Industrial Cthulhu: Starting as an Island Lord

Castel’s “Good night to Blood Harbor” was carried across the city by the whistle of the newly arrived steam locomotive, echoing into the ears of every soul in Blood Harbor.

The Prince’s hand, the one holding the coin, trembled slightly.

He could hardly describe the feeling in his heart. It was clearly just a simple greeting, yet once separated by such great distance and passed through two layers of encoding and translation, it somehow became precious.

He felt as though he were communicating with steel itself, conversing with the steam engine, and chatting through the voice of the whistle. His personal will had been vastly expanded by machinery—he was no longer a fragile, insignificant being. His voice could now resound through all of Blood Harbor.

The frontier of will was no longer bound by weak flesh.

Galahad swallowed hard. Though his heart, too, stirred with excitement, he still hesitated and asked, “This method of transmitting information seems rather troublesome… if it must rely on whistle signals, it doesn’t seem much more convenient than building a railway.”

But the Prince merely shook his head.

“Galahad, think deeper. Hughes’ code is just a form of encoding—it doesn’t have to rely on whistles as a carrier. You’ve read the Holy Text, haven’t you?”

The Prince didn’t specify which Holy Text, but Galahad knew there was only one answer.

—The Imperial Truth, that Holy Text which the Holy Guard carried with them day and night. Galahad had read it many times. To be honest, it was indeed a good book, but it had little to do with divinity.

Still, considering the Church was named “Imperial Truth,” it made a certain kind of sense.

—The Truth of the Empire had nothing to do with faith.

“I have read it, Your Highness.”

“The transmission of vibration in water is far more efficient than in air, and sound itself is a vibration—so if transmitted through solid matter, wouldn’t it be even more efficient?”

Galahad’s eyes widened, and Johan, who stood nearby, showed a thoughtful expression. His gaze occasionally drifted toward the top of the bookshelf, where The Imperial Truth rested.

Was this… the power of knowledge?

“This is just a rough idea of mine. Since Hughes and his people have already created this code, they must’ve mastered far more advanced techniques. Come on, let’s go take a look!”

Johan was taken aback. “Right now? Isn’t it a bit too late?”

“Not late at all! With such an interesting technology around, how could Hughes possibly be asleep?” said the Prince, pushing Johan toward the door. “Hurry, prepare the horses!”

“Hahaha, Hughes, my friend! I knew you wouldn’t be sleeping!”

Hughes’ eye twitched. “Didn’t I say good night already?”

“After saying good night, the night has only just begun! Come, talk to me about that code—I’m not the least bit sleepy. I could talk about it all night!”

Hughes sighed.

In the end, he still brought out the Morse code and the telegraph technology. Building a radio transmitter wasn’t particularly difficult—just that vacuum tubes and capacitors were a bit troublesome to make—but nothing truly insurmountable.

And honestly, there was no need to make it that complicated. They could build a more primitive kind of radio—the spark-gap transmitter. You could practically handcraft one of those.

For Castel, the spark-gap transmitter posed almost no technical challenge. Though it was inefficient and its short pulses occupied excessive bandwidth, which made it banned on Blue Star, there was no such restriction here.

Hughes had already drawn up blueprints and handed them over to the factories for trial production. It wouldn’t be long before they could begin testing.

As for the coins distributed earlier along with Morse Code—oh, he’d renamed it “Hughes Code.”

All this promotion was simply a warm-up for radio communication.

The radio technology itself, Hughes didn’t plan to share for now. But the code—well, that was different. It was more like a language—the more people who knew it, the better.

Besides that, Hughes was planning to test a few telephones. Radio signals might sometimes pick up strange, unknown waves—but wired telephones shouldn’t have such issues, right?

The principle of a wired telephone wasn’t complicated; it was nothing more than electromagnetic conversion. The real trouble was that Castel didn’t yet have the means to lay telephone lines beneath the sea.

Thus, communication between Castel and Blood Harbor could only rely on radio waves.

Still, that wasn’t a major problem. Hughes had already moved his office to Blood Harbor, while Alexei managed things in Castel. Having followed the entire process of industrial upgrading, Alexei could handle everything—industry, military affairs, and research alike. He was, without question, the most versatile talent under Hughes’ command.

Hughes briefly explained the principles of the telephone to the Prince, even wasting a few sheets of paper to make a simple makeshift one. It was enough to demonstrate how sound transmission worked.

“The essence of sound is vibration—as long as you can transmit that vibration as faithfully as possible, it’ll work, right?”

The Prince had read The Imperial Truth—and under the combined authorship of the late Chloe and Alexei, it had long since become more than just an infantry manual. It covered basic physics, mechanical theory, and so much more.

Anyone who read it could directly move on to the Advanced Class curriculum, as the Holy Text was even more comprehensive, though not quite as in-depth.

Lately, Alexei’s editorial duties had been passed on to Zoe, who spent her days studying Chloe’s Diary, researching how to write.

Hughes nodded, somewhat impressed by the Prince’s comprehension. Perhaps this man had some talent for research.

“Exactly. The telephone simply adds a step of electrical and magnetic conversion—it transforms sound into electrical signals, then converts them back into sound through the receiver’s speaker. It’s all just methods of transmitting information—just like how my words are transformed through Mo—er, Hu—Hughes Code into the whistle’s sound, then translated back into language.”

The Prince rubbed his chin and nodded thoughtfully. “I see.”

Hughes yawned. At last, it was over. He was already drowsy and only hoped the Prince wouldn’t start another round of endless questions.

As for the new steam locomotive engine—the Prince had already seen one back in Castel, so hopefully, he wouldn’t insist on inspecting it again.

Hmm… though the new one was fitted with a Dragon’s Breath Cannon, and rumor had it that the Prince was quite interested in that.

Hughes wasn’t so sure anymore.

Anyway, if the Prince did want to see it, he’d just have Connor escort him. A young man like Hughes deserved to get some sleep.

Yet the Prince didn’t move. He simply stood there thinking. Just as Hughes was about to nod off, the Prince suddenly spoke.

“Then how do you deal with the heretical entities that accumulate within the electric current?”

Hughes blinked drowsily, needing a moment to process what he’d just heard.

“What heretical entities? What do they have to do with electricity?”

“You don’t know?” The Prince’s face showed genuine surprise. “There have always been heretical entities within electricity. That’s why the Church calls it the ‘Blasphemous Thunder’ and forbids any related research—only the Mechanical Sanctum has methods to counter them.”

Hughes’ eyes widened.