The seventh day arrives not with a sunrise, but with a suffocating, sulfurous shroud. The air in the pentagonal fort is thick, a heavy gray curtain of soot-filled fog that clings to the back of the throat and stings the eyes until they weep. The rhythmic, deafening CRACK-BOOM of matchlock rifles echoes incessantly off the stone ramparts, a ragged symphony of explosions that vibrates through the teenagers' very marrow.
Officer Aguilar stands like a golden statue amidst the swirling black smoke, his polished armor gleaming with a terrifying, celestial light through the gloom. He doesn't flinch at the noise; he orchestrates it, his gloved hand rising and falling like a conductor's baton.
As the weary group of Earthlings stumbles into the yard, Aguilar's flinty eyes immediately lock onto two figures. He strides forward, the metal of his greaves clanking with purposeful menace. He reaches out, his gauntlets catching Minh and Joon-soo by their collars, and shoves them toward a secluded corner of the ramparts where a stern, silent man waits.
"Captain Shaw!" Aguilar's voice cuts through the thunder of the musketry. "Take these two. They have proven their hands are not merely clay. Drive them until the iron becomes an extension of their own wretched souls. I shall see to the remaining dross."
Officer Shaw, a man with a face like carved granite, simply nods. He gestures for Minh and Joon-soo to take up positions before a row of moving targets—wooden silhouettes suspended from pulleys.
Minh fumbles with his match, his fingers shaking from five days of sleep deprivation. "Advanced version, huh? "I feel like I'm in a glitchy tutorial that won't let me leave."
Joon-soo doesn't look up, his face a mask of sweat and soot. "Just aim, Minh. Shaw looks like he'd kill us just for blinking too slow."
Across the yard, Aguilar looms over the rest of the teens, pointing a gauntleted finger toward the corner where Minh and Joon-soo are already reloading under Shaw's silent, predatory gaze.
"Behold!" Aguilar roars, turning back to the trembling line. "While ye fumbled with thy matches like babes in the dark, these shards of Earth have found the steel in their marrow! They grind while ye groan! They bleed while ye weep! Look upon them and know that thy lethargy is a choice—a choice that smells of treason!"
The teenagers scramble to load their weapons, the clouds of acrid powder smoke thickening until the sun is a mere ghost in the sky. In the midst of a brief lull, a Colombian boy named Mateo collapses into a fit of ragged, wet coughing. His lungs, ravaged by the soot, rebel, sending him doubled over in the dirt.
Aguilar is upon him in seconds, his shadow looming over the gasping boy like a vengeful spirit.
"Dost thou dare foul the King's air with the sounds of thy frailty?" Aguilar sneers, his lip curling in a noble, aristocratic disgust. "Thy lungs are as hollow as thy resolve! Thou art a vessel of weakness, unfit to carry the lead of the PCA!"
"I... I can't... the smoke..." Mateo wheezes, his eyes bulging as he looks up at the golden giant.
"Silence! Thou art a defect in the machinery of the Federation!" Aguilar bellows. He signals two freeman soldiers. "Cast this coughing cur to the slave pens! He shall be a Field-thrall. Let the open pastures cure his 'affliction' while his back breaks beneath the hoe. Out of my sight!"
As Mateo is dragged away, his coughing fading into the distance, a girl with a defiant spark in her eyes drops her ramrod. She stands straight, wiping a streak of black grime across her forehead.
"This is actually insane..." she shouts, her voice high and trembling with indignation. "My nation on Earth never even had women in the frontline military! This is literal patriarchy, and honestly, I don't even know why I'm here. I'm a pacifist! Why am I being forced to shoot a gun?"
Aguilar freezes. He turns slowly, his movements majestic and terrifying. He walks toward her, the silence in the yard growing so heavy it feels physical.
"Thou speakest of 'nations' and 'rights' as if they were holy relics..." Aguilar says, his voice a low, vibrating growl. "Listen well, daughter of Earth. Thy sinful kin knelt to the Shadow five centuries past, and that debt is written in thy very blood. A debtor has no voice in the choosing of his labor! Thou art here because thy existence is a forfeit to the Crown!"
He leans in closer, his golden helmet reflecting her terrified face. "Today, none shall find the mercy of 'promotion' to other roles. Ye shall grind. Ye shall stay in the dirt and smoke until thy movements match the perfection of the two I have set apart. Any who lag behind shall find the lash to be a swifter teacher than my words!"
Minh and Joon-soo, watching from their corner as they fire yet another volley into the silhouettes, exchange a look of profound, hollow realization.
This isn't an army, Joon-soo monologues internally, his shoulder bruised purple from the recoil. It's a Multi-Sectoral Slave Personnel Allocation Agency. We aren't recruits. We're just cargo being sorted for the highest bidder. If we're good, we're tools. If we're bad, we're fertilizer.
He's literally just middle management for a human trafficking ring, Minh thinks, his mind spinning as he slams the ramrod home. Advanced or not, we're just the premium models in the same display case.
The shooting continues. The thundering CRACK of the matchlocks becomes the only heartbeat of the day, a relentless, sulfur-choked rhythm that consumes their youth, their memories, and their hope, one explosion at a time.
The eighth day of their incarceration arrives with a peculiar, heavy silence that feels more ominous than the thundering volleys of the day before. The sulfurous smog of the matchlocks has settled into a greasy film that coats everything—the stones of the pentagonal fort, the parched tongues of the captives, and the long, splintered wooden tables that have been dragged into the center of the training yard.
Upon these tables lie the matchlocks, disassembled into a skeletal array of iron barrels, blackened wooden stocks, and intricate, spring-loaded lock mechanisms. The air smells no longer of explosive fire, but of rancid animal fat and cold, stale oil.
Officer Aguilar stalks the rows of tables like a predator surveying a fresh kill. His golden armor, though still majestic, bears the faint streaks of soot from the week's carnage. He halts before the trembling line of Earthlings, his eyes scanning for any sign of the "agency" or "rights" that had provoked his fury the days prior. Today, however, no one speaks. No one groans. The teens stand with their heads bowed, shoulders hunched in a collective posture of total, terrified submission.
"Ye hollow vessels! Ye have learned to burn the powder, yet thy minds remain as foul as a clogged vent!" Aguilar's voice echoes, his noble, rhythmic cadence vibrating through the yard. "A soldier who cannot tend his steel is but a corpse-in-waiting, a jester playing at war with a stick that shall surely betray him!"
He moves toward the center of the yard, but his eyes snap toward Minh and Joon-soo. With a rough, armored shove, he sends them reeling toward the far corner, where the granite-faced Officer Shaw stands waiting.
"To the corner with the favored dregs!" Aguilar bellows, pointing a gauntleted finger. "Shaw! See that these two do not merely clean the iron. They shall strip the locks to the very springs and pins. If a single grain of grit remains in the sear, let their fingers bleed for it!"
Minh stumbles, catching himself against the edge of a grease-slicked table. He looks at Joon-soo, whose face is a mask of exhausted concentration. "Guess we're the 'Advanced Maintenance' squad now, It's like being the only kids who actually read the manual for a project no one wants to do."
Joon-soo doesn't even crack a smile. He picks up a rag that smells of old grease. "Just focus, Minh. This isn't a project. It's a survival horror game and we're low on health."
Back at the main tables, Aguilar begins his demonstration. For all his brutality, he moves with a surprising, fluid grace. His scarred hands, thick-fingered and calloused, pick up a trigger mechanism with the delicacy of a master jeweler. He demonstrates the correct way to shave away the carbon buildup, how to oil the pivot pins, and how to balance the tension of the serpentine. He performs the entire process exactly once.
"Watch, ye witless curs! For I shall not waste the King's breath a second time upon thy sluggish ears!" He snaps the lock back into the stock with a metallic clack that sounds like a closing trap. "If thy reassembly falters, if thy iron groans from neglect, the lash shall be thy only comfort!"
The "MSA-ing"—the Multi-Sectoral Slave Agency sorting—seems to have paused for the day. Aguilar is no longer looking to expel them to the mines or the forests; he is focused entirely on the survival of the equipment. But the cost of a mistake has only grown more intimate.
As the teens begin to work, the only sounds are the rhythmic scritch-scratch of rags against iron and the heavy, rhythmic thud of Aguilar's boots as he paces the lines. He carries a short, coiled whip of braided leather.
A girl a few tables down from Minh fumbles with a tiny screw, her fingers slick with oil. It slips from her grasp, bouncing off the table and vanishing into the dirt. She lets out a small, sharp gasp of air, her face going pale.
Aguilar is there in an instant.
"In the heat of the vanguard, a lost screw is a lost life, thou clumsy sow!"
The whip cracks—a sound like a pistol shot. The girl screams, her body arching as the leather bites into her shoulder, tearing through the thin fabric of her shirt. She collapses into the dirt, frantically clawing at the dust to find the missing part.
Minh watches from the corner of his eye, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. He turns back to his own barrel, his fingers moving with a desperate, trembling accuracy. He mimics Aguilar's movements exactly, scrubbing the interior of the barrel until the rag comes out grey instead of black.
Joon-soo, meanwhile, works with a mechanical, eerie stillness. As he carefully oils the firing mechanism, he finds his mind drifting back to the long, grueling hours of his childhood in Seoul—the Hagwons, the endless repetition of characters, the rigid expectations of his father, and the ancestral rites that had always felt so suffocating.
I used to post rants about how toxic Confucianism was, Joon-soo thinks, his jaw tight. I literally made a TikTok about how "unnecessary" the discipline was. And now... it's the only thing keeping my back from looking like that girl's.
He mentally apologizes to his grandfather, realizing that the ability to shut out pain and focus on a repetitive, soul-crushing task is a gift he never asked for, but one he now desperately needs.
I'm sorry, Haraboji, he monologues silently. The "rigid traditionalist structures" are literally the only reason I'm still breathing.
Minh, on the other hand, stares down at his hands. They are no longer the hands of a high school student who spent his afternoons gaming or worrying about his chemistry grade. They are stained deep with soot and oil, the grime etched so far into the creases of his skin that he doubts it will ever come out.
How am I still here? Minh wonders, a cold wave of existential dread washing over him. Eight days. It feels like eighty years. I'm cleaning a medieval gun for a guy who thinks I'm a "sinful vine" from another dimension. This isn't real. It can't be real.
But the sting of the salt spray in the air and the heavy weight of the iron in his hands are undeniable. He is no longer a person; he is a component. An asset.
The sun begins to dip below the high stone walls, casting the yard into a deep, purple shadow. The waning moon rises—a thin, cruel sliver of silver that watches over the fort like a cold eye. As the night falls, the work finally ceases.
The teens are herded back toward the straw-filled barracks, but the mood is different tonight. There is no gossip. There are no hushed jokes about Aguilar's "main character energy." The group next to Minh and Joon-soo huddles together in the dark, the quiet whimpers of the whipped children lost in the moaning of the cold night wind. The raw, red welts on their backs are visible even in the dim light, a map of their failures.
Minh lies back in the prickly straw, staring up at the Mage-Walks—the elevated stone paths where the guards pace. He can hear the rhythmic clank-clank of their heavy plate armor, a constant, metallic reminder of their cage. The guards look down on them not with hatred, but with the casual indifference one might show to a crate of tools left out in the rain.
The silence of the barracks is heavy, broken only by the occasional sob. They are trapped in the belly of the Palantine military, a machine that doesn't care about their names, their homes, or their "human rights." As the eighth day ends, the transformation is nearly complete. They aren't just Earthlings anymore. They are the "Carcasses" Aguilar promised they would be—hollowed out, reassembled, and waiting to be used.