The door burst open and a red faced angry boss burst in, “What the hell are you all doing in here? Get back to work!”

The boss was usually a chill person but with his superiors breathing down his neck he had a certain level to meet otherwise his neck would be on the chopping board, quite literally.

“Hey boss, we are just doing our martial arts lessons. We will be back at work soon, don’t worry.”

“Don’t worry? Don’t worry! How can I not worry? If all 650 of you stop working for only an hour or two we lose over 18 million kilograms of product. If only 50 of you took time off then fine but all of you? It can’t happen. I’ll lose my head if the superiors saw this. Not only would I lose my head but some of you may lose yours too.”

Gulp, their throats seemed to have choked up.

“Okay, okay…. I have a solution, how about this? We have rotations, 50 today, 50 tomorrow, 50 the next day, so on and so forth. We will go in alphabetical order, that way it’s easy to manage and everyone gets a turn.”

Lucif cringed as he said this but he had to, or else he would face losing his dojo all together. His daily profit would drop from $6000 to $500. You could almost see his soul leaving his body.

The rest left but the money stayed in his account, they just wouldn’t have to pay for their first lesson. He started teaching and the 50 remaining beginner martial artists were like hawks watching his every move. It made him feel slightly uncomfortable having so many powerful super humans staring down at him, memorizing his every move.

Their progress was simply unimaginable, in only a single lesson they had already memorized the introductory karate phase and were ready for the second wave of learning but time was up and they headed back to work. “You know kid, you are a real prodigy. These moves look easy but they are actually quite hard to perform.”

‘I’m a prodigy? No, your fathers a prodigy, your whole damn families a prodigy!’

Lucifer wiped the sweat off his cheeks, ‘These guys are real monsters. If I were to grade them now they would already be able to earn their first belt, their rate of learning, memorization and application is at the level beyond prodigy. Luckily I have mastered 32 martial arts. Even at this speed it should still take them two years to master them all.’

After that he went back and continued his work.

2 weeks passed in the blink of an eye. Today was payday and he could finally see how much he had earned over this month.

Tick, tick, tick… It slowly loaded up and everyone’s names appeared on the board.

“Larry, Lebron, Lennox, Livy…. Dah, dah, dah.. Ah, there my name is.”

“$29,690… Add on the $800 we found on the guards and I’m still $10,000 short. Shit, I only made around $3000 from the gold, damn. This will be harder than I thought.” Lucif clicked his tongue. He actually expected it to be a bit more. After all, he worked so damn hard over the last few days.

‘To make another 10K will take 3 or more months, and that’s only if I can find more gold. School starts in February, that’s two months from now. I’ll have to figure something else out. At this rate it will take too long. If only my fingers weren’t broken then we wouldn’t be in this mess.’

As he thought some more he realized another problem, if he continued to fight the guards he would break even more fingers. He needed something like a metal claw to protect his hands but where would he get one of those?

After he got his pay card he walked outside, tonight the moon was shining bright and lit up the entire area. As he looked out he saw a plume of white smoke on their mountain. Usually the night was dark and he never saw it before or else he never bothered to look but tonight it was in full view.

“Hey, what’s that white smoke over there on top of the mine?” He quickly asked one of the workers before the left.

“That? Ah, it’s the blacksmiths quarters. They make components for the UCA’s spaceships and replacement parts.”

“Are they able to make anything else?”

“The old man who runs the place likes making swords. He’s not just a world renowned smith, he’s practically known all over the Universe. It’s quite sad to see a once great man working like a dog here in the mines.”

“H..how can he make swords when there is a ban on weaponry? Wouldn’t the UCA kill him?”

“Haha, kid… What’s a sword going to do? You can’t bring a knife to a gun fight. The swords are sharp but can they penetrate through the powerful defenses of the punishment squad? In the right hands they could but on the planet there are probably no more than a hundred who could exert over 50 tons of pressure. Meanwhile there are over 1,000,000 guards on this planet. Even a fool can see you’re fighting a losing battle. So they lose a few guards? Big deal, they wouldn’t even care, life is nothing to them. Look at what they have made us? We are all humans yet we are treated like this.”

‘Hah, so that’s why no one cared when I killed the guards. But why did they react so viciously when Eve stole a supplement box? Something’s not adding up here.’

Lucif decided to make his way up the mountain and check it out. If he wanted a claw then he needed a smith to make it for him. How much would it cost? How long would it take? There was only one way to find out.

A few moments later he came around and was met with a big dip. The mountain suddenly opened up and in the middle was a bunch of buildings all pumping smoke clouds. The sounds of tinging could be heard as hammers smashed against iron and steel.

“It’s done, drop it in the delivery box and grab some more Iron.”