Chapter 282: New District
One of the boys ran off to the tailors and came back with a whole stack of bright yellow cloth.
No wonder they hadn’t been able to sell that batch of mage robes.
Well, as a base layer to a formal robe, the bright yellow wasn’t bad, but it was too hot for multiple layers right now, and nobody would wear that sort of bright yellow out in public on a regular day.
Except the mages.
They were happy to have clean new clothes, and quickly retreated to an empty house to wash up and change clothes.
"Where did you leave your other robes?" Dominic asked when they returned, glowing in the sun.
"Oh, they didn’t take our pouches, just all the money and valuables. They’re attuned magical items, so they were deemed to have zero value if we weren’t being executed." One of the boys explained.
"Alright. That’s perfect, and it saves on space in your dorm until the tower can be built."
They all went back to work, and Dominic watched in awe as they combined their power to carefully dig six massive basement holes. They left the removed dirt piled at the edge of the development, and Dominic noted that most of it was actually good grey clay.
That could be used to make metal roofing and magitech items later.
A perfect situation, even if it did mean that they needed to do some extra work to ensure that the basements didn’t flood.
They were digging trenches for that, and for the drainage down the street toward the river.
It would tie into the existing pipes further down, but the fact that they had managed to get so much accomplished in under an hour was incredible. If they could build the structures at the rate that they were digging the holes, they would have all new apartment buildings in the next few days, just waiting for the extra details and interior finishing.
Some of that would take a lot of time, unless the team had a way to carve wood with magic. The town only had a single master carpenter for the entire renovation team, and while he had taken apprentices, there still weren’t enough of them to go around, and not enough dried wood to keep up with demand.
Their rate of expansion was beginning to far surpass their rate of resource production, and even the number of ranchers that they had managed to gain would not be enough.
Dominic realized as he looked at the new developments, and the number of houses occupied in town, they were going to have to do much more than just rebuild houses. He was going to have to import livestock so that there would be enough meat for everyone, and not just a few chicken eggs per house every day.
Hunting would help, but that was more of a supplement than a primary source of meat.
There simply weren’t enough wild animals in any given area to support a fast-growing town.
Fortunately, not everyone in town was as carnivorous minded as he was, and vegetable soup was the staple of basically every household on the continent.
In fact, compared to most nations’ peasant households, theirs was excellent quality soup, as they not only had plenty of vegetables, they had variety, herbs and spices. For many households, the last weeks before harvest season were usually filled with nothing but beet soup.
Just beets and water. Sometimes with seasonings from the garden, if they hadn’t used it all when it was fresh.
John Mackay, the former King’s Man, had a large flock of sheep, but that only covered their need for wool. There weren’t many food animals around, and the sheep couldn’t be butchered too young if you were going to keep up the flock size.
And that was the priority right now. Building up a proper flock.
They weren’t even short on farmers to raise the animals. They simply didn’t have enough animals right now, as most of their farmers were refugees. He would definitely put sheep and pigs on the next request form for the Merchant’s Guild, if it wasn’t on there already.
"Are you going to keep working tonight?" Dominic asked the development team.
They shook their heads. "No, it’s been a long day of travel, and the ground needs a bit of time to settle, so we can see if anything is hidden underneath that we didn’t detect. Besides, we worked the mages hard to dig that much ground in one day, and tomorrow we will do all the foundations.
We have the same [Fieldstone Wall] spell that you have, and that will make the shell of the houses, so we can get the timber in for the floors.
Or, we can use [Transmute Stone] to create floor pillars. However, it’s better to have the flexibility of wood for the floors. Stone is much less forgiving of damage."
That made sense to Dominic. Stone had a habit of cracking if you hit it just right, and the last thing you wanted was a floor joist cracking.
The mages got excited when he mentioned that. "You know, we have magic for that. I mean, we’re not witches, but if someone cuts down the trees, we can shape them into posts and planks and dry them suitably for use. It only takes a few minutes, and we know [Levitation] to move them into place.
We’re really rather well suited to construction work of all sorts."
Dominic chuckled. Not many mages would volunteer for heavy manual labour. They tended to view themselves as above such things, but the Purity Sect was going all in on their status as prisoners.
Personally, Dominic suspected that there was something not right in their heads. It might just be the curse, or the combination of their curse and indoctrination, but he was certain they weren’t quite right in the mind.
Unfortunately for them, they were the helpful sort of crazy, and that gave him very little incentive to try to fix them.