Declaration of General Strike
Declaration of General Strike
The most-wanted man in the Scrap Yard, the name most often featured in the local papers, was Karl Lenaro.
Considered the ringleader of the Labor Theorists and their most dangerous figure, rumor had it that he was holed up somewhere in the Scrap Yard's mines. His exact location and personal details were never disclosed.
And for good reason—every Labor Theorist in the Scrap Yard used every trick they had to protect him.
But today.
Karl Lenaro, who rarely ventured outside under ordinary circumstances, resolved to go out.
"Comrade Lenaro. It's dangerous."
"I still have to see it. I absolutely have to."
The Healing Saint.
A presence who had achieved staggering feats in the capital and skyrocketed to become the most critical figure for the Imperial Household and the Pantheon had, out of nowhere, begun healing work in a corner of the Scrap Yard.
"Religion is the opiate of the laborers. I must go and see what sort of person this is for myself. Otherwise, the workers' lives could be shattered even worse than they are now."
Three hundred years ago.
The Scrap Yard was a city that had been badly burned by an evil god.
Sweet words and promises of an afterlife.
Brainwashing and fanaticism had led the people of that time, plunging the city into immense chaos.
The brainwashed fanatics ignored laws and regulations, forced their doctrines upon others, and severely undermined the basic order of families and society.
They refused to pay taxes while demanding tithes, and under the conviction that they were righteous, those presences committed every kind of nuisance and atrocity imaginable.
They had even attempted to launch a holy war, pushing the city into a state of civil war for three years. Even after that, their roots were not fully pulled out for over ten years, and they kept shedding blood endlessly until the very last moment before they finally vanished.
In the aftermath, the city had grown to loathe religion and magic.
The so-called gods of the Pantheon had offered no aid whatsoever while the city was tormented by the evil god, and the citizens had clearly witnessed the entire city transform horrifically through things like magic and sorcery.
That was why Lenaro resolved to see this so-called saint for himself.
If the man intended to exploit the workers' grim circumstances for proselytizing or to mass-produce fanatics, he had to be stopped by any means necessary.
So for several days, Lenaro hid himself thoroughly and secretly observed the saint's healing activities.
He witnessed the man treating the sick without proper sleep or food.
He witnessed him spending his own wealth to feed the hungry.
He did no proselytizing.
Instead, he wept alongside a woman who had lost her child, and he raged in empathy for the shattered lives of the workers.
He also witnessed the police trying to drive the saint away.
He saw him refuse and denounce them with a roar.
But Lenaro was not deceived.
Those who devoutly believed in things like religion and magic were not the kind to genuinely try to change the lives of the common folk.
They were merely jackal-like figures who acted for the god they served, to offer the tribute of faith.
"You are all dismissed!!"
When the police showed up, wrecked the free meal station, and tried to drive out the patients, Lenaro saw the saint standing helplessly, unable to do anything for them, and he realized that a critical turning point had arrived.
In this hopeless situation.
The moment the saint uttered the nonsense that believing in the goddess Lilia would bring salvation, he would be someone who had to be driven out of the city.
A typical fraud who had no intention of fixing the fundamental problem—the social system—and devoted himself solely to peddling religion.
No matter how great the tragedy three hundred years ago had been, time made people forget many things.
To workers whose present lives were hell and suffering, the idea that believing in a goddess in the heavens could bring happiness would surely sound unbearably sweet.
'Well now. The despairing, departing masses are right before your eyes. There is no better moment than now if you intend to peddle your religion. What will you do? Will you sell this drug as well? Or will you show the will to solve a problem far more fundamental than that?'
Lenaro's eyes glinted with cynicism as he hid among the crowd and watched the saint climb atop the wrecked meal station.
'Nine times out of ten, he'll push the religion. He'll tell us to believe in the goddess despite this grim and gloomy reality. He won't be able to eliminate the factory owners, and without showing any will to solve capitalism's horrible problems, he'll just say to take the drug and live day by day. The moment he says that, you are the enemy of the workers.'
It was just as Lenaro was thinking that.
The saint opened his mouth.
The name of the goddess Lilia did not leave his lips.
Neither did the names of the Pantheon's gods.
Nor the authority of the emperor.
Nothing of the sort came out.
"A specter is haunting the Empire!!!"
Instead, he shouted in a sharp voice that sounded as if he were coughing up blood.
"It is the Specter of Capitalism!! Greedier and more brutal than any demon or evil god recorded in history, this specter endlessly grinds up and drinks down the souls and lives of the workers, yet it still screams that it is hungry!!"
The saint was nearly wailing.
"And just now. That specter declared it will grind up the lives of all of you gathered here as well!! Just as it always has!! It laid bare its greedy inner thoughts, promising to keep doing so in the future!! How long!! Exactly how long will you let yourselves be exploited! How long will you live claiming to be slaves!! Workers of the city!!"
The roar, so immense it made one doubt whether such a volume could truly emerge from a human throat, seemed to shake Karl Lenaro's very soul.
The cynical gaze he had directed toward the saint was vanishing before he knew it.
Just like every other worker gathered there.
Karl Lenaro too was astonished.
The saint did not seem like someone raised as a greenhouse flower under the gods' care.
He spoke like someone who had been hurt and tormented for a long time within a capitalist society.
Hollow, vacant eyes.
Faces completely devoid of any hope for the future.
An attitude utterly lacking the conviction that one could live and eat properly in this society.
People with no belief that tomorrow would be different from today.
No belief that working and trying hard would definitely make things better.
They were extremely familiar faces.
Those people were me.
More precisely, they were like how I had been before my reincarnation into this place.
Anxious and just scraping by in South Korea.
The one difference was that, compared to those people, the human Kim Min-gyu living in South Korea could at least go to a convenience store and eat ramen if he was hungry, go to an employment center and receive some training, or go to a hospital and get treated if he was sick. By contrast, they had no safety net whatsoever.
Injured?
Then you had to die.
Hungry?
Then you had to starve to death.
This place was hell.
And in such a hell, even if a person's body was healed.
If the system itself did not change, what would actually change no matter how much their bodies recovered?
With their healed bodies, they would inevitably have to go back to the factories and labor again, get injured again, become homeless again, wander about again, and die. The destiny was clear.
Treat them for just one week and then leave?
That would amount to committing an act more cruel than anything anyone else had done to them.
It would mean forcibly extending a life without hope.
If I was going to fix it, I had to fix it properly, from the root up.
So I shouted.
I shouted, pouring in more resentment and rage than anyone else.
"Look at them!! Look at those factory owners!! They have melted human dignity into exchange value, and traded human life as a shameless commodity!! Through division of labor and mechanization, the worker has now become a mere tool or a part, and has become a slave to the supervising manager, the employer, the bourgeois, and the state!! Yes! You are slaves!! Slaves with no hope and no assurance of a developing tomorrow! You are slaves!!"
At my voice, a common emotion slowly began to kindle in the workers' eyes.
Anger.
Resentment.
Parents who had watched their children die before their eyes began to shed tears, and young people with vacant eyes began to burn with fighting spirit.
The presences who had nothing left but their bodies, who were starving and had nothing to lose, slowly began to change their gazes at my words.
"Now, refuse to be slaves any longer!! Refuse to live as parts for the factory owners, as tools to fatten their wealth!!! Do not let yourselves be devoured by the Specter of Capitalism any longer!! Workers!! You are human beings!! You are not parts that operate for the factory!! You are not parts to be discarded and replaced when you are broken and damaged!! You are human beings!!"
Without my realizing it, my voice began to mix with my own bitterness.
The convenience store boss who had cheated me and refused to pay.
The horrible memories of my first workplace that I truly never wanted to recall.
The soul-shattering pain of when I was defrauded out of my deposit, money I had collected by grinding down my life and soul and bleeding myself dry, all came flooding back at once.
"You are not wrong!! Who can call you wrong, when you have struggled to survive harder than anyone else!! What is wrong are the norms and rules of this society!! So let us deny those norms and rules!! Let us no longer merely suffer!! Let us deny a life as parts, and reclaim a life as human beings!!"
But no matter how severe the pain I suffered in Korea was, could it really be worse than theirs?
Could it be worse than the hearts of parents who watched their three-year-old child die right before their eyes?
"Therefore, it is revolution!! I shall declare a revolution against this rotten world and its rules!! Make the factory owners and the rulers of this city tremble before the revolution!! No longer be devoured by the Specter of Capitalism, but become ones who hunt that specter!!"
"How can we do that! O Saint!!"
Someone in the crowd threw out the question.
How to do it?
There is only one way.
"Workers of the city, unite!! You have nothing to lose but your chains!! You have freedom and dignity to gain!! Do not fear rifles and swords, and do not be broken by clubs!! Unite and refuse to labor!! Never work in the factories until fair wages and fair treatment are given to you!!"
I could feel the atmosphere gradually ripening.
I raised my hand.
"Persecution will come!! The enemies will brandish their weapons and try to destroy you!! But what is there to fear!! Fight!! And seize it! Then we, who were nothing, shall become everything!!"
Thanks to the Body Modification, I could let out an unimaginably immense roar.
A roar immense enough.
To set the entire city ablaze.
"Refuse to live as parts, and die as human beings!!! Do not pass this pain on as an inheritance to your children!!"
I didn't know who it was, but someone in the crowd began to shout.
"Long live the labor revolution!!!!"
And the cry spread in an instant.
I raised my hand high toward them as they shouted like that.
"A general strike!! I hereby declare a general strike!! Stop the factories and do not fatten the Specter of Capitalism any further!! Until just rights and fair treatment are given to us!! We shall never stop!!"
That final cry of mine was the spark.
The thousands of workers gathered there all began to shout at once.
"Long live the revolution!!! Long live the revolution!!!"
"Lead us!!"
I did not turn away from their cries.
It had all started from trying to save a worker family who gave me a single piece of black bread.