Facing the crowd's righteous outrage, Iron Hammer felt wronged to the extreme.
Making a living was hard these days.
When Herbert had told him that Lord Levis was about to implement the Abolition Act and the Labor Regulations across all of Zelandia, he had still harbored a sliver of hope. Surely reforms on that scale would take at least half a year, maybe even two or three years, from drafting to enactment?
Who would have thought that the very day after the first conference of the Zelandia Free City-State concluded, both laws came down at once—and were enforced with unprecedented resolve.
His old friend Herbert had gone mad with work around then, personally leading teams from shop to shop, visiting merchants who refused to comply or were still sitting on the fence.
Faced with redemption payments slightly below market value on one side and permanent expulsion from the country on the other, most ordinary merchants like Iron Hammer naturally chose the former.
After all, they had bought those female slaves, and the women had worked in their establishments for free for so long. Having City Hall buy them back hardly counted as taking a loss.
But Iron Hammer quickly realized that he was still too young.
He found that unless he gritted his teeth and bled a little, he fucking couldn't hire anyone at all!
Used to slave dancers who needed no wages, Iron Hammer had nearly developed the urge to hammer someone whenever those "aunties" casually demanded thirty copper thumbs a week—or told him to forget it.
Lately, customers had been giving him no end of grief, saying his taste had gone horribly wrong.
Wrong my ass. Though, in his view, aunties with waistlines like buckets did indeed suit Dwarf tastes better, he wasn't some foolish Dwarf who didn't