"You better do it very well, pod boy! The supervisor is coming!" The voice was hushed and directed at Vacuse.
Vacuse tightened his hands and grimaced.
A large, narrow artificial river ran slowly in front of him, the water bloodied and filled with chunks of body parts. From limbs to heads and crushed chests. Get full chapters from novel·fıre·net
Vacuse and the other slaves that stood at the edge of the river continuously dipped their hands into the river, fished out a limb, and began assembling it.
It did not matter what type of limb went with what chest or head, or if the head matched the body. The only requirement was if it fit when they sewed it together with threads.
And most of the bodies were not fresh.
With one week gone by since he started working there, Vacuse was getting used to the smell.
He brought out a head from the water and stared at it. The head was from a young woman, and luckily for Vacuse, she had a clean severance so he did not need to trim out any excess flesh before he found a chest to attach it to.
Just as he was about to leave the river's edge for his table, a shadow loomed over him and he froze, his eyes wide and his breath almost stopped.
"Well, what do we have here if it isn't the pod boy!" The voice was filled with amusement.
But Vacuse was not fooled.
The supervisor, Supervisor Kim, was a thin man with even more thinning hair and a sadistic smile. His only source of joy was inflicting pain on the slaves, and he took his job too well.
When he found out that his Soulbearer power was somehow not available and he had lost his connection with Rith, he did not take it well.
He had freaked out and turned on the supervisor there to take him to the 'dead river,' but things had not gone as planned at all.
When Vacuse lost his power, he lost absolutely everything and was returned to that of a mortal. But the supervisor, on the other hand, was strong.
And he had not held back on Vacuse.
He was beaten so much that he lay in his own pool of blood and vomit.
It reminded him of his past life.
Right now, Vacuse grimaced as he stared up at the man, his face carefully free of any emotions.
"I see you are working harder now, pod boy. I will add one more spoon to your food tonight."
They were only served once a day and sometimes none at all. They were slaves, and if they died, their bodies would be of use. Living or dying made very little difference, especially when there were plenty of slaves to replace them with.
Vacuse nodded. "Thank you, sir!"
He was not used to people looking down on him, not anymore, and he was not used to calling people who were not worth it 'sir,' but that too had been beaten out of him by Supervisor Kim.
Kim grunted in satisfaction. "Go on, continue your work. It seems you will not need more taming."
Vacuse watched him leave.
There was no emotion in his eyes, but somehow, the red became redder.
"...I will personally kill you myself..."
But how? Vacuse was thin, malnourished, and he had no power. In fact, it was a situation even worse than his past life. At least in his past life, he had been the lowest of the lowest Soulbearers, but he was still a Soulbearer.
This time though, things were not that simple. Even his Dragon ring had been taken away from him.
It had been one week, and he had more or less pieced together what had happened to him.
When he entered the Dungeon, he must have fallen directly into the path of Eboncrypt men. The name of the kingdom he was in was Eboncrypt, and it was ruled by a necromancer currently at war with another necromancer kingdom.
Anyway, he had been captured, stripped of his clothes and jewelry, and then taken into the pod with a seal that suppressed his powers at the very back of his head.
The pod itself was a living thing, with each pod connected through veins to a large monster that crouched at the top of the building. The monster fed on the dreams of people trapped in the pods to create weapons of war.
It was like a war artifact, but a living one.
The monster devoured the dreams by trapping people in twisted versions of their dreams.
"...but it was Rith that rescued him..."
The black-clad minister was Rith, the one who slowly shook him out of the dream.
But then, where was Rith?
Vacuse already had an idea.
When he was captured, an enchanted tattoo was imprinted on the back of his head. That imprint was what suppressed his power, and no matter how much he tried, he could not even feel a lick of it.
The Great Dungeon he was in, the world itself was not a simple one. The people here used powers unlike the Soulbearers. They called themselves Magus, and in the area, the dominating expertise was the Magus necromancers.
Vacuse took a deep breath as he returned the body to his table and began to assemble it, stitching the head to the neck with a needle and a special magical thread.
It was what he had been doing for one week straight, and he was already good at it. Besides, it helped Vacuse think.
He needed to get out of the slave encampment. He needed to survive and find the others, if they still existed. Because how long had he even been trapped in the pod?
How had he even been captured? At least he should have been aware when he first arrived, but he was simply captured just like that?
It looked too suspicious.
He sat and continued working, stitching bodies together while he thought of what he was going to do.
First, he needed to unseal himself and get his ring. Then he needed to get the hell away and find out just what the fuck was going on with the world.