Chapter 64
If there was a being with the highest bounty in Scrap Yard and the most frequently covered in local newspapers, it was undoubtedly the name Karl Renaro.
Considered the leader of the laborists and the most dangerous figure, it was only speculated that he was holed up somewhere in the mines of Scrap Yard, with no specific location or personal information known.
This was because all the laborists in Scrap Yard were using every means to protect him.
But today.
Karl Renaro, who rarely went out, decided to venture out.
"Comrade Renaro. It's dangerous."
"I still have to see. I must see for myself."
The Saint of Healing.
A being who had suddenly risen to become the most important figure of the imperial family and Pantheon after achieving tremendous feats in the capital was unexpectedly conducting healing activities in a corner of Scrap Yard.
"Religion is the opium of the workers. I must go and see for myself what kind of person he is. Otherwise, there's a possibility that workers' lives could become even more ruined than they are now."
300 years ago.
Scrap Yard was a city that had been severely burned by the Evil God.
Sweet talk and promises of the afterlife.
Thanks to them who led people through brainwashing and fanaticism, the city was plunged into tremendous chaos.
Brainwashed fanatics ignored laws and rules, forcing their doctrines on people and severely infringing on the basic order of families and society.
They were beings who didn't pay taxes but demanded tithes, and committed all sorts of public nuisances and evils under the belief that they were right.
They even tried to start a holy war, putting the city in a state of civil war for 3 years, and even after that, their roots couldn't be eradicated for over 10 years, endlessly spilling blood until the very last moment before disappearing.
Since then, the city came to hate religion and magic.
The so-called gods of the Pantheon didn't provide any help even though the city was suffering under the Evil God, and they clearly witnessed the entire city changing terribly through things called magic and sorcery.
So Renaro decided to go and see this person called a saint for himself.
If he was trying to take advantage of the workers' gloomy circumstances for proselytizing or planning to produce fanatics, he had to stop it by any means necessary.
For several days, Renaro thoroughly hid and secretly observed the saint's healing activities.
He witnessed the scene of him treating sick people without properly eating or sleeping.
He witnessed the scene of him feeding the hungry by using up his own wealth.
He didn't proselytize.
Instead, he cried with a woman who lost her child and sympathized with the destroyed lives of workers, becoming angry.
He also witnessed the scene of police trying to drive him away.
He saw the scene of him refusing and rebuking them.
But Renaro wasn't fooled.
Originally, beings who believed in things like religion and magic were not beings who truly tried to change the lives of the common people.
They were just wolf-like beings who acted for the god they served.
To offer the sacrifice of faith to that god.
"You're all fired!!"
When the police appeared and tried to smash the soup kitchen and drive away the patients, Renaro realized an important turning point had arrived when he saw the saint powerlessly unable to do anything.
In this desperate situation.
The moment he started spouting nonsense about how there would be salvation if one believed in the Goddess Lilia, the saint would become someone who must be driven out of the city.
Because he was a typical con artist who focused only on selling religion without any thought of fixing the fundamental problem of the social system.
Even if they experienced the horrors 300 years ago, time made people forget many things.
It was clear that the words "You can be happy if you believe in the goddess in heaven," would sound too sweet to workers whose lives are painful and hell right now.
Now, the people who have lost hope and are leaving are in front of your eyes. If you're going to sell religion, there's no better moment than now. What will you do? Will you sell drugs too? Or will you show the will to solve a much more fundamental problem?
Renaro watched with cynical eyes, hidden among the crowd, as the saint climbed up onto the destroyed soup kitchen.
Nine times out of ten, he'll push religion. He'll say to believe in the goddess despite this gloomy and depressing reality. He won't be able to get rid of the factory owners, and without showing any will to solve the terrible problems of capitalism, he'll just say to live day by day while taking drugs. The moment he says that, you're the enemy of the workers.
While Renaro was thinking that.
The saint opened his mouth.
The name of the Goddess Lilia didn't come out of his mouth.
Nor the names of the gods of the Pantheon.
Nor the authority of the Emperor.
None of that came out.
"A specter is haunting the Empire!!!!"
Instead, he shouted in a sharp voice as if spitting blood.
"It is the specter of capitalism!! This specter, more greedy and cruel than any demon or Evil God recorded in history, endlessly grinds and drinks the souls and lives of workers, yet still shouts that it's hungry!!"
The saint was almost wailing.
"And just now, that specter declared it would grind up the lives of all of you gathered here too!! As it has done until now!! It shamelessly revealed its greedy intentions to continue doing so!! Until when!! Until when will you be exploited!? Until when will you live as self-proclaimed slaves!? Workers of the city!!"
The enormous shout, which made one wonder if it could really come from a human mouth, seemed to shake Karl Renaro's soul.
The cynical gaze towards the saint was already disappearing.
Like all the other workers gathered here.
Karl Renaro too was surprised.
The saint didn't seem like a person who grew up like a greenhouse flower under the care of the gods.
He was speaking as if he had been injured and suffered for a long time in capitalist society.
***
Hollow and empty eyes.
A face with no hope for the future at all.
An attitude with no confidence that they could properly eat and live in this society.
No belief that tomorrow would be different from today.
Beings with no belief that if they worked hard and diligently, things would surely get better.
They were all too familiar.
They were me.
More precisely, they were the image of me living anxiously in Korea before reincarnating here.
The one difference was that human Kim Min-gyu living in Korea could at least go to a convenience store and eat ramen if hungry, go to an employment center and receive education, and go to a hospital for treatment if sick, whereas these people had no safety net at all.
Injured?
Guess one would just have to die.
Hungry?
One might as well just starve to death.
This was hell.
And in such a hell, even if their bodies were healed.
If the system itself didn’t change, what would change even if their bodies recovered?
It was obvious that they would have to go back to the factory to work with their healed bodies, get injured again, and then become homeless again, wandering around until they die.
Just treat for a week and leave?
Then I would have done the cruelest thing to them.
Because I would have forcibly extended their hopeless lives.
If I was going to fix it, I had to fix it properly from the roots.
So I shouted.
I shouted with more resentment and anger than anyone, "Look!! Look at those factory owners!! They have melted human dignity into exchange value, and replaced human life with shameless means of commerce!! Workers have now become mere tools or parts due to division of labor and mechanization, and have become slaves to supervisors, employers, the bourgeoisie, and their state every hour!! Yes! You are slaves!! Slaves with no hope and no certainty of a better tomorrow! Slaves!!"
At my voice, a common emotion slowly began to rise in the workers' eyes.
Anger.
Resentment.
Parents who lost their children before their eyes began to shed tears, and young people with dull eyes began to burn with fighting spirit.
The eyes of those who had nothing left to lose but their starving, hungry bodies slowly began to change at my words.
"Refuse to be slaves any longer!! Refuse to live as tools to increase their wealth by becoming parts of the factory owners!!! No longer be devoured by the specter of capitalism!! Workers! You are human!! You are not parts that run for the factory!! You are not parts that can be discarded and replaced when damaged and broken!! You are human!!"
Resentment unknowingly began to mix into my voice.
The convenience store owner who withheld wages.
The terrible memories from my first workplace that I didn't even want to recall.
The soul-crushing pain of losing the deposit I had saved while shitting blood and grinding away my life and soul to real estate fraud all came rushing back at once.
"You are not wrong!! Who can say that you, who have struggled harder than anyone to survive, are wrong!? What's wrong are the norms and disciplines of this society!! So let's deny the norms and disciplines!! Let's not just take it anymore!! Let's deny life as parts and reclaim life as humans!!"
But no matter how severe the pain I suffered in Korea was, could it be worse than theirs?
Could it be worse than the feelings of parents who watched their 3-year-old child die before their eyes?
"So it's revolution!! I declare a revolution against this rotten world and its rules!! Make the factory owners and rulers of this city tremble before the revolution!! No longer be devoured by the specter of capitalism, but become beings who hunt the specter!!"
"How can we do that, Saint!!"
Someone in the crowd throws out a question.
How should we do it?
This is the only way.
"Workers of the city, unite!! You have nothing to lose but your chains!! And a world to win!! Don't fear guns and don't be broken by clubs!! Unite and refuse to work!! Never work in the factories until you receive fair wages and treatment!!"
I could feel the atmosphere slowly ripening.
I raised my hand.
"Persecution will come!! The enemies will brandish weapons and try to destroy you!! But what is there to fear!! Fight!! And win! Then we who were nothing will become everything!!"
Thanks to Body Modification, I could let out an unimaginably huge shout.
Enough to engulf the entire city in flames.
It was an enormous shout.
"Refuse life as parts and die as humans!!! Don't pass on this suffering to your children!!"
I didn't know who, but someone in the crowd started shouting.
"Long live the labor revolution!!!!"
And that cry spread in an instant.
I raised my hand high towards them shouting like that.
"General strike!! I declare a general strike!! Stop the factories and no longer fatten the specter of capitalism!! Until we are given our rightful rights and treatment!! We will never stop!!"
My final cry was the catalyst.
The thousands of workers gathered there began to shout in unison.
"Long live the revolution!!! Long live the revolution!!!"
"Lead us!!"
I didn't ignore their cries.
This all started from trying to save a worker's family who gave me a piece of black bread.