That's right! They have no home to go back to!" "Are Orisa's wife, daughter, and son supposed to go back to his old master's plantation?!" "Why did we redeem ourselves in the first place? In the end, it's just the same!" The shouts grew louder and louder, the crowd's agitation swelling. Naji panicked and yelled recklessly, "Then what do you want?! Do you expect us to support them for the rest of their lives? On what grounds?!" At those words, the crowd erupted into an uproar, their glares turning even fiercer. "On what grounds?!" "On the grounds that Orisa died working for you!" "We bled and sweated for this port! On what grounds is there no place here for us?!" "That's right! We're not just demanding justice for Orisa! We want justice for ourselves!" "Our wages must go up!" "Either pay us at least ten dinars a day, or let us organize ourselves to contract dock operations! Fair competition—we eat as much as the work we do, and we won't owe you a thing!" Angry roars from the laborers echoed across the entire docks. Even slaves trying to squeeze through the crowd couldn't help but halt in their tracks. Hearing these increasingly outrageous demands, Naji felt his scalp tingle with dread. These greedy bastards, asking for the sky! Ten dinars a day! That would be three hundred a month—double their previous maximum pay! All that money just for carrying a few crates—why didn't they go rob someone instead?! As for letting them organize and contract the docks themselves, that was out of the question. It wasn't merely a matter of profit; far pricklier issues were involved. Neither the Wilantes nor the nobles would ever permit these lower-class scum to organize. If they dared demand to contract the docks today, tomorrow they'd demand to contract City Hall, the bank, and the post office! Whose name would West Sail Port bear then? Would it bear the name of these sewer rats? Naji's brow twitched violently, and he bellowed at the crowd with all his might, "Are you out of your minds?! Do you have any idea what you're asking for?! Why don't we just hand the port over to you as a gift?!" "Then give it to us!" The laborer in front didn't flinch in the slightest, showing no intent to back down. As if he had heard a hilarious joke, Naji sneered, "Give it to you? It wouldn't take you a single day to destroy everything here!" The dock worker glared fixedly back. "Then let it be destroyed! Nothing here ever belonged to us anyway!" Seeing the crowd grow increasingly agitated, the Wilante guards standing nearby could finally watch no longer. The guard captain stepped up to Naji, yanked him aside, and stared into his eyes, enunciating every word, "Are you a pig? I told you to negotiate terms and coax them back to work, not pick a fight! Do I have to teach you how to do your job?!" Seeing the Wilante officer lose his temper, Naji hastily whined in self-defense, "M-My lord, you don't understand... You can't show them a pleasant face! Once you give them an inch, they'll crawl right up your truncheon like a snake!" "I don't understand?" The guard captain sneered, patting Naji's head with a chuckle. "How many colonies have you been to? You've only been a foreman for how many days, and you dare talk to me like that?" Cold sweat dripping, Naji bowed his head in pallor. "This humble servant wouldn't dare..." The captain looked disdainfully at the flustered wretch, his disgust deepening. He didn't mind an obedient dog, but a dog ought to be of some use, shouldn't it? Having served over a decade as a guard in the Southern Legion, he had dealt plenty with the natives around the colonies. While he had not personally participated in the high-stakes games of grand figures, he understood the fundamental consensus. Whether it was the Southern Legion, the civil officials, or local tribal chiefs and nobles, everyone preferred to fatten the milk cow before milking it. That was best for all involved. Yet these fools acted as though they had never seen coin in their lives. They couldn't wait to slit the cow's throat, skip the milking entirely, and press their mouths to the wound to drink the blood. Not having the leisure to wait for this idiot to see the light on his own, the captain spoke in an unmistakable tone of authority: "Raise the standard for death compensation and bump up their wages. Don't give them everything at once—haggle with them... Manage that yourselves. I have only one demand: resume work immediately, and don't let this blow up. Otherwise, if the Governor finds out, none of you will have a good ending!" Hearing this, Naji immediately put on a mournful face and pleaded, "But my lord, our profit margins are already razor-thin. If we raise their wages, how are we supposed to make any money..." "Don't fucking play dumb with me!" Seeing this fellow still trying to play him for a fool with clever tricks, the guard captain snapped, pointing right at Naji's nose. "You charge by the weight of the cargo! What you pay them in wages isn't even a tenth of what you take in! What if you give them one-tenth? The time and money wasted standing around here already far exceed that amount! Do I really need to teach you how to run a business?!" Watching the foreman cower without daring to take a deep breath, the guard captain sighed, softening his tone slightly. "...Be a little kinder to your own people. Don't push them too hard, and stop trying to squeeze out every last dinar. Otherwise, no one wins." "Understood..." Naji answered grudgingly, though in his heart he didn't view these scurrying vermin as his people in the slightest. He was a Lion Folk, after all. Even if not an aristocrat, he was far nobler than this rabble. Urged on by the captain, he had no choice but to return before the crowd once more. "...Thank the benevolent Governor! We can raise your wages! But don't push it too far—how about eight dinars a day? That's two hundred and forty a month! Damn it, even I envy your pay! Work five months, and you can buy a concubine!" Hearing the wage raised to eight gold coins a day, the once-furious crowd began to show cracks of division, hope for life flickering back into some eyes. Just as Naji said, two hundred and forty dinars a month was no small sum! Yet not everyone was so easily bought. Many still glared at the foreman thrust into the spotlight, full of righteous indignation. "What about Orisa?" Naji gritted his teeth. Since a mountain of money was already being thrown away, a little more wouldn't make a difference, so he bit the bullet and declared: "The Labor Registry will provide an additional three thousand dinars to his family... However, this money is not compensation, but a donation made entirely out of goodwill and charity! We cannot chill the hearts of those who shed blood and sweat for West Sail Port—his family deserves the care of West Sail Port!" Three thousand dinars was already generous! Even calculated by the newly raised wage, that was a full year's earnings! A gleam of hope finally shone in their eyes. Who would have thought there were decent folks among the nobility after all? A few even began whistling and clapping in approval. This time, even among those previously burning with indignation, differences began to emerge, leaving only a small handful still glaring fiercely. Seeing the crowd wavering, Naji pressed on in a soothing tone: "Alright, disperse! If you still want today's wages, get back to work immediately—or were you expecting gold coins to fall from the sky?" The crowd gradually dispersed. Naji finally breathed a sigh of relief, though the thought of the money spent made his heart ache fiercely. Hopefully the masters wouldn't blame him... If they did, he could only use the Wilantes as a shield. He would claim he had held the line, but the Wilante guards had forced him to raise the wages. Seeing the troublemakers return to work, the Wilante guards drawn up in ranks before the port dismissed their formation and went about their business. The turn of the year was fast approaching, followed immediately by the Day of Nativity. None of them had any real appetite for work, much less looking for trouble; their thoughts had already drifted homeward. The guard captain returned to the station. First, he transmitted a telegram over the dedicated line to Evernight Port stating [Crisis Resolved], then reported the sequence of events to the secretary of the Governor's Office. Governor Huye had returned to Triumph City, taking half the Governor's Mansion guards with him. General MacLaren and the cadre of instructors had also departed some time ago to board ships at Evernight Port. The armed presence in West Sail Port was reduced to the port guard and the local city defense force, leaving defenses unprecedentedly thin. If possible, he hoped the Governor's Office could borrow a detachment from the Southern Legion. Even auxiliary troops would do. Yet the trouble was that there wasn't a single ship available along the entire route. Every usable vessel had been dispatched eastward by the civil officials, so transferring personnel was likely no simple task... Meanwhile, Naji, having finally settled the matter, returned to the Labor Registry to report the situation at the port and the wage increase to several major shareholders one by one. Before he could catch his breath after receiving a thorough chewing-out, he saw one of his subordinates running in in a frantic rush, yelling at the top of his lungs: "Master, something terrible has happened!" His rear had barely warmed the chair when Naji's heart skipped a beat. He stood back up, cursing, "What happened now?! Didn't I just raise their wages?!" His subordinate was pale with anxiety and blurted hurriedly, "Th-This time it's not the docks! It's the steel mill... and the cement factory! As soon as the factory laborers heard the dockworkers got a raise, every single one stopped working and started demanding a raise too!" Hearing this, Naji nearly coughed up blood, spewing curses: "Those greedy vultures!" Just as he had anticipated. He knew it would come to this! Those Wilantes knew far too little about Bolo Province. Mudlegs could never be coddled; as soon as their days grew a bit comfortable, they would start kicking up a fuss. Once factory wages went up, dockworkers would probably start clamoring again, arguing that hauling freight was harder labor and shouldn't pay the same as the steel mill. Back and forth like that, they wouldn't make any money at all—they might as well shut down every factory in the port! As Naji sweated with anxiety, the director of the Labor Registry stood by, frowning, and muttered under his breath, "Something about this doesn't smell right. It feels like someone is fanning the flames." Naji jolted. "You mean the Alliance?" The director shook his head. "Doesn't seem like them either. Too far-fetched." Alliance merchant ships also came here to purchase steel and cement. Golden Gallon Port and Port French Fries had substantial demands for building materials, as did the Southern Sea and Haiya Province, which were undergoing reconstruction. Making a mess of West Sail Port wouldn't benefit them either; at most, it would give the Legion and the Empire a mild headache. Just then, the subordinate who had rushed in with the report had a thought and quickly spoke up: "Right, I heard that several leaders of the commotion seem to be followers of the Church of the Silver Moon! The ones who shouted the loudest earlier too!" Hearing this, Naji flared up at once, cursing furiously, "Have those zealots lost their minds?!" The director's eyes flickered, and he said thoughtfully, "The tenets of the Silver Moon sect include mutual aid. The reason this blew up so big... might really have something to do with them." The servant chimed in eagerly, "Right?! I always felt those zealots were up to no good! Oh, and I heard that Orisa was a follower of the Silver Moon sect. The ones leading the uproar this time used to attend services with him all the time." Naji's eyes narrowed, a barely discernible malice gleaming through the slits. "So that's what it was all along..." He had indeed been negligent. He had nearly forgotten that a church was an organization in itself. Not to mention that this Silver Moon sect was anything but obedient—they not only taught believers literacy, but even published some kind of newspaper. As though grasping the root of the problem, he immediately began scheming in his head. "...We must find a way to eliminate that church." Yet after hearing this, the director shook his head. "That won't be easy... We can't touch the people from Silver Moon Bay. They're subjects of the Camel Hump Kingdom, protected by treaties under the Slime Mold Consortium. If we lay hands on them without a valid reason, who knows what serious trouble it could cause." "Why do we have to do it ourselves..." Naji gave a sinister smile, and under their astonished gazes, spoke unhurriedly: "If the residents of West Sail Port drive those charlatans out themselves, surely no one can pin the blame on us, can they?" ... While the steel mill had no shortage of orders, the work was not nearly as urgent as at the docks. Before the guards kept by the Wilante masters could intervene, Naji gathered a hundred-odd slaves borrowed from the Labor Registry and formed a "Cudgel Squad." He promised them freedom and rewards in dinars, assuring them they would be well taken care of in the future. The moment these slaves heard there was money to be made and that they would be entrusted by the masters, they grabbed cudgels without a second thought and dispersed the workers gathered on strike. Watching the rabble flee in disarray with heads in hands, Naji wore a vindictive, triumphant sneer. Refuse to work? Fine! At worst, the steel mill shuts down for two days—let's see who starves first! With the lesson from the port, he understood that hesitation was not an option. When strength was needed, one had to be hard; when action was required, one had to be decisive. Striking first was always better than striking late! Even if a few people died, that was far better than letting things escalate to the Wilante masters and taking the blame. Having dealt with the trouble at the steel mill, Naji followed the same playbook at the cement factory, directing the cudgels loyal to him to beat sense into the troublemakers there as well. Under his swift and ruthless crackdowns, West Sail Port—a powder keg waiting to blow—seemed to finally regain its customary tranquility, yet beneath the bottomless greed, an even greater crisis appeared to be brewing... Over three days of strenuous labor by the dockworkers, the cargo ships jamming the port were finally unloaded, and the docks at last cleared out. Carrying letters of authorization from the Governor's Office, the unburdened merchant fleets set sail in droves for that legendary dreamland—Haiya Province in the far east! Meanwhile, Naji, who had been pushed to his wits' end by those porters, finally breathed a sigh of relief. The hardest days were behind him; he could finally free his hands to attend to other matters. Whether it was the striking laborers or the Silver Moon sect instigating them to be lazy... He swore he would make them pay! Day after day slipped by, and West Sail Port seemed quiet for a spell. At the same time, the merchant fleets that had been first to depart West Sail Port for the Death Coast finally began arriving at the shoreline of their dreams. Having drifted at sea for eleven full days, Yarman, standing on the deck and gazing at the port emerging along the coastline, finally showed an excited expression on his face. A port! They had finally arrived! The Eastern Legion's nearest unit was stationed in Haibei City, a hundred kilometers from the coastline. As long as they presented the letter issued by the Governor's Office to them, they would be able to claim those munitions sold by the jin! "Hurry! Bring the ship alongside!" Yarman shouted to the crew behind him while eagerly pulling out his binoculars. Yet the moment he brought the binoculars to his eyes and looked toward the coast, he froze in utter disbelief. Arrayed in neat rows beside shipping containers stood pitch-black combat vehicles, waiting for specialized crane equipment to hoist them aboard vessels. The model of each and every one... Why did they look so damn familiar?