Struggle in the Steam Age

In the early hours of the morning, at the intersection of Linshu Street in the wealthy area with the best security conditions in Eagle Fort. A horse-drawn carriage running all night, with the clatter of horses' hoofs, entered the station, which was brightly illuminated by gas lights.

Even 10 years ago, this kind of overnight transportation did not exist in cities. If a person wishes to travel at night, except for a few wealthy people who have their own private vehicles, other people can only advance to their destination with their own legs.

However, with the development of the economy, a large number of middle classes have emerged in big cities like Fort Eagle. At the same time, due to the popularization of lighting appliances such as gas lamps, more and more people need to work night shifts. Under such circumstances, the problem of public transportation at night has to be put on the construction agenda.

So seven years ago, Eagle Fort, the largest city in the Silver Federation, built the first night bus line. It stretches from the highlands where the middle class live in the north to the Albatross Wharf in the south. In the middle, it passes through the railway station, the financial district and a series of areas where the middle class and high-level skilled workers work and live.

As a night bus, the conductor and driver on the bus have received simple training and wear guns. At the same time, all the carriages are painted bright orange to ensure the safety of running at night.

The door of this carriage with two articulated carriages was just opened when it entered the station. A young man with white hair and blue eyes was wearing a hunting suit and a young man with gray hair and blue eyes was also wearing a men's hunting suit. The girl who looked like a doll walked into the carriage arm in arm. Each of them carried in his hand a leather case with copper-bound corners.

The two young people who came out in the early morning were naturally Lawrence and Safiel who were traveling this time. The reason why they came out now was purely because the tickets they bought were the Federal Express that stopped at Fort Eagle in the early morning.

Ha-oh, next time I will definitely not buy early morning tickets, even if this express sleeper ticket is about the same as a soft seat ticket, I won't save the money. After buying the ticket and sitting down at the conductor, Sai Feier called He yawned and said to Lawrence with a sleepy face. She originally thought that as an apprentice-level warrior, she should be in good health, but she didn't expect that after getting up at 2:00 in the morning, she would be as sleepy as ordinary people.

Crazy girl, don't you know that for extraordinary people, as long as they have not reached the silver level or above in ancient times, that is, today's experts or experts and above. Then they are only equivalent to ordinary people who have mastered special abilities. , and in many places are not much different from ordinary people.”

Understood—nerd, don't call me nicknames when there are other people in the future. Hearing Lawrence calling his nickname, Safir said to Lawrence after looking at the dozing passengers in the scattered seats around him. , and then leaned his head on his shoulder. Call me when I get to the place. I'll sleep for a while.

Just after Safiel leaned his head on Lawrence's shoulder, there was a crisp whip sound in front of him. Then, with the clatter of horseshoes, the carriage started running along the track again.

Eagle Fort was dark at night, only the two kerosene lamps hanging in front of the car illuminated the surrounding roads brightly through the lenses on the lamps. Although these horse-drawn carriages stop at each station for a long time when they run at night, because there are no people or cars on the road, the overall speed is still very fast.

With the road going smoothly, it only took half an hour for Lawrence to pull the sleepy Safir into the brightly lit Central Station. Because this train is a long-distance train, the platform 32 they went to this time is just in the opposite direction from the platform where they took the train to the capital last time.

The train was no different from the ones I had seen before. It was the same iron-gray giant armored train, but this time there were a lot of red, green and black bloodstains on the barrier breaker in front of the train. There are also a few places where the collision marks are obvious, even leaving traces on the hard surface of the barrier breaker that has been smelted with some kind of extraordinary metal.

This road doesn't look so peaceful. Through the fog that filled the platform, Lawrence could clearly see the traces of various attacks on the front barrier breaker and the muzzle blackened by gunpowder.

Unlike the last road to the Capital Eagle's Nest Special Zone that mainly passed through the human-controlled area, the long-distance route that this train took that traversed the entire White Eagle Federation in a C shape from south to north needed to cross many The wilderness, so fighting with extraordinary creatures in the wild and some wilderness races is also inevitable.

Because they bought a sleeper ticket, Lawrence and the others quickly climbed up the stairs after getting on the car, and then found the door of their own box in the dim light on the second floor of the car.

Here it is, Box 233. Lawrence glanced at the ticket in his hand, then at the number on the palm-sized bronze plate nailed to the door, and after making sure he was in the right place, he stepped forward and twisted the handle to push open the door .

This box is very narrow. When the door is pushed open, there is a small car window. There is a table under the window. There is a small chair under the table. In addition, there is the bunk bed on the right side of the door. Yes, it looks like four or five square meters.

After entering the box, Lawrence and Safir said good night to each other and went straight to bed to catch up on sleep. This sleep lasted until after ten o'clock the next morning.

It takes five days to take the express train from Fort Eagle to Huguang City, so Lawrence and the others naturally prepared some things to pass the boring time on the road. Of course, although he took advantage of the day before departure to go to St. Gutenberg The cathedral bought several magic scrolls for learning, but those things are naturally not suitable for learning on a slightly bumpy train.

So the book he was looking at at this time was a series of information books that he had also borrowed from the library of St. Gutenberg Cathedral, including The Extraordinary History of the White Eagle Federation, Essays on the New World Hokuriku, Ericson Priest Travel to the Great Lakes, etc., among which Lord Lawrence attaches the most importance to Travel to the Great Lakes by Priest Ericson.

Priest Erikson was the first priest of the Church of Knowledge to go deep into the northern inland area of ​​the New World, and he was also the first adventurer from the Old World to discover the Great Lakes. The foundation stones of many cities in inland areas today are related to the batch of information obtained by his exploration in those years.

Some of these discoveries even appeared in geography textbooks. For example, the earliest colonists who came to the east coast thought that the Great Lakes region mentioned by the local aborigines was just a big lake, and Priest Ericson discovered after in-depth investigation that the so-called The Great Lakes are not one lake, but six huge lakes connected by rivers.

Because he made such a great discovery and also wrote very well. Therefore, the notebook Priest Eriksson's Travels to the Great Lakes that recorded what he saw and heard during his travels along the way sold very well, and many people in the Federation had read this book.

This is true whether in the world of ordinary people or in the world of extraordinary people. Many people with a little money in their families would buy a set of common sense education for their children. For example, Lawrence remembered that there was a set in Safir’s family at that time.

Of course, the set of books that Lawrence is holding now is different from the ones bought in the world of ordinary people. There are many books sold in the world of ordinary people that have been deleted from the books related to the extraordinary.

For example, it is mentioned here that the two lakes in the south of the six lakes, Green Lake and Black Lake, are so named not because of the color of the lake, but because Priest Eriksson really lived here. Traces of green dragons and black dragons have been found in the lake area.

This is actually a very miraculous thing from the perspective of extraordinary biology, because the giant dragon has very high requirements for the space of movement, often reaching tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of square kilometers. And here, the black dragon and the green dragon are two different types of dragons, and the areas where the two kinds of dragons frequently move are less than 20 kilometers apart, which seems a little strange.

Because of this note, several churches and the Federation itself organized multiple expeditions to explore this area. More than 70 years ago, a joint expedition organized by multiple churches and the Federation successfully discovered the Dragon Blood Forest.

The reason for this name is that the land under the forest was assimilated by the blood of a certain dragon with the power of the gods. All draconic beings in the vicinity of that forest gain some small but real benefit from it. This is why the two giant dragons could live in harmony here.

Can it benefit the approaching dragon-veined creatures? After reading this paragraph, Lawrence suddenly felt that it was a pity that Fatina could not travel together this time, because the dragon blood forest was obviously more useful to her.