manynovel Chapter 21 Iron 7 Rebellion
Chapter 21 Iron 7 Rebellion
chirp——
chirp——
The sharp, piercing sound of the whistle, high-pitched like birdsong, echoed through the narrow passage.
Sado and Menelaus, who were diligently mining, simultaneously stood up, stopped what they were doing, looked at each other, and both saw the confusion in each other's eyes.
Today isn't the first of every month, so why would these noble gentlemen condescend to come here?
There was no point in thinking about it. Sadora pulled Menelaus, whose legs were a little numb, and the two joined the crowd and walked together toward the meeting point.
As they emerged from the tunnel, the space gradually expanded. When they passed Mine 88, which had collapsed a few days earlier, Menelaus paused briefly to pray for the victims.
Sado, meanwhile, stood beside him, disgruntled, driving away the discontented miners, and praying with Menelaus toward the mine.
"We should go now, Menelaus." Sadolaus stopped Menelaus, and the two continued on their way until they reached their destination.
Because of their lingering, they were positioned very far back, only able to gaze at the few people at the very front.
Sado placed one hand on Menelaus's shoulder and laboriously stood on tiptoe.
Menelaus straightened his shoulders to help his friend see the situation ahead.
"Eight men, two loyal dogs, five brainless idiots, and a fat worm," Sado whispered in Menelaus's ear after seeing clearly.
They consist of two armed slaves, five crippled machine servants made from miners' corpses, and a male nobleman.
If the woman is a noblewoman, Sado will call her "fat chicken".
If that nobleman could hear Sado's assessment of him, he would surely hang Sado in the mine and skin him whole, hanging his skin in the center of this transfer station leading to the various tunnels of this mining area.
The nobleman impatiently brushed off non-existent dust from his body in six-second intervals.
Besides the impatient disdain on his face, there was also a hidden, perverse excitement, as if he was anticipating something to happen.
"Is everyone here?" The nobleman lightly touched the ground with his foot and nodded slightly, as if enjoying some kind of music.
No one responded to him; everyone stared at him silently and numbly with their eyes, which were adapted to the darkness and even half-blind.
However, the nobleman clearly didn't care whether anyone came or not; the five servants behind him stepped forward to check.
Whenever the mechanical legs, resembling spider legs, move in front of a person, a printer embedded in the hollowed-out abdomen will pop out the person's identification.
The nobles waited quietly until all the information about the eight hundred people in this area was available.
Five servants approached the nobleman, opened the printer's cover, and retrieved the person who had been unable to arrive due to information processing issues.
The dozens of sheets of paper were stacked together, and at first glance, they looked quite thick.
A slave stepped forward from behind the nobleman, bent down to take the stack of papers, then knelt before the nobleman, head bowed low, holding the stack of papers up with both hands.
The nobleman held up two fingers, pinched them gently, and smiled, "Then let's deduct according to the share of seventy people."
"Damn it..." Sado's voice was extremely low, and only Menelaus could barely hear it.
His friend turned around, and he cursed under his breath, muttering, "This stack of paper could kill twenty or thirty people at most."
Sure enough, after the nobleman announced the quota of seventy people, a commotion broke out in the room.
They weren't as perceptive as Sado, but they could certainly tell that there couldn't possibly be a large group of seventy people there.
This means that some people will inevitably die from exhaustion or starvation because they can't get enough food.
Their commotion alerted another slave behind the nobleman, who raised his gun and aimed it at the crowd below.
The modified mechs also sprang up instantly, their folded, spider-like mechanical legs shooting out like scimitars and plunging into the ground.
They "stood up," with only half of their upper bodies remaining. Printed papers swayed beneath them like white tongues, and green beams of light flashed in their empty eye sockets, locking onto the miners.
"Don't get agitated." The nobleman raised his hand, his face showing a hypocritical compassion, his eyes unusually cold, as if he were looking at a pile of dead objects.
Gently brush off the dust from your body.
"I know you don't understand, I know you feel that someone as good as me is hurting you."
"This is an insult to me, a misunderstanding of me, you are hurting me."
The nobleman looked distressed, his thumb lightly tracing the corner of his eye, wiping away non-existent tears.
"But if you knew that in other mines, they were subtracting the quota from the base of two hundred, you would know just how merciful I am."
"I really love you all and care about you all. I'm also very sad about this. This is the best I can do."
The nobleman spoke with a sorrowful tone.
The people below had different expressions. Some of them were actually fooled by the nobleman's charade, but most of them cursed him in their hearts as utter nonsense.
Sado wanted nothing more than to punch that hypocritical face twice and then chop off his hands that kept patting the dirt.
The nobleman took in everyone's expressions, then changed the subject, his sorrowful expression vanishing instantly.
Indifference and anger then emerged, as if a rehearsal was taking place before a grand performance:
"It's all your fault." He clapped his hands forcefully, the sound of his clapping pressing down on the miners' hearts.
The slave, who was allowed to get up, ran out and soon reappeared around a corner.
He held a rope in his hand, the rest of which, except for the small section held by the slave, was made of extremely sharp, triangular alloy as hard as fiberglass.
They were tied to the hands and abdomens of several men.
The men were gagged and their hands were bound. Their faces had no ears or noses, and hard bloodstains had formed in their empty eye sockets, leaving only a mouth that could still whimper.
They were clearly prisoners of war.
They wore the same clothes as them, and had the same lead-gray skin, corroded by minerals from being rarely exposed to sunlight.
"They are miners," Menelaus, who had been silent until now, said, suppressing his anger.
Sado pressed down on his friend's hand to calm him down, but his eyes were also filled with anger.
"They are traitors."
"He is a heinous criminal."
"Waaah—waaah—"
The nobleman seemed to feel that he had waited too long.
He walked with the elegant steps of a nobleman, approached the slave, and coldly took the rope from him.
As the nobleman took the rope, he walked back to his previous position without slowing down.
As he walked, he explained to them the origins of these people.
As he quickened his pace, those who could not see were forcibly dragged along, the sharp, glass-fiber-like alloy on the ropes piercing deep into their wrists and abdomens, cutting through flesh without hindrance.
"Waaah—waaah—"