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Chapter 959: Witnessing History

The next day was Neverwinter’s fourth holiday in autumn—the first weekend of mid-autumn.

This world had no Genesis stories, no mythological calendar to organize rest around. Most people spent every day of every year in pursuit of food. When Roland introduced the rule of one day off every seven days—paid, no deductions—his subjects gave him their gratitude without reservation. No one complained about a lord who let them rest.

The refugees in particular, flooding in from cities that offered nothing but hunger and poverty, found that even the news of demons could not shake their determination to stay. Compared to starvation, demons were a threat they could at least see coming.

According to Barov’s reports, the weekly rest day had barely touched production. Once officially established, it became a matter of individual choice: many workers simply elected to come in on the holiday and collect the additional pay. Meanwhile, the city’s trade expanded in ways that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise. The market square thrived on weekends—local merchants mixed with traders from outside cities, who arrived each weekend to sell, then spent the weekdays sourcing goods from the Western Region before returning home to profit on them. With more concrete boats in circulation, goods turned over in weeks rather than months, the cycle shortened beyond anything that had seemed possible a year before. Inland cities like Redwater, which once ate only pickled fish, could now serve refrigerated fresh fish from Shallow Port at a noble’s table.

With this in mind, Roland had made a deliberate choice: important speeches, demonstrations, and commendation ceremonies fell on rest days, timed to catch people already in a shopping mood. Goods moved, deals were struck, and the additional tax revenue offset whatever wages he paid out. A single move that served several purposes at once.

This weekend was no different in principle—but in every other way it was unlike any before it.

Beneath a cloudless sky, with the last warmth of summer blending into the cool of autumn, streets from the inland river dock to the northern city wall were packed with waiting people. They had not come for the Convenience Market. They had come to witness their king’s new invention.

An unprecedented form of transport—“the train”—was about to make its first trial run.

Victor, the jeweler, was among them.

The moment City Hall’s propaganda reached him, he had handed off the major negotiation he was managing, walked to the dock, and boarded the first concrete boat to Neverwinter that night.

Victor was, by this point in his life, deeply impressed by what had happened in the Western Region. He had first visited it when it was only a small, isolated border town. He still had a hazy memory of the lord then: a heavyset middle-aged noble who complained at length about how barren his land was. If not for the fine gemstones available, Victor would never have made the journey past Longsong Stronghold.

He had once come only once a year, and each time the small border town had looked as dilapidated as ever. Then the frequency had shifted—once a month, particularly after Roland Wimbledon announced he was building a city here. Now Victor could not imagine staying away.

It was as if the Western Region ran on different time. A day here was worth a month’s progress elsewhere; those months accumulated into years. He could not explain how it moved so fast.

The tavern’s owner met him at the door. “I knew you’d come. Third floor, window table—I saved it for you.”

Victor pulled out a silver royal and flipped it over. “Lead the way.”

He didn’t have to stand in the crowd. The third floor was also busy, but at least there was a view. Around him, the discussion had been running since before he arrived.

“The train’s going to run on that narrow stretch of road? It’s too far from the square and the residential areas.”

“That’s not a road—that’s a railway, the same kind they use in the mining area,” someone replied, laughing. “It’s not designed for people to ride. Better to keep it somewhere less crowded. You think it’s a wagon?”

“Like the ones in Silver City’s mine?”

“Yes, runs on a steam engine. Made right here in Neverwinter.”

Victor found himself joining in. “I’ve seen the carts driven by steam engines before. Their advantage is handling uneven terrain. But on flat ground, mules can match them. If it were simply that, the City Hall wouldn’t call it era-defining.”

“Maybe it’s just a stunt,” a man muttered.

The room turned on him at once. “Is this your first time in Neverwinter? King Roland doesn’t boast.”

The man looked unconvinced but never got to answer. From somewhere down the boulevard came a long, low whistle—

“Woo——————”

—and the room erupted.

“It’s coming!” Everyone pressed toward the windows. Some pulled out telescopes. Victor leaned as far forward as the frame allowed.

Behind the rooftops, a dark shape appeared.

Long. Black. Enormous. It moved steadily into view above the houses—its head a metal drum, gray smoke pumping steadily from the top like a working steam engine at full output. Beside it ran a wagon drawn by two horses, clearly driven at a matching pace, as if the two were competing. The wagon was laden with ore; the driver’s whip never stopped, and the horses strained visibly with every step. If the wheel hubs had not been iron-forged, the wagon would have already collapsed.

Then the train’s full length revealed itself, and the crowd forgot to breathe.

Carriages. One after another. Each one four or five times the size of the wagon, each laden with ore—every single carriage the rough equivalent, in bulk, of a cargo sailing ship on the inland river.

The counting began.

“Four—the fourth!”

“The fifth!”

“There can’t be more—”

“My God. The sixth!”

“There’s another. Seven!”

The enormous locomotive trailed seven carriages and moved steadily, unhurried, across the clearing before the castle.

Victor found his answer.

There was a difference—a fundamental difference—between a steam engine fixed at a mine entrance to power carts along a fixed track and a steam engine that could move independently, carrying its load wherever a railway could be laid. Weight was no longer the constraint of land transportation; the train’s capacity outstripped river transportation entirely. A king with enough track could empty a city of its resources and move them across the land without touching a river.

Victor had grown up in trade. He knew better than most people what transportation meant—why almost every city of consequence sat beside water. He understood in his bones what the word “era-defining” was doing in City Hall’s announcement.

Something came over him then that he couldn’t quite name. Something between fulfillment and loss. The sensation of witnessing a hinge-point in history—and knowing, with perfect clarity, that most of the world was still utterly unaware of it. The lords of other kingdoms were drowning in wine and traveling muddy brick roads on horseback, congratulating themselves on their arrangements, entirely unaware that the ground had already shifted.

The future has already arrived, he thought. It just hasn’t reached every place yet.

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