Chapter 155 The Power of the Masses
Meanwhile, inside the shipyard.
In order to save on labor costs which were already worth very little in Zaun, Takeda Saito employed slave laborers who were not even paid.
How can slaves be motivated to work if they have no salary and no freedom?
This point has already been analyzed in the "Zuan Investigation Report".
Even in the blacklist tailored by the Leader for the Zaun Alchemy Barons and in "When the Humanoid Stars Shine" compiled by Levi himself, Takeda Saito is the most despicable and inhumane existence.
He creatively invented an assessment management method that combines the 'alternating ranking method' and the 'last-place elimination method'.
That is, first, according to the performance evaluation factors, the slave workers are ranked alternately from the best to the worst, and finally, the slave workers ranked at the bottom are regularly "optimized" out of the factory.
Where to optimize?
Of course it is "waste utilization", which is optimized to the biological and chemical weapons factories, cyborg transformation factories, alchemy laboratories run by Takeda Saito... these places that need "experimental consumables".
Under this cruel management system of last-in-first-out and negative incentives, slave laborers work hard even without receiving a penny.
They just want to live.
But is life easy? Of course not.
"Fuck Nima!"
"You damn Takeda Saito, just wait for me... I'm going to kill you today!"
Baku struggled to cover his shoulder that was torn by the supervisor's whip, and crawled up from the ground covered in blood.
He used to be Levi's co-worker in the audio factory and was Levi's best friend.
Later he also became a leader, and because he was eloquent and good at dealing with people, he changed his career from a worker to a propagandist for the leader.
Later, Baku received a mission from Levi - Levi needed him to disguise as a slave laborer and sneak into Takeda Saito's shipbuilding factory, secretly carry out propaganda work among the slave workers, and establish an underground organization.
He accepted this difficult task.
After nearly a month of lurking, Baku's efforts are finally about to bear fruit today.
Because today is the day when the shipyard conducts monthly "performance appraisal" on slave workers and optimizes a group of talents to the laboratory.
So at this moment——
The slave laborers huddled together trembling with fear, waiting for the supervisor to come with the "optimization" list and announce the names of those among them who needed to be eliminated.
"Oka, Jim, Yadu, Barlow, Beavis, Curtis... you all performed badly this month."
"Lord Takeda doesn't keep lazy people. You can go away now."
The supervisor coldly read out the names one by one and sentenced them to death one by one.
The slave laborer whose name was called felt as if his bones were pulled out. He turned pale and fell to his knees limply on the ground.
But the supervisors will show no mercy.
They picked up the slave laborers from the ground with ease, just like catching bamboo rats from a farm, and threw them one by one into the "slaughter area" nearby.
Their lives are about to be lost, of course some people want to resist.
But a team of fully armed cybernetic warriors were just watching coldly at the side.
Is resistance useful? No.
The slave workers had long experienced the horror of transformed warriors.
Just one look from these brutal war machines and they collapsed to their knees.
So there were hundreds of slave laborers and hundreds of living people on the scene, like lambs to be slaughtered, being stared at by a few supervisors with whips and a team of cyborg soldiers, so that they dared not move at all.
Soon, 20 to 30 slave laborers on the death list were ruthlessly eliminated.
"No, please don't... Sir!" The slaves knelt in front of the supervisor and begged, "We really didn't slack off. We all worked hard! Please talk to Lord Takeda and let us continue to work for him!"
"Shut up." The supervisor said impatiently, "Our performance appraisal will not go wrong. If you want to blame someone, just blame yourselves for not working hard !"
"No...please." There was crying and wailing everywhere.
"Get lost!" The supervisor certainly would not be moved.
Not to mention him, even the surviving slaves beside him were already used to this scene. Their hearts were so numb that they couldn't even feel the sympathy of the rabbit dying and the fox mourning.
Everyone was just grateful for their survival and thankful to God for letting them live another month.
At the same time, they also secretly warned themselves in their hearts that they must work harder next month and not let themselves fall to the point of being eliminated by optimization.
Everything is the same as before.
The eliminated slave workers cried and begged, while the surviving slave workers just stood by and watched coldly.
The supervisors waved whips and drove the "graduates" into trucks carrying experimental supplies.
But at this moment, Baku stood up.
“Stop!” Baku stood in front of the supervisor bravely like a hero in a story: “You are not allowed to take them away!”
"Huh?" The supervisors were all stunned.
They haven't seen anyone who dares to stand up and cause trouble for a long, long time.
"You bastard, you want to die, right?" the supervisor sneered.
"I don't want to die. None of us want to die! But if we don't stand up and resist, we will just be waiting to die!" Baku shouted at the slave laborers.
But the slaves didn't dare to look at him.
Instead, the supervisor hit him hard on the shoulder with a barbed iron whip.
Baku was whipped to the ground. When he got up again, cursing, half of his body was already stained with the glaring blood.
But Baku still didn't take a step back.
He turned around and looked at the surviving slaves, his friends who had long been familiar with him:
"Everyone, you can continue to be spectators."
"But do you know? I've been in this factory for a month and have seen more than a hundred slave laborers. Do you know how long the longest tenure of the person here is?"
"Two years! Apart from those skilled workers who really cannot be replaced , the longest length of service left is less than two years!"
Baku shouted at the slaves at the top of his lungs:
"No matter how docile and honest we are, we won't survive more than two years!"
"And how have we survived these past two years? Can we really be considered alive if we are just lingering on like this?"
"This..." The slaves who had been silent as lambs suddenly became agitated.
They actually know that they won't live long if they continue doing this.
People grow old and tired. Sooner or later, they will be eliminated because their physical strength declines and they can no longer work.
But no one has thought about how long this time is exactly.
No one dared to think about it and just wanted to live in a daze.
But now, Baku has exposed this bloody fact without any concealment.
"Brothers, stand up!"
"I think many of you have already understood what Janna Thought is and what a leader is. Many of you have even become followers of the goddess Janna without realizing it."
"Now I can tell you—"
"I, Baku, am the messenger of Goddess and an official member of the Wind Leader Association. My companions and I came here for one thing - to liberate everyone!"
As soon as he finished speaking, as if setting an example, slaves one after another stood out from the crowd with determined looks.
Like Baku, they are all underground propagandists sent by the Leader to lurk.
Of course, many of them were resistance activists who developed after Baku and others came to the factory.
These people are leaders.
When they responded to Baku's call and stood out from the silent crowd, the atmosphere on the scene changed completely.
The slaves went from silence and fear to shock and suspicion, and then to whispering and restlessness.
At this time, no more people came forward, but there was already some hope in their eyes.
"You, you guys...are rebelling, really rebelling!"
The supervisors initially treated Baku like a clown and teased him, watching him struggle and cry out in mockery.
But now they realized that the situation was not good.
"You want to die? Fine, then I'll kill you all!"
One of the overseers dropped his whip and pulled a gun from his bosom.
He pulled the trigger almost without hesitation.
But Baku ignored his bullets.
Because almost at the same time, wisps of breeze condensed and took shape from Baku and from these leaders who were just mortals.
The breezes gathered into a gale, sweeping across the sky and the earth.
Not only were the bullets blown everywhere, but even the supervisor who fired the shot was blown flying backwards.
"This..." The slave workers were all shocked.
"Did you see that? This is the power of the Goddess Janna!"
As soon as Baku finished speaking, threads of faith were drawn out at the scene.
Many slaves who were content with being ordinary and accustomed to being slaughtered were shocked to discover at this time that they also had such magical qualities.
"As long as you believe in Janna, as long as you dare to resist, then you can ride the wind of change that can destroy all old things just like me!"
The crowd was excited.
They tried praying to Janna, and they actually felt a surge of strength in their bodies.
Then, Baku turned to look at the more than 20 eliminated slave workers who were already on the death list:
"Oka, Jim, Yadu, Barlow, Beavis, Curtis..." The overseer's death list now became Baku's call for his companions.
"You are going to die, do you know that?"
“……”Of course they know.
"Now if you obey you will die, and if you resist you will also die. It's all death, so why don't you die for the ideals of Jannaism?" Baku shouted loudly.
"Hurry, kill these bastards!" The supervisors also shouted loudly to the cybernetic warriors.
The cybernetic warriors surrounded them murderously, and then...
They saw hundreds of lines and hundreds of winds.
No, there are more than hundreds.
As the wind gathers, the situation changes, the air becomes hotter, and people's hearts become more excited, the number of "lines" continues to increase.
Those without wires have wires, and those with wires become brighter.
As a result, there are more and more wind clusters, and the winds that are condensed become stronger and stronger.
The slaves, who were as weak as lambs, all raised their heads.
The powerful cybernetic warriors were stunned for a moment, and then...
“Run!!”