The Wrath of the Zaunites

On the other side, Li Wei had already started his work for the night.

The factory he worked at was small, and its business was niche:

The products made here were Hextech Sound Systems—magical home audio systems powered by Hextech Gems.

Li Wei's job was to sit at a narrow workstation, holding an electric Mithril Welding Gun, soldering components and Mithril Circuits onto the Printed Circuit Boards of those Hextech Sound Systems.

The work wasn't tiring, but it required precision; a single mistake in soldering could ruin the entire board, cutting into his already meager pay—

Mithril was a precious material, and excessive waste meant deductions.

Repeating the same task over and over, staying alert every second to avoid errors, inevitably brought immense mental strain.

After just two hours at the station, Li Wei already felt dizzy and his eyes were blurring.

He had to put down the Mithril Welding Gun and rub his sore eyes.

"What's wrong, Li Wei?"

A coworker at the next station, a skinny guy who looked like a monkey, asked with concern.

Li Wei "remembered" him—this guy was called Baku, the original owner's best friend at the factory. Naturally, Baku was also a Zaunite.

"Are you sick today?" Baku asked.

"No."

"Then why are you so weak today?" Baku grinned lewdly. "Only two hours and you're done? Isn't that a bit fast?"

Li Wei pretended not to catch the guy's crude innuendo and just complained from the heart:

"Two hours is already pretty exhausting, okay?"

"Exhausting?" Baku blinked in surprise. "Isn't this way easier than what we did back in Zaun?"

"Uh..." That was true.

In Zaun, you couldn't find a job as easy as soldering circuit boards.

Over there, there were only sunless black mines, steel mills spraying molten slag, alchemy plants flowing with sewage, and machine shops thick with iron filings.

For iron ore, that Li Wei's grandparents were buried under a mine shaft.

To smelt the iron into steel, his father fell into a furnace.

To shape the steel into parts, his mother got her hair caught in a machine.

Now Li Wei had finally made it.

He just had to sit in Piltover's bright, safe factory, assemble the mechanical parts shipped from Zaun, install the core Mithril Circuit boards and Hextech Gems, and process them into sound systems.

Not tiring, safe, and paid well (compared to Zaun).

"What do you have to complain about!" Baku encouraged him kindly. "Li Wei, we've gotta work hard—don't let our foreman catch you slacking!"

"..." Li Wei was speechless.

He suddenly realized he might have misjudged the situation.

He'd thought the Zaunite Apprentice group was a powder keg, ready to explode into fireworks with just a spark.

But the reality was:

Because they had the hellish life in Zaun as a comparison, these Zaunite Apprentices who'd already run to Piltover seemed pretty satisfied with their current situation?

"Hey, Li Wei, seriously, don't rest too long!" Baku was still kindly reminding him. "If you get fired for slacking, you'll be sent straight back to Zaun."

"You don't want to go back to Zaun and hang out with those losers, do you?"

"..." Li Wei was even more speechless.

Great, they hadn't even gotten Piltover residency yet, and they were already looking down on their poor relatives back home.

No wonder Baku could be so content—thinking about the poor relatives across the canal who were drooling with envy at them every day, it sure gave him motivation to work!

"But don't you think we're not much better off now?" Li Wei started stirring the pot without missing a beat. "In the eyes of those Piltovans, what difference is there between us and the people back in Zaun?"

"..." Baku went silent.

He held it in for a long time before finally squeezing out: "What can we do? We're Zaunites—our lives are cheap."

"A Zaunite's life is still a life—why should it be cheap?"

"We do the exact same work as those Piltover workers, even more and heavier work—why do they get treated so much better than us?"

To prioritize employment for its own citizens, Piltover required every factory to have at least 50% of its workers from Piltover itself.

And those Piltover Native Workers' salaries were nearly ten times that of Zaunite Apprentices in the same positions.

This inequality was blatant.

A little poke and it would flare up.

"Sigh, what's the point of saying all this?" Baku's face darkened with frustration. "No matter how much we say, those Piltovans are still riding on top of us."

"No, is it the Piltovans riding on top of us?" Li Wei pressed on, guiding the conversation. "Were the policies discriminating against Zaunite laborers made by the Piltover workers we see every day?"

"Those Piltover workers are just ordinary people—should we blame them for all this?"

"Of course it's their fault!" Baku didn't even pause.

He gritted his teeth in hatred and cursed out loud: "Those damn Piltovans sit around collecting fat paychecks every day without doing a lick of work. Whenever there's a job, they shove it onto us—we're basically raising those fat pigs for free. And we still have to take their insults every day, being called Zaunites, Sewer Rats. All the perks go to them, the Piltovans, but when something goes wrong, the blame falls entirely on us Zaunites. No matter how well we work, we can't get a promotion or a raise, while any random dog from Piltover can waltz in and be our boss."

Baku ranted for several minutes straight, and not once did he repeat himself.

It was clear just how much he hated those Piltovans.

This gave Li Wei a massive headache.

"Summoner." Azure Finch Janna stirred in his work pocket and quietly communicated with him through thought.

"Is this what you mentioned before?" She'd learned a lot of new words today and saw a chance to put theory into practice: "Shifting the blame?"

"Yeah," Li Wei replied.

"Looks like this kid's hating the wrong people." Janna sighed with pity.

"Not entirely. The conflict is already an objective reality—it doesn't just vanish because you talk theory or shout slogans."

"Piltovans have formed a systematic discrimination and collective oppression against Zaunites, and that's the kind of oppression Baku, as a Zaunite laborer, encounters most in his daily life."

"As for the big business owners who actually cause his suffering, they're too far removed from his daily grind for him to even know where to direct his hatred."

"So what should we do?" Janna asked.

She was gradually realizing that Li Wei was leading her into something that could overturn the world. Even she, a goddess, felt lost and helpless about it.

But Li Wei, with zero practical experience, wasn't much better off than her.

Faced with Baku's bitter, blood-soaked grievances, he didn't know how to console him either.

Those hardships were Baku's own lived experience, far more convincing than any of Li Wei's grand principles.

With no other choice, he could only quietly listen to Baku vent, while urging him not to get too worked up: "Baku, calm down a bit. If the foreman hears you, you're screwed. The shift supervisor is a Piltovan too."

"Ah..." Baku finally stopped cursing.

The fire Li Wei had stoked in him seemed to have burned out at last.

And then, the guy let out a wistful sigh:

"Man, I wish I were a woman."

"Huh?"

"Being a woman would be great. Just crawl into some Piltovan's bed, get a marriage certificate, and boom—you're a Piltovan."

"Look at those female workers in our factory. They've all latched onto the foremen and technicians, and they're living way easier than us."

Li Wei: "..."

Is this really what you came up with after all that cursing?

You can't even fantasize big? Have some ambition!

"Hey, why are you looking at me like that? Looking down on me?"

Baku's mood had stabilized, but his grin turned sleazy again:

"Li Wei, think about it—"

"If some rich Piltovan woman wanted to keep you, would you really say no? You'd probably be dropping your pants before she finished talking!"

"Fuck off!" Zaunites had a high mother-invoking quotient in their speech.

Li Wei went along with the local custom and cursed back: "You think everyone's as spineless as you? Sleeping with some rich old lady for money—don't you feel sick, you bastard!"

"Ha, what if she's a young rich woman?"

"Pfft, why would a young rich woman pick you? What kind of trash would go for you? Aren't you afraid of catching something!"

"Screw you! Why can't a pure, beautiful lady fall for me?"

"I'm just making an example—"

Baku actually got serious about his fantasy:

"Say, for instance, our boss's daughter—Mr. Ervin's daughter."

"If she took a liking to you, could you really turn her down?"

"Huh?" Li Wei frowned.

His original memories told him that Boss Ervin did indeed have a daughter.

But that young lady might have some strange illness—she stayed holed up in the house next to the factory all year round, barely ever stepping out.

The original Li Wei had never seen what she looked like, nor did he know her name.

"Have you seen her?" Li Wei was actually a bit curious.

"No."

"Then why the hell are you talking?"

"Do I need to? You've seen Mr. Ervin and his wife—how could their daughter be ugly? If Mr. Ervin wanted you as his son-in-law, could you hold out?"

"Ha, why not?" Li Wei gave a lofty laugh. It was all bragging anyway, so pride cost nothing.

"How could a sparrow or a swallow ever know the ambition of a swan?"

"I'm not about to become just anyone's son-in-law, not even Mr. Ervin's."

"Unless Mr. Ervin's daughter were to chase after me—"

"Then there might be the slightest chance!"

And just like that, he was in the middle of boasting.

"Li Wei!"

Suddenly, a deep, authoritative male voice rang out from behind him.

Then a slap landed on his head:

"My daughter chasing after you?"

"You wish, you bastard!"

P.S. Folks, please try not to stir up political nonsense in the comments. I can keep this book within bounds, but I'm worried the comment section won't hold up. It's just a piece of wish-fulfillment fiction—don't take it too seriously.

Especially don't pull any of that cheap, clichéd political crap. If you actually understand the theory and history, you'd know I'm definitely not on the same side as those people.

And to those friends who still see the world through that simplistic binary lens—honestly, you're not the target audience for this story. I don't want this place to turn into a low-level mudslinging arena. Thanks for your understanding.