'Don't you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey, whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness?'
********
Ray was conscious, but his body felt like it was drifting endlessly into something.
He couldn't open his eyes or even his fingers to check if he was bleeding; his mind just lay there in the dark, trying to figure out if he was actually dead or just paralysed.
Thuck.
Thuck.
Thuck.
The sound kept repeating in the background.
It definitely wasn't a ticking watch.
It sounded like a metal was hitting a rock over and over again.
"Wake up, prince," a voice sneered from above him.
Before Ray could even process the words, a heavy wooden staff slammed right into the side of his head with full force.
The pain exploded behind his eyes, and his anger surged up instantly.
He wanted to swing back and break the guy's jaw, but his muscles were completely dead as his body simply refused to respond.
"Oh, sleeping soundly, aren't you?" the voice mocked him.
Suddenly, a massive shockwave of pain ripped through his entire body.
It felt like pure electricity frying his nerves from the inside out.
'Gahhhhhhh!' Ray's mind screamed in agony.
He waited in pure rage for his limbs to start working so he could rip this guy apart.
'Move it, you shit,' he talked to himself in his head as the pain burned his chest.
'Move, fuck, move.'
He could hear the swoosh of the heavy staff being raised again.
It was aimed right at his skull this time.
Bap.
Ray's hand shot up out of nowhere and caught the wood right before it reached his face.
His eyes were now open, and his face twitched with pure annoyance.
He was awake, but quickly realised this wasn't his old body.
He was looking through the eyes of a young guy, and he could see a messy fringe of red hair falling over his forehead.
"The fuck you think you are doing?" Ray spat.
But the voice coming out of his mouth completely surprised him.
It wasn't his usual rough, deep tone but sounded much younger, smoother, and totally unfamiliar to his ears.
He glared at the guy holding the staff.
It was an old man, probably around sixty years old, wearing dirty clothes, who had an eyepatch over one eye and a mouth full of broken, rotting teeth.
The old man scoffed and tried to pull his staff away, but Ray held on tight.
"You nobles always do this first," the old man sneered.
"Get up and work, or you will be fed to the greedy beasts in the dead forest."
Ray ignored the threat and looked around to figure out what was going on.
He was standing in a tall, dark cave lit by torches like those you would see in movies.
Everywhere he looked, there were skinny humans without shirts swinging pickaxes and using shovels to mine chunks of grey rock.
It was a slave camp doing hard labour, and the air smelled like sweat and eroded soil.
Ray slowly stood up.
He kept his eyes locked on the old man just in case he tried to swing that piece of wood again.
Right then, a blue, game-like screen popped up in the air directly in front of his face.
[Name: Zephyr Valerius]
[Description: A noble who was kicked out of his family for failing the ceremony.]
[Age: 18]
[Rank: Awakener]
[Status Window:
Strength: 8
Durability: 8
Stamina: 9
Mana: 0
Luck: 5
Level: 2]
[Title: Monarch of Sins (Locked)]
[Ability: Sin Authority (Locked) - User can wield the power of sins with respect to their knowledge or by embracing a particular sin.]
'Zephyr?' Ray thought as he read the text.
The name felt a little familiar in the back of his mind, but mostly it just felt completely alien.
He realised this was his new identity.
The system really did bring him back to life, but it dropped him right into the weak body of an eighteen-year-old exiled noble.
He let go of the staff he was holding and took a slow step back to assess the situation.
"Go do your work, you worthless noble scum," the old man spat on the stone floor.
But his wrinkled face was full of genuine shock.
He was staring at Ray's hands, clearly wondering how this skinny kid was suddenly so much stronger than he was just yesterday.
Zephyr walked over to the side of the tunnel and picked up a iron shovel.
He walked over to a pile of loose rubble and started mining just to blend in with the crowd.
He knew he couldn't just start a fight without knowing what kind of place this was or who was in charge.
'What kind of sick game are the gods playing with my mind?' he thought as he dug the shovel into the rocks.
He died in a club, and now he was breaking rocks in a cave.
"Don't stop," a quiet, shaky voice whispered from his side.
Zephyr looked down to see a young blonde kid, probably only ten years old, shovelling rock right opposite to him.
The kid looked starving and exhausted, but he kept his head down and kept working.
"It's almost time for her to come," the kid muttered, refusing to make eye contact.
"Keep mining."
'Time for who?' Zephyr wondered as he tossed a pile of rocks aside.
Suddenly, the sound of shovelling and mining increased around the entire cave.
Every single person started working twice as fast.
They were sweating and panicking, and the air grew intense with fear.
Then the sharp echoes of heavy boots could be heard walking down the tunnel.
A woman with long silver hair walked into the main cave area.
She was wearing a crisp, dark police-like uniform that looked way too clean for a miner.
In her right hand, she casually held a long, thick leather whip.
"How are my slaves doing!" she said loudly as her face had a huge, creepy smile on it that didn't reach her cold eyes.
She slowly walked down the line of workers, her eyes analysing every single person swinging a tool.
She looked like a predator watching a cage full of mice.
A few yards away, a twenty-eight-year-old man lost his footing on the uneven floor and fell hard onto his back, dropping his heavy shovel with a loud clatter.
The silver-haired woman gasped and ran right to his side.
She leaned down with a worried look and gently offered him her hand to help him up.
"Oh my, are you okay, dear?" she asked in a soft, caring voice.
The man looked up at her and completely panicked.
His face went totally pale, and he scrambled backwards on his hands and knees.
"Madam, I'm sorry! I was careless, I was careless!" he begged repeatedly.
She pulled her hand back and gave him a warm, forgiving smile.
"It's okay, mistakes happen," she said nicely.
The man let out a huge breath of relief and relaxed his shoulders. "Ah, thank yo-"
Before he could even finish his sentence, her arm snapped forward.
The whip slashed right across his face as the leather tore the skin right off his cheek near his mouth, spreading blood onto the cave floor.
"Gahhhhhhhh!" the man screamed in pain as he grabbed his ruined face.
But she didn't stop there.
For every single noise he made, she hit him again and again.
She swung the whip brutally, tearing his skin apart stroke after stroke, hitting him until his jawbone showed through the bloody mess on his face.
The man finally stopped screaming and fainted right there in the dirt, completely unresponsive.
The silver-haired woman stopped swinging and looked down at the puddle of blood.
She pouted her lips and tapped her chin thoughtfully.
"Oh no, did he faint or die?" she asked herself out loud.
"Whatever."
She licked a tiny drop of blood off her cheek and started literally skipping down the tunnel as she continued her patrol.
It was like she just squashed an annoying bug and totally forgot about it a second later.
Zephyr looked around the cave to see how others reacted.
Even after all that screaming and bleeding, none of the workers batted an eye.
There were at least two hundred people inside, but no one even looked up from their shovels.
They were so broken and scared that they just kept staring at the rocks, hoping she wouldn't notice them next.
Nobody reacted at all.
Except Zephyr.
He was standing up straight, gripping his shovel tight, and staring right at the crazy woman.
Ray, now Zephyr, hated bullies in his past life, and he couldn't stand people who abused their power just because they could.
It pissed him off more than anything, and he didn't care about hiding his anger.
The woman stopped skipping.
She felt his stare and turned her head slowly as cold, analysing eyes landed right on him, standing tall in the crowd.
She tilted her head and gave him that same creepy smile.
"Oh, noble boy?" she called out to him, her voice repeating in the quiet cave.
"You want something?"