- Two days after the graduation of Euryale from the Academy -

The ship he was on, landed and he was led out with the rest of the former conscripts from the academy.

As he left the craft he looked around and saw he was in a red dust covered area with the sound of machinery everywhere. Many different races were around him in various states of abuse and exhaustion.

*zap!* *crack!*

An electric shock prod went off with the power of a taser, causing one of the miners to scream and go down.

"Keep your eyes off of me, slave!" Said a large man that resembled what Sorin believed to be a troll as a smaller Dwarf laughed behind him at the twitching slave.

"Move!" A voice growled behind him as he and the others were shoved forward into a line.

"Stand up straight for the foreman!" Came a shout as some of the conscripts had their hair grabbed and lifted straight as a short extremely fat human with greasy hair, waddled up looking at all the new arrivals.

The man began to speak and Sorin couldn't contain himself and laughed out loud. The man had a high pitched nasally voice straight out of an anime.

*wham!*

A rod slammed into Sorin's lower back knocking him forward as the foreman came stomping over.

"What....could possibly be so funny for one in your position?" The fat man said, but all Sorin could do is bite his lips together and shake his head to keep from laughing more.

"You will answer when I speak to you, slave!" The man said snapping his fingers. Sorin was hauled back up to his feet and led over to a stout metal pole and anchored to the ground and chained to it.

With a wave of the foreman's hand, whips held by two guards, came down across Sorin's back and immediately the laughter inside Sorin died out.

White hot lines of pain scorched down his back seeming almost amplified somehow to hurt worse. After the tenth strike, he was unchained and thrown down in front of the foreman.

"Not funny now, is it?" He asked with a cruel sneer on his face.

"Get back in line!" He shouted as Sorin slowly got back to his feet, hurting and furious.

The man looked back up at the rest of the arrivals. "My name is Foreman Gisbon and as you can see through your fellow slave's very generous volunteering; I am the law here. If you fail to meet meal quota of aether iron ore, you will not eat. If you don't get that quota long enough you will not be strong enough to get it and you starve. Luckily the mine never stops or closes so take as long as you need." He said with that cruel sneer again.

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"We never run out of workers and don't really care if you live. Just do us a favor and go down to the deepest parts of the mine to die so we don't have to deal with the body. Rebellion is met with execution and it's easy to follow through with since everyone is collared."

He looked around at the group before nodding at the silence.

"Put them to work." He said waving his hand dismissively.

They were shoved forward where they went through a couple of stations. The first station they each got a pickaxe and the next gave them a canteen and a leather backpack which they were told was their meal quota once full of ore.

They were led to where they could and were instructed to fill them up with what was murky muddy water.

Once the group had water, they were marched off to different parts of the mine and one or two were left at each part instructed to find the others to be shown where to trade quotas for meals.

Sorin was the last and was led further in than anyone. The guard stopped and turned to Sorin with a grin.

"I was asked to give further regards of our foreman." With a blur of motion that Sorin with his collar couldn't match, he felt a major blow to his stomach then the blows really rained down. Punches and kicks until he could barely move.

"Good luck getting your quota." The guard said leaving the bloody Sorin laying in the middle of the tunnel with a dim red aether light.

Sorin's regeneration skill though severely curtailed still worked and began patching his injuries. After about a half hour, he was healed enough to begin moving without excruciating pain lancing through him.

He grabbed the pickax and began to work on the wall. He grabbed the aether light and looked closer at the wall after some stone came away. All he saw was just dark rock. No ore at all.

He began looking along the wall with his light going further and further down. Everywhere he looked it was just dark stone. There was no change and Sorin didn't have a clue what he was looking for.

After about an hour of looking for any changes in the wall, he just sat down and began thinking through everything as he felt his wounds hurting less and less.

He knew he needed to figure out the collar. He had damaged the artificial gravity field according to the system before. He closed his eyes and began to use his internal aether to work the collar. He spun his aether and began to drill into the collar.

After what seemed like a couple of hours, he got a single fleck off the field and it remained gone, until his aether was withdrawn and the field was repaired.

Sorin sat and looked at the part he was drilling on, realizing what had to be done in concert with drilling and dreaded it, but got to work anyway.

Sorin didn't know how much time went by, but he drilled and pushed and pushed until he felt his strength slowly begin flowing back into him. He looked closely and saw a threat of his aether had managed to drill through making contact with the outside world.

His head ached beyond anything he had felt before and with access to the aether outside again, it began to recede.

He activated Absorption and pulled aether in as hard as he could trying to widen the small path in the collar's gravity field and slowly, ever so slowly, barely able to be seen, it expanded.

He kept maintaining that path. The strain on his mind was immense, but he kept it up.

Sorin tried to pull up his HUD.

Warning!

HUD disabled due to aether repulsion field. Emergency messages are all that are available to user.

Sorin guessed he didn't have quite enough aether to bring the HUD back. He couldn't sense more than an inch off of his skin, and his strength wasn't coming back quickly at all. He was breathing essentially out of a needle in a manner of speaking. He smiled though.

He had a way forward and maybe this collar could be used as a training tool now that he knew he could get through it.

He got back up maintaining his mental and aetheric effort and began digging into the wall for his quota. He would test this and see if it actually was feasible.