Somewhere on the outskirts of Fargo
While the smoke of war was slowly rising, most of the citizens—especially Fargo's—remained completely unaware. The citizens were doing their daily activities. Most were hunting and working hard to survive, some—mostly those who had allied with Fargo—were dilly-dallying, while others were busy bullying their fellowmen.
At this time, a good portion of the activity was fixed in the mines. "Work harder!" A man said, kicking another poor slave to 'wake'. He didn't move anymore though and someone checked his breathing to be extremely weak.
"Tsk. Another one broken," Peko sneered, spitting out in disgust. He looked at one of the guards and gestured to get rid of the body.
One man carried the near-corpse to the edge of the cave system. It wasn't exactly a cliff, but the slope wasn't gentle either. The guard carelessly threw the man there, watching him roll to the bottom, hitting a few trees by the way. He watched until he was satisfied before nodding and turning back to the gossip.
Rolling down and hitting rocks and shrubs, Thomas didn't care anymore. He didn't even feel the pain of being thrown down. He doubted he'd feel the pain if a monster decided to bite onto his flesh.
He just wanted his life to end so Vivian didn't think about him anymore. How sorry she must feel to him, and how guilty she must feel to be touched like that by those men. But he couldn't even tell her he didn't blame her at all, and that he would not be disgusted with her.
But it's alright now. With his death, Vivian would eventually forget about him, moving on with her life.
Eventually, the seemingly-endless rough roll downhill ended, and he heard various rustles of shrubs around him. He closed his eyes, feeling his last breath slowly leave him.
From the back of his consciousness though, he realized he wasn't hearing the familiar growls of monsters. Instead, it was voices. "Hey, it's a corpse!"
"No, he's still alive." Another voice said. "Pull back now. Back to the temporary base!"
"Yes, Boss Gill!"
Thomas didn't know what happened anymore because he completely lost consciousness.
***
Anyway, back to the mines, the guards were lounging as they watched the hard-working slaves, completely unaffected by the fact that they threw away yet another one to the monsters.
"We found copper, why are we still mining limestone?" One asked, wondering why most of the slave labor still went there.
He was a little annoyed as one of the people who 'found' the copper, because it made his 'contribution' less cooler.
"Idiot, sure copper is awesome, what do we do next?"
"Make money?"
"Nah, many people tried to take it in their spaces to see if it could be converted to money, but it didn't work."
"Damn!"
"At least we have construction experts here, we could at least make concrete!" One said. "That's a huge thing, okay?"
Most of the gangsters weren't highly educated, so they didn't know much about concrete except it was a good place to throw people in. However, from the various conversations and actions in the territory, they could surmise limestone was needed to create it.
"They tried putting it over a section of the wall to make it stronger."
"And?"
"It didn't stick."
While the men were chatting, Bruce was working hard nearby. They chatted without care around slaves thinking that they couldn't reveal anything automatically as long as they were enslaved.
They thought wrong this time though. Unless slaves were explicitly ordered not to say anything specific, they had no prohibitions at all. In terms of computer, the residents had to program a command each time, and each command had varying effectivity.
However, none of this mattered because there was no one to tell at this time.
Clack! Clack! Clack!
Bruce diligently worked on his area of the mine, also for the little girl around 10 years old right next to him. After all, if their sector didn't meet the required productivity, the slave drivers tended to be harsher on that group of people.
On the girl's other side was Rebi, a man his age, with copper-colored skin and a strong body. He was also doing the same thing as he was.
The girl reminded him of his daughter, and it was the same with Rebi—who was taken away from his own daughter by the disaster. Bruce was still much luckier because he knew his Lily had a good chance of survival due to Tom and the others, but Rebi's daughter got separated from him during the transfer.
Bruce had known Rebi arrived at Bright about a day or so before it got attacked. He had used his remaining savings to announce his daughter's name—Fiona—offering a bit of reward for valid news of her. He was saving up to pay the caravan to do the same in the allied territories, but sadly the war happened and there was no chance anymore.
Bruce sighed. He couldn't imagine waking up in this new world, suddenly not finding your precious daughter.
Most people who were together in Terran mostly transferred together. Rebi was very unlucky in this regard. However, his hope was that she was in a nearby territory because that was how it was, and that had been his hope for living all this time.
The girl between them was named Lina. She was a ten-year-old orphan who hadn't lifted a finger until the disasters. Her parents died as early as in Terran, where her father ate her mother right in front of her eyes.
By luck, she managed to survive by hiding in their pantry. She was lucky to have been transferred with Micheal and the others—having lived in the same rich neighborhood as he did back in Terran.
She traded protection and other resources with the food she managed to stock up and she had lived decently in Bright for a few weeks until the war started.
At this time, she was absolutely unsightly with blood and grime—Rebi covered her up—which was the only reasons why she hadn't been dragged out to become a different kind of slave. Her slow productivity certainly wasn't helping her out, so the two fathers could only work harder to cover for her.
Bruce and Rebi had also made it a point to always work next to her, using their own largeness to cover direct sight of the girl. They thought: what these bastards couldn't see, they wouldn't remember, and so far it had worked in their favor.
Unfortunately, the men today were particularly deep in heat.
"Damn, all the women are either occupied, too boring with their coo-cooness, or dead!" They yelled it with so much disgust it gritted in the slaves' hearts.
Of course that happened. They took advantage of the female slaves too much!
The slaves gripped their weapons, gritting teeth, using the stones in front of them to vent.
They had to endure more of their dirty talks, talking about this woman or that woman, and what they did, as well as the woman they were now pining for.
"Damn, when will the boss get tired of my goddess Juni! I want to have a taste!!"
"Eh, she seems special, even the two favorites got kicked out!"
"Damn, I also want those two! Just one, just a taste!"
"Too late! Boss Uzon already got the blonde and Boss Sen already got the dark-skinned one!"
"Ah, pity!"
As they chatted, the bored guards walked around, checking the status of their work. But then one stopped right behind Lina.
He looked at her profile, looking at her up and down, with his eyebrows rising in a pleasant surprise a moment later.
"Eh, hey, we have a girl here."
At this, everyone's blood turned cold.