Two days later, in the morning.
Accompanied by Aisha Hodhua and Lusana, Sang stepped into the outside world once again after a full half-year absence. Before leaving, he turned back toward the 【Heavenly Key】 and stuck out his tongue. “Nyah nyah, farewell forever, you prison!”
Aisha and Lusana both developed a vein throbbing on their foreheads. “Just so you know,” they reminded him, “we’re coming back tonight.”
“Uh… don’t be like that. You’re scaring me.”
Seeing the boy put on such a deliberately cutesy act, the two maids sighed in unison. They were used to it by now, but they still couldn’t stand it.
How could there be such an infuriating human in the world?
To avoid drawing attention, the three of them wore ordinary yet exquisitely tailored clothes—the sort that ordinary nobles might don. It gave them the air of nobility traveling incognito. However, Sang was the type who wouldn’t look like a prince even if you dressed him in the finest robes. For one thing, his looks were utterly unremarkable. For another, his build was average at best, and he wasn’t even particularly tall—one meter sixty at fourteen or fifteen years old, hardly enough to fill out the outfit.
Moreover, the Central District was nothing like Kaen Town. Sang’s head of black hair had gone unnoticed back home only because country folk had never seen anything like it. But here in the Central District, nobles were everywhere—nobles with high titles, no less. The moment anyone laid eyes on that striking black hair, the younger generation might not recognize it, but the elders certainly would: 【Abandoned Child】.
【Abandoned Child】 was the ultimate ingredient, one that could dramatically boost the power of the Blood Race. If greed took hold in someone’s heart, Sang could find himself in real trouble.
That was why, before they set out, Aisha Hodhua had specially dyed the boy’s hair to hide that eye-catching black. She’d wanted to go with gold, but dye technology in this world wasn’t advanced enough, so it came out a deep blue verging on black. Hmm… the same shade as Adolf’s.
There had been other options, but Sang had insisted on this color.
Well… he did miss Adolf.
Since the 【Heavenly Key】 was located in the Inner Ring of the Central District, stepping outside put them right in noble territory—the so-called Blood Race district—with a massively opulent palace right next door.
In your typical Western fantasy world, royal families were a staple. Palaces served dual purposes: residences for the royals and seats of governance.
Yet in this world, there was only one True Ancestor and no royal family. The True Ancestor slumbered for decades at a stretch and showed no interest in ruling when awake. Over time, the palace had become little more than a showpiece.
Of course, it wasn’t entirely abandoned. The Cape Family treated it like their own home.
Sang had no interest in any of that. It wasn’t his business, so why bother? He’d finally gotten out, and he had a packed itinerary. First order of business: mailing a letter!
He had never forgotten— no, the ones always foremost in his thoughts were the folks back in Kaen Town, especially Sister Lilian, Luna, and Adolf. They probably still thought he was dead. He had to let them know he was alive.
Why hadn’t he sent word from the 【Heavenly Key】?
Simple: he hadn’t had the freedom. For one thing, letters weren’t allowed. For another, back then, he hadn’t known how long he’d survive. Send a letter today, drop dead tomorrow… Now things had stabilized. He wasn’t going to die anytime soon, and he’d even managed to step out. Finally, he could send that letter.
“There are no public post offices in the Inner Ring,” Aisha Hodhua explained. “Nobles have their servants deliver mail. If you want to send a letter, we have to go to the First District in the Outer Ring—that’s where the public post office is.”
The Pink-Haired Little Lolita was dressed in a red-and-black Lolita outfit today, as cute as could be. She pulled it off perfectly, without the awkward cosplay vibe from his old world. No sense of mismatch at all. At one meter forty tall, with long, cascading pink curls like a shower of fallen petals, her face was delicately sculpted without a trace of makeup.
Had this girl been raised on cuteness?
He could only dream of hearing those words from her lips: “A fateful encounter in another world, savor the delicious feast.”
He couldn’t fathom how the Hodhua Family had the heart to toss her into the 【Heavenly Key】. In modern society, a horde of looks-obsessed fans would be lining up to pamper her.
Lusana came from fallen nobility, so she was noble-born at least, and quite pretty in her own right. But she lacked standout features, unlike Aisha Hodhua or the Pink-Haired Little Lolita—those two left a lasting impression. No need to belabor the point.
Back to the present moment.
Sang had ridden inside a carriage the whole way from Kaen Town to the Central District and then straight into the 【Heavenly Key】. This was his first real chance to take in the sights of the Central District.
He’d always harped on how backward this otherworld was, but now he had to admit he was wrong. The Inner Ring of the Central District resembled Victorian-era Britain, on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution. It wasn’t the full-blown steampunk spectacle, but the seeds were there. In another ten or twenty years, it would all take off.
Streetlamps had already become commonplace—at least in the noble districts.
The streets were smooth stone avenues lined with rows of roadside trees of indeterminate species. Nearby stood wooden-and-stone buildings seven or eight stories tall, interspersed with villas of every architectural style. It seemed every noble had their own taste, each hoping to set the trends.
It was a chaotic age, but also one of boundless flourishing.
The worst of times, yet brimming with possibility—a era of magical realism.
“The Central District isn’t even in the same league as Kaen Town,” Sang couldn’t help marveling, even as a modern-day transmigrator. He was intoxicated by this world teetering on the brink of industrial revolution.
The difference between the Central District and Kaen Town was night and day, enough to make one question if they were even the same world.
Aisha Hodhua was shocked too. She’d been cooped up in the 【Heavenly Key】 for decades herself and hadn’t expected the outside world to have changed so much.
“It’s way different from when I was little.”
Lusana caught the looks of awe on their faces and flashed a disdainful glance. “No need to be so impressed,” she explained. “Humans made all this. Humans are such fragile creatures—most of them can’t even become knights. They take up other trades instead. Some who serve in noble houses go to ridiculous lengths to curry favor with the Blood Race, inventing all sorts of bizarre contraptions. Most of it’s useless, of course, but it’s their way of clawing for survival.”
Sang couldn’t fully agree with that. These were treasures of human progress. Forget the miscellaneous gadgets—the invention of streetlights alone was a monumental leap for illumination!
But on second thought, he understood Lusana’s point. In a world of superpowers, technology wasn’t the prime driver. Knights were the pinnacle of achievement. Few humans could wield superpowers, and their physical prowess paled against the Blood Race. They had to rely on their wits, seeking other paths to change their fates.
From Lusana’s words, Sang gleaned this world’s attitude toward technological civilization: the Blood Race looked down on it, even deliberately belittling human tech—yet secretly embraced it. Otherwise, why would streetlamps be standard in noble districts?
Why the hypocrisy?
It was straightforward. For one, the Blood Race’s pride wouldn’t let them admit inferiority to humans. For another, they feared humans might one day leverage technology for a counterattack, threatening Blood Race dominance.
Once again, Sang felt the weight of a hard truth: in the grand sweep of history, even a transmigrator was just a speck.
How could a mere human hope to budge the wheels of history?
Whatever. He was out now, and he intended to have the time of his life!
