Season 3 chapter 78
The Ballistic Test
The worker stood in the grimy courtyard, the massive, steam-pressurized Stone Assault Rifle resting perfectly against his bruised shoulder. His sharp eyes scanned the factory grounds for a suitable target to demonstrate the weapon's raw ballistic capacity.
Kniya's eyes immediately lit up with unhinged, highly destructive CEO energy. He aggressively pointed a finger toward the edge of the loading dock.
"Hey, you! See that car?" Kniya ordered loudly, pointing directly at the pristine, heavily armored corporate steam-sedan that Filoska and Salesh had literally just parked. "Shoot at this car! Hit the front!"
Filoska's eyes widened in sheer, unadulterated horror.
"Wait! No! Stop, don't—!" Filoska shrieked, lunging forward.
CLACK-BOOOOM!
The worker didn't hesitate for a single microsecond. He pulled the heavy iron trigger. A massive, hyper-compressed blast of steam erupted from the rifle's cylinders. A heavy stone tore through the air at terrifying velocity and slammed point-blank into the hood of the corporate sedan.
KRA-CRASH!
The damage was absolutely catastrophic. The heavy armor plating of the bonnet completely buckled, violently ripping off its hinges and flying into the air as the engine hissed out a massive cloud of black smoke. The pristine luxury car was instantly reduced to smoking, twisted scrap metal.
Kniya stared at the smoking wreckage, his jaw dropping in pure awe. "Oh, wow. That is incredibly powerful."
Filoska stood entirely frozen, staring at the shredded remains of her transport. A terrifying, murderous shadow fell over her face. Slowly, she turned her head to look at Kniya.
The Ketchup Casualty
"You absolute fucking idiot!" Filoska roared at the top of her lungs.
Without a single ounce of hesitation, Filoska wound up her leg and delivered a massive, full-force kick directly into Kniya's stomach.
"OOF!" Kniya violently gasped, flying backward and crashing hard into the dusty factory concrete.
Filoska immediately marched over to him, raising her fists to deliver an absolute executive beatdown. "I just got that sedan cleared from the corporate garage! Why the fuck would you tell him to shoot our own car?!"
But Kniya, being the absolute master of shameless survival tactics, immediately deployed his ultimate street-level defense mechanism. While scrambling backward on the dirt, he frantically reached into his inner coat pocket and pulled out a small, crumpled plastic packet of red fast-food sauce.
In one seamless motion, Kniya bit the top off the packet, squeezed the red sauce directly into his mouth, and violently spit it out across his own chin.
"AGGHHH!" Kniya wailed theatrically, violently coughing and clutching his chest as he rolled on the concrete. "Oh my god! I am coughing up my internal organs! I am bleeding out! The kick was too lethal!"
Filoska stopped, staring down at him with an expression of pure, soul-deep disgust. She could literally smell the cheap tomatoes.
"Are you fucking kidding me, Kniya?!" Filoska shrieked, kicking him in the shin. "That is literally street-vendor ketchup! Get up, you pathetic idiot!"
"No! It is my life force leaving my body!" Kniya whined loudly, refusing to drop the act. He desperately looked over toward his best friend, who was casually leaning against a rusted generator. "Malesh! Malesh, help me! I am dying! You can clearly see what Filoska did to me! She is beating me to death! Please help me!"
Malesh smoothly adjusted his tailored cuffs, looking down at his bleeding business partner with a completely flat, unyielding deadpan stare.
"I am not going to help you, Kniya," Malesh stated coldly. "It was entirely because of your own foolishness. You literally pointed at our own escape vehicle and ordered an artillery strike on it. It was your absolute idiocracy. What can I even say for that? You are just paying the price. You are not a little baby."
A slow, deeply malicious smirk spread across Malesh's face.
"Huh huh," Malesh let out a slow, incredibly evil, satisfied laugh. "Enjoy the concrete."
Kniya instantly stopped coughing up ketchup, glaring at his best friend with pure betrayal. "Oh, you absolute idiot."
The Fisluation Researcher
Realizing the fake blood trick had completely failed, Kniya wiped the cheap red sauce off his chin with his sleeve and casually stood back up, acting as if he hadn't just been screaming for his life five seconds ago.
He dusted off his tailored coat and walked directly up to the worker, who was still casually holding the massive Stone Assault Rifle.
"Okay, jokes aside," Kniya interrogated, crossing his arms. "You created a highly pressurized, perfectly rifled gun out of nowhere. Who the hell are you? How are you able to create such a magnificent thing from raw scrap? Are you some kind of underground engineer or a black-market gun manufacturer?"
The worker lowered the rifle, wiping the remaining factory soot from his forehead.
"Well, you have mistaken me," the worker replied smoothly. "I am absolutely not an engineer or a gun manufacturer. By profession, I was a Fisluation researcher."
Salesh raised an eyebrow, stepping closer. "Fisluation? Wait, you mean that weird, highly unstable sand mineral?"
"Yeah," the worker nodded calmly. "I studied a lot about this mineral. I wanted to have a deep, extended research career in this field, but the government completely refused to approve my grants. People just think it is a common sand that becomes incredibly slippery when you pour water on it, exactly as the name suggests. But it is not like that at all. It is a really, really powerful fuel and energy source. We can develop massive things from this, but no one is realizing it. It is a highly critical mineral. I was dedicating my life to researching its thermal outputs."
Salesh scoffed, entirely skeptical of the claim. "You are telling me that Fisluation is actually useful for heavy industry? I don't believe in this. It's a literal novelty mineral."
"Yeah, normal people cannot believe this, just like you," the worker shrugged, completely unbothered by the doubt. "But it is really, really useful."
The Casual Tragedy
Malesh narrowed his dark eyes, his pragmatic baseline analyzing the massive discrepancy in the man's story.
"I am not getting this thing," Malesh deadpanned flatly. "You are clearly an advanced researcher. You were developing highly complex energy theories, and you literally just built a masterpiece of mechanics out of scrap iron. So why the fuck are you working here as a manual laborer getting beaten with a leather belt? What was the event that caused this?"
The worker leaned against his stone rifle, his expression remaining completely chill and conversational. He looked like a guy casually explaining what he ate for breakfast.
"Well, it is because of the reason that I had taken a massive federal loan for my advanced university studies," the worker explained normally. "And when I finally graduated and got into the real job market, I was entirely unable to pay off my loan because of this massive civil turmoil going on across the country. The economy crashed."
He paused, shrugging his shoulders lightly.
"So, because I defaulted on the debt, my land got seized, my house got completely sold out by the bank, and my parents formally cut all their ties with me," he continued, a completely relaxed smile on his face. "I was totally stranded. I had to sell literally everything I owned just to survive, and now I am still working in this shithole factory just to repay the remaining interest on my loan, which is basically eating my entire life. So yeah, my life is kind of bad."
Kniya, Malesh, Salesh, and Filoska stared at him in absolute silence.
The guy had just described his entire life being utterly destroyed, his family abandoning him, and falling into literal corporate slavery, all with the exact same emotional tone as someone returning a slightly oversized shirt to a department store.
"Well, whatever the fuck it is, I honestly don't care," the worker casually added, waving his hand. "My life is just like that. God has chosen this specific path for me, and I don't give a single fuck about this thing. I just go to work."
The Fisluation Limitation
Filoska aggressively rubbed her temples, trying to process the absolute whiplash of his trauma-dumping.
"Okay…" Filoska sighed, attempting to steer the conversation back to reality. "You are saying that you developed this advanced Fisluation research. But we don't fully believe you yet. Why haven't you got any corporate job related to this field? Have you actually created anything useful before this gun? Because claiming you are some kind of rogue energy genius requires verified, physical proof."
The worker leaned against his heavy stone rifle, his expression remaining perfectly chill.
"Honestly? I have never developed anything physically related to Fisluation," the worker admitted casually. "It is really, really expensive, and the government hoards it. I never got my hands on enough raw material to actually build a working Fisluation prototype."
Kniya frowned, crossing his arms. "So you are just a theorist?"
"No," the worker corrected smoothly. "I couldn't get Fisluation, so I decided to make our traditional fuel perform much, much better. I created a small Mataenium-style reactor. Like a mini power plant."