Industrial Cthulhu: Starting as an Island Lord

After speaking, Monica realized something was wrong. She quickly covered her mouth and glared fiercely at Hughes.

Strange. Why did she suddenly blurt out so much information?

The moving corpse in front of her was a stranger, yet she felt an indescribable familiarity with him. That feeling was so reassuring that if she let her guard down even a little, she would instinctively want to rely on him.

So strange.

Monica scrutinized Hughes for a moment, then looked at the gaping hole in his chest. No matter how hard she searched her memory, she couldn’t recall who he was.

Hughes also noticed Monica’s wariness. At this moment, he hesitated—should he reveal his identity?

As long as he told her, she would undoubtedly believe him. Hughes and Monica were simply too familiar with each other.

But...

Hughes lowered his head, looking at the hole in his chest. The ability to descend into different bodies was his greatest secret, something he had never told anyone.

Monica... She had always been the troublemaker of his territory, constantly stirring up chaos. Hughes gazed at her beautiful, fair face. She was no longer the child she used to be. Should he choose to trust her?Hughes suddenly clenched his teeth. His people were still fighting against the monsters in his territory, yet he was wasting time here. He stared into Monica’s emerald-green eyes—that familiarity was undeniable. Even if her appearance had changed slightly, she was still the same soul he knew.

”Monica, listen to me. This might be hard for you to accept, but I am actually Hughes. Your Lord Hughes. The Hughes who signed the Symbiotic Contract with you.”

”Mm, I believe you.”

”I know you don’t want to believe me, but I can tell you many details... Wait, what did you just say?”

”I said I believe you. I don’t know what you’ve been through, but if you don’t want to talk about it, there must be a reason. Since you are Hughes, and I am Monica, I choose to believe you.”

Hughes was momentarily speechless.

”Banshees are a race attuned to the mind. Our intuition is very accurate, and right now, it tells me that you are Hughes. There’s no mistake.”

Hughes felt as if the words were stuck in his throat. These banshees had always been like this. Whether it was when he first met Ash or when he accepted their allegiance under the sea, they had always trusted their intuition. It was as if they could directly see into people’s hearts.

”Y-You shouldn’t be like this. What if I’m just pretending? What if I only want to deceive your trust?”

”Then you’ve already succeeded.” Monica suddenly revealed a sly expression. ”Since you’ve said this much, tell me about myself.”

Hughes twitched at the corners of his eyes, sighed, and slowly began recounting.

”The first time I met you was in the sea, more precisely, at the bottom of the Abyss. At that time, the banshees worshiped me as a god. I rejected your request, and things became awkward.”

”A god...” Monica murmured with a complicated expression. ”It would be better if there were no gods.”

”What did you say?”

”Nothing. Go on.”

”Oh. Then you stepped forward and said that since I was the half-lord of the Storm Ocean, you were my half-subject.”

”Half-subject...” Monica trembled slightly.

Hughes found it odd but hesitated only briefly before continuing: ”That was how the banshees joined Castel. Later, due to discovering heavy contamination in the Abyss, the banshees had to move to shallow waters. Though you retained your human form using Flesh Magic, you could still barely use your powers. This led to you being eroded by the contamination and falling unconscious.”

Monica silently nodded.

”Then I called Nora to help treat you, but in doing so, we accidentally broke a cognitive barrier. A massive amount of contamination gathered around you, and in the end, I successfully purified it.”

”Actually, you only purified half of it.” Monica suddenly spoke.

Hughes was stunned before he fully processed what she had said. Confused, he asked, ”That’s impossible. You have the Symbiotic Contract. Even if some contamination remained, it would have been purified as your life force circulated.”

Monica shook her head and sighed. ”Didn’t you notice? At that time, too much contamination was drawn toward me.”

Hughes frowned in deep thought. That did seem to be the case. Since then, he had never encountered such a powerful contamination beast.

Even the wolves mutated by contamination, despite being submerged in it, were only slightly stronger than ordinary beasts. The contamination beasts in the Abyss needed a whole swarm to injure Monica—back then, Ash was the only combatant, single-handedly protecting the entire banshee clan.

So why did Monica become so terrifying after being contaminated?

Back then, Hughes hadn’t understood the true strength of the banshees. Thinking about it now, it was indeed strange. Though the banshees had been holding back, Monica had become overwhelmingly powerful, even with a hundred banshees trying to restrain her together.

Constantly growing stronger.

Contamination gathering.

Absorbing the contamination in the sea.

Why did this process feel so familiar?

And now that he thought about it—was contamination really that powerful? Just being injured caused her to fall unconscious, and even the entire banshee clan combined couldn’t heal her?

Even other Extraordinary beings without purification abilities would only need time to recover from direct contact with Entity Pollution. They wouldn’t suffer such severe acute symptoms.

The more Hughes thought about it, the more alarmed he became. Back then, he hadn’t understood much about the supernatural world and assumed it was normal. But looking back now, everything seemed suspicious.

And he distinctly remembered that after purifying Monica’s contamination, a strange presence fled in all directions, even triggering a storm. Since when did purifying contamination cause changes in the weather?

What had really happened back then?

Was Monica truly just contaminated?

Hughes swallowed and looked at Monica. ”What do you know?”

”Yes. Ever since I summoned the Machine Soul from the steam engine, I’ve been faintly hearing things. It felt like something was speaking to me. Back then, I thought the Machine Soul had finally acknowledged me.”

Her gaze drifted into the distance as if lost in thought. After a while, she chuckled softly. ”Thinking back, I should have realized it sooner. I was the only one who could summon a Machine Soul. No one else could...”

Monica suddenly turned around and looked at Hughes. ”The threads you were holding before—those were actually fragments of a god’s authority, weren’t they?”

Hughes froze, his face filled with astonishment.

Monica sighed. ”You must be wondering how I knew—because what eroded me back then wasn’t contamination. It was the Sea God.”