Industrial Cthulhu: Starting as an Island Lord

Principality of Tis, Blood Harbor.

By now, the entire Blood Harbor had almost completely changed its appearance.

Yami carried a bag in his hand, looking at the newly fenced-off construction sites along both sides of the road, and could not help but sigh.

These days, he had been attending classes.

At first, it was a literacy class, but after only a few days, he was pulled into a new course.

It was said that the course was related to his talent for counting, but he really could not feel it.

If anything, those geometric things were more like drawing, boring as could be, with only calculus holding a trace of fun.

The one teaching him was a dark-haired youth, very young, yet somehow knowing everything. Yami later found out that this was none other than the Lord of Castel.

To be honest, Yami was a little curious. Why would this Lord not stay in his own territory, but instead come from Castel to Blood Harbor? Yami asked him directly, and Hughes answered that he was here to assist in construction.

That answer was too convincing, for the construction in Blood Harbor had almost never stopped.

First was the pier. As a port, Blood Harbor naturally had an old pier, but unfortunately, it had been completely destroyed in the rebellion of the Life Mother Church.

It was said that the final battle had taken place at the pier, when a gigantic flying beast in the sky had bombed the land into furrows.

Other places could still be considered ruins, but the pier had been blasted into a giant crater.

Blood Harbor was a port, and the pier had to be rebuilt. Yami originally thought that once he finished the literacy class, he could find a job here, but reality proved he had thought too much.

The entire pier’s reconstruction was completed in only half a month.

The people of Blood Harbor had practically watched, dumbstruck, as the pier rose again. One bag after another of grayish powder was delivered—oh, Castel called that concrete.

They wove iron bars into a skeleton, shaped rough molds with wood, and then poured in the mixed concrete. That was it.

Mia felt it absurd. It looked hardly more complicated than piling up mud to build a castle, but once that grayish powder hardened, it was shockingly solid.

After the pier was built, Castel’s cargo ships seemed endless, bringing in all kinds of goods every day.

From then on, Blood Harbor began to feel more and more unfamiliar.

Yami let out a sigh and casually set down the book in his hand. It was a set of Complex Functions gifted by the Lord. Although he had no idea what use it had, it seemed rather interesting, and he occasionally read it for leisure.

He heard that Miss Zoe also loved reading, though hers were novels. Yami did not know what novels were, but he figured they must be something similar.

Yami lay down on his bed, relaxing his whole body, and began to slowly ponder his future.

In the past, he only wanted to get some meals out of the literacy class, build up his strength, and then find labor work. But this plan had stalled after only the first step.

The meals at the literacy class were too good.

  According to the Lord—ah yes, the Lord of Castel—there would also be advanced classes in Blood Harbor in the future, teaching even harder knowledge.

What would harder knowledge be like? Yami could not imagine. So far, he had not seen knowledge that felt difficult. Every day he dozed off while listening for a while, and then received a meal. He felt his will gradually sinking.

“Yami, oh Yami, you can’t go on like this, you must think of your future!”

Hmm, speaking of the future, Castel seemed to be building some massive structures in Blood Harbor. With the pier as the center, there were fenced-off yards everywhere—Castel’s construction sites.

It was said they were building factories.

Yami did not know what factories were. He had heard the word from the Prince, who declared his support for Castel at every possible occasion, and had even publicly hanged several gang members who caused trouble at the sites.

The factories still needed some time to be built. Yami figured by then he would have finished the literacy class, and there would be no more meals to mooch.

Should he go to the factory?

Although he had no concept of what a factory was, he assumed it would mean selling labor. At this thought, Yami felt a headache—his body was not strong, and he wondered whether they would even take him.

Then what else could he do?

Oh, he almost forgot. Besides factories, the people of Castel were also building rail tracks.

According to Granny Penny next door, such things already existed in Rhine—fixed rails laid on roads, where carriages could run on top, called tramways.

The principle of rails had already been explained in the literacy class. It was simple enough: let the wheels press on two steel bars.

But wheels could roll on the ground as well, so why build rails at all?

This was something Yami did not understand. The advantages of rails were immense even without steam locomotives; with horses alone, the difference was huge.

Rails reduced rolling resistance by 80% compared to dirt roads. A single horse could pull a 10-ton carriage, whereas a regular carriage could only manage 2 tons.

This greatly saved animal strength and made mass transportation of goods far easier. Only Rhine, with its budding industry, had such a demand for tramways.

Another important issue was that the roads in cities were generally terrible.

On Blue Star, this had been a common problem in the 19th century for many European and American countries. Roads paved with stone slabs or gravel were tolerable, but dirt roads were a disaster for public vehicles. Deep ruts carved by wheels became obstacles to passage. In summer, roads turned to clouds of dust; in rainy seasons, they became seas of mud, making carriages immovable. In winter, snow and ice made things worse—canals froze, roads grew rough and slick, and carriages could not move.

Thus, the first thing Castel did in Blood Harbor was infrastructure.

At present, the roads of Blood Harbor were also being rapidly built. This did not conflict with the rails—railways were simply the best solution under harsh conditions. Castel broke one rail line into multiple segments, building simultaneously, and then joined them together in the end.

Since the steam locomotives had not yet arrived, the residents of Blood Harbor still did not know what kind of colossal machines would run on these rails.

Besides the construction sites, there were also all sorts of recruitment notices, many of which left people baffled.

For instance, Nini at the Press in Blood Harbor.

Speaking of Nini, Yami felt complicated.

The Banshees—completely non-human beings. They were tall, able to lift massive stones that took several men to carry, with a single hand. Many residents of Blood Harbor were fearful of them.

It seemed only the people of Castel truly treated them as kin.

Although the Lord had repeatedly declared them to be friends of Blood Harbor, and although many had witnessed Nini’s heroic battle against the Compassionate Mother, most still struggled to accept them.

After all, the Church had been rooted in Blood Harbor for many years, constantly preaching that all non-humans were enemies, all monsters.

Fortunately, the Church was gone now. Blood Harbor was no longer what it once had been.