Industrial Cthulhu, starting from the island lord

Chapter 433 Calculus, what's so difficult about it?
Duchy of Tess, Blood Harbor.

Blood Harbor has now been almost completely transformed.

As Yami looked at the newly fenced-off construction sites on both sides of the road, carrying a bag in his hand, he couldn't help but sigh.

He has been attending classes these days.

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

It's said that the course is related to his talent for counting, but he really doesn't feel it.

If I had to put it in perspective, geometry and the like are more like drawing, which is quite boring. Only calculus has some fun.

The boy who taught him was a dark-haired boy. He was very young, yet he seemed to know everything. Yami later learned that he was none other than Lord Castel.

To be honest, Ami was a little curious as to why this lord was not in his own territory, but instead came to Bloodport from Castel. Ami asked him directly, and Hughes replied that he was here to assist with the construction.

This answer is very convincing; the construction of Blood Harbor has almost never stopped.

First, there was the dock. Blood Harbor, as a port, naturally had an old dock, but unfortunately it was completely destroyed during the rebellion of the Church of the Mother Goddess.

I heard that the final battle took place at the dock, and that day a giant flying beast plowed up the land with bombs.

While other areas could still be considered ruins, the dock was blown into a giant crater.

Blood Harbor is a port, and the docks always need to be rebuilt. Yami thought he could find a job here after finishing his literacy class, but it turned out he was wrong.

The reconstruction of the entire dock was completed in just half a month.

The people of Blood Harbor watched in stunned silence as the dock was completed, bag after bag of mortar was delivered—oh, Castells called it concrete.

They wove an iron frame together, made a simple mold out of wood, and then poured in the mixed concrete, and that was it.

Mia felt a bit of absurdity; it looked almost no more complicated than building a castle out of mud, yet the mud was surprisingly hard once it solidified.

Once the dock was built, the ships that transported goods to Castells seemed endless, with all sorts of things being delivered there every day.

Blood Harbor became increasingly unfamiliar from that time onward.

Yami sighed and casually put down the book in his hand. It was a set of "Complex Functions" given to him by the lord. Although he didn't know what it was for, it looked quite interesting, and he would occasionally look at it for amusement.

I heard that Miss Zoe also loves to read, but those are all novels. I don't know what novels are, but they're probably something like that.

Yami lay down on the bed, relaxed, and began to slowly ponder the future.

He used to just want to earn a living by teaching literacy classes and then work after recovering his health, but this plan has stalled after only the first step.

The food at the literacy class was delicious.
According to the lord—well, the lord of Castel—an advanced class will be opened in Bloodharbor in the future to teach some more difficult knowledge.

What would more difficult knowledge look like? Yami couldn't imagine it. He hadn't encountered any difficult knowledge yet. Every day, he would listen to a few drowsy lectures and then get a meal. He felt his willpower gradually sinking.

"Yami, Yami, you can't go on like this. You need to plan for the future!"

Well, speaking of the future, Castells seems to be planning to build some big things in Blood Harbor. Centered around the docks, there are fences everywhere, which are construction sites marked out by the Castells. It's said that factories will be built there.

Yami didn't know what a factory was; he'd only heard the word from the prince, who would show his support for Castell at almost every opportunity and even publicly hang several gang members who went to cause trouble at the construction site.

The factory construction will take some time, and Yami estimates that by then he will have finished his literacy class and won't be able to mooch meals anymore.

Are you going to the factory?
Although he had no idea what a factory was, he knew that going in would mean doing hard labor. The thought gave Yami a headache. He wasn't very strong, and he didn't know if they would even want him.

So what are we going to do?

Oh, I almost forgot, besides factories, the Castel people were also building railway tracks.

According to Grandma Penny next door, this kind of thing exists in the Rhineland. It's a fixed track laid on the road surface, and horse-drawn carriages can travel on it. It's called a tracked carriage.

The specific principle of the track is explained in literacy classes; it's really very simple—it just involves the wheels running over those two steel bars.

But if wheels can travel on the ground, why build that extra railway?

This is something Yami didn't know: even without using a steam locomotive, the advantages of rails are still considerable when using horse-drawn carriages.

The rails reduce rolling resistance by 80% compared to dirt roads, allowing a single horse to pull a 10-ton carriage, while an ordinary carriage only weighs 2 tons.

This greatly saves animal power and facilitates the large-scale transportation of goods. Only the Rhineland, with its nascent industrial development, had such a need for horse-drawn carriages.

Another important issue is that the road conditions in the city are generally very bad.

This was a common problem in many European and American countries in the 19th century. Roads paved with flagstones or gravel were somewhat better, but dirt roads were a disaster for public transport vehicles. The deep ruts and grooves left by wheels became obstacles to passage. Every summer, the roads were dusty, and during the rainy season, they became muddy, making it difficult for vehicles to move. In winter, the land was covered in ice and snow, the canals froze and closed to navigation, the roads were full of potholes, and the deep snow made them slippery, making it impossible for horse-drawn carriages to pass.

Therefore, the first thing Castells did in Blood Harbor was to build infrastructure.

The roads in Blood Harbor are also under rapid construction, which does not conflict with the railway. Railways are the best solution for bad road conditions. Castells broke a railway into multiple sections, constructed them at the same time, and then connected them together.

The steam locomotives have not yet arrived, and the residents of Blood Harbor have no idea what kind of behemoth will be traveling on these tracks.

Besides construction sites, there are all sorts of job postings, many of which are baffling.

For example, Nini's newspaper in Blood Harbor.

When it comes to Nini, Yami has very mixed feelings.

Banshees are a completely inhuman race. They are tall and can lift boulders that a group of people cannot move with their bare hands. Many residents of Bloodharbor are afraid of them.

It seems that only the Castel people truly considered them as one of their own.

Although the lord repeatedly proclaimed that they were friends of Bloodharbor, and many people witnessed Nini's heroic battle against [Mother], most people still found it difficult to accept.

After all, the Vatican had been established in Bloodharbor for many years, and they had always propagated the idea that alien races were only enemies and were all monsters.

Fortunately, the Papacy is gone now, and Blood Harbor is no longer the Blood Harbor it once was.

(End of this chapter)