William began exploring the this strange eastern city.
'Automobiles' William thought as he looks att he cars running on the road, he looks around again nothing that the technology level of this place seems to be around early 20th century, with zeppelins and automobiles being a common sight.
William notes that the cars they had on this place bore a striking resemblance to early automobiles he had seen in one of those silent black and white movies.
'I think it was called the 1908 Model T... if I remember correctly' William thought as looks at a particular car, the whole situation feels very surreal to him, especially when looking at the the curved Chinese roofing on top of cars.
He moves through the city all the while drawing quite a few eyes on him despite his attempts at going under cover, his blonde is hair really does sticks out from the crowd of people whom all had dark hair.
While he could probably do something about it with his reality bending powers as hair colour can be changed by adjusting the amount of melanin, but he's always very hesitant on using it on himself.
The last thing he wants is to turn into some inhuman monster, so he has been refraining from his body chemistry, especially when he isn't good at fine control using his powers.
He fine at brute forcing his way through problems such as tearing atomic structures apart but as for for much subtitle finer control such as changing chemical composition of an object, while not impossible but he has a much harder time in doing so.
For comparison it's like the difference between tearing a piece of paper and trying to thread a needle.
He has no problems with trying it out on someone else but as for doing it to himself is a big no no.
It's really much more different when you're messing with other people body where you wouldn't suffer the consequences if you mess things up royally and doing it to yourself, having to bare the consequences of your actions.
While his hair colour did draw a few eyes but other wise nothing much came out of it.
Interesting to note that the inhabitants of this world oddly speaks understandable "standard" English despite being very culturally different.
Standard?
Yes, as it's certainly much more understandable than whatever the Australians are speaking.
Strangely though despite the inhabitants speaking English their writing system system seems to an odd for of Chinese, although he William doesn't know Chinese but he's pretty sure that the writing in this world is Chinese or something close to it.
As he's walking around he some mad man preaching on what William assumes to be some communists ideology called the Equalists, just like early 20th century Earth when communism rose to power.
William at this point assumes that he's in some parallel version of earth in the early 20th century with an eastern take on things.
Even though the man was drawing quite a crowd William is less then interested in the stupid ramblings of a mere mortal who can't accept in his pitiful miserable existence and is jealous of those more fortunate.
'Communist' William thought looking down the man not bothering to hear the rest of the nonsensical ramblings the man's babbling.
William walk pass the foolish masses drawn to the "Equalist's" nonsensical communist ramblings.
Walk pass?
Yes, as that's what people do when you encounter some mad man rambling on the street and it's especially true for other world traveller who is foreign to the world. (The author's criticism on the other FanFict's unrealistic reaction of confronting the Equalist preacher.)
Hr then proceeded to inquire and heads to the market place to inquire about the local market price and figure out how much did he actually get from that traveller earlier.
He still haven't figured out how much these strange pink paper bills is worth, obviously he can't the Chinese characters on them so he'll have to figure them.
He heads to stall and starts asking for the price of a bunch of random fruits before proceeding to hand out a paper bill and see how the stall owner reacts.
With that he finally got the general idea of how much he's worth.
Much later when night falls William heads to one of the local hotels to stay for the night.
Although the money he has acquired from that traveller seems to be quite substantial but it seems that the lodging in the city seems to be quite expensive, so he'll need to figure some way to generate money soon.
Although he is a powerful reality bender and can easily level the city of he really wanted but there's no telling if this world has any paranormal organisations that can deal with him, so he can't run wild here.
The SCP Foundation itself can be traced back to the Victorian Era from the "Her Majesty's Foundation for the Secure Containment of the Paranormal"
There are also other organisations that such as the Horizon Initiative compromising of the 3 major Abrahamic religious. (Christianity, Judaism and Islam) their origins can be traced much further and has access to some very scary rituals.
So William Will really need to think twice before going wild.
Suffice to say while he can get away makes a few people missing but when it reaches a certain point, it will start getting suspicious which prompt a response and investigation so he can't solely rely on making people disappear as a form of income.
Fortunately as a reality bender he could doesn't have to rely on robbing people to make money he could easily turn a lump of coal into diamonds.
While he can't just show up at the bank with a sack of raw uncut diamonds...
Or can he now?
William thought deeply as the technology from this place seems to that of 19~20th century right around the era of the gold rush.
William heard that in the past people can directly convert the US dollar into gold as the Is dollar is directly pegged to gold, and there were stores of people walking to bank holding into a chuck of gold to be exchanged into US dollar.
Although in the modern world it is much more complicated and people can no longer barge into banks holding huge lumps of gold but this world seems to still be in the 20th century so there's got to some sort of bartering system in place, where he can exchange various raw uncut gemstone for cold hard cash.
The next day William bought a sac of coal and began his diamond making plan.