On the windward outskirts north of Evernight Harbor, battered by sand and wind, stood a narrow alley called Blackwater Lane.
This was Evernight Harbor's slum, home mostly to marginalized ethnic groups other than Velanders.
There were natives from the Great Desert, exiles from the Legion's homeland, indigenous people from the New Continent, and even Boro People.
Its tangled mix of races and sharp conflicts had made it a den of every kind of scum.
Although local gang members did not dare openly wage bloody turf wars under the Velanders' noses, vendettas and armed brawls were common, much like in West Sail Harbor after the Southern Legion took over.
The Velanders did not care whether these scraps lived or died. They were simply cheap, useful labor. Though they struggled year after year on the line between poverty and starvation, they had never quite died out.
Like weeds, they always came here for one reason or another, and whenever the spring wind blew, fresh shoots sprang up one crop after another.
No wonder the Southern Legion was dissatisfied with Triumph City's bureaucratic clique.
Triumph City-style exploitation was simply too inefficient—almost softhearted.
If those Triumph City fools had built a society of "mutual harm" among the lower classes like they had, letting flies and rats smash each other's heads in over a mouthful of shit and spit at one another over who stank worse, the first riot in West Sail Harbor would never have happened.
Take Evernight Harbor, for example.
No laborer would ever be worked to death on a Velander dock.
Before they collapsed from exhaustion, they would be quietly buried somewhere no one could see, amid everyone's mockery and with the regret of sudden realization in their hearts.
Like Blackwater Lane.
After all, they were not Velanders. They could hardly be