Karz and the other slaves were coming out of the cave in different groups. The group Karz was part of was the 3rd group. Each group had a total of 50 slaves, excluding the overseers. There were a total of 12 groups. The work was divided equally, as groups from 1–6 rested while the remaining six worked, and vice versa.
The first six groups were moving to the makeshift tents made from rags and full of holes. The two overseers went to report the progress to the master of the mining expedition—Dion, a man in his early thirties. He was strangely tall even for a human, built like a small giant with deep blue eyes and a heavy beard. Karz watched as the two overseers went to his luxurious tent and were out of his sight.
Karz kept moving and went to the tent responsible for feeding them. The food was the bare minimum to keep them alive, but it had no taste. It looked like a hard piece of rock. The elderly even broke their teeth trying to chew it, but Karz's teeth were somehow more resilient. He still had some difficulty, but it wasn't something a little effort couldn't make possible. After the food, he drank water and went to sleep. Six hours of mining was, after all, quite tough for him and took its toll on his 17-year-old body. After a few hours, he was jerked back and woke up. In front of him was Ron, a 24-year-old blind man. Ron had entered his group a few days ago. He was captured by the overseers when they were scouting for beasts around the camp.
"Karz, look what I found." Ron handed Karz a piece of dull black rock.
"What's so special about it? It's just a rock," Karz responded.
"Well yes, but my mother used to tell me stories that rocks like this could bestow simple skills upon us, like body strengthening."
"What good will that do us? We are weak and wouldn't be able to make something of it. The overseers are also warriors of the 1st rank." Karz didn't know what it meant to be of the 1st rank. All he knew was that they were stronger and could use powers he couldn't fathom. "Wait, how can you remember your mother? The collar prohibits us from remembering our memories," Karz asked, with a look of bewilderment and hope on his face.
"Well, that's a secret for another day," Ron said with a smile that seemed to hide secrets and exited the tent. "Rest well. Soon we have to go back and take care of the rock." Then he left. Karz, now alone, started thinking about the blind man. How? I tried various kinds of things, even letting multiple pickaxes hit him on his collar in an attempt to break it, but it was just a complete failure. It was indeed strange for the collar to break, but now looking back on things, it was even stranger for Ron to be here. Even though he didn't know exactly where, he was sure that they were deep in the forest—so how had Ron simply been roaming the forest in the first place? And why did he give the black rock to Karz? They had only said hello to each other a few times after all. Just who is this Ron?. Thinking all this karz hid the black stone with him.