Reincarnated as the Crown Prince
Chapter 61: Beginning of the Age of Empire Part 2

Chapter 61: Beginning of the Age of Empire Part 2

Lancelot disembarked first. He wore no crown, only a worker’s coat with a Civic badge pinned to the collar. At his side, Juliette carried a rolled blueprint tube and a sealed leather dossier marked "Expedition One: Dawn Road."

Bellido followed, wiping sweat from his brow. "We’re weeks ahead of schedule. You’ve got every dockworker in Cadiz threatening to unionize just to get some sleep."

"They’ll get rest once the engine hums from Dakar to Valencia," Juliette muttered.

At the end of the dock, Admiral Vives saluted. His naval coat was immaculate despite the chaos around him.

"Your Highness," he said. "The fleet awaits."

Lancelot returned the salute. "Let’s begin."

The loading ramp thudded into place.

—

Three days out from the Iberian coast, the sea was calm. Lancelot stood on the deck of the Resolución, staring out at the Atlantic horizon. He was joined by Dr. Calvet, a noted geographer and ethnographer who had recently returned from a failed British expedition in Sierra Leone.

"You know," Calvet said, adjusting his spectacles, "the British send priests. The French send traders. But you send engineers. That’s either madness or genius."

Lancelot didn’t smile. "The others want converts or coin. I want conduits. Steel, electricity, knowledge. Let others own the gold—if we control the machinery, they’ll come to us for everything else."

Calvet nodded. "Still, the climate will break men before battle does. Malaria. Rot. Insects that eat copper. You’ll need more than engineers. You’ll need hospitals."

Juliette, overhearing from nearby, added, "We brought six portable clinics. And four field schools. If a child knows how to solder a joint before he’s ten, we’ll have won more than territory—we’ll have secured the future."

Calvet chuckled. "You people really do believe in building as a weapon."

Lancelot’s gaze stayed locked on the horizon. "It’s not a weapon. It’s a promise."

—

The expedition made landfall on the coast of modern-day Sierra Leone—an inlet protected by cliffs and jungle canopy. There were no formal docks, only canoes and thatched huts in the distance. But as the Civic Brigades deployed prefabricated piers and modular walkways, the village elders approached—not with weapons, but with curiosity.

A translator stepped forward. Juliette did as well, offering a small metal cylinder—a portable hand-crank lamp. She twisted it. The bulb lit.

Children gasped.

Elders stepped closer.

One reached out and touched the lamp, as if unsure it was real.

Juliette smiled.

"We have more," she said.

Within two hours, a temporary power station was humming. Lights glowed near the water’s edge. A medical tent opened. A pipe was driven into the ground and fitted with a hand-pump—clean water gushed forth.

By dusk, fires were no longer needed.

Electric lanterns dotted the camp—and curious villagers remained nearby, watching the machines that glowed like stars fallen to earth.

Lancelot walked the rows with Calvet beside him.

"You’ve gained more ground in a single day than most armies do in weeks," the scholar murmured.

Lancelot said nothing.

But he knew it was true.

—

Within a fortnight, a full base of operations had been established.

The first telegraph relay was raised.

A 3-kilometer length of light-gauge rail extended inland, connecting the shoreline to the jungle outposts where rubber trees grew in dense clusters.

More Civic engineers arrived—some local boys already joining their ranks as assistants.

The region’s local chiefs met with Lancelot beneath a shaded awning. He offered them partnership contracts—written in Aragonese, translated into phonetic Creole, and marked with images to convey meaning.

"You retain your titles," he told them. "You retain your lands. We offer schools, roads, clinics, and workshops. In return, we ask for labor and access to rubber and ore."

One chief frowned. "And when the trees are gone?"

Lancelot nodded. "Then we plant more. And train your sons to be metallurgists. Not pickers."

It was not immediate.

But the chiefs agreed.

Not because of promises—but because of proof.

Their children already had light to read by.

—

By the end of the first month, the first "Dawn Port" was named: Nueva Cadiz, built on a high embankment above the inlet. It had a generator station, two schools, a hospital, and a Civic Council Chamber open to local representatives.

Copper wire snaked up through the hills, carried by poles driven into rock.

Civic flags flew beside local tribal totems—an awkward union, but a growing one.

And then came the ship from Britannia.

—

It arrived without warning—a merchant frigate bearing the Union Flag, anchored just beyond the permitted range. A launch approached under truce.

A diplomat disembarked. He was young, red-faced, sweating through his linen, and clearly annoyed.

"You’re building a city," he told Lancelot, "in a sphere previously—understood—to be shared influence."

Lancelot motioned around them. "Do you see any garrisons here? Any ports flying your crest? I see jungle. And I see progress."

The diplomat frowned. "London may not take kindly to unilateral colonization."

Juliette stepped beside Lancelot. "We’re not colonizing. We’re electrifying. If London wishes to object to children learning to read at night, they’re welcome to publish an editorial."

The diplomat reddened. "This will not stand."

Lancelot nodded.

"You’re right," he said. "It won’t stand. It will rise."

And behind him, a crane hoisted a steel girder toward the framework of a new Civic foundry.

—

Weeks passed.

Nueva Cadiz expanded.

The iron mine was located fifty kilometers inland—near a ridge once held sacred. Lancelot refused to touch the temple stones, ordering the site redirected without protest.

"That buys more loyalty than conquest ever could," Calvet said, scribbling notes.

The railroad pushed forward. More rails. More engineers. More contracts.

And finally, the first letter from Valencia arrived:

"Copper demand exceeds current capacity. Civilian factories request raw materials for domestic lamp production. Shipments required by early spring."

Lancelot read the letter aloud in the new council chamber.

Juliette exhaled. "We need another outpost. Somewhere closer to the interior."

Bellido pointed on the map. "There’s a river fork here. It can serve as a hub."

Lancelot nodded. "Then build it."

—

On the second month’s end, a young boy ran barefoot into camp with a torn scrap of parchment.

It bore one sentence in red ink:

"The dark resists."

And an emblem—an old royalist crest once used by exiled nobles.

Juliette stared at it for a long time.

"Saboteurs?"

"Probably," Bellido said.

"Let them try," Lancelot replied, setting the parchment down.

He turned to the window—where Nueva Cadiz hummed with power and light, its smokestacks glowing like lanterns.

—

The Empire had no coronation.

No crown was forged.

No anthem was sung.

Only steel laid down, one length at a time.

And the world watched.

From Paris. From Lisbon. From Rome.

From London.

The Kingdom of Aragon had crossed the sea.

But it had not come to conquer.

It had come to build.

And beneath foreign stars, the first sparks of empire glowed—not from cannon fire, but from coils, lamps, and a thousand children’s books read under electric light.

The Fourth Age had begun.

And it marched not with drums, but with engines.