Since the ruins in the woods were temporarily useless, Shade entered the city again with the black-haired lady. Compared to thirty years later, Vesta City could not possibly deserve the title "City of Music."
Just judging by the city's dreadful infrastructure, this place was really just an oversized rural town. There were no Gas Street Lamps in this era, the streets themselves were full of potholes, and only a few main roads could accommodate carriages.
Because of the large-scale burning of forests to clear land, the entire city was shrouded in gray fog. People wrapped themselves in black or gray clothes, lowered their heads, covered their mouths, and hurried along the streets, occasionally having to watch for excrement or other unidentifiable disgusting things beneath their feet.
The buildings along the streets were low and exceptionally dilapidated from years of exposure to polluted air. All kinds of signs hung haphazardly outside shopfronts, and whenever children approached people on the street, the first thing to consider should not have been whether they were newsboys, but whether they were thieves.
Compared to thirty years later, this was much closer to the Outlander's image of the "barbaric Steam Epoch." For a moment, he even felt that the choking fog had nearly reached the level of Tobesk City.
Though it was summer, both of them had wrapped themselves tightly, and Lady Helena Carter had even put on a scarf.
However, the farther they walked uphill, toward the future center of Vesta City, the more modern the city became. After all, this was a newly established district, and from the very beginning of Creekwood Town's expansion, it had been decided that this music hall atop the hill would become the future city center.
There was no performance at the music hall on this midsummer morning. Only