A Plan That Could Change the World

"It can reach 600 kilometers per hour. As for cargo capacity... Our tests showed that twenty-four cars work best. If it's carrying freight, each car can hold 80,000 kilograms—provided the cargo fits, of course."

Viscount Rost remained calm under the questions from the bigwigs in Car No. 1. "For passengers, a car can carry 120 people, as it is now."

The calmer he was, the more stunned everyone else became.

In other words, this steel behemoth could haul over 1.9 million kilograms of cargo at 600 kilometers per hour.

It was absurd.

How far was it from the southernmost end of the continent to the northernmost?

Three or four thousand kilometers at most.

That meant someone leaving the Golden City in the far south could reach the Watcher's Wall aboard the Ultra-High-Speed Rail Transit System in just six or seven hours.

They could leave in the morning, arrive by noon, and return that evening. A round trip in a single day was beyond anything they had imagined.

Even a Legendary Mage traveling at full speed could do little better.

Dragons were only a little faster.

More frightening still was the carrying capacity.

Suppose it carried nothing but grain, and suppose all that grain fit inside the cars. A single trip could transport enough to feed a million people for a year.

What kind of monstrous capacity was that?

If the Ultra-High-Speed Rail Transit System spread across the entire continent, every kind of trade would...

They scarcely dared think about it.

It was simply too staggering.

They had assumed that laying so much track was either reckless extravagance or a scheme to drive up Steel Futures prices.

Now it seemed otherwise.

No, wait!

They even suspected Viscount Rost had caused the Steel Futures crash himself. If he had released this news