Struggle in the Steam Age

After returning to the hotel, Lawrence found that all the crew members stayed in the hotel waiting for the news they brought back. It is different from ordinary merchant ships. As a warship, the crew of the Enterprise are all from Shaw Island, and they can be regarded as the citizens of Lawrence. So they are very interested in what kind of honor Lawrence can get this time.

After announcing the news that I had jointly built a medical ship and that the church of suffering had entered the island, the crew cheered happily. Although they don't quite understand how important Lawrence is as a partner of the medical ship, they can understand the significance of the medical ship berthing at New Saule Island for one month every year and the establishment of the Church of the Passion on the island.

After all, after meeting the basic necessities of life, everyone's needs will go further. For example, more comfortable housing, more delicious food, stable work and development space. There are even medical and educational services. Now all that the Passionists can offer is good medical care. More importantly, unlike other islands, this service is clearly aimed at everyone on the island. That's why the crew is so happy.

After everyone's excitement passed, Lawrence began to assign tasks. Because he decided to stay here for a while to deal with the pests and diseases in Viscount Doropia's cotton fields, he just had time to purchase some things that are difficult to buy in other places in this city, and then transport those things by the Enterprise go back.

These things include several specially customized machines and a large number of special mechanical parts, as well as some special materials needed by the superhumans on the island. The unified feature of these things is that they are not large in size, but they are more difficult to buy. Fortunately, as one of the largest cities in the New World, Ilysia, the capital of Elysium, can buy these goods more conveniently, but it needs to be customized in advance and wait for a few days before delivery.

So at the beginning, Lawrence didn't plan to buy these supplies here and bring them back. After all, at that time, it was not expected to stay in this city for too long. If you buy here, it is better to send the list to the White Eagle Federation and ship it from the White Eagle Federation.

But after Viscount Doropia's incident was confirmed, as soon as he returned, Lawrence sent a telegram to Safir through the telegram on the ship to report the incident, saying that he might need to stay for a few more days before returning, hoping that she would Be able to count the list of materials needed and send them to yourself.

Since there is a lot of space on the warships of this era for loading materials, after learning that he might have to stay here for a while, Lawrence decided to simply order those things, and then use the Enterprise to pull them back to Singapore. El Isle. In this way, the efficiency will be a little faster than ordering from the Silver Federation, and it will also save money on shipping.

After receiving Lawrence's telegram, Safiel seemed a little angry, because a large part of the island's work was on her shoulders during this period, so she had been hoping that Lawrence would come back as soon as possible to take over this burden and deal with government affairs. But now, after she had endured for so many days, Lawrence actually told her that the return time would be postponed.

This made Lawrence spend more than ten minutes to appease his fiancée. After all, he did make a mistake in this matter, and he was not able to abide by the previous agreement between the two parties. Fortunately, Safiel is not the kind of unreasonable person, so Lawrence managed to appease the somewhat unhappy Safiel, and then got the list of goods from her.

After Safir sent the detailed list the next morning, Lawrence gave the list to the captain and asked him to go shopping. On the other hand, he and Nora went to the previously agreed place, the mansion of Viscount Doropia in the city, and planned to go to those manors to check the possible problems in the cotton fields on the spot.

When the two of them arrived at the Viscount's mansion. The steward there told them that the viscount's family had already set off yesterday accompanied by members of the Agricultural Church. But before leaving, they specially bought airship tickets for Lawrence and the others and asked Mr. Housekeeper to hand over these two tickets to Lawrence. Seeing that the departure time of the airship was only an hour later, Lawrence immediately took Nora to the airship parking lot.

An hour later, Lawrence and Nora sat on the airship and watched the buildings on the ground outside the window getting smaller and smaller. After the airship left the city, they began to look at the interior of the airship. Unlike the super airship he had been on before, the interior decoration of this small airship used for short-distance passenger transport was closer to the first-class cabin of the plane in Lawrence's previous life.

"We're lucky, otherwise we'll have to wait until tomorrow." Lawrence said to Nora, watching the airship sail smoothly in the air, "Although there are more airships in the capital, it's a luxury As for the way of travel, the number of flights is not too many in terms of number alone.”

"Moreover, this airship is obviously reduced in size to reduce resistance and increase speed, but in this way, the number of passengers and the size of the entire airship will naturally not be too large." Nora said after carefully observing the airship. "And in order to reduce weight as much as possible, the various facilities on this airship are not complete at all. It can even be said to be a bit crude."

For example, the height of this airship is only two or three kilometers above the ground, so it is easy to be attacked by extraordinary creatures or affected by various weather conditions. But the advantage is that the airship does not need to be sealed at such a height, which can reduce the life support system by more than half, and at the same time reduce the difficulty of airship production.

Fortunately, airships are still a relatively luxurious means of transportation in this era, so even if they are a bit crude compared to the top-level airships, they are still very well decorated overall, and the sound insulation effect is also good. So after taking a nap, Lawrence and the others successfully arrived at their destination, Heraklion in the valley plain.

Because they had sent a telegram before departure, preparations were made for the reception here. As soon as Lawrence and Nora left the airship field, they saw the person sent by Viscount Doropia to pick them up holding a letter The wooden sign with their names stood beside a carriage looking at the gate of the airship field.

After a brief negotiation, the two of them boarded a carriage and drove towards the cotton plantation outside the city. Along the way, they discovered that Heraklion, the inland city of the empire, was completely different from the capital. There are not so many high-rise buildings and factories, but it looks like a big countryside.

City roads are gravel and cinder roads, and may appear uneven due to too many users. Fortunately, there is not much rain in this place, so there is not much water on the road. It will not cause a large number of pits due to the rolling of heavy-duty vehicles and the corrosion of rainwater like roads in some areas.

Both sides of the road are full of two or three-story classical-style small buildings, and there are large gaps between buildings, which are not as dense as many big cities. What's more special is that every other block, Lawrence can see a small fountain formed by conveying water through the underground pipe network in the center of the block to provide water to the surroundings.

In short, the style of this city does not look like a modern city, but an ancient city thousands of years ago. The only modern buildings in the entire city are the telegraph office with a huge iron tower on the top of the five-story building, several processing factories on the edge of the city, a large comprehensive trading center, and a black-smoky train.

But this corresponds to the fact that the air in this city is very good. For example, Lawrence can see the blue-gray mountains outside the city and the snow on some mountain tops through the gaps between the buildings while sitting in the carriage.

Although this city looks a bit ugly, it is because it is an important cotton and cattle producing area and it is only about 30 kilometers away from the town of Caracalla, the best spa in the empire. So the whole city can be regarded as a relatively wealthy city in this area, and because of this, such a city has airship routes that are rare now.

Because of the small size of the city, the carriage left the city quickly. Everything that appeared on both sides of the car window gradually changed from a small building on the second or third floor to a large field, interspersed with a very delicate looking manor house. Just when Lawrence was getting tired of the scenery on both sides of the carriage, the carriage stopped and their destination had arrived.