I will survive

For a moment, Elliot did not know what expression to make.

Those lofty Alchemists had plainly been outmatched, beaten to the punch by lowly craftsmen, yet they had flown into such a humiliated rage that they launched a bloody purge, even venting their anger on the emerging factories.

Now factories stood throughout the empire, while alchemy had become a niche plaything. As the wheels of history rolled on, the victors were ultimately crowned and the losers condemned.

"However, after destroying the Hammer Brotherhood, the Golden Dawn also succeeded in building its own Difference Engine. After the Golden Dawn split into three, the Troy Society monopolized the manufacture of Difference Engines and strictly limited their use to entertainment."

"The one you are using is a relatively old model. It can only play card games and is hardly top of the line. I hear Duke Fitzgerald has one that can even put on stage plays-from writing the script and making the costumes to controlling the puppets during the performance, it does everything independently."

Writing its own scripts was one thing, but making its own costumes and then performing?

Elliot's eyelids twitched violently as he listened. Good grief, could purely mechanical machinery really do that?

And you still say there's nothing supernatural here!

He could not help shouting inwardly. But on second thought, perhaps it was simply the limits of his understanding.

Many industrial products from Blue Star would probably be regarded as miracles if brought here, too.

"However, this Difference Engine has its advantages as well. Information can be fed into it. For instance, I put this morning's newspaper into it, so you may encounter similar content in the game."

Elliot nodded in understanding.

So that was it! No wonder the game mentioned the New Poor Law.

Apparently, it was just logical extrapolation based on the information fed into it, not some supernatural power. A false alarm.

"If you are interested in Difference Engines, young master, I can contact the Troy Society to have one custom-made. With a rush order, it could arrive in a month."

"Don't we need to inform Mother?"

"There is no need to trouble Lady Camilla over such a small matter," Conrad replied nonchalantly.

Elliot narrowed his eyes slightly.

It seemed his status as "Master Sterling" carried even more weight than he had expected.

The old butler could simply commission an "extremely expensive" Difference Engine without even reporting it first?

"Not for now. This one's card game is quite good." Elliot waved a hand and returned to the study.

He was probably overthinking things. This Difference Engine might have caused a sensation on Blue Star, but here it was merely an "advanced toy," its technology monopolized and its uses strictly restricted.

After Conrad's explanation, even those seemingly "intelligent" real-time conversations were merely the product of information input and preset logic.

Elliot sighed, a faint sense of disappointment lingering in his heart.

"Ah... if only I really had a cheat."

"Mr. Razi! I finished the job!" Vanessa pounded on the warehouse's heavy iron door until Old Razi's deeply lined face appeared in the crack.

"Stop banging! You'll knock the door apart!" Cursing, he pulled the door open. His cloudy gaze lingered briefly on the body bag on the flatbed cart before returning to Vanessa, the corner of his mouth twisting in silent mockery.

Vanessa made two trips, first carrying the miscellaneous items inside, then trying to move the corpse.

The corpse belonged to an adult man and weighed nearly two hundred pounds. Back at the Wild Dog Gang, others had helped load it onto the cart, but here she had only herself to rely on.

Old Razi stood to one side with his hands tucked into his sleeves, showing no sign of coming over to help. Vanessa could only move it herself.

"S-so heavy!"

Moving a corpse was no easy task. A corpse was much harder to carry than a living person of the same weight. Vanessa tried to carry it on her back, but she could not manage it no matter what she did.

"Heh, heh, heh..." Old Razi wheezed out a mocking laugh like a broken bellows. "You don't even know how to move a corpse... you'll never get it onto your back like that."

"Then... how should I carry it...?" Vanessa panted, her body tilting as she fell into a sitting position on the floor along with the corpse.

"Carry it!" Lachi glanced at her thin little frame. "Or drag it."

Vanessa took a few breaths and stood up again. This time, she had learned her lesson. Following Old Razi's method, she slipped her arms beneath the corpse's armpits and hauled it backward as though dragging a heavy sack of grain.

Sure enough, it was much easier.

"I never thought there would be so many tricks to moving a corpse. You really know a lot, Mr. Razi."

"Heh, heh, heh..." Old Razi's laugh was as unpleasant as ever. "What tricks? You just don't know how to move one... you treated the corpse like a living person."

Vanessa froze. Thinking it over carefully, she really had instinctively tried to carry the corpse as she would a living person at first, but a corpse would not cooperate or exert any strength.

"In a city like this, you can treat people like corpses, but you can't treat corpses like people." Old Razi snorted, turned, and went back into his room.

"Alive, they're people. Dead, they're meat."

Vanessa silently lowered her head and looked at the "meat" she had brought.

It was the corpse of a young man who must have died only recently. His skin was still supple, and his face still held a trace of boyishness as he lay there with his eyes closed.

Vanessa thought he looked more like a sleeping person than a lump of meat that had yet to rot.

Putting the corpse into a drawer was purely a test of strength. Fortunately, there were still empty drawers on the lower level, and Vanessa managed to get the corpse onto one without too much effort.

After hastily copying the information on the body bag onto the drawer's label, this grueling task was finally over for the time being.

She fetched cold water and carefully washed her arms and cheeks. Exhaustion swept over her like a tide, yet a faint sense of accomplishment strangely rose in her heart-she had made it through her first day.

"I will survive," she told her wavering reflection in the sink, her voice so soft it was almost inaudible. "I will survive, no matter what."

Outside the window, thin mist swirled silently. Dim yellow gaslight filtered through the moisture-covered glass, casting shifting light and shadows over Vanessa's wet face.

After the difficult first day came the difficult second day, the third...

Nothing got better, but nothing got worse, either. Vanessa grew more practiced at carrying corpses over her shoulder with each passing day, and gradually grew accustomed to sleeping in a drawer beside the corpses she had brought in. Occasionally, she would even wish them good night.

The mysterious will that occasionally controlled her seemed to appear less and less frequently, as though it were gradually losing interest in her.

This is a good thing, Vanessa told herself.

She had originally planned to save some money and then ask Director Randall for treatment, but now it seemed she might even be able to save herself that expense.

At heart, Vanessa was someone who took things as they came and lacked ambition.

Her demands of life were pitifully low-being alive and not having to go hungry were enough.

Days like these seemed quite all right, too.

She had wanted to use a delivery to the gang as an opportunity to exchange a few more words with that mysterious back-alley doctor, Dorothea, and perhaps run into Winnie again. But lately, she had received no jobs taking her to the Wild Dog Gang, and she did not quite dare visit the gang's base alone, so she kept putting it off.

Until one day, she received a somewhat strange job.