A city under curfew was not suited for exploration. Duncan remained in the antique shop through the night—the excitement of setting foot on land drove him on, leaving him tireless as he explored the entire building.
The original owner of this body had indeed been a cultist, but even as a cultist, he had also been an ordinary person who needed a normal social life. He needed the conveniences provided by modern civilization to survive, needed to interact with others, and needed all manner of daily necessities.
He needed to deal with the entire city.
And all of this would leave behind a great many clues, allowing Duncan to roughly infer how one survived in Pland City-State, as well as the approximate technological level and state of everyday life in this era, even with fragmented and blurry memories.
He found a small amount of cash in a hidden compartment behind the first-floor counter: a handful of loose coins and several blue and green banknotes of varying denominations. These were legal tender accepted throughout most city-states, jointly certified and issued by the Archons of the city-states and the Boundless Sea Chamber of Commerce. The primary unit was called the "Sola," while a subsidiary currency called the "Peso," worth one-tenth of a Sola, was also issued. The cash Duncan found totaled just over two hundred Solas, which, according to the information in his memories, was roughly enough for a family of three to survive for a month in the lower city.
It seemed that even though business at the shop had been poor and most of his property had been donated to the Church, this body's former owner had still maintained a basic standard of living—meaning this "antique shop" had a stable customer base of its own.
The entire first floor of the shop consisted of only two sections. Two-thirds of the space was occupied by the storefront in front of the stairs, while the remaining third was the "storeroom" behind the small door beneath the stairs. Beyond the storeroom was another door, the building's back entrance, which also seemed to be the passage used for receiving goods.
The second floor had a somewhat more complicated layout. Aside from a washroom, it contained one large room, one small room, and a utility room shared with the neighboring building. The large and small rooms lay on either side of the second-floor stairwell, and both were fairly clean.
There was also a tiny kitchen on the second floor, though it appeared not to have been used in at least half a month. Everything was covered in a layer of dust.
After inspecting everything, Duncan returned to the master bedroom on the second floor. He looked around the room, which was even smaller than his own studio apartment, and his gaze fell upon the little cabinet beside the bed.
There was a picture frame there. Inside it... was a black-and-white photograph.
The photograph showed a family of three: a simply dressed young man and woman with a little girl who looked only four or five years old. They stood before a courtyard backdrop with obvious artificial touches, faint smiles on their faces as they looked toward the camera.
Duncan walked over to the frame, picked it up, and examined it carefully, constantly matching it against the vague, scattered clues in his memories.
The original owner of this body... was not in the photograph.
The people in the photograph seemed to be this body's family... very close family.
As he gazed at the young couple, Duncan could almost feel a faint sense of longing emerging from the depths of his memories.
Yet any further information about the photograph was blurred beyond recognition. It seemed that... more memories of them had vanished from this world along with the original owner's final breath.
He set down the photograph and considered what level of expense such a black-and-white photo represented among the commoners of the lower city. He considered how far this world's photographic technology had advanced, and what principles its equipment was based on.
At the same time, his gaze fell upon the neatly made bed, and a faint doubt rose in his heart.
Would a cultist who had completely fallen into Sun God worship normally have so much time to keep his room this clean?
The first-floor storefront had clearly been neglected. How had the bed in this bedroom been kept so immaculate?
He walked outside again and entered the smaller room across from the stairs, looking at the equally neat and clean bed and desk.
He sorted through the memories in his mind and confirmed that this body's original owner had left the shop several days ago to attend a gathering of Sun God believers at a secret meeting place—that had been his final departure. The details were already hazy, but there seemed to be no memory of him cleaning up the rooms before leaving.
Which meant... there was someone else?
Someone else had lived with this "cultist"? Family?
Duncan frowned slightly. While searching his mind for corresponding clues, he walked over to the desk in the small room. His gaze swept over the neatly stored paper, pens, and stationery before finally settling on a book.
The book sat in the most conspicuous spot on the desk. Its cover was dark blue, decorated with gears and connecting rods, and its title was written in elegant lettering:
"Steam and Gearcraft—General Textbook III"
Duncan frowned. He had already vaguely realized that this room likely belonged to "someone else," but he still instinctively picked up the book.
There had been no books to read aboard the Lost Homeland, and he had found not a single scrap of readable writing in the master bedroom or elsewhere in the shop. The book before him might help him understand this world.
When he opened the cover, illustrated pages came into view—this truly was a "textbook" on engineering techniques and the principles of steam machinery. Between its paragraphs, he could also see numerous annotations left by the book's owner.
The slender, beautiful handwriting seemed to belong to a young woman.
Duncan rubbed his forehead. The original owner of this body seemed to have had no relatives or friends. Most of the scenes—or rather, impressions—in his memories carried a cold, lonely quality. Yet after sorting through those memories several times, he finally vaguely "remembered" someone... a girl with dark brown hair.
She seemed to be the only person whom the cultist named Roen had considered worth caring about as he drew his final breath.
Duncan's gaze fell on the pages. Rather than struggling through the passages and diagrams involving specific technology, he deliberately focused on sections such as the editor's introduction and discussions of concepts.
Then a line of text suddenly entered his sight:
"...Flame—or, more precisely, the specific flame released through burning deep-sea oil and coastal mineral crystals—is the cornerstone that sustains modern society and protects our civilization...
"The prosperity and order of modern civilization are founded on flame and steam... Clean and convenient electricity cannot replace fire's exorcising effect, nor can it keep large machines running stably for long periods... Experiments have proven that steam is the most stable form of power when subjected to the influence of deep space...
"In this chapter, we will discuss three typical steam-core configurations and explain their mechanical principles and design concepts..."
Duncan's gaze froze slightly.
He remembered the gas lamps, torches, and oil lamps that had been everywhere in the sewers, as well as the gas streetlights along the city roads. He also remembered the doubt he had felt upon seeing the electric lamp in the shop.
So... this was the reason behind those seemingly "strange" circumstances?
They would risk using open flames in the sewers, and still use gas lamps to illuminate outdoor streets even after electricity had developed to a certain degree, because "fire" could, to some extent, resist the spread of certain "dangerous aberrations"?
An indescribable feeling welled up in Duncan's heart. He continued reading and saw complex diagrams, densely packed notes, and meticulous annotations left by the book's owner.
They were machines he could not understand at all.
And they were definitely not the "steam engines" he had known in his previous life.
Those precise gears, those extraordinarily complex cylinders, the connecting pipes and valves between the components—all of them went far beyond the concept of a steam engine. They looked more like devices that had leaped out of some fantasy catalog, every part revealing a contradictory yet bizarre beauty.
This was the "heart" that supported the advance of civilization in this world.
Lost in thought, Duncan slowly returned the book to its original place.
Because he could not understand it at all.
As an Earthling, even though he had once been a teacher, he could not make heads or tails of the highly developed steam-powered mechanisms described in the book.
Even so, a vague realization emerged in his heart:
The civilization of this world seemed to be traveling down a path utterly different from anything he understood.
In order to survive in a world surrounded by crises, the kingdoms of mortals had taken on bizarre and dazzling forms. Yet no matter how strange a world was, as long as it could still be called a "civilization," there had to be its own reasons and logic behind its development.
The gas lamps burning in the sewers, the electric lamps lit in the shop, and the steam mechanisms depicted in the book, forged from the accumulated wisdom of countless people, all faintly revealed a kind of... resilience.
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