Ch.90New City

“Is this the new city?”

“Are you new? Stop dawdling and get moving. Work’s about to start.”

“Ah… yes!”

On a cold winter day, the construction workers newly recruited to build the new city quickly began following their seniors.

Though proper new buildings were starting to appear and street vendors were gradually setting up here and there, compared to Amurtat City, which had served as the capital of Amurtat for the past decade, the new city was little more than a slightly larger village.

The roads were still paved with dirt and gravel, there wasn’t a single watchtower let alone city walls, and with the sewage system still incomplete, the stench of rot permeated the air despite the winter cold.

It was a harsh environment for young people accustomed to city life, but their fathers and mothers had given birth to them and raised them in similarly harsh conditions, and the countless people who would live in this new city would experience the same.

“This is where we keep the work tools. Make sure to organize them neatly or the foreman will raise hell, so do it properly even if it’s a hassle.”

“Yes.”

“And that’s the assembly point. The foreman will raise hell if you show up without proper equipment, so make sure you have everything before coming out.”

“Understood.”

“And over there is where we’ll be working. The framework is already up, and we just need to put up the walls, floors, and roof.”

“Ohh…”

Since the foundational work had already been completed in many areas over the past few months, this batch of reinforcements included many workers skilled in exterior finishing and interior design.

Even though this world’s technology lagged behind that of modern Earth, they already possessed the ability to construct buildings hundreds of meters tall, so building a city was a relatively simple task from a national perspective.

BWAAANG!!!

“What’s that sound?”

“What else? It’s the signal to start work. Come on, hurry up!”

The arrival of such skilled workers meant that the first phase of the new city’s construction was nearing completion, and that refugees who had flowed into Amurtat would soon have places to live with their families, even with their meager incomes.

Having heard this from their supervisors, the workers were filled with passionate pride in creating homes for families, and today too, the day’s work began with the foreman’s equipment inspection.

*

“Ahhhh… I feel alive…”

The forest keeper spoke with his cheeks bulging, his mouth stuffed with pieces of steak.

Though the new city was still far from complete, the workers on site needed to eat, so convenience facilities like dormitories and toilets were built first, followed by establishments like restaurants that gradually began to open.

And these restaurants were all packed with customers, the majority of whom were forest keepers.

For forest keepers who had been deprived of urban amenities for nearly a decade, this new city under construction was like rain during a drought, an oasis in the desert. After such a long time without tasting the pleasures of civilization, the forest keepers were shoving their wages at restaurant owners and chefs, demanding more food.

And that wasn’t all.

The lodgings were also much cozier and softer than the cold, damp forest outposts, causing the forest keepers to cry out in joy. The taverns in the new city were so filled with forest keepers that the construction workers returning after a day’s labor couldn’t even set foot inside.

“What do you mean there’s no room? How is that possible in a five-story building?”

“But that’s what’s happening. What can I do? I can’t ask the customers to leave…”

“Good grief… Looks like I’ll be sleeping in a sleeping bag again tonight.”

“Damn those forest keepers! They should sleep in their own outposts, not come down here causing trouble!”

Of course, forest keepers were civilian employees who could commute, and the outposts primarily served as surveillance points.

Nevertheless, due to the real danger of being killed by wild animals while commuting and the unfortunate problem of excessively long commute times, most forest keepers resolved their accommodation needs at the forest outposts despite the poor facilities.

Since staying at the outposts wasn’t mandatory, there were a few who stubbornly commuted, but unless they spent large sums on transportation like horses, they would typically last only a few months before becoming spirits of the forest. Now, that problem had disappeared.

Moreover, as buildings suitable for permanent residence were rapidly springing up, the forest keepers—who had diligently received their wages for the past decade but had no time to spend them—began securing rooms faster and differently than others, once again leaving the construction workers behind.

“What do you mean there’s no room? How is that possible in a fifteen-story building?”

“But that’s what’s happening. What can I do? The contracts are already signed, I can’t cancel them.”

“But… we built this building, and now we have nowhere to live… how does that make sense?”

“If it makes sense, would you have nowhere to live?”

“Are you mocking me?”

And so, a crazy rich-get-richer phenomenon was unfolding in the new city, where those who built the place had nowhere to sleep or eat, while those who already had places to sleep and eat secured even more comfortable places to sleep and more delicious places to eat.

*

March of the 11th year of Amurtat.

Though the cold was gradually subsiding, the forest paths that repeatedly froze and thawed became even more dangerous, making it difficult to transport large quantities of supplies to the new city.

Rumble rumble rumble…

“Sigh… It’s good not to get stuck in the mud, but this is like pissing on frozen feet…”

When the roads were solidly frozen, a single cart could transport several tons of materials, but now they could only move a few hundred kilograms at a time, causing no small amount of worry for the delivery people who made their living this way.

“I was just thinking… why do we have to transport materials one by one?”

“Huh?”

“Think about it. The storekeepers handle both intake and output, so couldn’t we just move the storekeeper?”

“Haaa…”

Those who had seen storekeepers summon terminals of spatial warehouses to suck in and spit out numerous items might think this way.

“Have you… never thought about why they’re called ‘storekeepers’?”

“Hmm?”

“A storekeeper isn’t someone who can move around freely… they can only exercise their power within a specific space called a ‘storehouse’… You’ve seen it a few times, right? Storekeepers moving goods into the warehouse with carts before putting them into the spatial warehouse…”

That’s right.

Storekeepers can’t freely open and close spatial warehouses as they please; they can only use their powers within the specific confines of a ‘warehouse.’

If storekeepers could open spatial warehouses at will, they wouldn’t have been called storekeepers in the first place.

Then why not build warehouses first and have the storekeepers diligently take out materials from the spatial warehouses?

That’s a valid point.

In fact, that’s exactly what they’re doing.

However, the problem is that the amount a spatial warehouse can release at once is limited.

Since spatial warehouses are essentially the concept of earth—which accepts everything—abstracted by the planetary core and materialized through the monarch, they resist releasing what has entered, much like how humans can plant seeds quickly but harvest slowly.

The role of storekeepers is to use the power granted by the monarch to create a ‘hole’ in the warehouse through which items can be extracted.

Naturally, this means they excel at ‘continuously’ supplying something but are not suitable for providing large quantities of materials in a short period.

“…Get it? That’s why we’re hauling cargo carts to the new city even in this chilly weather. We don’t make much profit from transporting these small amounts of materials, but it’s enough to put food on the table.”

“Damn it. Why doesn’t anything in life go the way I want it to?”

“If you have nothing useful to say, just go to sleep…”

Clop-clop… clop-clop…

In truth, if it feels like settings keep being added, that’s because they are.

The Polistory production team initially attached all sorts of impressive-sounding settings, but when users asked, “Isn’t this a setting error?” or “Couldn’t this be done this way?”, they didn’t want to revise the settings, so they kept adding excuses, resulting in this situation.

Even the uniform size of each region being 50,000 km² was actually impossible to establish.

With an area that size, it would be a country, not some freezing city-state. Even in modern Earth, numerous countries are smaller than 50,000 km².