Industrial Cthulhu: Starting as an Island Lord

The Prince occasionally stood alone on the deck, watching the scenery, sometimes even talking to himself. This was no secret.

Ever since the last time he reached an agreement with Hughes, the Prince could hardly wait to board the ironclad and return to Castel.

The reconstruction and reorganization of Blood Harbor had not even begun. Refugees needed comfort, and the disaster had to be assessed. By reason, the Prince should not have left his territory at this time, yet he still chose to do so.

He simply gave brief instructions, then tossed all the work to Galahad and the bureaucrats he had promoted himself. Without even bringing attendants, he boarded the ironclad.

Hughes could not tell if this was courage or recklessness. If he had even the slightest intention toward the Duke of Tis, he could have made him die inexplicably in Castel without leaving a trace.

Later, Hughes thought about it and guessed that perhaps it was precisely because he refused to swallow Blood Harbor that he inexplicably gained the Prince’s trust. Who knew what went on in the mind of this man who always acted in such unexpected ways?

The Holy Guard on the ship deliberately kept their distance from the Prince. After all, this was Castel’s vessel; if they got too close, it would easily look like surveillance.

But the Prince often took the initiative to approach the Holy Guard. Whenever there was a chance, he would chat with them, and sometimes he would even borrow the Holy Text to read.

He never talked about sensitive topics, nor asked about weapons or equipment. Instead, he showed great interest in Castel’s system.

Hughes had not adopted the Empire’s civil official system on the island. The thirteen-level civil official system was already extremely advanced in this era, as it gave people from the lower strata a path upward.

But it was still not advanced enough, because it had not completely removed nobles from the bureaucracy.

The thirteen-level civil official system ultimately left a path open for the nobility.

Although it was never openly stated, nobles were able to exploit all sorts of loopholes. For instance, civil officials above the eighth level were eligible to be awarded titles. So how could one get promoted from the eighth to the seventh level?

Simply waiting with seniority was not enough—one had to achieve results.

Yet civil officials at that level had no right to independently manage affairs. They were never given work that could allow them to achieve such results. It was a dead loop.

But nobles were different. Within the system, they could help one another. What was a wall as high as heaven for commoners could be resolved by a noble with just a flick of the finger.

Over time, aristocratic clans would inevitably seize control of the Empire’s power once again.

Why not solve this? Was it because the Empress did not want to?

In fact, the Empress deliberately left those loopholes. It was simple: her foundation of rule was the nobility. Without them, no one would carry out her orders. If she did not leave the nobles a path in exchange for their cooperation, even the civil official system could not have been implemented.

The Empire was the nobles’ country, not the commoners’. She was the nobles’ Empress. Giving the people even a single path upward was already the greatest compromise from the nobility.

As long as she sat on the throne, she could never solve this problem.

Unless everything was torn down and rebuilt.

And the reason she had been able to kill off all the nobles in Blood Harbor was precisely because there, she was no longer constrained by such limitations. The thirteen-level civil official system had already trained a large number of lower-level bureaucrats with administrative experience. Without nobles in management, these people could still keep the territory running.

Of course, this civil official system had built today’s Blood Harbor, but it also shackled its future.

The Empress had been willing to fake her own death to start anew. Naturally, she would not allow the nobility to seize power again. But how exactly should the system be reformed? Even she did not know. This was something that had never happened in history.

Castel, however, was different.

From the very beginning, Hughes had not practiced any noble fiefdoms.

He was the Frontier Count, holding extremely high autonomy. Castel was his own country.

And Hughes carried neither the burdens of history nor the resistance to reform. As long as he did not wish to be a noble, no one in this world could use nobility to oppress him.

And with his experiences before transmigration, he knew just how destructive even a single loophole in the system could become.

So Hughes directly made examinations the most important criterion for selecting civil officials.

To rise within the civil official system, one needed both grassroots administrative experience and advanced class studies. To manage a certain field of power, one had to have worked in that field before being allowed to assume the upper-level post.

For example, Gaia managed the explosives production line. Therefore, she had to have worked on that line before being permitted to take that supervisory role.

Even Alexei had personally led troops in battle before being allowed to serve as a military officer of the Holy Guard.

Perhaps the only exception was Chloe. When she became the representative of the sacrificial personnel, she had not exactly “died” beforehand.

This set of rules seemed complicated and cumbersome, but no one complained—Castel was Hughes’s fief, an absolute dictatorship. Even if he wanted to act against all conventions, no one could say anything, let alone when it was merely a more troublesome system.

After all, it also gave common people a path of upward mobility.

The people of Castel could not grasp the deeper significance of Hughes’s system, but Isabella was different.

As the Empress of the Empire, she constantly searched for ways to save the massive Empire, even to the point of faking her death and giving up her power and status to start over.

And the system Hughes had designed looked unremarkable at first glance, like something a lord had casually thought up. But the more one pondered it, the more one could perceive its brilliance.

The greatest advantage of this civil official system was stability. The officials it selected were all necessarily proficient in practical affairs and possessed considerable scientific literacy.

Its shortcoming was a lack of initiative, since the system itself did not encourage risk-taking.

But Hughes himself filled this gap. The research directions he set were often unexpected, but they always proved correct in the end.

And judging from the way the Holy Guard behaved evasively, Castel must have another system in place to provide checks and balances, just like the Empire’s alchemist system. In terms of research, there must be an independent mechanism.

The only reason it was not revealed to her was surely because it involved taboos. It was said that the island’s furnaces burned with a Heretical God, and it was entirely possible that another was secretly being worshiped.

Perhaps Hughes had even formed a new cult centered on himself. It would not be surprising—she was not ignorant about the Mystics.

But none of that mattered. A decaying system was more dangerous than a Heretical God. Isabella would rather cooperate with one than trust the nobility.

“Castel, how many more surprises can you still give me?”

As she thought of this, her gaze slowly fell upon the transparent spirit beside her.

“Prince, I have only one request for you,” she said in a low voice.

“What?”

“Listen carefully. There must be many wondrous things on that island. You have already heard Galahad’s words. When the time comes, when you see them, do not make the same embarrassing sounds you made when you saw the airship.”

“Wha–what! I wasn’t that weak! Besides, you’ve never even been to the island yourself. Maybe you’ll be just as embarrassed as Galahad!”

“Heh, impossible.” Isabella sneered. “I am the Empress of the Empire. What have I not seen before?”