Triss bowed, turned, and exited the room. Her steps were light, filled with unprecedented vitality and anticipation.
Nairn was alone in the room once again.
He sat back down on the sofa and began to ponder what benefits this "exorcism" operation could bring him.
The most direct benefit, of course, was to further consolidate his image as "mysterious,
powerful, and omnipotent" within the official circles and high society of Tingen City.
This would add a deeper layer of camouflage and deterrence to his persona as the "Anti-Fraud Mutual Aid Foundation." In the future, whatever the Foundation wanted to do would encounter much less resistance.
Secondly, there was Sir Derville himself.
The baronet wanted to use this opportunity to reach a deeper cooperation with a man of great supernatural powers; but why wouldn't Nairn also want to completely control this wealthy, powerful noble who possessed a desire for reform yet was limited by his own class?
All the information regarding Sir Derville surfaced in Nairn's mind.
His career started with lead and porcelain factories, and now spanned steel, coal, shipping, banking, and securities. He was a great philanthropist personally praised by the King, having established the Derville Charity Fund, the Derville Trust Company, and the Derville Library—he was granted the title of baronet five years ago.
A standard successful man who rose from the Industrial Revolution, an elite of the Victorian era.
He had a kind heart and was willing to make changes, but this kindness and change came with a prerequisite: it must not damage his own core interests and long-term development.
Nairn recalled the evaluation of the Derville Charity Apartments by Klein's brother, Benson, in the original work.
Those requirements for residency that sounded so incredibly correct—mandatory vaccination, rotating cleaning duties, no subletting,
no letting children play in the hallways—were natural virtues for a well-to-do gentleman.
But for the poor struggling on the line of basic survival, it was the naivety of "Why don't they eat meat?"
Did they have the money to get vaccinated? Free medical care would have a three-month waiting list.
Was their work stable? Once unemployed, if they couldn't sublet the room, they'd have to pack up and get out immediately.
Did they have the energy to discipline their children? They didn't even know where their next meal was coming from.
Derville's kindness was a condescending, self-satisfying kindness. It was more like the self-promotion of a feudal noble thinking, "The master is kind-hearted and cannot bear to see the poor die at his doorstep," a performance art intended to manifest his own superiority and sense of morality.
Perhaps, like Dunn, these social elites saw the ills of the era but naively believed that as the Kingdom developed, these problems would naturally be resolved.
But the old problem came back around—
In the process of development, who would implement such a solution?
Who would do it?
Those gentlemen sitting in their clubs, drinking black tea and discussing the "labor problem"?
In the afternoon Backlund, sunlight spread generously yet coldly across the streets.
The black smoke from distant factories still rose slowly, merging with the skyline like a massive, unhealable scar of this era.
The sunlight was dazzling; on the bustling streets, the sound of horse carriages was crisp and pleasant.
Thinking of the "Derville Charity Apartment Management Regulations," Nairn had unconsciously walked outside.
His gaze passed over the bustling carriages and the decently dressed gentlemen and ladies on the street, as if piercing through solid brick and stone and the flow of time, seeing those silent, hunched figures in the cramped alleys of Tingen's East Borough.
They were not data in newspapers, not "labor force" in the mouths of factory owners, and certainly not "recipients of aid" in the eyes of philanthropists or a "poverty problem" to be used as conversation fodder in noble salons.
They were living human beings, easily crushed by the giant wheels of the era, their every groan drowned out by the roar of the machines.
Benson's words seemed to echo in his ears again.
The cold realities regarding vaccinations, unemployment, and shared rentals were like needles, popping the magnificent balloon named "charity."
Derville was a good man, Nairn knew.
But his set of decent rules couldn't save those who were about to starve to death.
His kindness was like sending an exquisite pair of embroidered gloves to someone about to freeze to death in the dead of winter.
It looked good, but it couldn't warm the body.
Sir Derville's kindness was a kindness under a glass dome, a kindness that discussed the wind and snow outside while sitting before a warm fireplace with a compassionate heart.
It was the kind of kindness that enjoyed the convenience brought by the steam engine but was unwilling to ask where the burning coal came from.
That kind of kindness could not warm frozen fingers in the cold nights of the East Borough, nor could it fill the empty stomachs of children whose parents were unemployed.
A cold yet burning thought completely took shape under the sunlight at this moment.
The kindness of reform could not save a world in desperate need of reshaping.
Decent repairs could not stop the rot deep within the Foundation.
Sir Derville saw the problem and even tried to lend a helping hand.
But he and his kind were, after all, people standing on the high towers of the old era, cautiously throwing down a rope.
That rope was too short, and the tower base they stood upon was too stable.
They couldn't lower their status, and they certainly didn't dare to shake that high tower cast from the blood and sweat of countless people that supported their superior lives.
In that case, let me be the one to spark the revolution.
When this thought arose, what Nairn felt was not a blood-boiling surge of excitement, but an absolute, deep-water-like calm.
He knew better than anyone that true change never originated from the polite discussions in noble salons.
It required fire, it required tearing, it required someone willing to be the first to step into the filthiest, darkest quagmire and then light that first fire.
That fire might burn away all existing corrupt orders, or it might burn the arsonist himself to nothingness.
He was not a martyr fantasizing about glory.
He clearly foresaw what it would mean once he embarked on this path.
At that time, he would betray all existing social bonds and endure hostility from both the upper and lower classes.
He would betray the class he was currently integrating into; he would endure misunderstanding and hostility from both levels.
High society would view him as a deviant traitor and a Lunatic, while the lower-class masses he wanted to save might, in the early stages of the revolution, view him as an agitator bringing disaster.
He would be all alone, walking a lonely path of being misunderstood.
He accepted this loneliness calmly, as he accepted his own shadow.
His goal was no longer limited to something as simple as "solving a certain injustice."
What he wanted to shake was the cold logic rooted in this age of steam and steel that alienated people into "labor force" or "objects of charity," that invisible shackle placed upon every soul.
For this, personal safety and posthumous reputation could all be discarded.
To "sacrifice one's life for a cause" was never about passively enduring suffering, but actively and soberly choosing the most difficult, most dangerous, yet only path possible to move the entire world.
This was an extreme, rational madness.
At this moment, the brighter the sunlight, the more it revealed the fragmentation and hypocrisy of reality.
This light did not belong to the slums; it only belonged to those on the high towers.
But what "Days of Yore" intended to do was to let this "light" shine into every dark corner it had been deliberately ignoring.
Even if the method was to use a raging fire to burn out a new skylight.
A gust of wind blew, swirling the coal ash from the street corner, lightly brushing past his resolute profile.
The church bells in the distance rang; that was the old order keeping time for itself.
And within Nairn's heart, he had already begun the countdown for the new era.
The sunlight stretched his solitary standing shadow very, very long on the ground, like a lonely monument carved for himself in advance.
This man-eating world, this decency that glossed over peace—
Being a good person is useless; decency is useless.
If that's the case, from this day forth, he would be this "villain."