CHAPTER 62 THE PIT

We all slowly filed out of the carriage coming to a halt one by one a few feet away from the soldiers.

The lieutenant, or what I assumed was a lieutenant, marched up the line inspecting each individual person. Grabbing their face, twisting it to the side, checking muscles and level of health I’m assuming.

He paused when he got to me.

“Now this is a rare one, how did you end up so far from home? Hell I didn’t even know elves were this low of a level!”

I didn’t respond at first, my thoughts instantly went to the military. Sometimes they talked out loud but weren’t necessarily expecting an answer. And I just wasn’t experienced enough to be able to tell what he wanted from me.

One of the guards stepped forward back handing me, “Officer Salvin asked you a damn question scum, answer him!”

The force of his blow knocked me back several feet where I collided with the carriage, cracking my head against the bars. Hitting my head so hard prevented me from catching myself on the landing so I fell over onto the ground, my vision spinning. My head hurt really fucking bad as well, I spat out some blood from my mouth as I tried to shift myself to get back on my feet, but I wasn’t entirely sure how to go about doing that with how I was hindered by the chains. I felt someone grab my collar and yank me back onto my feet and hold me there until I could stand on my own.

My vision was swirling and I could barely make sense of up or down, I felt nauseous because of the blow as well.

I heard yelling as my sense slowly came back into focus, “-ur assistance I’d ask for it! Could be the elf doesn’t even speak our language you fucking buffoon! That thought ever cross your mind!” The officer seemed to be yelling at the guy that backhanded me.

One of the other guards was holding me, he let go when I focused my eyes on him, I gave him a brief nod that he didn’t return as he stepped back into position. I did the same filling my spot back out, the officer stopped chewing out the soldier turning back to me.

“So do you actually understand the Emperor’s tongue, elf? Or am I speaking Mil’kori to you?”

“I understand, sir.” I responded succinctly. My speech slurred a little as my mouth had started swelling a little bit and was filling up with blood that I turned to spit out of my mouth.

He frowned a little bit at the display, but refrained from having one of the soldiers backhand me again, thankfully.

“So then how did you end up here, elf? I’m curious. I’ve never seen one of your kind before. Much less seen one get arrested for anything.”

“I’m not entirely sure, sir. Last I heard I was supposed to remain in the custody of the guard captain at the east gate of Verdanst. I was being charged with the murder of 1000 citizens and the governor that was committed a week ago, although he verifying the veracity of such claims considering there’s not really a way I would’ve been able to pull that off as a tier two. Next thing I knew I was being shipped here.”

He nodded, “Well that’s all good and interesting, thankfully finding out where you’re supposed to be and what you’re supposed to be doing-” My heart jumped up a little bit at the thought of potentially getting this squared away. “-is none of my damn business.” And my hopes were instantly crushed.

“Quite frankly, whether or not you’re supposed to be here is irrelevant now that you are here. Once you come into this place, the only way you leave is when we dump your corpse in the river and let it carry you to the ocean.”

I grit my teeth.

That at least confirmed my suspicions. I was going to have to break out of here, because I absolutely refused to remain here my entire life. Which meant I was going to have to get dirty to get out of here. I was immediately going to have to start piecing together an idea. There was no way I was realistically going to be able to get into The Tunnel at this point. That was basically a lost cause. Hell, this entire country was a lost cause for me. So either I had to go back to Seltas, or I continued north and tried another country.

Plans for later. I needed to find a way to establish myself here. I quickly glanced at the soldiers getting their levels.

[Level 403]

[Level 393]

[Level 173]

[Level 663]

[Level 353]

Hmmm… All tier three, even the officer. Potentially the leader of the area is tier four or five, there are probably some tier four or five soldiers walking around as well, definitely not something I can ignore.

The officer gave me a quick once over, inspecting me, taking note of my missing arm and my level. Before nodding and moving on. I spent a bit of mana healing the injuries to my face and head. The officer’s head instantly snapped over to me with all the soldiers bringing their weapons out and preparing to take me out.

The reaction speed had me stiffening my posture as I prepared to try and dodge.

“What did you just do elf?”

I swallowed trying to keep my nerves as I responded, “I uhh… I healed my injuries.”

He kept an eye on me for a long moment before giving a hand signal that had all the soldiers putting their weapons away, but keeping their hands on the pommels of the sword just in case they needed to quickly pull them back out.

“I’ll let it slide this once, in the future you ask permission to heal yourself or anyone else. Understood?” He said with a cold, stern voice.

I nodded slowly, “Yes, sir.”

He turned and continued his inspection of the line. It passed by quickly, the officer obviously not finding any problems with the prisoners he had just received. He eventually came to stand in front of all of us, there only being about 10 of us in the line made it a relatively small affair in general.

“Alright scum, looks like none of you are being rejected. Which is a good thing for both of us, it means you all get to live and I get more workers. Congratulations. I’ll be leading you to your living quarters, you’ll meet your cell mates. You’ll be working the night shifts going forward so you’ll want to get some sleep in while you can so you’re ready for what you’re going to be doing.”

His face bloomed into a toothy smile that spoke of sweat, tears, and no small amount of pain going forward.

“Alright then, follow me.” He then spun on his heel and marched off two of the soldiers following behind him, the other’s waiting for us to follow. The two remaining soldiers directed us in a single file line to make sure everything was orderly.

We were led further into the gorge of our doom. I took a quick glance at all the prisoners I could as we filtered through the area.

All of them were sitting around tier two as well, so I didn’t have particularly high hopes for them, one looks like he had just broken to tier three. Probably got arrogant when he had unlocked his third class and got himself caught doing something stupid.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

We passed tons of workers, slaves rather, with picks swinging away at rocks, breaking them apart, or using smaller utensils to break through the veins and deposit them into barrels. The salt itself seemed to form in weird patterns that had me wondering if it was actually natural or not. I wasn’t entirely sure.

Behind those slaves are people that held shovels and removed the buildup of useless dirt and debris and put them on strange box-like structures that hovered ever so slightly off the ground. People then directed those boxes to another spot where I assumed they dumped them.

We were led down a twisting winding path that eventually opened up into a huge open area that we had seen from the gate at the upper end of the gorge. There were probably just under a thousand workers in this area alone, all of them toiling away relentlessly. I saw several soldiers ganging up on one of the slaves, beating him into the ground before dragging him off somewhere I couldn’t see. Nobody reacted.

Not too surprising honestly, I wasn’t really expecting anyone to do anything. It just hammered home how merciless this area was. It was starting to sink in that I was basically a slave at this point. Slavery had been ‘outlawed’ on Earth. But that hadn’t really stopped it from happening in less developed countries. But it had been mostly out of sight out of mind.

Here it was just a natural way of life. It didn’t really sit well with me, but I wasn’t in a position to really achieve anything.

Eventually we ended up going through a man made tunnel through the side of the gorge. After several hundred feet it opened into a massive cavern, it expanded upwards several hundred feet back towards the surface and about several hundred feet down. It was probably three miles across as well. The enormity of the cavern made it nearly impossible to fully grasp. It was the size of a small city.

“Gentlemen!” The officer spoke, gathering our attention, “Welcome to Camp 17! Or as we like to call it, The Pit. It’s a bit simple, but quite fitting wouldn’t you all agree?” He turned back around without waiting for a response.

“Larks! Lurks! Get over here” The officer barked, “Get over here, have some more that need broken up, we need more on night shift. Make sure they’re broken up accordingly.”

A male and female duo walked up to us. It was clear, not only from the names, but from their appearances that these two were twins. They both had long red hair that they parted on opposite sides to form a mirror image when they stood next to each other. They both stood at an unnatural height of about 6’8”. I didn’t like having to look up to them. It was unnerving, especially the way they looked at each of us individually, like they were trying to find the best ways to abuse us.

They had scarlet red eyes that naturally made me think of a vampire, but when the woman flashed a smile I didn’t see any fangs, so I wasn’t sure if that was the case. Possibly they could hide it? The woman shook her hair out of her face before turning to look back at the officer. They were both wearing similar clothing, or rather they were in a similar state of undress. The man wore nothing but a pair of well maintained leather trousers, as did the woman except she wore a matching top that was similar to a sports bra. She had an extremely voluptuous figure and definitely wasn’t afraid of showing it off, although the man was extremely toned as well and was pretty attractive in the looks department as well.

When they responded to Officer Salvin they spoke at the exact same time, in the exact same tone, at the exact same pitches. It was extremely eerie how in sync they were with each other.

“We understand, Officer Salvin. We’ll make sure they end up where they should. We were also told to inform you that Commander Drikith wanted to speak with you when you returned.”

The officers eyes narrowed as he looked at the two of them, “And that wouldn’t happen to be because you fucked something up again and now I’m having to clean it up would it?”

They let out a cheerful laughter that would’ve been fine from each individually but set my nerves on edge hearing it doubled so perfectly.

“Even if that was the case, you still owe us for last time, Officer Salvin. As such we will be taking that advantage of that now with these new recruits. No complaints we assume?”

The thing that’s creepy about the way they talked was that it was actually perfectly in sync, not like one was a tenth of a second or less behind. With my increased senses allowing me to perceive and process stuff through my brain faster, I could tell. There was no difference between one of them speaking in the other, it was like their brains were interconnected with each other and operating off the exact same host.

It was slightly amusing watching Officer Salvin stare them down as if he could intimidate them given that they were nearly a foot taller than him. Eventually he just huffed and walked away.

“Whatever, your job is yours. I won’t step on your toes.”

“We appreciate your understanding, Officer. Enjoy your evening.” They said together with a slight bow.

I took time to examine my new ‘overlords’.

[Level 524]

[Level 524]

Perfectly identical levels as well. Strange.

They turned to us and flashed us bright pearly white smiles.

“Welcome to The Pit, new recruits.” They continued speaking in that exceedingly creepy way.

“The half of you on the left will go to Team Alsen, the other half will go with Team Bel.” They said.

Nobody moved at first.

What the hell kind of team names were those? Were they this world’s version of alpha, beta, etc? Very strange.

Their eyes flicked slightly before they spoke again, communicating with someone maybe?

“Larks is in charge of the first team, Lurks is in charge of the second. So follow the male if you’re in the left half of the line and the female if you’re in the right half.”

I quickly glanced around noticing I was standing just on the right side of the halfway point. So that put me with the one named Lurks then. Damn was she tall. In any other situation I might’ve been attracted to her, in this instance she was just plain creepy. It didn’t help my mind that she held absolute authority over me in every way possible. I was a slave, she was taller than me, she was more than likely physically stronger than me, at the very least a higher level, on top of that I was down an arm. Not that it would make a particular difference if I wasn’t down one.

They finally began speaking in different patterns now that they were splitting up with each other helping ease the unnaturalness they spoke with.

“Alright children,” Lurks said with a silky voice, “Follow me and I’ll take you to your cellblock, from there you’ll get a few hours to rest before you have to eat.”

This voice was an improvement. Barely. It was still creepy and had a predatory tinge to it, so it wasn’t really that much better to listen to. Not that I was planning on voicing my thoughts on the matter.

“Work shifts are broken into two 5 hours and 45 minute work periods with a thirty minute break in the middle to have a meal.”

That was… Honestly a bit better than I was expecting, sure it’ll be manual labor but with stats it should be considerably easier than it would’ve been on Earth. I had worked 12 hour shifts before, and they weren’t pleasant, but humans at base level could handle it. Many worked it regularly and didn’t mind.

There had to be a catch somewhere.

“The other 12 hours are for you, mostly you’ll be monitored by your cell block leader, but you can get a meal whenever you choose to do so, although there are generally limits on how much you’re allowed to eat. Your fellow cell-mates will fill you in on how that works. Otherwise you can choose to sleep until your next shift or you can choose to mingle in the common areas.”

Huh, that was a pretty relaxed system.

It makes me suspicious.

There’s something I’m missing, something completely obvious. What could it be though?

Lurks stopped in front of a door that went into the rock wall. “Any questions, little ones?”

I had several but I really didn’t want to be the first one to speak up. And it seemed like all of the others in my group felt the same.

“Please, don’t be afraid. This is your chance to get it all figured out, we like to have a seamless integration to our system, so if you don’t ask your questions it causes us problems.”

She thrust a finger at me, “You, ask a question. If you don’t have one, make one up and ask.”

Her face told me I didn’t have a choice in this matter, if I didn’t follow her order there’d be a disciplinary action. I was not interested in finding out what that was.

I swallowed as I broke out into a cold sweat from the intensity of her stare. It felt like the cave walls were closing in around me as she held me in her gaze.

I struggled to open my mouth and speak, but I managed to squeeze out one of my questions.

“Sk-skill… Skill uses… Are-ar-are there any… Restric-tions?” My voice tapered off at the end.

Just speaking was a struggle, my mouth refused to cooperate with my tongue. Lurks smiled, stepping forward and placed a hand on my cheek, softly stroking it.

“See, was that so hard? As for your question, passives, and non-combative actives are allowed. Anything outside of that is restricted for obvious reasons. So for example your healing skills or wood creation skills are allowed.” She said with a slightly malicious smile bringing her lips up at the end of her sentence.

My blood ran cold, and my mind started stuttering again.

How the hell did she know what my skills were?