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

​The silence that fell over the audience chamber following Lobrecht’s arrival was not a peaceful one.

​It was a suffocating silence. A toxic quiet born when mortal enemies, labeled traitors, and faction leaders were forced to breathe the same air, each carrying the crushing weight of their own truths.

​At the head of the table, Anneliese remained frozen. Her hands, which had been trembling just seconds ago, were now terrifyingly still, clasped so tightly over her stomach that her knuckles had turned white. Her pale blue eyes hadn’t strayed from Lobrecht for even a fraction of a second.

​”Archbishops,” Anneliese’s voice finally shattered the mute tension. Her tone wasn’t raised. There was no shouting. Yet, the absolute authority woven into her voice left zero room for negotiation. ”Leave us.”

​The first Archbishop—the stout man who had been the most vocal—choked on his own saliva. ”Y-Your Eminence! You can’t possibly—”

​”I can. And I am ordering it.” Anneliese didn’t even bother to turn her head. ”You possess perfectly functioning ears. I will speak with the three of them. Alone.”

​The second Archbishop, the gaunt man with sunken eyes, glared at Lobrecht with a hatred so thick it was almost tangible. ”This man is a sacrilegious traitor erased from the Church’s holy history! He has absolutely no right to breathe the remaining air in this sacred chamber, Your Eminence!”

​”He draws breath in this chamber because I permit it.”

​This time, Anneliese’s gaze shifted. She glared coldly at the Archbishop, unleashing a surge of spiritual pressure that forced the man to reflexively take half a step back. ”Or... do you wish to challenge my decree directly, Archbishop?”

​Gulp. The Archbishop swallowed hard. Cold sweat dripped from his temple.

​The five Archbishops exchanged panicked glances. The youngest among them had already half-turned, opting for the safe route of immediate departure. Meanwhile, the oldest Archbishop—the man with thinning white hair whose face had remained as flat as a board since Orion’s projection played—merely threw a fleeting glance at Lobrecht.

​There were no curses. No sparks of hatred. Just a hollow stare whose meaning was impossibly difficult to read. The old Archbishop then turned around, tapped his staff against the floor, and walked out in total silence. He was quickly followed by his three colleagues, who were still muttering suppressed complaints.

​Thud. Click. The heavy double oak doors were shut tight. The echoing snap of the locking hinges felt excessively loud in the quiet room.

​Now, the grand stage held only four actors. Anneliese. Lobrecht. Roland. And Rianor.

​Anneliese stared intently at Lobrecht. Lobrecht returned the gaze with an unnatural, profound serenity. Standing amidst this thick tension, Roland and Rianor—for the very first time since breaching the Cathedral—felt like absolute fools who had walked into the wrong room.

​”You... haven’t changed much,” Anneliese’s voice flowed incredibly softly, almost like a whisper in the wind. It wasn’t a greeting. It was an honest confession slipping out by accident.

​”Neither have you.” The corners of Lobrecht’s lips lifted ever so slightly, carving a genuinely warm smile. ”Exactly the same as you have always been in my memories.”

​Anneliese lowered her head, avoiding eye contact. Her fingers wrung each other nervously. ”Years without seeing each other... and that is all you have to say to me?”

​”I have already said everything I needed to say to you. Through the blazing battles fought by my forces. And through my presence in this very room.”

​Lobrecht looked at the Holy Maiden with an affection that felt bizarrely tender for a rebel Warlord. ”It’s just that... you’ve always kept your ears closed, Anneliese. You were simply never ready to listen.”

​Roland threw a side-eye at Rianor. Rianor responded with an equally flat glance. Without needing to utter a single sound, the diplomat and the scientist brothers had reached a mutual consensus.

​These two need some privacy.

​Roland took a step back. Rianor followed suit. They slowly retreated into the darkest corner of the vast chamber, giving a wide berth to the two former Arcanum Masters who were busy stirring up decades of painful memories between them.

​However, right as they stepped into the shadows... Rianor’s footsteps abruptly stopped.

​It wasn’t because he was interested in eavesdropping on Anneliese and Lobrecht’s romantic tragedy. It was because of a specific keyword Anneliese had uttered earlier—a phrase that had been bouncing around his skull ever since Orion’s projection turned off.

​A lie.

​If the Church’s historical dogma was fabricated... If Project Legion was what actually saved the world, not the holy ancestors uniting to defeat the demons... If the epic saga of demons and holy heroes was merely a political lie...

​Then what other data has been manipulated all this time?

​Rianor frantically dug into the inner pocket of his coat. His hand whipped out a leather-bound notebook that never left his side—his observation logbook, filled out religiously every single day since their long journey from Eastmarch.

​Flip... flip... He frantically turned the pages.

​”Compass anomaly shifted thirty-four degrees,” Rianor muttered quietly, mostly to himself. His eyes rapidly scanned rows of coordinate data.

​Roland turned in surprise. ”What’s wrong?”

​Rianor acted as if he were completely deaf, ignoring his brother. His fingers continued flipping through pages littered with complex formulas and rough sketches.

​”Back in the Eastmarch plains. The mana compass needle constantly leaned toward the extreme south, rather than pointing to the center of magic in Luminara. At the time, I assumed the hardware was malfunctioning.”

​His intense, rapid-fire muttering brought Anneliese and Lobrecht’s conversation to a grinding halt. Both turned to look at the corner of the room. Rianor had dropped entirely to the marble floor, completely discarding his noble aesthetics, with the logbook splayed wide open on his lap.

​”But it turns out that wasn’t the only pattern.” Rianor bit his lower lip, his hand slamming onto another page.

​”The southern coast. The tragedy of massive sea creature carcasses washing ashore. Their bodies were scorched. But not by ordinary fire. There was a residual radiation energy inside their cells that I couldn’t identify.”

​”Brother, what exactly are you—” Roland stepped forward, trying to intervene.

​”Wait. Don’t break my train of thought.” Rianor held a single index finger in the air, silencing his brother. His eyes were now bulging, glued to the notebook. The fragmented puzzle pieces in his genius mind were violently snapping together.

​”The incident at Driftwood port city,” Rianor continued, the tempo of his speech accelerating dangerously. ”Abnormal infrasonic sound frequencies echoing from the bottom of the oceanic trench. Seawater abruptly boiling in the dead of night. Fishing boats found completely empty. Their wooden hulls were scalding hot, yet the surrounding water temperature remained freezing. Their nets melted without a trace of fire... leaving behind a super-cooled black dust residue that was impossible to wash off.”

​Rianor suddenly snapped his head up. He was no longer looking at the letters on the paper. His gray eyes were now tracking an invisible red thread connecting all those disparate tragedies. The grand pattern.

​”The spatial Gate at the Colosseum... spewed out ten anomalous demons. The Gate in Geisterstadt yesterday... vomited dozens of demons that were significantly larger. Infinitely more savage.”

​Rianor swallowed hard. ”The further the route shifts to the south... the more massive the scale of the radiation anomaly becomes.”

​The scientist slowly rose to his feet. He let his notebook hang open in his faintly trembling hand.

​”Every single anomalous epicenter on this continent... moves in a straight line, converging on one absolute coordinate.” Rianor looked back and forth between Lobrecht and Anneliese. ”The World’s End Mountains. The apocalyptic mountain range at the extreme southern edge of this continent.”

​Anneliese’s face instantly went taut. ”Those lethal mountains mark the absolute edge of the world.”

​”That is exactly the point.” Rianor stared dead into the Holy Maiden’s blue eyes. ”In that projection earlier... Orion, the pilot of Legion Prime, stated that they sealed Satan—the Demon King—in the southern sector. Right behind the walls of that uninhabited mountain range.”

​The name Satan dropped into the room’s atmosphere like a massive boulder hurled into a silent pond. The ripples of sheer terror instantly pierced through the pores of everyone present.

​”Throughout our journey from the North, I’ve been endlessly collecting garbage data without knowing what grand picture I was trying to paint,” Rianor continued, breaking the suffocating silence.

​He snapped his notebook shut with a loud thwack.

​”Before, all that data felt bizarre and isolated. But now...” He looked at them one by one. ”Now I know the connecting thread. And all these scientific calculations... culminate in one absolute conclusion.”

​Anneliese stepped forward, her face radiating extreme severity. ”Orion’s prison seal.”

​Rianor gave a firm nod. ”Correct. That ancient seal is already cracking. Its structural integrity is deteriorating rapidly.”

​The genius scientist laid out his apocalyptic theory. ”The demonic radiation energy from behind that seal has begun to leak out. Small-scale leaks disrupted the compass’s magnetic field. Subsequent leaks annihilated the marine ecosystem. And the massive leak that occurred this week...” Rianor paused, letting the dread set in. ”...provided their demon forces with enough energy to tear open spatial Gates and slip through.”

​A horrifying silence reclaimed the audience chamber once more.

​Anneliese shifted her gaze to Lobrecht. Then to Roland. And finally stopped on Rianor.

​”Why are you revealing this information to me?” Anneliese asked, her voice audibly wavering. ”What is your goal? To force me to believe that the apocalypse is right on our doorstep?”

​”I don’t give a damn whether you choose to believe it or not, My Lady.” Rianor nonchalantly shoved the logbook back into his pocket. ”My job is merely to serve the raw data on the table. The rest... it is up to you to deduce the truth.”

​Roland stepped forward, standing firmly to guard his brother’s flank. He took over the diplomatic reins.

​”However, you must remember, Your Eminence,” Roland stated, his tone calm yet laced with a lethal threat. ”If you decide to turn a blind eye and refuse to believe this data... ensure your mental fortitude is strong enough to bear the responsibility for the millions of Luminaran lives that will be lost.”

​Roland narrowed his eyes. ”Because if our calculations are correct... and your ignorance is wrong...”

​Roland deliberately left the sentence hanging in the air. There was no need to finish it. The horrifying imagination of the consequences was far more effective.

​Anneliese stood rigidly. She stared at the two strange princes from the north standing before her. Behind them, Lobrecht—the man who had once been the axis of her world—stood radiating an aura of eternal tranquility that had always calmed her heart.

​It was too much information. Too fast for her brain to process.

​”I... I need time,” Anneliese whispered hoarsely, her hand unconsciously massaging her temple.

​Lobrecht nodded in deep understanding. ”Unfortunately, our hourglass is running empty, Anneliese. That demonic anomaly at the southern edge will never wait for our mental readiness.”

​”I am acutely aware of that.”

​Anneliese turned her back, walking slowly toward the colossal stained-glass windows in the eastern wing of the chamber.

​Through the colored glass, she could gaze out over the vast expanse of the bleeding Capital of Luminara. The smoke of war was still billowing. And far off on the southern horizon... the silhouette of The World’s End Mountains loomed pitch-black, like the tombstone of the world.

​Lobrecht didn’t push her further. He let the woman find her footing. He simply stood in silence, watching Anneliese’s fragile back.

​Amidst the heartbreaking silence, Anneliese slowly closed her eyes.

​And for the very first time after locking those memories away at the bottom of her soul for decades... she allowed her mind to remember.

​To remember everything. Her sweetest and most bitter memories.

​Right back to how it all began.