Life Bursting Forth, All Things Competing to Flourish

The sky was a murky gray. Sunlight struggled through the thick clouds, casting only a feeble glow; the land lay in lifeless gray-white silence, with only faint traces of moss visible in the shadows of jagged rocks.

The twenty-four-car Iron Dragon thundered along, belching black smoke that blotted out the sky.

Gazing at the stone forest beyond the window, Lude poured himself a glass of whiskey and savored its faint citrus and tobacco notes. With a slight smile, he gently clinked his glass against his reflection in the window, producing a crisp chime. To his past self—and to the life ahead.

It had to be said, Aleppo's tiger skin was even more useful than he had imagined.

Over the past five days, Lude's life had seemed like a reenactment of the protagonist's in The Million Pound Banknote. Riding without a ticket was nothing; a first-class private compartment opened specifically for him was merely standard treatment. Even his three daily meals had been prepared to the standards of a professional restaurant.

Lude still could not figure out how those people had managed to make such an elaborate meal on a train!

Of course, this skin did not come without its drawbacks.

For instance, Lude had regretted more than once during this journey that he had told that lie when boarding.

To maintain it, Lude had been trapped in this compartment for days. Whenever the train pulled into a station, he even had to draw the curtains to keep the lie from being exposed, unable to get a proper look at the cities outside.

There were no phones, computers, or internet in this world to pass the time. These past days of confinement had been practically like prison for Lude.

Fortunately, he had a bagful of Professor Beshe's inheritance to keep himself occupied. Thus, he had spent these days sorting through and studying the books Professor Beshe had left behind, while considering where to begin building his achievements after arriving in Enamel City.

Enamel City, the largest port city in the Loselin Empire, was something like this world's London. It was also the destination Lude had chosen for this journey.

The Loselin Empire was one of the Five Great Empires and the largest powers on the Aiden Continent. It had developed the fastest in recent years among the five, and it was also the closest of them to the Rhine Kingdom.

On the fifty-three-million-square-kilometer Aiden Continent, nations could broadly be divided into three tiers based on their strength and territory.

The first tier was the [Hegemonic Empires]. These nations possessed formidable power. They could withstand the assaults of all manner of supernatural creatures and hazardous supernatural environments, establish stable railway networks spanning their entire lands, and achieve de facto centralized unification.

There were only five nations on the Aiden Continent capable of this. The smaller nations called them the [Five Great Empires].

[Red Dragon] Mettenheim, [Black Eagle] the Loselin Empire, [White Bear] the Tsardom of Russia, [Golden Lion] the Harris Sultanate, and the [Romaining Papal State], which had the largest population but had recently become somewhat unstable internally.

Below the Five Great Empires were the second tier: [Regional Powers].

These nations were not especially large, nor had they achieved de facto unification. They were more like products of mutual-defense pacts between multiple cities, liable to collapse at the first sign of trouble.

The Rhine Kingdom where Lude currently was, along with Florence and the Turin Kingdom, all belonged to this category.

There were roughly thirteen or fourteen second-tier nations, though the total occasionally changed. Half had been established with the support of the Five Great Empires, serving as their vassal states, bridgeheads, or satellite states; the other half had independently formed mutual-aid alliances and sought ways to survive on their own.

As for the third tier, Lude called them [Loose-Packaged Nations]—loose-packaged in the literal sense.

Most of these small nations had only hundreds of thousands, tens of thousands, or even merely thousands of people: a castle and several villages. Faced with supernatural creatures and natural disasters, they could only cower within their cities. Many inland city-states were even stuck in a pastoral Middle Ages and had never heard of a steam engine!

These nations were the most numerous. According to statistics from five years ago, there were... more than 1,600 of them.

When Lude used to read fairy tales, he had wondered where all those princes and princesses came from. Were they being mass-produced? Now he understood. In this world, princes and princesses really were mass-produced!

The princes and princesses of those small nations were probably not worth as much as a single down-and-out noble from the Five Great Empires!

There was another reason Lude had chosen the Loselin Empire: the race of this body. One look around made it clear that Lude's physical features were distinctly different from those of the other passengers on the train.

The mainstream mythology of this world held that humanity had originated from dust, so humans called themselves the [Dust Kin].

Based on differences in physical traits, the Dust Kin were further divided into seven races: Ash-Born, Dust-Born, Gravel-Born, Floating-Soil-Born, Ice-Field-Born, Molded-Clay-Born, and Silt-Born. Silt-Born referred to all races outside the first six.

A closer look showed that the most numerous people aboard this train were the [Dust-Born].

The [Dust-Born] were the most populous ethnic group on the Aiden Continent. Their curly hair was mainly gray or beeswax-colored, their eyes ice-blue or pale gray, and their cool white skin looked rough and dry. Without proper care, they easily developed wrinkles at a young age.

The race of Lude's body, meanwhile, was the same as Siana's: the [Ash-Born].

The [Ash-Born] primarily had gold, red, or black hair and eyes. In popular stereotypes, they were long-lived and skilled at forging.

Yet few people were willing to provoke an Ash-Born, because those skilled in forging were often equally skilled at using steel and flame to destroy their enemies.

At its core, forging was the destruction of what already existed, followed by the creation of something new upon its ruins.

The [Ash-Born] were the principal ethnic group of the Loselin Empire and held absolute dominance in its military and political systems.

That was also why Lude had chosen the Loselin Empire as his target. With this appearance, he would naturally receive preferential treatment there.

As for why he had selected Enamel City from among the hundreds or thousands of cities in the Loselin Empire...

Lude had never been one to settle down. Whether for supernatural power or worldly authority, he was prepared to start from nothing once more. As the Empire's largest port city, Enamel City was clearly an ideal stage for his ambitions.

An environment that was too stable and rigid made social advancement difficult, while one that was too impoverished made it hard to accumulate wealth.

According to Lude's research, Enamel City, as a port city, possessed the level of industrialization of London in its fog-shrouded era, the population density of Hong Kong in the nineties, the business opportunities of New York during its golden age, public security comparable to Gotham's, and an occult atmosphere on the level of Yharnam.

This city, brimming with life and bursting with activity, where talents gathered in abundance, could not have been more suitable as the place for him to make his fortune.

Back then, when he had been alone and without anyone to rely on, he had still made a name for himself. In this life, he not only possessed the experience of his previous one, but also power beyond the reach of ordinary people. If he did not venture out and make something of himself, he would feel he had wasted the foundation of this life!

Still, Lude knew full well that if he wanted to rise in this world, strategy and experience alone would not be enough. He also needed sufficient strength.

That was why Lude had been pondering these days how he could become stronger.