Three days passed quickly. For the more than eighty million citizens of the Imperium living across the Upper Hive, Mid Hive, and Lower Hive, the changes that took place over those three days surpassed everything that had happened in the previous twenty-five years combined.
The first day, six in the morning.
A convoy led by Holy Blood arrived at the main entrance of Hive City.
Two thousand players who had completed basic augmentation and five thousand Aurelian Youth League members who had received full education and basic military training marched down from the transport vehicles.
These Youth League members ranged in age from twenty-two to twenty-nine on average. They wore matching gray work uniforms, with Crimson Dawn emblems on their left arms.
Their eyes possessed a clarity rarely seen in this age, the radiance of people whose dignity had been forged through labor.
"Brothers."
Holy Blood stood before the ranks, his voice carrying across the grounds through a simple loudspeaker. "The city beneath our feet has ninety-eight million, seven hundred and forty thousand people struggling beneath a rotten system."
"Most of them have never eaten a full meal, never drunk a mouthful of clean water, and never been treated as human beings from the day they were born to the day they died."
He paused, his gaze sweeping over every young face. "Now, Crimson Dawn has arrived."
"What we intend to give them is not charity, not mercy, but an opportunity—an opportunity to change their fate with their own hands."
"And you will be the first to spread the flame."
The Youth League members straightened their backs.
Most of them came from the Crimson Bright Wasteland base. They had seen potatoes grow there with their own eyes, seen how Tax Brother smashed oppressors' heads with his fists, and seen how