Industrial Cthulhu: Starting as an Island Lord

Gwen and Nora whispered to each other for a while, and in the end decided to eat first and talk later—the ship was still early anyway.

So many workers who had gone to work that morning noticed an astonishing scene: beside Miss Bettys’ Fried-Fish Stall, Gwen and Nora, one big and one small, were squatting there eating fries.

“Nora, try this! Fries with chili and sea salt—this is absolutely amazing!”

“Mm, sho goood!” Nora replied indistinctly, her mouth full.

“This one, this one is great too—what flavor is this?”

“This is a Castel specialty flavor. The sauce is made from a local small sweet fruit from Castel Island—sweet and sour, very appetizing~” Bettys said as she stood on a box, frying fish for customers while explaining to Gwen.

“Fruit? Shipped here?” Gwen looked at the jam in her hand in surprise.

Fruit was extremely difficult to transport. Back when she was in the Northlands, she had never heard of any caravan transporting fruit.

Let alone shipping it across the sea—even fruit within a village was hard to transport into a city.

Gwen pinched the jam in her hand, thinking that perhaps it was made into sauce first and then sent over. But in such warm weather, jam would spoil even more easily, wouldn’t it?

“You’re outsiders, right?” the workers lining up to buy fried fish laughed and called out. “Then you should go take a look at the port. Every day several ships load and unload there—bringing in coal and ore, fruit and olive oil, and shipping out ship after ship of iron ingots and steel.”

Gwen nodded awkwardly. The Northlands had no seaports, and she had no real concept of these things.

“We’ll be taking a ship to Castel later.”

“Then we can only wish you a smooth journey.” The looks in people’s eyes turned sympathetic—the infamous Castel Syndrome was truly known by everyone.

“You must be the legendary Lady Nora, right?”

“Mmh.” Nora nodded simply, still chewing fries.

Nora’s recognizability was honestly a bit too high. Alongside Chloe, the Grand Presiding Judge, she ranked as one of Blood Harbor’s two urban legends—the protector of the Northlanders, the Headless Nora.

Chloe was hard to see unless one went to the Tribunal, but Nora had not yet been assigned specific work by Hughes. The workers clicked their tongues in amazement; some even wanted to come up and ask for an autograph, though they were fortunately stopped by those around them.

The workers queued up to buy fried fish, the aroma overflowing from the oil pan and drifting through the streets and alleys of Blood Harbor.

The two finally finished the last bag of fries and fried fish, both wearing satisfied expressions.

“Let’s go… wait!” A troubled expression suddenly appeared on Nora’s face. “I promised to bring a portion for Gaia.”

“Take this.”

The two looked in surprise as Bettys handed over a box of already packed fried fish and fries.

“Gaia often comes to pre-order takeout fries. I was planning to have Monica bring a portion, but since you’re here, even better. If I let her bring it, the loss would be a bit higher.”

A metal lunchbox, its lid fastened tightly, carried a very Castel-style feel.

Holding this box of still-warm fried food, the two headed toward the port.

“By the way, Lady Nora, where exactly did the fries you ate go? They didn’t leak out below either.”

Although Gwen was not very well read and knew little about the human body, she still knew that food went down the throat and into the stomach.

Curious, Gwen poked Nora’s cut surface. Nora shuddered, then spoke viciously, “Don’t touch randomly!”

“But Lady Nora, you were the one who taught me to stay curious, to explore this world with knowledge and reason.”

“Don’t explore these weird places!”

In fact, Hughes also found this strange. Nora had lost everything below her neck, yet she could still speak—normally, sound should be produced by airflow passing through the vocal cords. Nora no longer even had lungs, yet she could still talk.

There were many other small details as well. For example, when Gwen moved with full force, the power she burst out with was terrifying, yet her clothes and shoes could mostly endure it and rarely tore apart suddenly.

By the normal strength of such materials, when Transcendents fought, they should be bursting out of their clothes at every turn.

But in reality, almost all Transcendents looked “not that transcendent.”

No one had ever truly paid attention to this. Only Hughes, who came from another world, would sense that something was off and notice these details.

And now, Gwen had noticed it too. Hearing her question, even Nora revealed a thoughtful expression.

She had always thought that eating was just eating, and speaking was just speaking—nothing strange about it.

“It does seem… a bit strange.”

Thinking sometimes spread like a virus—once it started, it could no longer be stopped.

“Come to think of it, I can jump up just by using a bit of strength.” Nora jumped out of Gwen’s arms and landed back again. “But how exactly am I exerting force? I don’t seem to have any muscles that could make such movements. It’s as if I simply had the thought, spent some strength, and it naturally succeeded.”

“That sounds a bit like—”

“Cognitive Interference? No, this seems more like Extraordinary Power itself. Extraordinary Power is the projection of the Sea of Unawareness into the present world. Perhaps that projection is not limited to just those powers.”

As the two pondered while walking, Gwen suddenly stopped in her tracks.

“What’s wrong?”

“Th-this… this is the ship?”

Even Gwen’s voice was trembling.

It wasn’t that she had never seen ships before. Beneath the Canary Mountains ran a long river, stretching from the White Raven Principality to the Northlands. In many places, one had to take a ferry to cross the river.

A ferry could carry several people. If they squeezed a bit, even ten people could stand on it, though one had to be extremely careful—it could easily capsize.

As for larger ships… Gwen had seen cargo ships drifting downstream.

Those ships didn’t carry many people, but they were several times larger than ferries, over ten meters long. Gwen had thought those were already very large ships.

And the ship before her now…

Gwen lifted her head, straining to look upward. Only at the very edge of her vision could she barely see the edge—the edge of the deck. No matter how hard she craned her neck, she could only see this much; everything above the deck was almost completely blocked.

That hull…

Gwen’s eyes widened. The answer had already surfaced in her mind, yet reason refused to believe it.

“That’s made of steel too?”

Standing beside such a colossal cargo ship, Gwen felt her senses fall into partial disarray. Looking at the metal hull, she felt it didn’t seem that big—but the anchor chain that looked slender was not far from her. Gwen didn’t even need to compare—it was already thicker than her waist.

Just how large this ship was went without saying.

“Th-this… is this really a ship? And not a steel island floating on the sea?”