Reborn as a Hated Noble Family, We Start an Industrial Revolution

​”I-I’m... I’m just a normal mine worker, Sir...”

​Adul’s voice came out in a stutter, sounding almost like the squeak of a trapped mouse. His head was bowed deeply. His soot-stained hands frantically twisted the hem of his own shirt. He didn’t dare meet the eyes of the towering, black-cloaked man before him.

​Inside his chest, his heart was still hammering wildly—thump, thump, thump—exactly like the deafening war drums that had just echoed through the mine shafts.

​”I... I don’t know how to fight, Sir. My hands slip just holding a pickaxe. The foreman always beats me, says I’m clumsy... always too slow...”

​Tears welled up again, burning the edges of his eyes. Adul squeezed his eyes shut, resigning himself to his fate. This mysterious man from the assassination squad would surely be disgusted, disappointed, and leave him to rot here—or worse, put a bullet in his head for being useless.

​However, his expectations missed the mark. The man didn’t draw a weapon. There was no condescending sigh.

​”Do you want your mother to live?”

​The question was delivered flatly, yet it pierced straight into Adul’s gut, hitting far harder than any lash of the foreman’s whip.

​Adul snapped his head up reflexively. His eyes went wide. Tears spilled over, washing away the coal dust on his cheeks. ”Y-Yes...! More than anything else in the world... I want her to live, to eat well, Sir...”

​”Then listen to me very carefully.”

​The man stared straight into Adul’s trembling eyes. His gaze was as cold as ice and as sharp as a predatory eagle. Yet, this time, Adul saw something else behind the killer’s eyes.

​”You and your mother will live a decent life. She will get her medicine. You have my absolute guarantee,” the man said slowly. ”So... what is your answer?”

​Adul froze stiff. Gulp. He swallowed hard.

​His mind spun like a top. Memories of his mother’s pale face flashed before him. The bowls of bland, watery soup every morning. The wet, bloody coughs that shattered the silence of the night, and the meager copper coins that were never enough to afford a single prescription from the city apothecary.

​But this offer was also sheer madness. This cold-faced man was clearly not a wheat merchant recruiter. The job he was offering would undoubtedly be soaked in blood and far deadlier than a cave-in at the iron mines. Maybe he would die tomorrow. Maybe he would never see his mother’s face again.

​But... if he refused, he would rot in this mine until his lungs gave out. His wages would never be enough to buy a whole loaf of bread. And his mother... his mother would slowly waste away on that rickety cot.

​Adul clenched his fists tightly.

​”A-Alright... Sir...” Adul’s voice still shook violently, but for the very first time, there was a sliver of steely resolve in it. ”I... I accept your offer.”

​The man studied him intently for three full seconds, then gave a slow nod. ”A good choice.”

​He straightened his posture. ”My name is Borch. Commander of the Ghost Squad. From this second on, you are a part of my family.”

​Adul gave a rigid, jerky nod. He had no idea what kind of creature a ’Ghost Squad’ was. He was completely blind to what awaited him in the future. But there was one thing he was absolutely certain of: his mother would never cry from hunger again.

​For the first time in his miserable, tragic life... he felt that maybe—just maybe—he could be worth more than a pile of coal dust.

​Iron Hearth.

​Adul’s jaw practically hit the floor. He stood paralyzed in front of the city’s main gates, his eyes bulging like a country bumpkin who had just witnessed a miracle descend from the heavens.

​He hadn’t even dreamt a city like this could exist. The streets weren’t muddy or reeking of horse manure—they were coated in an incredibly smooth, hardened black material. Asphalt, the locals called it. Steel carriages glided effortlessly over it without the whinnying of horses or the ear-piercing screech of wooden wheels.

​Vwuuunggg... Atop high-voltage steel rails, a long metallic carriage zipped gracefully by.

​”Eh?! I-Is that... a carriage moving without horses?!” Adul shrieked hysterically, reflexively stumbling back into a pillar. ”Is that ghost magic, Sir?!”

​The Ghost Squad operative escorting him—a scrawny man with thick-lensed glasses—merely chuckled in amusement. ”Not magic, kid. It’s called a Lightning Rail. Runs on electrical energy extracted from mana. Lord Rianor’s invention. You’ll wrap your head around it eventually.”

​Adul’s shock didn’t wear off even after the sun went down.

​As night embraced the city, he watched the towering metal poles lining the streets. Click. Bzzzt. The glass orbs at their peaks ignited in unison, radiating a brilliant, remarkably stable golden-yellow light. They didn’t flicker in the wind like torches. They didn’t spew stinging black smoke like kerosene lamps.

​”It’s night time... but it’s crazy bright, almost like day...” Adul whispered, barely remembering to breathe.

​”Mana-electric streetlamps. Also Lord Rianor’s handiwork.”

​That name again. Lord Rianor. Ever since Adul set foot in this Northern border territory, that name had been echoed like a sacred mantra. And every time the name was spoken, people’s expressions and tones shifted into a state of absolute reverence. Adul began to wonder what kind of god possessed the brain to forge this magical world.

​His curiosity was fully satiated when he was permitted entry into Facility Alpha.

​From the outside, the building looked as cold as a military fortress plated in glass and steel. But the moment he stepped through the doors, Adul felt like he had been transported into another universe. Colossal machines operated autonomously. Copper gears rotated with flawless precision. Hssss... Steam hissed from giant pipes. Crystal monitors projected endless rows of numbers and logarithms that instantly gave his brain a cramp.

​”Is this... where Lord Rianor makes those magics?” he asked, practically voiceless.

​”Yeah. This is his private lab.”

​Adul fell silent, staring at the busily humming machinery. Beneath his awe, a suffocating sense of inferiority crept in. The people here were on a god-like level. While he... was just an illiterate mine boy.

​The days of torture commenced the very next morning.

​Adul had mentally prepared himself for physical abuse. He figured he’d be ordered to haul hundred-kilo ammo crates, dig trap trenches, or scrub blood out of the gutters. But it turned out... the Ghost Squad’s training syllabus defied all logic.

​There were no pickaxes. There were no whips. There was only the hell of precision.

​THWUMP!

​”Focus on your breathing, you idiot!” his instructor barked—a buzz-cut woman with a bullet scar on her cheek. ”You need to read the wind currents before your finger even grazes the trigger! The wind curves the bullet! Air humidity chokes the projectile’s velocity! If your brain can’t calculate that, you’re just shooting at the damn wind!”

​Adul nodded frantically, though his brain felt like it was going to explode. On his first day of shooting, he failed completely. His bullet missed the target by two meters. The wind, which he thought was dead, was actually blowing a faint draft from the left flank.

​”Pathetic! Run it again until your fingers blister!”

​Then came the real nightmare: Camouflage and Mobility Training.

​Adul was forced to learn how to move without disturbing the air molecules, how to blend into shadows, and how to deceive the naked eye. It was ten times more agonizing than calculating wind trajectory. He had to manipulate his own heart rate to remain totally silent.

​Snap! Adul tripped while trying to step over a dry twig.

​”Are you a ghost soldier or a pregnant buffalo, Adul?!” his instructor roared from atop a tree. ”Never step on your heels! Use the outer edge of your soles! Step as lightly as falling dew!”

​Adul winced, nursing a throbbing ankle. He wanted to protest that his feet were human, not equipped with the soft fleshy pads of a cat. But he swallowed the complaint whole.

​His physical stamina was indeed well above average, thanks to the hellish iron mines. But mastering micro-balance and killer instincts? It drained his sanity. He kept falling, kept getting scraped, kept getting yelled at. But he refused to quit. His legs went numb, and his index finger bled raw from the friction of the trigger.

​”The first week is mental filtration.”

​Borch sat cross-legged next to Adul, who lay gasping for air on a wooden bench in the barracks. The Commander’s face remained as flat as a brick wall. But to Adul, this man no longer looked like the grim reaper.

​”Your report card isn’t any worse than the other recruitment waves,” Borch continued casually. ”Your stamina is highly efficient. You just need time to sharpen your killer instincts.”

​Adul gave an exhausted nod. He chugged water from his canteen. Gulp, gulp. Then, moving faster than his brain could filter, he voiced the most nagging thought in his head.

​”Commander Borch... Duke Lucian, the man who rules this place... what is he like?”

​”Stubborn. Authoritarian. But his eyes are always just. He is a leader born to rule.”

​”And... Lord Rianor. I keep getting haunted by his name in every corner of this city. They say all this metal magic—the horseless carriages, the streetlamps, our weird weapons—they all came from his head?”

​”Rianor Sudrath is the very incarnation of the word genius,” Borch replied quietly, his tone dripping with profound respect. ”Almost one hundred percent of the civilization you’re enjoying here in Iron Hearth... flowed straight out of his mind.”

​Adul fell silent again. He looked down at his own calloused, filthy palms.

​”I... sometimes I feel like I really don’t belong here, Sir,” Adul whispered bitterly. ”All of you... Duke Lucian, Lord Rianor, everyone in the Ghost Squad... you’re all incredible. You have god-tier skills and intellect. And me? I’m just an ex-mine slave. I’m a crybaby. A coward. I have no real value.”

​Borch slowly turned his head. His eagle eyes seemingly peeled back the layers of the desperate boy beside him. A long stretch of silence passed.

​”You’re wrong, Adul,” Borch said, his heavy baritone echoing deep. ”You are hiding something far more terrifying inside.”

​Adul snapped his head up in shock. ”E-Eh? W-What is it, Sir?”

​But Borch refused to spoil nature’s secret. The tall man stood up, lightly patted the top of Adul’s head twice, and walked away down the barrack corridors.

​Adul stared at his Commander’s broad back. He didn’t understand the riddle at all. But for the very first time since he was born into this fleeting world... he felt valued.

​Whoosh...

​The bone-chilling twilight wind slapped his face once more. His memories were brutally sucked back into reality. Back to the black stone courtyard of the Magniora Tower.

​Beside him, Eva lay helpless.

​Adul opened his tear-soaked eyelids.

​Tears still streamed heavily down his cheeks. Snot still clung to his split lip.

​Yet... the rhythm of his heart had changed.

​It was no longer the erratic, panicked thumping of a crybaby waiting for death. This was the heartbeat of someone whose entire life had been relentlessly robbed by fate, finally saying no more.

​Adul stared at Eva’s freezing face. His scraped, trembling hand slowly crept across the asphalt, grabbing the hilt of the dagger Eva had dropped near her fingers.

​His fingers gripped the hilt so tightly his knuckles turned white. The veins in his arms bulged.

​Adul forced his shattered knees to rise. He stood before Selene. Trembling, bleeding, yet his stance refused to yield even a single inch.

​Before him, Selene furrowed her perfect brows. The Water Arcanum Master suddenly sensed an incredibly bizarre anomaly.

​A frequency distortion in the air surrounding Adul. It was incredibly subtle, humming with a high-pitched whine that made the hairs on her neck stand on end.

​”You... what kind of energy is—”

​BZZZT!

​Adul vanished. Lightning Acceleration.

​Sparks of golden-yellow energy exploded wildly, wrapping around his legs and arms. His movement tore through the laws of physics—blindingly fast, terrifyingly precise, and entirely silent without a trace. His speed broke through visual perception.

​Flicker.

​Adul was already standing dead still, directly behind Selene’s back.