Mysteries: Arcana Wars

Backlund is 236 meters underground.

Underground City Banyan Street.

Lade Roca walked down the street, following the same route he took day after day as usual.

The Luna sister he picked up from the street corner was still staying in his house, and he was still following the route engraved in his bones to the factory. The residents on the street were still silent, walking on the narrow underground streets in gray and old clothes, like fish struggling in a stinky ditch, moving forward numbly along the striped bottom of the trough, but from beginning to end they were just wandering uselessly in a pool of stagnant water.

But Rad knew that since that day, nothing in his life had been the same.

The sticky red liquid seeping out from the iron gate of the factory announced the end of Rad's past life.

As an underground city, even if the roads of Banyan Street are complicated, the space of the entire underground city will not be that big. Soon Rad arrived at the food processing factory where he worked. The heavy iron door had been cleaned up long ago, and it was even cleaner than its old appearance in the past.

Opening the creaking door, Rad entered the factory where he worked before. The machines were still running non-stop, and the children who were about Rad's age were still working at their posts, but now more adults were busy on the assembly line. The factory facilities were very simple, and just walking in the corridor, the strange, rich and cheap food aroma slipped out of the gaps and hit Rad's face with the heat wave.

No one could tell that a bloody massacre had taken place here more than a month ago.

The workshop was as noisy as usual, but the roars accompanied by the whipping sound disappeared in the massacre, and the whole workshop was now filled with only the rumbling sound of machines. What surprised Rad was that after the massacre, the [Exiles] took over the factory, and since then the entire factory has been physically much cleaner. Sometimes Rad would think that maybe cleaning the entire factory was also part of the [Exiles] destroying the bodies and traces.

Rad finished preparing for work and waited for his shift change in the preparation room. The crude disinfection process was also a change brought to the factory by these exiles. Rad felt that from the perspective of the dungeon, this was obviously an unnecessary and cost-increasing operation. Rad's understanding of "factory" was also relatively shallow. The only thing he had understood was this illegal food factory and the vicious boss who had died.

But Backlund in the aboveground world must be different, Rad thought. Those buildings growing upward from the land are not as barren, cold and damp as those underground, but can create machines with great power. Those creations will move forward under the sun like a torrent of steel, unstoppable.

Just like what Rad had seen in books and Internet cafes, the factory above the ground was like a magical wishing well. It was not a god, but it could satisfy all people's yearning for life. Whether it was pictures or text, Rad could only find and understand so much. For an illiterate orphan from the underground city, obtaining information was a difficult task.

The thin supervisor with deep eye sockets and dark circles was sitting at the door of the workshop in a red robe. Perhaps because of disinfection, he kept Rongshu Street clean and tidy. It can be seen from the uniform plain red robe that he is also an [Exile].

Finally, the supervisor looked at the time and opened the door to let Rad and others take over their shift.

Although there were some children Rad was familiar with in the evening shift, most of them were young and strong men Rad had never seen before. Judging from their ragged clothes and depressed looks, their situations were not much different from his own. Rad walked to his workstation to start work as a member of the morning shift. There were obviously more children in the morning shift, and there were also some elderly workers with them.

Like every morning, Rad repeated these monotonous and physically exhausting movements over and over again. But today, he suddenly felt that the little boy next to him was a stranger, as if he was a new "colleague" in the factory.

"Atala, from [Laundry Alley]."

Rad unconsciously looked at Atala a few more times. This curious gaze made Atala feel a little uncomfortable, so he couldn't help but remind him.

"If you ever wanted to know my name, now you know it."

"Ah! Sorry..."

This made Rad realize his own gaffe, and he looked away and continued to work. Being distracted on such a low-quality assembly line is very dangerous, because you don't know which part of the machine will fail in the next second, and whether it will roll you into the furnace or the cutting knife.

Thinking carefully, Rad seemed to have met Atala once in the disinfection room. However, Atala's face was covered with dirt at that time, and he was very uncooperative with the cleaning and disinfection before work. In the end, he was directly pinned down by two [Exiles], and the towel wiped his big face clean. After that, Atala was indignant all the time, and finally walked into the workshop with his head down.

I didn't expect this boy to be so handsome. As someone who also lived in the dungeon eating energy bars, Atala was just as skinny, but he had a handsome and gentle appearance that was totally inconsistent with his shabby clothes, and even stood out a little.

Maybe that's why Atala put the dust on her face, Rad thought. In the underground city, beauty is actually a risk. Those perverse gangs like to make trouble for beautiful people. Sometimes they just intercept them halfway, and some of them may take out the sacks and kidnap the little boys and girls, and sell them to wealthy and needy big customers on the ground.

Ah, Backlund on earth, has money, factories, delicious energy bars, and things that are even more delicious than energy bars... It seems that there is everything on earth, but there is no place for Rad.

The workshop was noisy, so the two did not talk about anything else. Occasionally, Rad could see Atala and some other strange children and adults making silent eye contact, as if they were all from the same place.

Rad didn't care much about his new colleagues. In a factory like Underground City, people were never happy for newcomers, nor sad for those who left. Most of them were numb to the changes in the flow of people.

The appearance of new colleagues is not the biggest difference that has happened in the factory recently, but that these [exiles] have actually established... a school in this factory?

Now, Rad only needs to work half a day in the morning shift to get the same pay as before. When the morning shift is over, all the child workers are required to enter the dim classroom to learn literacy and other knowledge.

This is also a very confusing operation. In the underground city, some people do pay their employees to learn to read. Some factory owners believe that literate child workers can adapt to more jobs and will be more useful in some situations.

Rad's morning shift was about to end amid the roar of machinery. Just as Rad was about to leave the workshop, a red-robed [Exile] suddenly appeared at the door of the workshop.

"Rad! You passed the class test yesterday!"