As soon as I stepped out of the presentation building, a familiar face jumped into view.
"Ah! Eric! We meet again!"
Her voice was bright, her gesture sweeter than summer lemonade.The ultimate cutie-sexy, armed with a lethal wink — but one wrong move and she'd snap like a rabid dog.That guide girl beamed at me, practically bouncing on the balls of her feet.
Justin, ever the annoying one, elbowed me, eyebrows waggling like he was fifteen.
"Oh... how'd a country boy like you land that cutie?"
"She was the one who led me here earlier," I said flatly."Didn't you have a guide too?"
"Yeah... but mine was like, twice her size.Looked like she could bench-press a truck."
Maybe they already knew you can't keep your hands to yourself around pretty girls and assigned you a bodyguard, I thought, but kept it tucked behind a polite smile.
I turned to the guide, giving just the right nod — friendly, but not overeager.
"Hey, nice seeing you again.What brings you here?"
"I'm actually here to give everyone a factory tour, as the lead guide," she chirped."I was hoping I'd run into you, Eric. Looks like fate wants us tangled together. Ho ho ho~"
If fate's what you call getting shot full of hellfire and dumped into a smelter...
Without that cursed Hellfire Revolver at her hip, maybe her words would've been charming.But today, they sounded like a death sentence.
"Everyone~~ please board the train!"
With a flick of her hand, the train doors hissed open.Not the tiny four-seaters from earlier — this beast could swallow twelve, maybe sixteen souls in one gulp.
We all piled in.The doors whispered shut, and with a low groan, the train shot toward the factory grounds.
"So, Eric," she asked, still bright, "which level did you get assigned to?"
"First level. B Block."
Her face darkened a little.
"B Block... Oh dear.That's the train assembly floor.You've been thrown straight into the grinder."
"What?!"I blinked, dread slithering up my spine.
"I figured building trains and trucks would be rough, but... the worst?"
I sighed, shoulders sagging.
"Back when I was alive, car factories were automated to hell and back.Robots did all the heavy lifting.Please tell me it's the same here?"I asked, clutching a sliver of hope.
She shook her head, almost apologetic.
"Sorry. No automation in Hell's factories.Everything's handmade.One hundred percent by human hands."
Damn it.
The words hit harder than I expected.I pressed her, not willing to let it go.
"But... but look at this train!The tech here's insane!Why no automation?"
She shrugged, a rueful smile tugging at her lips.
"Because labor's infinite here.Why build machines when you've got an ocean of workers, desperate for something — anything — to do?"
She tilted her head, thoughtful.
"There's close to five hundred million people working here."
"F-Five hundred million?!"
I practically screamed.
Jack, ever the simpleton, blinked wide-eyed.
"Five hundred million?That's... a lot, right?"
"God, you're hopeless," Justin muttered, already warming up for a lecture."The whole damn U.S. barely scrapes past three hundred million.And this factory?It's got almost twice that, packed wall to wall."
Jack's jaw dropped.
"No way... How do that many people even fit in one building?"
The guide laughed softly.
"That's why the Main Factory is the second biggest structure in Hell, right after the Power Plant.You'll see.You're about to have your mind blown."
Right on cue, the train slowed, creeping into the belly of the beast — the first level of the factory.
It hesitated under a flickering red light.Then, as green flared, it glided forward.
"Whoa... This place is massive..."
First stop: A Block — where the trains were born.
Trains longer than subway cars snaked slowly along titanic conveyor belts.At least twenty belts, lined side by side, each a steel river crawling toward some unseen horizon.
The ceiling loomed three stories high, studded with blistering white lights that left nowhere to hide.Everything shone too bright, too raw — like a nightmare you couldn't wake from.
Teams of a hundred workers swarmed over every train car, welding with furious showers of sparks.
Jack's mouth hung open.
"This... This is where they make the thing we're riding in now, right?"
I just nodded, stunned into silence by the scale.
Justin, trying hard not to sound impressed, muttered,
"I've seen some big construction sites back home... but this...This makes them look like kid's playgrounds."
The train rolled on.
We passed belts where smaller parts — gears, bolts, engines — were painstakingly assembled.
Each worker stood shoulder to shoulder, barely enough room to swing an elbow without hitting the next poor soul.Most were middle-aged or older — tough, worn down, but still unbreakable.
But where were the frail ones?The old ones I saw waiting for trial?
"Hey, uh, where are the elderly workers?" I asked the guide quietly.
She hesitated — her first real flicker of doubt.
"Honestly... I'm not sure.But from what I hear, only those strong enough for labor are assigned here.The too-weak... they probably get sent somewhere else."
I thought of the trembling professor.The old woman clutching Jenny's hand.Where had they gone?
The conveyor belts hummed slowly, patiently — as if time itself had thickened into syrup.
No one rushed.No one shouted.
Each hand moved at the same measured, endless pace.
Jack shivered.
"Everyone here... no one's talking.It's creepy."
The guide gave a sad little laugh.
"Yeah... it's always like this.I mean, think about it — most of them have sentences of hundreds, thousands, even tens of thousands of years.You do the same thing, every day, for millennia...Eventually, you stop being a person.You just become part of the machine."
"Tens of thousands of years..." I whispered.
I remembered when I worked at a factory back in life — not even a full year, and I had thought it was unbearable.
Less than a year.And yet I whined like it was the end of the world.
Here?People grind through thousands, even tens of thousands of years.
The weight of that time...
It wasn't the speed of the work that crushed you.It wasn't even the hardship.
It was time itself that broke you down.
I thought back to how I used to complain — about struggling through a mere twenty-some years of life.
And now...I felt ashamed.
Ashamed that I ever dared to think my suffering was enough.
Maybe that's why the living always feel like they're running out of time.
Maybe that's why they never stop running.
After the tour of the first level, we moved on to the second and third.
Levels One through Three were all connected by external trains —you could board right from the platform without ever setting foot outside.
The train we rode slipped out of the first level, skimmed across the outside world, and then climbed back up into the second.
The second and third levels were... familiar.Factories for appliances, televisions — the same industries I remembered from the world of the living.
There was nothing particularly strange about them.Nothing at all.
Except maybe...the way everyone moved.
Slow.Slack.Drained, like ghosts tethered to the assembly line.
Then came the fourth level.
Radios and communication devices.
And when I saw what was waiting there—I lost the words in my mouth.