Industrial Cthulhu: Starting as an Island Lord

The number caused the conference room to fall silent for a moment.

The first round of literacy classes had already enrolled several thousand people—nearly equal to the entire heavy industry production line workforce of Castel.

“You… you people, how did you manage to organize this? We’re talking about thousands of people!?”

“Just finding enough houses must have been difficult, right?”

Zoe smiled. “The literacy classes weren’t all held at the same time. Some were in the morning, some in the afternoon, and others at night. Even those with regular jobs could attend after work.”

“And besides—” she turned her head to look at Qiao Xi.

“Ahem, the Cult of the Hidden already had many gatherings and meeting spots. Those channels and venues were ready-made. We simply shifted the literacy classes into them.”

Hughes nodded in satisfaction. This was precisely why he had preserved the organizational framework of the Cult of the Hidden, instead of dismantling it entirely and moving it back to Castel.

A religious group that could penetrate the very lowest rungs of society had an influence in Blood Harbor beyond imagination. Administrative decrees from The Prince could not reach the slums—but the Cult of the Hidden could.

And with the Cult serving as its endorsement, Castel’s difficulty in opening literacy classes decreased dramatically. Hughes had no foundation here, but Qiao Xi certainly did.

“How many people do you think could ultimately be transformed into workers?”

Zoe hesitated, speaking without much confidence. “...Five hundred?”

Hughes raised an eyebrow. “That low?”

“The beginning is always the hardest. When we first opened classes for the islanders, it was very difficult to recruit workers into the factories. But once the first batch entered, everything changed.”

“At that point, everything inside the factories spread throughout Blood Harbor. People’s mindsets slowly shifted. More and more would rush in. They would take the initiative to learn reading and writing, and to study.”

These were experiences from Castel. Hughes himself had never directly witnessed them, so he asked curiously, “Was it because our treatment wasn’t good enough?”

“No,” Zoe shook her head. “The reason the factories couldn’t recruit workers at first wasn’t because of treatment—it was fear.”

“They feared the factories. The towering workshops, the thunderous machines—things that looked like monsters to people who had never encountered them. Only when the first batch of workers returned did people begin to accept their existence.”

So that was it.

When trains first appeared, many thought of them as giant monsters. When films were first screened, audiences instinctively ducked away from the vehicles on the screen.

Even Galahad, an extraordinary who had dealt with industry before, had been frightened into losing control on Castel. Ordinary folk with little experience had even less chance of keeping calm.

Human imagination was limited. Fear of the unknown was only natural.

“Actually, the thing inside the factories that attracted people the most wasn’t the pay.” Zoe suddenly remarked.

“Then what else could attract them?” Hughes was puzzled. Factory conditions were generally poor—stifling heat, deafening noise, and if one ignored safety regulations, injuries or even death.

The aesthetics of industry? Impossible.

“Fairness.”

“The rules inside the factories were extremely strict. Beyond ensuring safety, they also created fairness. To the lower classes who had never experienced such a thing, it was like a drug. Once they tasted it, they could never give it up.”

“Those who had suffered oppression might grow accustomed to oppressing others, but if you let them experience respect and fairness, they would pursue it no matter the cost.”

Everyone in the room looked at Zoe with surprise. At some point, she had gained such deep understanding of the people at the bottom.

Hughes coughed lightly and pulled the conversation back. “Ahem, five hundred is not a small number—especially for Castel. And while Blood Harbor’s population had decreased greatly, it was still far larger than Castel’s. As long as we kept up with universal education, the number of factory workers would continue to grow.”

He glanced at Connor. “The Prince doesn’t have any objections, right?”

“Not at all. He even strongly supports what we’re doing. At present, Blood Harbor’s policies are almost entirely prioritized for us.”

Hughes nodded. “A wise decision.”

The ones who could enter the factories were, of course, the able-bodied. Normally, no lord would be willing to lose such precious manpower. But The Prince viewed it differently.

The Principality of Tis did not lack people. If it did, the nobles of the Northlands would not have strictly forbidden refugees from entering their territories.

What The Prince lacked was educated people.

Without a base of industrial workers, industrialization was impossible. Back when Hughes had the technology and no shortage of resources, he still couldn’t convert the factories to steam power because he lacked skilled workers.

Fortunately, the Church of Candlelight had exiled a group of workers from Rhine, solving the urgent crisis and allowing Hughes to develop while also training an industrial population.

For Hughes to draw workers from Blood Harbor, schools and education had to be spread on a massive scale. Perhaps the very best students would leave The Prince’s territory for Castel, but many would certainly remain.

Those people could support the foundation of industrialization.

After visiting Castel, The Prince had immediately abandoned his previous plans and fully embraced industrialization—a mutually beneficial decision.

“Beyond the literacy classes, we also need to move some advanced education into Blood Harbor.” Hughes turned his gaze toward Qiao Xi.

Qiao Xi froze for a moment before realizing and then nodded firmly.

The upper ranks of the Cult of the Hidden were mostly engineers from Castel. Spreading knowledge and technology was second nature to them. Elementary education was already widespread in the Cult, and many had also been taught advanced lessons, though not in a systematic way.

Hughes now intended to fill in that gap. With some training, members of the Cult would become qualified workers.

“How many people are in the Cult of the Hidden now?”

“Nearly two hundred senior followers. Most were brought from the Northlands by Captain Jeremiah, with some of the earliest recruits among them. Almost all of them have received advanced education, and many could already take charge on their own.”

These were the core members of the Cult. Their level was not much worse than Castel’s islanders. They might have lacked some militarized training and systematic knowledge, but they were more than capable of handling most tasks within an industrial system.

“And then there are the outer believers—over seven hundred. Most joined after the first rebellion of the Followers of the Mother Goddess, when Blood Harbor was in chaos. We opened our doors to provide shelter.”

“This group’s standards vary widely. Some are as capable as the senior followers, but most have only just completed the literacy classes.”

Graduating from the literacy classes was enough to enter basic processing factories—for example, the olive oil factory. Such places were relatively low-risk, their processes more primitive, and the risks of Cognitive Interference lower. The recruitment threshold was simply the completion of literacy classes.