The entire Black Furnace Mine is divided into four major areas: east, south, west, and north. Each area has several mining faces of varying sizes. Humans control one medium-sized and one small mining face in the East District, so the settlement area consists of a series of abandoned mine shafts surrounding that area.
Just after passing through the long, wide passageway, the thin young man named Rams grabbed Unas and led him through a maze of twists and turns to a dark little Cave.
In the corner was a stone bed that had been roughly polished flat. Lying on it was a middle-aged man with white hair and a gray beard. His muscles were bulging all over, and his calves were bound with two splints and hemp rope. Hearing someone come in, the middle-aged man squinted and reached for the miner's pickaxe beside him. He only relaxed when he saw that it was Rams.
"Uncle Sam, I've brought a Paladin who can surely heal you!" Rams said excitedly as he walked quickly to the stone bed.
Unas had never made such a guarantee, but he didn't want to undermine the patient's confidence, so he said nothing.
Sam looked him up and down, his gaze full of suspicion. "You're a Paladin? Paladins can be captured and enslaved?"
"Birth, aging, sickness, and death; marriage and Paladin are just ordinary people," Unas stepped forward. "Let me see your legs."
Seeing that the middle-aged man was still hesitant, Unas cast a Holy Light on his leg. "Does that feel better?"
Sam's doubts vanished considerably. "By the Holy Light, please examine this, my lord."
Unas sat on the stone bed. Having experienced several wars, he had witnessed many times Doctors or Priests treating the wounded, so he knew the basics.
He gently removed the splint, and a foul stench wafted out. The wound, congealed with black blood, was swollen and festering, showing signs of slight rot. He turned and asked, "Isn't there any medicine here?"
"No..." Rams looked at the wound, which showed no signs of healing, with a tense expression.
"The limited amount of medicine is controlled by a few bosses and is meant for those who can protect everyone. A useless old man like me who only knows how to mine can't enjoy it." Sam didn't know whether he was complaining or feeling sorry for himself.
Unas nodded, then touched his bones again, and with a little force, straightened the slightly misaligned leg bone back into place. He then took out a bottle of wine, a dagger, and two bullets from his loincloth (actually Spatial Bag).
Sweating profusely from the pain, Sam exclaimed in astonishment, "This is impossible! Every slave who comes in is searched several times. How did you manage to carry these things on you?"
"You don't need to worry about that," Unas said, washing the dagger with wine. "Bear the pain; I'm going to cut off all the dead flesh."
Sam and Rams were still reeling from their astonishment, staring at Unas's crotch, unable to fathom how it could hold so much stuff.
Unas swiftly cut off all the necrotic tissue, blood gushing out. He then washed the wound clean with alcohol, disassembled the bullet, and poured gunpowder on it. Although Sam called himself a good-for-nothing, he was definitely a tough guy when it came to pain, and he didn't utter a single cry of pain throughout the entire process.
"Pass me the fire," Unas instructed. Using the Crimson Diamond to start a fire was too extravagant and would reveal that he possessed a valuable treasure.
Rams quickly took down the torch from the cave wall and presented it to him. Unas pressed tightly on the middle-aged man's thigh and flicked a few sparks with his fingers. With a hiss, the gunpowder on the wound was ignited, instantly burning the wound. Sam shuddered in pain on the stone bed and almost fainted.
After re-fastening the splints, Unas cast several more Holy Light and applied all the buffs, useful or not, to the middle-aged man, increasing his attributes to some extent and enhancing his resistance.
"That's all I can do. Your recovery depends entirely on yourself. Get some rest. If the wound doesn't get infected again within a few days, it's only a matter of time before your leg heals completely."
"Thank you Paladin!" Rams rushed to the bedside and wiped the sweat from the middle-aged man's body.
Sam weakly nodded his thanks to Unas, too exhausted to even speak, and soon fell into a deep sleep.
After Rams tidied up the middle-aged man, he said to Unas, who was resting nearby, "Sir, you are Blackbeard's... slave. Let me take you to see Riedel first; he is the human leader of the Blackbeard Gang."
"Blackbeard Gang? What's that? Do you even have gangs?"
It turned out that there were no guards or overseers in the Black Furnace. The slaves had to mine enough minerals each week in order to exchange them for food and some supplies from their masters. Of course, the more they handed over, the more they would get in return, while those who did not meet the quota would go hungry.
Moreover, the four major mine owners could only trade with their own slaves, and no one could cross the line. The slaves' foreheads were branded with the family marks of their respective owners, making it clear who belonged to whom. This formed four large slave groups that competed with each other for Ore Deposits. There was no law here; whoever was stronger could obtain more resources.
This approach reduced the direct armed conflict between the four major mine owners to a struggle among the mine slaves. Therefore, although the slave mortality rate was high, the mine owners still had to keep sending people in order to save face and make a profit.
However, the actual situation is more complicated. Some races do not want to kill each other, so they gather together to watch over and help each other. For example, the weakest group, humans, number only two hundred or so. If they were divided into different groups, they would only become the targets of oppression. So, humans gathered together to fight against external enemies, regardless of their masters, but they were still divided into four small groups internally.
Along the way, Rams explained all of this to Unas.
Unas touched his forehead, the mark of the Blackbeard Family, indicating that he had to fight for the Blackbeard, to seize and mine more minerals to earn food for himself.
He checked his Spatial Bag. Several bags of whole grains had been thrown away when he resisted the black net, leaving only a small half-bag of corn and a few scattered pieces of bread. There were still more than forty bottles of wine, the armor and the steel shield were still there, and there were fourteen or fifteen spare weapons. In addition, there were some daily necessities such as Tents, useless jewelry and coins, and most importantly, the Crimson Diamond.
"Which gang are you from?" he asked Rams.
"Coldsteel, my master... is Samuel Coldsteel."
Rams had what appeared to be a felt-like mark on his forehead. Unas was curious about what the Blackbeard mark was; could it belong to a Blackbeard Dwarf?
After turning a few more corners, the two finally arrived at Riedel's Cave. Two burly men guarded the entrance. One of the guards sized them up, then looked at Unas's face and sneered, "You must be the new Paladin, right? Haha, that's the best joke I've heard all year."
Those young men seemed to have already spread the word about Unas, and the guard clearly didn't believe it at all.