Lucif woke up, his body ached and burned. It was clear to see he was still suffering backlash from pulling the trailer. As he looked around he found himself in an unfamiliar room. He slowly got up and walked out the door but his muscles wobbled and almost collapsed.

“Hey kid, you’re awake.” The boss laughed as he saw that Lucifer had woken up.

‘Damn, I passed out on the first day. Am I going to get fired?’ Lucifer couldn’t help but worry because he desperately needed this work.

“Good job, you passed your trial and I’m ready to sign the contract for your full time employment. We get many applicants to this mine and many fail to qualify.” The boss walked around the table as he handed a contract to Lucifer.

“As you noticed our mine mainly consist of abnormals. The work here is hard and laborious, even fit adult normals can barely keep up. The stress often proves to be too much for them but after your work today I can see you are a seed grown from a different tree.”

“Here at MYHO (Mine your heart out) we pay our employees differently. You can turn up to work whenever you want and work whatever hours you want. You are not paid on an hourly rate but on the content of your trailers.”

“Sorry sir, what do you mean by that?” Lucif perked his eyes up and asked quietly.

“Right, I guess Buck never explained this to you. I’m surprised because he never stops talking. Each employee is responsible for their own work, we supply the basics but at the end of the day it is up to you to get the job done. It is also up to you to pick good mining locations.”

“Buck reported that you have potential to deliver at least one trailer of Iron a day. For a trailer of Iron we will pay anywhere from 5 cents a load to 5 dollars a load depending on its quality and quantity. Of course the quantity and concentration varies that’s why you take your trailer to the drop off for inspection. At the drop off your trailer will be weighed and scanned for its contents. After that your pay will be added to your account which you can collect at the end of the month.”

’50 cents a day, that’s $3.50 a week and around $14 a month. Damn, is that all I’m worth?’

“But….Sometimes you will find precious gems, metals, crude oil or other things that are worth more than iron. If you do find those then you will be paid a 1% commission for rare metals, 3% commission for gems and a 5% commission for oil. But don’t even think about trying to sneak gems out, the guards are constantly x-raying the mine exits from space and they shoot to kill.” The smiling expression on his face suddenly turned serious for a second as his indomitable aura was released. Really driving home his point and etching his words into Lucifer’s skull.

“But fear not, I’m not threatening you, I’m just warning you. You are a strong kid; I wouldn’t want to see you losing your life to those scumbags.”

There was anger and indignation in the bosses’ eyes but he quickly hid it from sight. As one of the four Generals he knew the enemy better than anyone and hated them with every fiber of his being.

“Buck registered the trailer you brought back for you. It had a bit of iron with trace elements of Gold. 73 cents was added to your account. After lunch you should go home and recover, don’t worry about working the rest of the day. If you overwork yourself your muscles will tear and we will have to fire you.”

Lucif nodded his head, clasped hands, turned around and left.

He was asleep for 2 hours and had been in the mines for 4 hours. It was already 3 in the afternoon. His sister wouldn’t be home for a few hours and he didn’t know what he should do now.

A strong smell assaulted his nose. It was the most pleasant fragrance he had smelt ever since he arrived on this highly polluted planet. He was use to smelling burning tar so this was a pleasant change from the usual smells he had grown accustom too.

He followed the smell and found himself in a dining hall where 600+ miners were sitting down and eating. What they had on their plates were steaming hot steaks, chicken, pork, eggs, mashed potatoes and even hot coco.

‘No way, these guys are eating like kings.’ Lucifer was visually stunned. That’s when he felt a hand land on his shoulder.

“Hey kid, you’re awake already? Good, just in time for lunch. How did you find the food hall? Hah, you little dog. You followed your nose didn’t ya?”

Lucifer turned around and sure enough the person who greeted his eyes was the old bastard.

“Hey old man, how much is it for these meals?”

“It’s free. Well, mostly free. For every $5 worth of materials you mine, you will earn a bonus meal ticket which is added on to your account.”

They walked to the order line where they could get their food. The servers were quite efficient workers. They served their customers incredibly quick. It could be seen that even the cooks were super human.

“Buck, just the usual then?”

“Yeah just the usual, can I check how many meal tickets I have left?”

“After this you will 275,360.”

“Right, can you also get my friend here the same as me but charge my account. He’s a new worker and has yet to get his I.D.”

“Sure Buck.” The lady went to the back and 30 seconds later brought back 20 black plastic boxes that felt warm to the touch. She split them into two piles, gave one pile to Buck and one to Lucif.

They quickly made their way to a nearby table, the stack was quite high and it easily towered over Lucif’s head as he held them in his arms. The old man didn’t wait around and instantly opened one of the plastic black boxes. Inside were 3 chicken legs, potato gravy and chicken salted chips.

It was a meal that could simply make one go crazy. In the side of the plastic packet was a hot fizzy coco can, he pulled it out and opened it.

Click

The sound of fizz venerated the air as a brand new can was opened. “Now don’t get any ideas kid, I’m only paying for your meals today because you don’t have your I.D yet.”

“Don’t be a stingy old man. You have quarter of a million meal tickets and you even lavishly buy 10 meals at a time! 250K meal tickets, doesn’t that mean you have at least 1.25 million dollars in savings?”

“Stingy old man? What happened to Venerable Elder huh? You two faced brat. Abnormals require a hundred times the energy to work and the materials we bring up are sometimes worth hundreds and thousands of dollars. For me this is only the first course, after this I’ll eat another 20 meal boxes before going back to work. All us abnormals save our meal tickets for when we retire, once we stop working we won’t be able to buy food but these meal tickets can be used to order food from any UCA provision station in the galaxy. And the 2.8 million I have in savings still falls short of the 5 million I need to free my daughters ya’ darn kid.”

Lucif looked down and stopped talking.

‘Damn this world is strange and this old man’s words are ruthless.’ In the past no one dared talk back to him because he was feared by all, it was an interesting change of pace. But these meal tickets were like a heavenly blessing. 50 cents a day is next to nothing, but these meal tickets are worth many times that.

His eyes glowed as he stared at the food that lay in front of him.