Blacksmith of the Apocalypse

"Stay." she heard someone speak softly from the corridor ahead.

Following the voice she found one of the doors opened. The people inside calmly stared into the distance with empty eyes. A man had entered the room and seemed to examine all the people inside.

"Come," he said after a few moments and signaled for three of the people inside to follow.

One was a boy, maybe six years old, even in a trance he held onto the girl that also stepped out. She seemed to be in her teens, maybe his sister? The third was a boy, maybe a little older than the girl, but not a player yet, so 17 at most.

"Kukuku, she's a little old, but her spiritual root is good. Just what the branch leader's son needed," he spoke to the fair teen girl in amusement.

"Follow."

Cade didn't interfere and also followed the for. She found that the man led them to a much better room in a different part of the facility. There were a lot of rooms in these hallways and their doors had different signs engraved on them.

She recognized them. She remembered that similar emblems and symbols were placed on the doors of the cells. Were they a sign of possession? Inside the room, the three were released from his control.

"I want to go home!" the little boy started crying the moment he was released. He pressed his face against the older girls who held him tightly. The girl stared at the man, fear and shock in her eyes, but her hand held onto her brother as tightly as he clung to her. The older boy stayed calm, his eyes fixed on the man.

"Rejoice, the three of you have been chosen. You won't have to endure this bleak existence in this dirty world any longer. You all have the chance to join the great Night Sparrow Sect and join the ranks of powerful cultivators," he spoke in Urth's common language, though he felt like he had studied this speech for a long time.

Cade could understand him before because Leana had forced her to learn <Universal Translation> before they returned to Urth. Hearing him try to speak the tongue of Urth was awkward, but it seemed like the kids understood what he said.

"Where are our parents?" the girl asked. Her voice wavered, but she tried to speak calmly in front of her brother.

"Forget them. Cut ties with your secular life. The sect will be your family," he answered in short, broken Urthian. It seemed like he had not practiced those lines. The girl was upset and tried to speak, but her mouth stayed closed.

"You will soon understand. Rest," was all the man said before he left the room again. The door was automatically locked behind him.

"It's a shame they always have to be so stubborn in the beginning..." Cade heard the man sigh as he left, going down the hallway.

What was she supposed to do now? Help them or keep investigating? The decision was not as hard for her as she wished for. She was able to help the group before because there were just a few. But here were hundreds of cells, in addition to these special rooms here. She couldn't help all of them. At least not for now.

What she had just heard confirmed their information once again. The people from the Voracious Cloud Continent that called themselves cultivators were definitely involved with Y-City. Since the Scene held the reign here, they had to be allied.

Unwilling she continued to investigate. First, she followed the man, but he soon vanished in another room and closed the door before Cade could follow. The door had the same emblem as the cell with the children. Was this the sign of the Night Sparrow Sect he mentioned?

Did that mean that they split the prisoners among the different organizations involved and chose people to join their sects from them? What about the other people that were not chosen? Could it be?

Cade had a horrible premonition. This time she investigated looking for something specific and it didn't take long for her to find an armored door in the basement of the facility. All districts had expansive subterranean facilities to save farming and living space, it was no different here.

But the entrance to those was barred with a thick, armored door. Breaking it would undoubtedly cause an alarm to go off, but she didn't have to go that far. Humans stayed human, and there were always keys for doors. She was able to collect a few key cards from random personnel and try them until the door opened.

The difference was not just the door. Entering the underground levels she found that the subterranean space below the facility had turned into a huge dungeon. The one with dark, barred cells, not the ones that came with the system. But inside these cells, Cade did not find a bunch of poverty-stricken people huddled together, but rows over rows and blood berserkers, with dark empty stares.

How did she know they were the berserkers Leana had written about? Cade's Rakshasa class had not only given her claws that could damage the soul of her target but also <Soul Detection> that allowed her to recognize the anomalous state of existence these people were in.

In the eyes of her skill, these people were invisible, like robots or household appliances. Her <heart of Steel> wavered when she saw the numbers that were held down here. There were thousands. Rows and rows of cells, on several floors. She had no idea about the full extent.

A more frightening thought was that this could not be the only facility like this. They called this Facility 3 but there had to be even more. The populace of the districts was in the billions. Even after the apocalypse, there were hundreds of millions in each district. To depopulate Y-City, which had the influx of refugees from Beta, to the point it currently was...

Her heart raced when she tried to fathom the full extent of what was going on here. She swallowed hard and continued searching. This time she was looking for offices, papers, anything that could give her information about the true extent of horror they were facing here.

She returned to the facility at the surface, to look for a kind of laboratory or office. There had to be a place where they turned the prisoners to berserkers, right? Right. She found a medical wing with several places that looked like laboratories and treatment rooms.

Unfortunately, there were no loose papers lying around, that could have further explained the situation to her or given her the scope of this operation. What she did find, was something unexpected. Trash chutes One in every treatment room.

When she could find any papers or hack the computers, she jumped down the trash chute following her instinct. The instincts of a Rakshasa, her hunger, had successfully led her to a place that would have been a paradise for a corpse eater.

The space below the medial wing, where all trash chutes led, was filled with mountains of intact corpses. A room the size of a big gymnasium was filled with dead bodies. On one side, Cade was able to make out bodies.

There she found gates and people loading the dead bodies onto trucks. Just how much worse could this become? Why were these people dead, without any injuries? What were they going to do to these people even after they were dead?

Using the same strategy as before, she tricked the workers to drive her to their destination. The trucks filled with corpses drove away from Y-City again, in the direction of the abandoned slums. When she saw a huge fog wall suddenly appearing in the night, she knew where the corpses would vanish to and hurriedly jumped off the truck.

She had been informed of the Tuatha De and had no wish to meet them. It was a long and confusing night. She decided it was better to return to the system church to organize and write down her thoughts. Leana had to know about this.

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