Blacksmith of the Apocalypse

Chapter 1323: The cells

Adam looked into the cells with disgust and horror. Meg Huffin had led them past the ward and deeper down into the prison block, the place Ray had felt the strongest miasma, even from the outside. The scene explained the source of the miasma and suffering that the chosen of SolʼFiam detected.

Big cells were filled with weak and starving people. covered in wounds and signs of abuse. Many had patches of metallic flesh, completely exchanged limbs, and unfinished, deformed cybernetic augmentations.

Unlike Meg, the guards, and the people they had seen in the ward, however, their augmentations were festering wounds, oozing blood and pus, with many turning black with necrosis. Nothing made it clearer why Meg and her people were the precious specimens.

His heart ached at the thought of how much these people had to endure to end up in this state. Adam himself was “lucky” enough not to fully remember his own suffering, but it came at the cost of not knowing his own past, either.

Although he knew only the tip of the ice berg of what happened to him, it didnʼt mean that he didnʼt know what his comrades went through and he felt empathy with these people who and experience such horrible treatment. Seeing this also increased his worries. Would he be able to forgive himself, if his comrades had to experience this environment a second time...?

“Letʼs hurry. I will go look for my people. Can I leave the rest to you?” Adam asked the Chosen of Maahes for his help. Mike looked at him for a moment, silently.

“Sure, go look for your friends. We will take care of the people here,” Mike offered his support. While Mike and the party began opening the cells and giving first aid to the captives, Adam and a handful of his guys followed Meg further in, checking the cells they came by.

Adams face turned grimmer and grimmer as they came by cells with people he recognized from their evacuation efforts. They were people he met in the camp when they rested for the night. It meant they were in the right place, but it didnʼt make him happy at all.

“Beth?” he almost rushed by the cell when he recognized the face of his second in command. She was the one he had sent as ambassador to Minas Mar in the past, to negotiate their cooperation in Thres. She had been in charge of the camp while Adam had been scouting the path for the refugees.

She was like him, a product of the secret experimentation in Beta, where they tried to infuse the power of the merman into players. Unlike him, Beth had not become a shapeshifter, but gained superior stats through the experiments and some skills of the fish folk.
Now, the once brilliant warrioress now in a sorry state. Her face was marred from starvation, with her eyes glazed over from drugs. A dirty bandage drenched in rotten blood covered the stump where they amputated her right arm, while the ragged gown was stained in all kinds of bodily fluids. The worst part was that she didnʼt even stick out with the state she was in. Almost everyone here was in a similar situation.

“Beth, Beth, can you hear me?” Adam ripped the barred door put of the wall and rushed to her side. Tapping her cheek, he was trying to make her look at his face. He didnʼt even recognize the mess he was kneeling in.

“Medic, quick,” he ordered their healer. The mutilated woman glowed in a subtle golden light, and her eyes slowly gained focus as detoxification, cure, and healing spells were layered on her body. She finally reacted to Adamʼs desperate plea.

“Bo-Gov... Adam, you are here...” she said with relief and a small but warm smile.

“Yes, Iʼm here. We will get you out of here, donʼt worry. We will get everyone out of here,” he assured her, and supported her to stand up. However, Bethʼs expression darkened a second after he said that.

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“Not many of us are left, Adam. I might be the last one...” she said with a heavy voice. She was not talking about the refugees they had guarded. It was clear that she meant themselves. Adamʼs group of people. They had been the ones to lead the resistance against the Muir Empire when Beta fell.

They had been the ones to conquer back the occupied parts of Beta from the invading forces. They may not have been able to save Beta, but the group of research subjects Adam had saved were a thorn in their side and had become the core of his power as he became Governor of Thres.

“How?” Adam asked, a barely audible waver in his voice.

“We were special. More resilient, more vitality, more interesting to them. They had their fun with us, trying to turn us into robots in all kinds of manners, watching as we suffer through the process... We have to kill them, Adam. They have to die, all of them,” the nails of her remaining hand dug into her palm, as she clenched her fist.

A wrathful fire was burning in her eyes, warming Adamʼs cooling heart and chasing away his sadness. She was right. They way not done here. He could always mourn later.

“We will find whoever is left and get everyone out of here first and then we will lay waste to this place,” Adam promised her, after the embers of wrath spewing from her eyes had ignited the fire of vengeance in his heart. Beth nodded and Adam handed her over to one of his man, so the healers could keep treating her, while he and the other kept looking for their own.

“What about the people from Minas Mar?” one of his men asked. “Will they agree to slaughter everyone here?” he asked, a little worried. Nobody doubted his decision; if anything, they couldnʼt wait to slaughter whoever did this to Beth and their friends.

“Did you guys ever hear about the Tower Master of Minas Mar?” Adam suddenly asked. His comrades looked at each other, but they knew nothing about him part than him being a guild master called the Tower Master and that he was a blacksmith.

“Not many know this, but the Tower Master has a few stories you can dig up with the right sources. Most of them have one thing in common; he shows no mercy to people who overstep the line. When he found weasel people abusing their illusion powers to rape and abuse people in Y-City he trapped them in a burning building, slaughtering them all with his own hands. Do you think people following such a man will stop us here?” he asked them seriously.

They were a little shocked to hear such a story about the Tower Master of Minas Mar, but the few who worried had their worries calmed. Mike and his party might not help them, but they were unlikely to stand in their way.

“Hey, If you start killing these assholes, you can count on us, too. Everyone here will gladly take the chance to settle their debts,” Meg Huffin commented, before taking the lead again, to bring the further into the prison block.

Following the short break, they quickly got back to freeing people and looking for their friends. Beth was right. Of Adamʼs men that had been captured, only Beth and two others had managed to survive the suffering and pain of the experiments. However, the other two were even worse off than Beth, as they lacked both of their legs and an arm, each, and had to be carried out after emergency treatment.

Most of the captives were no better off than Beth and were technically crippled for the rest of their lives. Even in a world ruled by the system, they would need high-tier healing magic to regrow limbs or organs. Apart from users of such magic being rare, it would also cost a lot for such an expert to put in the time to heal such a big wound, but Adam was going to eat those thoughts later on.

Meg showed them through the prison block, although she didnʼt quite know the way herself after a while. She had not stayed here for long. Soon, they had opened all the doors, whether by force or hijacking the door controls.

Having reached the end, Adam also joined the effort to evacuate the people. He had transformed into the massive merman berserker and was carrying three heavily injured people on his back as they returned.

“Adam, you are back. Bring them to the ward, please,” Shay greeted him upon his return. “ We set up a defensive perimeter over there,” he added, as he led several of Ellenʼs slimes to carry back more of the wounded.

When he returned to the big room at the ward, his breath stopped at the sight for a moment. The whole place had been turned into a sick ward and was covered by an AOE healing skill, as well as covered by a brilliant barrier.

he watched on, as people started healing the moment they entered the area of effect, and it was not just superficial wounds healing, but he could even see limbs slowly regrowing, by simply being inside the skill.

Beth, who had her arm amputated right at the shoulder, had already recovered her limb all the way to the elbow! At the center of the skill stood the one responsible, Lynri, the Priestess of the Fount. At this point he realized, that all the people he thought would have to live the life of a cripple, would probably walk out of this place, healthier than ever before.