"You're next."
As Yas's cold, indifferent voice fell, his figure had already become a streak of black light. Ignoring the apocalyptic scene erupting and cracking beneath his feet, he flew straight toward the mines deep within the island.
There lay the root of all the Sparta Kingdom's sins.
-the blood iron ore mines.
Deep within the mines, it was dark and damp, and the air reeked of blood, sweat, and despair, so thick it turned the stomach.
This was hell.
A true hell on earth.
Tens of thousands of slaves toiled here without end.
They wore barely enough to cover themselves, their bodies covered in hideous scars left by the overseers' whips.
They were skin and bones. Not a trace of human light remained in their cloudy eyes, only numbness and deathly stillness.
Like a horde of walking corpses, they mechanically swung their heavy pickaxes, striking the hard rock walls threaded with dark red veins of ore.
"Hurry up, all of you! You useless trash!"
A burly overseer with a brutish face swung his barbed whip, lashing an old slave who had collapsed from exhaustion.
Crack!
Flesh split open!
The old slave let out a faint groan and struggled to rise, but years of exhaustion and hunger had long since drained every last bit of his strength.
"Still trying to slack off?!"
A cruel gleam flashed through the overseer's eyes at the sight. He raised his whip, aimed at the old slave's head, and prepared to strike a killing blow.
The surrounding slaves saw it happen, yet their eyes remained numb.
Things like this happened every day.
Perhaps death was the only true release for them.
Yet just as that lethal whip was about to fall.
Rumble!
The entire mine-no, the entire island-suddenly began shaking violently, more violently than