Which brings us to the morning following the tragedy.
I’d managed to get both princesses to forgive me, and just like yesterday, I was sitting at the table with Mono and the others, eating breakfast together.
“For now, I’m going to have you keep working on the roads while I go head out to the village construction site and build it up quickly,” I said.
Mono, Deneros, and Raya exchanged looks.
They’d seen me put up six barracks and a water tower with an infinite water source yesterday, so they probably figured I could handle building a village on my own.
“And I want to bring one of you along as a supervisor.”
“…It’s gotta be Mono.”
“Definitely Mono.”
“Me…? I mean, if you two say so.”
It was unanimous: Mono would come with me. Despite her small stature, Mono had a good head on her shoulders and the people here really relied on her.
“Mono can use magic too. She’s quite skilled.”
“She’d always fight off monsters and bandits like swoosh, kaboom!”
“Hoh… So she’s got all kinds of talents, huh?”
Mono looked uncomfortable under my gaze. Hmm, she had a bit of a difficult personality… Or maybe it was more accurate to say it felt like she had things she was struggling with. I decided not to dig too deep. Everyone had issues they didn’t want others poking and prodding at.
“Okay. I’ll take Mono with me as a supervisor. I’ll also bring the ogre girls and Grande. Ifriita and Aqual, I want you to talk with everyone here and proceed with the plan.”
“Yeah, yeah. We’re on it. You’re fine with that, right?”
“Yes, If.”
By “the plan,” I meant the whole personnel recruitment thing. I wanted them to headhunt people who could read, write, and do arithmetic to be potential civil servants. We’d offer potential candidates positions in Merinesburg. These refugees were a problem Viscount Travis didn’t know how to solve anyway, so he probably wouldn’t object. And if he did, I could just butter him up with some valuables.
✦ ✦ ✦
Establishing a brand-new pioneer village from nothing.
Simple to say, but in practice, there was a lot to think about when it came to actually building it. For example, if the village prospered, how was it going to expand? I’d have to be careful about where to place the buildings and farmland. Normal people couldn’t just move houses once they were built. The same went for fields and waterways.
Of course, in my case, I could absolutely move all of that.
Anyway, farmland could be tricky. Some areas were naturally better-suited for crop cultivation than others, and I had to start by making soil. Normally, this process took years: making the land fertile, improving the drainage and quality of the dirt, stripping away rocks or trees, and painstakingly removing any pebbles that could disturb the ground. Only then would you finally have usable farmland.
In my case, all I had to do was swing my hoe.
“I feel like I’m losing my mind.”
“Take a good, hard look at reality.”
I was currently running around the build-site, developing as I went under Mono’s direction. From atop the observation platform I’d built, she could see the entire site and was making sure I set down buildings exactly according to the plan we drafted yesterday. Naturally, we stayed in touch via golem communicator.
The only ones at the build site were me, Mono, Grande, and a single harpy assigned to watch over me. The rest of the harpies and ogre girls were out surveying the surrounding area for monsters and hazardous terrain. I’d given each a golem communicator so we could stay in sync. The harpies were excellent aerial combatants and scouts, but I hadn’t equipped them with bombs for this trip, so they were strictly reconnaissance this time around.
At the moment, I was leveling out the land to prepare for the main village facilities. Believe it or not, plains like this were rarely ever flat, so site prep was essential.
“Um, what’s the deal with that…shovel thing?”
“It’s a mighty tool with a pure mithril blade and enchantments made from only the best materials, my good lady.”
“How in the world do you end up making something like that out of mithril and enchanting it?”
Mostly as a part of my hobby, honestly. But considering how useful it all turned out to be, all’s well that ends well, no? Being able to dig up land and flatten it in one go was extremely handy.
“Changing the subject, are there, like, cyclopes communities out there?”
“There used to be, but I haven’t heard of any these days. The Holy Kingdom really despised us, so a lot of folks did their best not to stand out. Fortunately, not only are we a long-lived race, but many of us are skilled in magic, pharmaceutics, or alchemy. Many of us offered our knowledge and abilities to other demi-human communities in exchange for protection. I think plenty of cyclopes survived that way.”
“Demi-human communities? I thought they all got suppressed and dissolved?”
“No, not really. Merinard had always been a place where humans and demi-humans could live together in peace, so when the Holy Kingdom took over, it wasn’t like those people suddenly turned on us. There were lots of civilians who pretended to follow Adolism on the surface, only to help demi-humans behind the scenes. And on top of that, many demi-humans are stronger or have more magic energy than humans, so there were quite a few cases of them settling in places inhospitable to humans.”
“Huh… I think Bela actually said something like that about her own village.”
I recalled her mentioning something pretty violent regarding her village. Maybe Bela came from one of those communities. I’d have to ask her for details later.
“Bela’s that red ogre, right? Ogres are usually powerful fighters, so they tend to build communities in harsh environments like the mountains. A lot of them can be kind of violent, so you get some trouble, but in the last twenty years, they’ve taken in lots of demi-humans and protected them.”
“Interesting. I guess a lot of them must be really empathetic, even if they’re a little rough around the edges.”
My ogre girls didn’t strike me as terribly violent, but maybe that was because they’d left home to become adventurers. They might have been the odd ones out.
“That sounds about right. Thanks to the western chunk of Merinard being so close to the Federation of Small Nations and the Dragonis Mountain Nation, the Holy Kingdom’s rule out here was always pretty loose. That said, they ruled the east, central, and northern regions with an iron fist. What else… Anti-Holy Kingdom forces were forming in the south, so over the last five years the Kingdom really focused its attention over there. About three years ago, there was a failed rebellion, and things got pretty bad after that.”
“Ah, I know all about that. The survivors of that rebellion fled to the Black Forest, which brings us to where we are now.”
The demi-humans who lived under horrific conditions in the south were probably the same ones who’d joined the rebellion led by Sir Leonard and the others. No wonder they’d been treated so harshly. Looking back, I got the feeling that a lot of the demi-humans we freed in Arichburg and farther north were treated better than the ones in the south.
And so, I kept preparing the site while Mono told me more about the Holy Kingdom’s rule.