Steampunk Era: Mad Abield

Long ago, Malin heard a saying that life is like a journey, what matters is not the destination, but the scenery along the way.

Though that’s true, in this godforsaken world, the scenery along the way can turn into bitter memories at any moment. When the train passed through the Lodis Plains and arrived near Germain Town, close to the Central Administrative Province, Malin sitting in the carriage shook his head as he looked at the refugee tide.

Over the past year, the countries to the north have been anything but peaceful, with natural disasters and man-made calamities coming almost all at once. The Chaos Cult held a "party" there, with casualties numbering in the tens of thousands. Judging by the accents of these refugees, they’re all northerners.

"I’ve always felt that Carterburg was too peaceful," Logan said with emotion while looking at the crowd outside the window: "I’ve always wanted to leave Carterburg to experience the big cities, I don’t want to be a country bumpkin...," he said, laughing and sighing: "I’m sure if they knew what I’ve been thinking, these people fleeing from the northern metropolises would be fighting to trade places with me."

"Father won’t let the refugees into the Central Administrative Province, probably because he’s concerned that there might be seeds of Chaos amongst them," Faye said as she looked at a man walking along the railroad tracks with his whole family: "I don’t know how they made it all the way here, their homeland is a thousand miles away."

"For survival, people often do things that others can’t understand," Malin said as he looked at the spectrometer in front of him, observing traces of corruption from Chaos on many of the refugees.

Because of the high consumption of Spiritual Energy, Malin soon canceled the Spell Formation, and by that time a group of mounted police had come from a distance, beginning to maintain order on their horses.

To Malin, it seemed that Carterburg might provide a haven for them, as long as they were willing to work hard— the second phase processing plant had taken in many refugees, who cherished their work that allowed them to feed their families, causing Malin to revise his opinion of the northerners.

In past conversations, everyone said that the northerners, especially those from foreign lands, were very stubborn and inflexible. But now it appeared that for the sake of survival, people were always willing to change.

The education Malin received led him to understand that people always need to labor to obtain the necessities of life; Malin wouldn’t treat workers as mere numbers or view work as just profit like those he despised, but those who do not work will not eat, and the lazy are doomed to die anywhere.