Industrial Cthulhu: Starting as an Island Lord

Richard was forty-one this year. He had been an Extraordinary for over a decade, and had worked as a doctor even longer—more than twenty years.  

Over those years, he had seen all kinds of people, from refugees whose lives were as cheap as weeds, to noble lords who held great power.  

And he had always believed one thing: there was only one true illness in this world—poverty.  

But poverty wasn’t a real disease. No medicine could cure it.  

It was precisely for this reason that he gave up trying to save the world through medicine and instead threw himself into the path of the *Moths Chasing Fire*. Before he realized it, many years had passed.  

Today, however, he suddenly realized that perhaps he had been too shallow.  

Besides poverty, there might also be madness.  

The world said the *Moths Chasing Fire* were mad, but Richard, as their acting chief, knew better than anyone whether that was true.  

The *Moths Chasing Fire* were not insane—  

The one who was mad… was the Lord.  Richard was a doctor. When he found out that the heart medication on this island could explode, he had a bad feeling.  

When Hughes said he wanted to *stuff a steam engine inside the human body*, Richard thought the Lord had finally gone insane.  

It wasn’t surprising. Those factories on land, which devoured pollution and spat out steel; those *Celestial Behemoths* in the sky, blotting out the sun, painted with ferocious fangs—anyone would lose their mind seeing such things.  

But after Hughes finished explaining, Richard felt that perhaps… it was *he* who was insane—  

Because somehow, he felt the idea… made sense.  

「The flesh and steel would reject one another, unable to truly fuse. But a *Shell* wouldn’t. These bizarre bodies don’t die, but they’ve also never truly lived.」  

「Pollution harms the human body because it’s alive—this incomprehensible, strange substance corrodes the soul until the entire body becomes a puddle of rot. But a *Clamorer* can suppress it, making it as lifeless as the dead.」  

「If you really shoved a steam engine into a human body, even an Extraordinary couldn’t bear the burden. But the steam engine can exert force and perform labor, taking the burden off the body.」  

「Everything sounds outrageous—  

But everything also makes perfect sense.」  

「My Lord, I don’t even know how to describe how I feel right now. I think I’ve gone mad. How can something this terrifying possibly work—yet my rational mind *wants* to try it.」  

Richard’s expression twisted uncomfortably. He was a methodical man by nature, and his instinct was to reject the idea. But deep within his soul, the inquisitive nature of a *Moth Chasing Fire* kept him from speaking the refusal out loud.  

It was too bizarre.  

Too insane.  

And far, far too interesting.  

He looked like a madman wrestling with himself.  

Finally, he removed his hat, pressed it to his chest, and bowed slightly, his voice trembling:  

「My Lord… Please, allow me to lead this research. Among the *Moths Chasing Fire*, no one understands the human body and *Shells* better than I do.」  

Hughes nodded in satisfaction. To be honest, all he had was a rough idea. Whether it could really work, or how far it could go, depended on the opinions of professionals.  

Seeing how excited Richard looked, Hughes knew it was promising.  

And in his opinion, this direction held immense potential.  

At its best, it might be the prototype of *mechas*; at the very least, it would be an ultra-premium version of an exoskeleton.  

You had to understand—  

The biggest limitation of modern exoskeletons was energy. Powering servomotors had always been the bottleneck. Either you carried a massive battery, or you charged for five hours and ran for one minute.  

But Hughes had bypassed the technical bottleneck by starting with a *result*—  

Using the body of a *Clamorer* as a base, then adding external mechanical components.  

This drastically reduced design complexity. Even with the technology of this era, it wasn’t out of the question.  

As for how to stuff a *Clamorer* into a *Shell*, Hughes had faith in the abilities of the *Moths Chasing Fire*.  

These people had already turned summoning Heretical Gods into a pollution-cleansing tool—  

Adding parts to a *Shell*? That was basically their specialty.  

The only thing Hughes worried about was whether what they came up with would be too *mind-shattering*.  

After all, this group always operated in two modes—either eerily quiet (rare), or *something massive explodes* (frequent).  

「I’ll leave it to you, Mr. Richard. Once Monica wakes up, I’ll have her work with you. She’s an expert in summoning Machine Souls. You’ll handle the mechanical part on your own.」  

The *Moths Chasing Fire* were deeply fascinated with machinery. People like Chloe, who focused on forbidden history, and Richard, who specialized in medicine, were rare. Most of the heretical researchers among the *Moths* had thrown themselves into mechanics and chemistry.  

Chemistry didn’t even need explaining. Hughes had long given up trying to control their obsession with explosive yield.  

Castel Island was crawling with *yield enthusiasts*.  

Talk about battle tactics, and they’d talk about explosive yield. Who knew where they even learned this from?  

Maybe that’s why the island’s bombs were especially powerful—  

A side effect of their influence.  

Their fascination with machinery, though, had caught Hughes by surprise.  

And it wasn’t just the *Moths*. Other advanced apprentices were just as obsessed.  

Those towering metal machines, the roaring factories—  

It was as if they had a natural pull on them.  

Sometimes, when the workers got off shift, they’d take a few bottles of sweet fruit wine and sit beside the idle machines to chat and drink—  

Just like how people in later generations would go camping.  

Hughes once asked them why.  

The workers couldn’t explain it either. They scratched their heads for a while and finally said, 「The vibe.」  

Vibe, in a damn factory?  

This was Hughes’ blind spot.  

As a modern man, he’d grown up seeing these massive machines—they were just part of the world to him.  

But for these workers, who were once fishermen and farmers, these iron beasts were things *they* had built, piece by piece.  

They mined the ore, smelted the steel, assembled the parts—  

The sense of accomplishment and belonging was something a transmigrator like him could never truly understand.  

When a person starts to ponder the meaning of life, and actually finds an answer—  

That answer becomes as important as life itself.  

Hughes didn’t fully understand, but he could tell—  

The way these workers looked at the machines, it was like they were staring at treasure.  

After Hughes left, Richard took a notebook from the cabinet.  

A brand-new one.  

He wasn’t someone who cared much for ceremony. His experimental notes were usually scattered everywhere. But this time, he prepared his record seriously.  

Richard had a hunch—  

This thing he was about to do would change the fate of many people.  

The refugees whose lives were as cheap as grass…  

The poor who writhed in pain…  

The silhouettes that once knelt before him, begging.  

They were all ghosts of the past, haunting every one of his studies, every sleepless night.  

But now—  

Maybe he wouldn’t be so helpless anymore.  

Frail flesh could be saved… with steel.  

Richard pressed his lips together, opened the notebook, and stepped up to the dissection table—  

Like a soldier picking up his weapon.  

If the battlefield of a poet was the tip of a pen,  

A chef’s battlefield was the stove,  

An artist’s was the tavern—  

Then the dissection table… was his battlefield.  

Studying medicine could not save the world—  

But perhaps, with a steam engine, it could.