Chapter 23

The next morning Sam went out for his usual run, he was used to run 5 kilometers each morning before starting his day and since his legs were back in shape he had went back to his good habit.

At the same time he was thinking about where to find a hammer, an anvil and a furnace, although he could buy them straight away it wouldn't be cheap and he had nowhere to put them so he thought of renting a workshop if he found one.

While running he was constantly scrolling on the website of a real-estate agency and he focused his research on empty hangars and other stuff like that.

In the end although there weren't a lot of such workshops with an anvil and a furnace Sam still found a satisfying one, it was at the other end of the city and he had to take the railway for 10 minutes but he didn't mind such a short time. Since the railway flew over the city it didn't have to take any detour and the time from one end of the city to another was barely 15 minutes.

Since the workshop was already on the list of the rentable buildings Sam straight away called the real estate agent and rented it, he had even managed to bargain the monthly rent down to 1200 galactic dollars instead of the normal 1400, it belonged to an artist who liked to work on materials such as iron, mythril and other rare and precious ores but he passed away and his family decided to rent the building, since they didn't have the money to renovate the building and maybe make it something better than a workshop they just rented it as it was.

As soon as he was done running Sam went home to shower and change to a fresh set of clothes before he headed to the workshop, he pushed up the iron curtain at the entrance and inside he could see a basic black anvil in a good state, rows of hammers of different sizes, huge bowls where the owner probably put quenching oil and finally the even bigger furnace.

Since the owner worked on mythril it meant that his furnace could definitely burn at a higher temperature than the 3209° celcius that Mechy had asked, now everything was in place to start the crafting process !

Sam happily smiled and said to Mechy:

"Let's go pick up our grade three materials and core !"

[Sure.]

Of course Mechy didn't have the choice but to follow him, after a short time in the railway Sam went down and walked in through the huge front gate, at a small booth he was asked to show his ID and as he did the guard suddenly looked more respectful for some reason that Sam couldn't pinpoint.

Sam had came to pickup his grade three materials but that wasn't all, he also wanted to see his good brother Edward but he didn't know where he was residing at all, the military camp was almost as big as the city itself and Sam had been here only two times: one time for the registration to the examination and the other time for the examination itself, he would be completely lost if he started going around without a map so he just asked the respectful guard:

"I came to pick up my reward from the examination, so you know where I should go ?"

The man pondered for a second and then said:

"If the people in the warehouse have already been told about it then you can just go there and they will hand it over; if not then you need to get the permission from a major at least."

"Alright thanks a lot."

Sam walked in the direction of the warehouse that the guard indicated him and after 10 minutes of walking he made it to a huge hangar, it looked so big that it could probably hold 4 or 5 stellar planes!

Sam slowly pushed the metallic door and took a step inside but the inside of the warehouse was completely dark.

"What is happening ? That guy didn't say anything about it being closed today..."

Sam pondered ans walked a bit deeper, he thought maybe there was some kind of office inside where he could find someone but after taking a few steps he started hearing some weird sounds.

"It sounds like a female voice..."

He put his hands around his ears to hear better and he realized there was a female voice coming from somewhere in the warehouse, it sounded a little bit muffled as if she had something in her mouth keeping her from talking or screaming.

In this era, beliefs in stuff like ghosts and other spiritual stuff had almost disappeared, it wasn't a surprise that after so long people had proven that these things didn't exist and they were only fueled by fear and stories.

Of course Sam didn't believe in those things either and he walked deeper inside the warehouse towards where the voice was coming from, finally he made it to a dimly lit room and he heard a second voice.

"Regret it now ?"

"Ugh!"

As soon as the first voice sounded there was the sound of something hitting against another thing and the second voice growled, the person was obviously in pain and Sam started guessing what was happening inside, he slowly pushed the door and just like he thought:

A girl of around 25 years old was hanging from her legs attached to a chain on the ceiling, she was almost naked with only her underwear hiding her body and even those were tattered. She looked pitiful and had blood covering most of her body, the blood was coming out from different cuts and bruises all over her body.

'Shit that's fucked up...'

The scene really wasn't pleasing to see so Sam looked at her torturers instead, he was surprised to see a bunch of familiar faces !

Most of the people in this room were with him in the hospital room a few days back, some of them even still had bandages, casts and other stuff that showed that they weren't completely healed yet.

When the door opened, everyone heard it squeak and they turned around, the guy who was about to lash out his whip also stopped on the spot and looked back at Sam, this one however wasn't in the same hospital room as him and he had never seen, he had a burly body, thick eyebrows and a sharp jaw.

"What's happening here ?"

Sam asked while looking the guy with the whip in the eyes, he didn't know who the girl was or what she did but once he had seen the scene he couldn't just leave like this.