Chapter 2: Mining all day

Deep in the jungle was a high mountain. The only particular point that this mountain had was a huge cave that entered deep in its heart.

At the entrance to this opening was a base that the invaders, now owners of the planet, had set up for the purpose of sending slaves to mine there.

This base could even be called a simple camp. Barriers had been placed around the cave, and in the middle was the spaceship, which served as the command center for these aliens.

It had been a week now since Rin had been sent to this hole as a slave.

After insulting the commander, this one suddenly stood up and started to punch him at a ridiculous speed.

Rin had a hard time. He could have sworn he had heard a few of his bones shatter, before passing out from the beatings. When he woke up later, he was like new, with no injuries or pain.

He didn't know how these aliens did it but it was undoubtedly amazing.

But although he woke up in great physical shape, he was now in this place.

Along with a few dozen other humans, he now had to go and mine what was in the cave. If one day he had been told that overpowered aliens would come and take control of the earth to mine two or three pebbles, he would have called this person crazy.

Yet he was there hitting the wall in front of him with a pickaxe in his hand. He knocked again and again, relentlessly.

The days passed like this. He would get up after a few hours of sleep on the floor, awakened by kicks by the guards. After eating a strange little cube, the only food for the whole day, he was mining all day almost without any break until he could go back to sleep.

At first he thought he was going crazy. Every time his pickaxe hit a rock, he kept thinking about his daughter, lying on the ground with blood all around. And it was the same for days. He kept thinking about that moment, thinking of various solutions, anything he could have done to protect his daughter in time. But of course, it was already too late.

He also thought many times to jump on the guard who passed behind him from time to time and to stick the point of the pickaxe in his eyes. But he didn't. He was waiting. Killing a guard wasn't enough for him. He would kill each of his bastards, until the last. It was his resolution. And he repeated it to himself every day, every hour, with every move of the pickaxe.

And like that, the more time passed, the quieter he became. He spent his time calculating. Watching how many guards there were, what were they doing, when, how, how long it was going on. He wrote down everything he could in his head.

The only thing he forgot was the time.

By dint of using pickaxes over and over again, and changing them every time one broke and became unusable, he had become a professional. He now knew how to have a good position with the pickaxe on impact. He knew where to strike, how to position his feet, he was learning little by little.

While other slaves found this toil unbearable, Rin used this opportunity to train his body. He ignored the fatigue day after day and continued to do so, always sharpening his will.

Over the weeks, and even months, the faces around him kept changing. Some of the slaves were exhausted with fatigue and, at the end of their strength, collapsed.

These ones had no second chance, they were killed, nothing more, and replaced quickly. Here, they were all just consumable.

After all, it was not the sheer quantity of slaves that would be lacking, as all of humanity having been made slaves.

By spending days and days in this cave, Rin ends up making contact with two other slaves. Elira and Martin.

Elira was a young woman, in her early twenties. Before the invasion, she was studying with the goal of becoming a teacher. However, her dream was shattered during the invasion.

Since she lived in a big city, unlike Rin, she had seen the horror in its entirety.

The army had been massacred, and the city razed to the ground. Purely and simply. The battle hadn't even lasted more than an hour before the humans who fought for their freedom were annihilated.

The survivors of this butchery were then sorted, and Elira had been sent here by a spaceship.

Martin was in his thirties, with short hair that was no longer groomed, and a beard gnawing at his cheeks. He was a policeman before the invasion. But certainly not the type of policeman in big cities who was used to chases or having to defend against thugs.

No, he was just a policeman in a quiet little town where nothing special ever happened. Nothing until the invasion. He had been unable to do anything, and before he could know it, he was already captured.

He was a sensitive man, but with a strong will to live, and a few nights at the beginning, Rin would hear him cry in the dark. After all, before he was captured, he had seen his wife being taken away before his own eyes, while he didn't do anything. Imagining the horror she was perhaps experiencing haunted him constantly. He didn't even know if she was still alive.

Rin understood this, he understood the emotions this man was feeling. But, for some reason he couldn't explain, all his sadness was gone like snow in the sun. The only emotion he was able to feel the last few days was hatred, only hatred, in a very pure form.

Rin, Elira, and Martin managed to communicate every now and then, as the Rashkirs either didn't listen, or just didn't care.

None of the three could understand what they were doing here. They just dug over and over again every day, before being redirected to another location by a Rashkir.

He appeared to be like a searcher in a dark red robe, and not a common warrior with their golden armor. The latters seemed to respect him enormously.

Rin and his two other companions in misfortune supported each other this way for several more days.

Until that particular day, or, while Rin was mining on his side, loud voices coming from his right reached him.

"What the fuck is this?"

"What is this stone? I've never seen anything like it!"

"Silence humans!" A guard was approaching with an expression of displeasure and played with his spear. "What's all the noises? Maybe you want to rebel ?!"

"Uh ... Raksh .... Rashkir? I...I found this stone while digging in that direction."

The man, holding a red stone in his hand, pointed with a trembling finger at the place where he had unearthed this object.

The guard, seeing this stone, snatched it from the hands of the pitiful human in front of him before turning around.

"Get back to work, miserable humans, faster than that!"

Rin and Martin, who was not far from his position, looked at each other. This object was probably the reason for what they had been digging here for weeks.

Now they just had to try to understand what this object was, which was far from easy.

The rashkir who was wearing a robe had left the camp and walked towards the middle of the cave, where the guard was waiting, when he received news that a red stone had been found.

He now had a big smile on his face as he kept staring at that stone in his hand.

Rin and the others were doing everything they could to try not to miss a moment. And so, while digging a bit haphazardly and blindly, Rin did his best to keep the searcher in his line of sight.

This rashkir, after looking at the stone for a moment with a satisfied smile, said a few unintelligible words to the guard who had given him this stone.

The latter answered him something, and then he guided him to the place where the slave had found this stone.

Rin was disappointed. He was doing his best to watch this scene in detail, hoping to catch a glimpse of it, but nothing special happened, and he ended up learning nothing.

After observing the crevice where the red stone had been found by stroking his chin, the rashkir stood up and gave an order. Then he turned around before returning to the camp.

The mining was resuming its normal course, the only thing that changed was now the surplus of people having been concentrated on the same area.

Rin had made sure to be among those in order to dig as close to that area as possible, so maybe he'll find something eventually.

Only a few days after that, luck ended up smiling at Rin.