Chapter 315: Chapter 315 Preparations For TheTransport
Which meant she couldn’t complete the transport in a single trip; she would need to return several times. Fortunately, she had already anticipated this. Instead of moving the crops and animals straight to the designated location, she planned to first establish a temporary shelter.
Once everyone was secured there, they could then transfer the goods to the final destination. This approach would prevent wasting precious time shuttling back and forth, reduce delays in addressing the locust swarm, and ease the burden on the mages.
"Alright, good work. Keep calming the animals and move the poultry into larger cages for transport. We’ll load the cages onto the horse carts during the transport. As for the bigger animals, we’ll just tie them together and herd them behind the carts so we won’t need too many carts."
"Since you’re more familiar with the animal behavior, I’ll leave the grouping to you. Decide how many can be moved together without making it too difficult for the guards to protect them if monsters attack." Addison instructed.
She noticed the man’s eyebrow twitch ever so slightly, as if he wanted to protest and say, ’There aren’t that many monsters here in the west.’ But he held back. After all, fewer didn’t mean none.
Besides, Addison was only considering every possibility, and he knew he didn’t have much say in the matter; she was the one in charge, and a princess at that. If a monster did attack during transport, it would be nearly impossible for the guards and the people following the caravan to watch the animals at all times.
That was why the number of animals being moved had to be kept under control. Unlike harvested crops that could simply be stored in a magic bag or magic crates and remain safe, animals were different.
In the chaos of an attack, they would surely panic. While the guards fought, the animals could bolt in every direction, and since they were tied together, their frenzy might drag the carts with them or leave them tangled in a dangerous mess.
When the animal farm leader finally grasped the crux of the situation, he stopped questioning Addison and grew serious. "Please leave this matter to me, Princess. I’ll make sure everything is arranged properly. I’ll just need to know how many horse-drawn carts will be available and how many guards or people will accompany the transport, so I can coordinate better with my team."
Addison gave a firm nod. "Alright. I’ll first finalize the transport arrangements for the harvested crops and take the number of how many young and elderly there are, along with the number of warriors in your pack. Once I know that, I can determine how many people will be moved each trip, and you can align your arrangements accordingly."
After finishing her discussion, Addison wasted no time lingering and headed straight to Alpha Hue to confirm the exact number of people. She found him inside one of the granaries, overseeing his men as they stacked sack after sack of processed wheat, rice, and other crops into large magic crates.
These crates worked much like magic bags, capable of storing vast amounts of non-living goods, but with even greater capacity. They were commonly used by merchants and Alphas from different regions to hold their tributes for the royal family, sparing them the trouble of bringing an entire caravans during long journeys.
This was also why most who traveled to the Royal Capital preferred horse-drawn carriages; they could bring the magic crates with them, which made their travel light, fast, and unburdened by endless wagons of their things, but they could still bring everything they needed.
This was also why Addison wasn’t too worried about bringing only twenty horse-drawn carts to the West for transport. The real advantage lay in the magic crates, each was capable of holding up to five hundred cubic meters of goods.
Even so, they would still need as many crates as possible and multiple trips to haul everything; that was just how massive the granaries in the West were.
And it wasn’t only the current harvest they had to deal with. The granaries still held grains from the previous harvest season, and in the Golden Hue Pack alone, there were five large granaries stocked with tens of thousands of sacks of grain.
That didn’t even include the fresh vegetables waiting to be harvested. They couldn’t afford to leave or waste them; vegetables were a vital part of the werewolves’ diet, and any spoiled produce could still be repurposed as animal feed or compost for fertilizer.
"Alpha Hue, do you have a moment?" Addison asked as she approached.
Alpha Hue paused in his work, no longer pointing out directions to the men hauling sack after sack of grain. Each load was carried to the magic crates, and once a crate reached full capacity, it was set aside near the exit, ready to be transported to the waiting horse-drawn carts.
As Addison glanced around the vast granary, she saw at least two dozen young men moving in a steady rhythm, each balancing a heavy sack on each shoulder as he carried it from the towering stacks to the crates.
Others had climbed atop the piles, loosening the stacks carefully so the workers below could catch the sacks and arrange them neatly inside the magic crates.
"Princess, you’re here," Alpha Hue said the moment he spotted Addison. "We’ve already finished transferring the supplies from the other three granaries into the magic crates. Each one is filled to the brim, five hundred cubic meters exactly."
"In just a few more days, we’ll finish the rest of the remaining granaries and then be ready to help store the newly harvested crops."
He paused, his shoulders sagging slightly. "As for the fresh harvest, we may not have enough time to process them. We’ll likely have to transport them with the stalks still on, unsacked. There are still a few magic crates left for those crops, but not nearly enough."
"And then there are the vegetables," Alpha Hue continued. "They’re much harder to transport, since even the smallest bruise can make them rot faster. It would be wiser to use the remaining magic crates for the freshly harvested vegetables."
"As for the bundled grains still with their stalks, we can stack them directly onto the caravans. For the final haul, we can add our own mule carts and horse-drawn wagons to add to the caravan."
He explained this so Addison could better plan the route and sequence of the journey, sparing her from having to solve every problem herself. Addison genuinely appreciated him offering practical suggestions at such a crucial time.
After all, he understood that without enough magic crates, the remaining newly harvested crops would surely have to be transported as they were, loaded directly onto the caravans.
That would take up far more space than if they had crates to contain them. Unfortunately, even though his pack had long prepared for such disasters, and even set aside part of their budget each year to purchase the expensive magic crates, because their efforts had always been aimed at ensuring that, in times of crisis, they could safely store the grains in their granaries and transport them elsewhere.