Industrial Cthulhu: Starting as an Island Lord

Hughes grinned but did not give a direct answer.

He waved at a nearby soldier of the Holy Guard. The young man ran over excitedly, gave a salute, and kept sneaking curious glances at the Prince.

“Give me your gun.”

The Holy Guard immediately took the rifle from his shoulder. It was an ordinary bolt-action rifle. Since he was only on patrol duty, and the cathedral was one of the safest places, it was not loaded. He also handed over a few clips along with it.

Hughes skillfully opened the receiver cover, removed the recoil spring and bolt assembly, and before long the bolt-action rifle was nothing but a pile of parts scattered across the ground.

Many people noticed the commotion and gathered around. Even Monica and several Banshees peeked over curiously to see what was happening.

After finishing with one, Hughes found another older Holy Guard and dismantled his rifle into parts as well.

The Prince frowned in confusion. The bolt-action rifle was currently the most powerful firearm. Ever since Hughes had gifted him one, he often took it out to play with and had studied it for quite some time. He too could disassemble it as Hughes had just done.

These two rifles did not seem special in any way. He had seen every single one of their components before.

Then Hughes winked at the Prince and began to reassemble—mixing the parts of both rifles together.

No way.

The Prince suddenly realized what he was doing, and could not help but take a deep breath.

It did not take long before Hughes had reassembled the two rifles, but it was impossible to say which one belonged to the younger soldier and which to the older one.

The parts of the two rifles had been completely mixed together.

Once reassembled, Hughes took a clip, loaded a single round into each rifle, gestured for the crowd to make space, and aimed toward a garden in the courtyard.

Bang! Bang!

Both rifles fired.

The Prince swallowed hard, speechless.

That parts of two rifles could be interchanged so freely was almost unthinkable in this era.

It was not that the craftsmanship was difficult. If the Prince demanded it, craftsmen could be ordered to make rifles like this. Not just two, even ten would be possible.

The key point was that these were randomly chosen rifles. Hughes had no reason to stage a performance in this setting. If the Prince was not mistaken, all bolt-action rifles in Castel had parts that could be interchanged.

All of Castel’s rifles.

Anyone with basic industrial knowledge knew what this meant. Although the Prince once held the highest authority in the Empire, he had also studied industrial production diligently.

What he saw before him shook him as deeply as when he had witnessed the divine-like descent of the Banshees in Blood Harbor.

The onlookers, however, did not think anything of it, as though this was nothing unusual. They clapped enthusiastically, simply admiring Hughes’s deft dismantling and assembling.

The Prince took a long while to regain his composure. Licking his dry lips, he finally spoke again, though his tone was much weaker:

“This is indeed an incredible feat, but what does it have to do with the Banshees? I still believe it is a waste of efficiency.”

Casting a glance at the still-stubborn Prince, Hughes picked up a fresh clip and casually asked, “How many bullets are left in your bolt-action rifle?”

“…Three rounds.”

That surprised him somewhat. Hughes had not given him many bullets to begin with, so the fact that three remained meant that the Prince had exerted every effort to save them.

Who knew—sometimes he could be rather stingy.

“And once your bullets are spent, what use is your rifle then?”

The Prince’s eyes flickered. He seemed to understand Hughes’s meaning.

“The Banshees are indeed powerful, invincible on the battlefield, and numerous enough to change the tide of war.”

“But everything on the battlefield is consumable—including lives. No, especially lives.”

“I certainly can form an army centered around the Banshees, but just like that bolt-action rifle in your hand, once the ammunition is gone, it is nothing but an iron stick.”

“And Castel will face no shortage of wars in the future.” Hughes returned the rifles to the Holy Guards. “Your Highness William, you are indeed knowledgeable about industry, but you still have not grasped its core—”

“Anything irreplaceable, hard to replicate, made by hand in a small workshop, can never become the true core of industry.”

“No matter how powerful, it must be ruthlessly eliminated.”

“The bolt-action rifle is strong, but its greatest strength is not in its firepower or accuracy. It is that it can be mass-produced on an assembly line, its parts interchangeable, needing only raw materials to be endlessly produced.”

“Your Highness William, you just claimed this was a waste of efficiency. But my exclusion of the Banshees from the tactical system is precisely for the sake of efficiency—they are not yet strong enough to overturn the system.”

The Prince pressed his lips tightly together. Hughes’s theories struck him like a thunderbolt from a clear sky.

He had always been pragmatic, obsessed with efficiency, even resorting to ruthless methods at times.

But all of that was born from his own subjective will. Hughes also pursued pragmatism and efficiency, yet his approach was entirely different.

Hughes had built an entire system that operated with high efficiency.

The Prince, however strong, was still just one man. He could push a project forward by his own strength, even drive the entire Empire, like forcing along a decaying carriage.

But Hughes removed the rotten parts altogether, refusing from the start to allow corruption and inefficiency to exist.

He did not need to personally handle everything, yet all still progressed according to his vision. He did not need to play the savior, because in the nation he built such disasters would never occur.

The Prince suddenly recalled the opening page of Imperial Truth, on which Hughes had personally written a single line:

【We do not need gods.】

The Prince stood in the cathedral courtyard for a long time.

He stood there, deep in thought, with no regard for his surroundings. No one knew what was on his mind. He was a brilliant man, perhaps the most brilliant in the entire Empire. Nothing had ever troubled him for so long.

And so, what could make him think so hard must surely be something of immense importance.

Hughes stood by, watching with interest, showing not the slightest impatience.

Before him was the sovereign of the Principality of Tis, a feudal lord in an era of low productivity, darkness, and chaos.

He was a noble, raised in a realm ruled by the Church and aristocracy. Industry and science ought to have been distant dreams for him.

Yet he yearned for them. Though he had never seen the modern society of Blue Star, he instinctively pursued it.

And if Hughes had opened a brand-new door for him… where would he go?