Chapter 959 (2/2)

“Perhaps it’s only a stunt,” a man murmured.

“Go away,” the people around the man cried immediately. “Is this your first time in Neverwinter? King Roland never boasts.”

The man looked unconvinced and wanted to argue but was abruptly interrupted by a loud whistle from far away.

“Woo——————”

“It’s coming!” The atmosphere of the room went wild. Everyone looked out of the windows and stared unblinkingly at a small street near the Castle District. Some of them even took out telescopes.

Victor also looked at where the sound came from.

A long and black beast appeared behind the houses, coming slowly in sight. It was huge, and above its two wheels was its head that looked like a metal pail, on top of which there was gray smoke pumping out, just like a working steam engine.

A wagon ran alongside the head of the train, drawn by two horses, moving as fast as the train, as if the two were completing. However, since the wagon was laden with ore, the driver of the cart must keep whipping to drive the horses forward, and every step the horses took was strenuous. If the hub of the wheel was not iron-forged, the wagon would have collapsed already.

As the full exterior of the train was revealed, Victor, despite himself, felt the hairs on his back stand up.

Carriages, one after another, followed the head of the train. Each was four or five times larger than the wagon and laden with ore. In terms of volume, one carriage was almost on a par with a cargo sailing ship on the inland river.

The point was that the train contained more than one carriage.

For a moment, all the audience exclaimed with admiration.

“Four…the fourth!”

“The fifth!”

“There can’t be more!”

“My God! The sixth!”

“There’s more, the seventh!”

The monster-like head trailed a total of seven carriages, moving steadily across the clearing before the castle.

Now Victor found the answer to his question.

There was a big difference between a steam engine that was fixed in the entrance to the mine to power the carts and a steam engine that could move independently and freely.

The latter could carry goods to wherever the railway stretched. The weight would no longer be the bottleneck of land transportation. On the contrary, the capability of the train would outstrip that of the river transportation. His Majesty could even empty a city in a short time by carrying everything away on the train if he wanted.

Being born as the son of a merchant, Victor naturally knew the importance of transportation, which was often the reason why most cities were built near rivers. Obviously, such kind of transport would bring limitless possibilities for the circulation of the resources, so the word “era-defining” was far from being over dramatic.

An unspeakable feeling came over him, he could feel content and lost and… It was like he had witnessed history yet meanwhile he had been forsaken by history. The lords in other kingdoms were still drowning themselves in pleasures and traveling by horses and mules on the road that was paved with bricks and full of mud.

They, however, were entirely unaware of what had happened here and still felt good about themselves.

Somehow, an idea emerged in Victor’s head.

The future had already come, yet it did not arrive at all places equally.