"What did you say?!" Vi couldn't help but interject.
"I said, I actually admire Silco. It's a stroke of luck that the people of Zaun finally got a leader with brains, an iron fist, and unwavering conviction, instead of those short-sighted, greedy bugs they call Chem-Barons."
Levi repeated himself emphatically, then instinctively covered his ears.
Sure enough, a second later, a familiar string of Zaunite profanity tore through the thick walls with ferocious momentum.
"Fuck your mother! Luck? You call that Zaun's luck? That despicable, ruthless, backstabbing bastard?"
If Silco's rise was a stroke of luck for Zaun...
Then what about her adoptive father, Vander, the former leader whom Silco overthrew and murdered? Was he Zaun's misfortune?
"You're nothing but a blind, brainless piece of toilet paper! The only thing you're good for is licking that dog's asshole!" Vi cursed, boiling with rage.
"Calm down," Levi replied in a low voice. "I mean that compared to the other Chem-Barons, Silco is actually pretty good."
"Since you're from Zaun too, you should know exactly what kind of trash those Chem-Barons are, right?"
Levi had analyzed this before.
These Chem-Barons represented Zaun's most backward relations of production. They only wanted to perpetually rely on Zaun's cheap labor to supply Piltover with low-value-added minerals, chemical raw materials, and mechanical parts, all just to scrape together a few meager crumbs.
In reality, they were economic vassals managing Zaun on behalf of Piltovan capital—Piltover's hounds wearing Zaunite skin.
Thus, Piltover's business owners ate the meat, Zaun's Chem-Barons drank the broth, Piltovan citizens got the leftovers, and the people of Zaun served as the ingredients.
Therefore, the vast majority of Chem-Barons, despite claiming to be Zaunites and cursing the Pilties, had absolutely no desire to actually fall out with the lords of Piltover.
"Don't assume that just because the Chem-Barons are Zaunites, or because a few of them occasionally lead a rebellion against Piltover, they are enemies of the Piltovan business owners. On the contrary, from a class perspective, they are true friends."
"So you should understand just how special Silco is, right?"
"He could have easily compromised and cooperated with Piltover. He could have comfortably entrenched himself above the people of Zaun, sucking their blood alongside the Piltovan lords and living like a local emperor."
"But Silco's ambitions don't lie there."
His goal has always been singular: to achieve independence and freedom for Zaun.
Based on that conviction alone, he is already several dimensions above those parasitic Chem-Barons.
"What... what nonsense are you spouting!" Vi retorted through gritted teeth. "I know Silco. He's a ruthless, unscrupulous snake!"
"All that talk about 'for Zaun'—I can see right through it! He just wants to use the excuse of rebelling against Piltover to tie all of Zaun to his war chariot, using Zaunite blood to fulfill his own ambitions!"
Under the right circumstances, those words would hold some truth.
But not in today's Zaun.
Preaching about the dangers of nationalism in a semi-colony still suffering brutal oppression from its suzerain state was like advising a malnourished person to eat less meat, eggs, and milk to avoid obesity.
"Vi, you're not wrong. Silco is using the people of Zaun. He's using the slogan 'for Zaun' to trick them into boarding his war chariot and bleeding for his ambitions."
"But if he didn't do that, would the people of Zaun not be bleeding?"
"If they don't board that chariot, where else can they go?"
"Where? The black mines? The chemical plants? To serve the Chem-Barons and Piltovan lords as industrial consumables with an average life expectancy of less than thirty years?!"
"And then irresponsibly leave behind a few orphans before they die, so the next generation, and the generation after that, can die in Zaun's stinking gutters just like them? So their corpses can be sold to chem-shops, not even leaving behind an intact body?"
Levi's barrage of questions left Vi completely unable to retort.
The people of Zaun had long reached the point where hanging themselves with a noose would be easier than continuing to live. If they didn't rebel now, were they just supposed to sit around and wait for death?
Even though Silco had his ambitions and his ideological limitations, he was, at the very least, a rebel.
"No..." Vi's momentum gradually weakened.
But she still couldn't agree with Levi's praise for Silco. "It... it won't work."
"What Silco is doing now isn't something Zaunites haven't tried before. We've tried many times, but every single time, the result... it just ends up like Vander's failure on the canal bridge ten years ago. It just makes everyone bleed for nothing."
Vi sighed deeply.
Her parents had sacrificed their lives in that failed armed uprising ten years ago.
She had watched her parents die right in front of her. She had seen the ground littered with corpses that hadn't even lost their warmth, the pungent white smoke, the blinding red blood. Blood had stained almost the entire bridge.
At such a young age, Vi had already profoundly experienced the consequences of rebellion.
"You're afraid," Levi pointed out, piercing right through her thoughts.
"B-Bullshit!" Vi slammed her fist against the wall in humiliated anger, producing a dull thud. "I just don't want to see Zaunites engage in this kind of pointless rebellion and throw their lives away for nothing!"
"And that is exactly where Silco is smarter than Vander."
"He knows that Zaun's overall strength is inferior to Piltover's, so he has been constantly accumulating power and making preparations in the dark, rather than acting blindly on emotion."
"Shimmer. You know about this stuff, right?"
The Shimmer potion was the trump card Silco had prepared for his grand cause of independence.
This tyrannical drug, which could drastically enhance human physical functions in a short period, could help Zaunites barely bridge the absolute gap in strength between them and Piltover.
With this stuff, defeating the Pilties was no longer just wishful thinking.
Silco not only possessed a rebellious spirit, but he had also produced a viable plan for rebellion, and he had been executing it consistently for years.
"He has a goal, an organization, and a guarantee of martial force. Moreover, he knows how to assess the situation, accumulate strength, and bide his time. Silco's performance is better than any rebel in Zaun's history."
"I think he might actually pull it off this time."
Levi gave Silco a rather favorable evaluation.
"No, impossible!" That demon who had destroyed her family once again was going to become the hero who led Zaun to independence?
Vi simply couldn't stomach the thought.
Yet she couldn't refute Levi's well-reasoned analysis at all.
As a rough Zaunite tomboy, Vi was much better at letting her fists do the talking. But separated by different prison cells, she couldn't exactly throw a punch first and "exchange opinions" with Levi while beating him up.
So, Vi could only mutter in agony, "No, he can't do it! Zaunites have always just thrown their lives away for nothing... Whether it's Vander or Silco, this kind of thing has happened too many times before!"
"Well..." Seeing that the time was ripe, Levi steered the conversation deeper. "Actually, Zaun's past rebellions haven't been complete failures."
"Huh?" Vi actually listened intently and raised a doubt. "What do you mean? After all these years, Zaunites haven't even managed to cross the border canal once. Can you really call that a success?"
"Of course it doesn't count as a success, but our numerous rebellions have indeed played some positive roles."
"Positive roles?"
Pah! What positive roles?
Having rebelled so many times over the past 200 years, had the lives of Zaunites improved for even a single day?
"The lives of Zaunites haven't improved, but..."
"The lives of Piltovans have."
Levi gave a shockingly perplexing answer.
Then he asked, "Vi, do you think Piltovans live well?"
"Of course."
"Then why do they live well?"
"Do Piltovan commoners live well because they are inherently smarter, more capable, and more creative than Zaunites? Because of some great and noble Piltovan national character?"
Of course not.
Everyone knew that Zaunites were more hardworking, more capable, and more favored by employers than Piltovans.
Then why did Piltovan commoners live so much better than Zaunites? Why, even when doing the exact same job, were Piltovan salaries significantly higher than those of Zaunites?
"Why else?" Vi furrowed her brows. "Because the Pilties are their own people."
"Isn't it perfectly normal for the Piltovan lords to pay their own people a little more?"
"No, that's not normal at all." Levi couldn't help but laugh.
"Vi, do you really think the great plutocrats of Piltover just have too much money and too kind a heart? That they treat Piltovan commoners as 'their own people,' and that's why they give them such good benefits and high salaries?"
"That's not it—"
"The good lives of the Piltovans were actually forged by the bloody rebellions of the Zaunites, time and time again!"