Industrial Cthulhu: Starting as an Island Lord

Blood Harbor had become increasingly busy recently.

New ships docked at the harbor every day, bringing all kinds of industrial goods from Castel. Most would be loaded directly onto the railway toward the Northlands, while many others were unloaded on the spot and distributed throughout Blood Harbor.

The city seemed to be in constant motion—everyone had something to do, and each day was no longer the same as the one before.

A tall school building had risen from the ground, and before people could finish marveling at it, factories appeared one after another in Blood Harbor. The first batch of workers who entered the factories hadn’t even gotten over their excitement before rows of resettlement housing were already completed.

People of Blood Harbor had spent the past half-year in a daze; if a person stayed indoors for just a few days, they no longer dared to claim they understood the city anymore.

Recently, this already busy city had become even busier—word was spreading that Castel’s Expeditionary Army had actually found those refugees of years past in the Northlands.

This news truly shocked the people of Blood Harbor. After all, today’s Blood Harbor was nothing like before—its daily newspaper delivered the latest information to everyone. Discussing current events was no longer a privilege of the upper class.

The latest news from the Northlands was also selectively published, often accompanied by editorials. Now that the unexpectedly rediscovered refugees—once believed to have perished—were found, all of Blood Harbor cheered.

They had followed this matter for over half a year, and by now, no one cared that this expedition had been launched by Castel. People instinctively celebrated the Expeditionary Army’s victory.

Castel? How different was Castel from Blood Harbor, really?

Under Hughes’s deliberate softening of distinctions and the Prince’s subtle encouragement, the identity of Blood Harbor’s people had already shifted. No one thought supporting Castel was wrong anymore. The returning Expeditionary Army and the first wave of injured Resistance soldiers received the warmest welcome.

Grisha was still dazed when he stepped down from the train.

On the battlefield against the Dragonfang Troops, he had been wounded.

He was a boy; bleeding wasn’t a big deal. But losing the prosthetic leg personally made for him by Sister Gwen weighed heavily on his heart.

After being lifted out of the pool of blood, because conditions at the front were too poor and he was so young, he was among the first batch sent onto the train.

To be honest, being stuffed into this closed steel carriage frightened him a little. But the people around him were all severely injured, and he was the least injured among them—he couldn’t bring himself to show fear.

They were headed either to Castel or to Blood Harbor. Grisha himself could hardly tell the difference between the two. Many in the Resistance often spoke of Castel—it was their hope, the reason they kept going. But Grisha didn’t do the same.

Grisha had always believed he would die here—die in the Northlands, die on the land where he was born. But fate loved to toy with children like him, giving him a future he had never dared imagine.

“Castel.” Grisha muttered.

He didn’t know what Castel looked like. He had never thought seriously about it. He had occasionally fantasized about it, but always stopped himself quickly—he feared that if he imagined too much, he would lose the courage to continue fighting.

Though many saw him as a child, he stubbornly believed himself a warrior. If no one acknowledged that, then he would simply be his own warrior.

A warrior could not look back; if he grew too soft, others on the battlefield would laugh at him.

Yet when the unimaginable victory truly arrived, he instead felt lost. He had never imagined what kind of place he would go to. This Castel, mentioned constantly by the Resistance as a way to encourage each other, was a complete blank in his mind.

And now he was about to witness with his own eyes the reward fate bestowed for his bravery.

The time spent sealed inside the carriage wasn’t long. He hadn’t even had time to eat the food given to him by the Expeditionary Army before the train slowed down.

Grisha peeked at the others. Many hadn’t eaten their food. Food was precious—if it could be saved, it was best not to eat it casually. One never knew when it might save a life.

“We’re about to enter the station. Everyone stay put, someone will come to help,” a soldier of the Expeditionary Army called out loudly.

This was the first batch to arrive—most were seriously wounded and in poor condition. The Expeditionary Army had already sent a message ahead, and the Hospital would send people directly to receive them.

Grisha glanced at the rice ball in his hands, hesitated for a moment, then tucked it into his clothes.

The carriage door slowly opened. Grisha looked at everyone, then carefully moved toward the doorway, poking his head out to look outside.

He wanted to see what the place everyone dreamed of day and night truly looked like.

Grisha took just one look—and froze.

What kind of scene was this?

The Northlands were desolate. For dozens, sometimes hundreds of miles, one might not see a single trace of human life. Flat wastelands often lay under a veil of mist. Occasionally, distant birds or beasts would pass.

The rare villages or settlements were like oases in an endless desert—beautiful yet fleeting. Most of the time, it was only vast and boundless barrens.

Grisha widened his eyes.

The first thing he saw was a row of tall buildings—those were the schools built earliest near the harbor. They were only five or six stories tall, but in the Northlands, only the tallest towers of great castles could reach such heights.

Yet here, those tall buildings stood one after another, like a city wall stretching beyond sight.

On the left was a truly towering structure—the lighthouse on the coastal side of the harbor. But Grisha couldn’t even see its top. The station’s roof and the narrow view from the carriage allowed him only a glimpse of a corner of this city.

Closer to him was a long row of houses—square-shaped. Grisha had never seen such houses before.

The Silent Sanctum favored domes, and their churches always had lofty spherical roofs. Ordinary White Raven homes were steep-roofed, so snow would slide off in winter and not collapse the structure.

But the houses before him were boxy and square.

These square houses, with their square windows, felt unreal—like the mud houses girls built when playing pretend. If not for the silhouettes of people inside them, Grisha would never have believed these were real homes.

Reluctantly pulling his gaze away from the distance, Grisha looked toward the platform. It was crowded with people shouting something toward them, tossing items their way. Most of the things were blocked by Expeditionary Army soldiers standing at the door, but occasionally something got through—like the paper box now lying before Grisha.

Grisha flinched. He wasn’t sure how the people outside felt. Would they reject refugees like him?

He shook his head, took a deep breath, and carefully picked up the paper box.