Chapter 46: How to Make Land (1)

“Today, we will turn this place into fertile land.”

Lloyd began his speech. Just then, a frog in the swamp croaked aloud in response.

“Ribbit! Ribbit!”

However, not a single one of the 120 civil engineers gathered in the area smiled. Was it because Sir Javier and Bayern stood beside Lloyd with a grim look on their faces? It might be for some, but for most of them, that wasn’t the case.

I wonder what I’ll go through in this construction.

The ondol, or the heated flooring system, the paved road, the coal mine, and for some, the seokbinggo had been tremendous projects. These experiences, along with the storage expansion and dormitories for the orc miners, had transformed these ordinary soldiers.

They were transformed into a group of elite civil engineers who had been trained through numerous construction projects. As such, their past experiences told them how crucial this speech was. After all, Master Lloyd believes this part of the process is important. This speech was usually given right before construction began. It was straight to the point with no flowery words. There was no unnecessary pep talk or empty flattery. Lloyd’s speech contained only the words the soldiers needed to hear.

“Alright, precautions first. We are working in swamps. So, don’t move around alone at your whim. Just imagine. Bad luck hits you, and you get your feet stuck in the swamp. What do you think would happen after that? This place has zero visibility. Look around. Lots of reeds stand all around us. You’ll become nothing more than dried jerky under the scorching sun. If you don’t want that to happen to you, move in groups of two. Understood?”

“Yes!”

“Good. Next precaution. It’s hot and super humid here because we’re in a wetland. What do we do now?”

“Take a break every hour!”

“Correct. And what’s another thing?”

“We must drink water with salt every break!”

“Very good. I’ll have the saltwater ready right here, so you can drink that. Don’t stash plain water behind my back and gulp it all down just because you’re thirsty. You’re going to get dizzy and collapse.”

“Excuse me, but what if I find the salt water too bland?”

One of the soldiers asked as he raised his hand, all awkward and clumsy. The number of civil engineers had doubled recently, and he appeared to be one of the new recruits. Lloyd flashed a gentle, kind smile as he looked at the newbie.

“You still have to drink it, obviously.”

“Even if I feel like vomiting?”

“Yes. You can choose not to drink and collapse. But your daily wage for that day will be deducted from your bonus.”

“I will drink it, Young Master!” The recruit agreed immediately.

A lot of soldiers had applied for the civil engineer position for the thick bonus that came after the construction.

“And lastly, this is the most important thing. Hamang will be drinking the water in the wetland. So if I ever find or hear you excusing yourself in the water throughout any time in the construction, I am going to throw you behind bars. Relieve yourself in the makeshift bathrooms. Am I clear?”

“Yes, Master Lloyd!”

“Alright, then, let’s get started. Hamang?”

“Hamang!”

Lloyd brought Hamang out of his embrace. The soldiers’ eyes widened in surprise. There was a stir among them, and they chatted that their young master seemed to have made a contract with a new summon partner. However, something else happened later that made their mouths hang wide open all the more.

“Hamang? Could you please drink the water here?”

“Hamamang? Hamang?”

“Yes, you can drink it all.”

“Hamang?”

“Aha, after that? Do you see the branch of the course of the river? It’s over there.”

“Hamamang!”

“Yes, you can roll over all the way there and spit it out. But don’t do it all at once. You’ll be causing flooding downstream.”

“Hamang!” Hamang nodded in understanding.

Once Lloyd put him down, Hamang immediately shoved his round face into the water.

The suctioning began.

“Humung!” Sluuurp! Swooosh!

Hamang sucked in the water and a whirlpool appeared around him. It looked like a gigantic vacuum was sucking up the water. The water level of the wasteland decreased immediately.

At the same pace, Hamang started to puff up. He continued to grow thirty feet, sixty feet, and even 150 feet tall.

“Woah…”

The soldiers had already stayed far away from the water at Lloyd’s instruction. Their jaws dropped—but that wasn’t the end of their shock.

“Humung!”

Hamang, all inflated and blown up, moved his body, rolling off to the downstream Lloyd had pointed earlier. He resembled a giant 150-feet water balloon rolling away. When he got there, he started to slowly spew the water out.

“Humung! Blergh!”

Splash! Thousands of minnows, frogs, and other living creatures that were sucked in by Hamang came out of his mouth, finding a new home downstream. They became the newbies of the river ecosystem. This entire process was repeated several times afterward. Hamang absorbed the water of the wetland and then rolled his inflated body down to the river. He then spat it all out.

“What am I seeing right now…?” The civil engineers muttered to themselves in a daze, and before they knew it, the water nearby was completely gone.

Of course, other areas needed to be drained as well. Hamang had only drained the water in one area here. However, it was enough to begin construction for the day.

Lloyd ordered, “Hold up your shovels.”

“Shovels!”

“From now on, you will get rid of all the grass and other remnants of rotten plants in areas I marked. Let’s get started with a shout.”

“Woah!!”

The soldiers got to work. They shoveled the ground, sweat pouring from their bodies. The rotten leaves and roots of aquatic plants were cleared in all the areas where the embankment would be installed.

Lloyd joined in on the shoveling and commanded his men. If I don’t complete this basic process properly, the embankment will leak and erode. Here we go!

Sometimes, some workers and managers disregarded this process, thinking all it took to build an embankment was to pile up the earth and turn it into a mound. However, that wasn’t the case at all. Even a common embankment was the product of rigorous science and engineering. The work wasn’t comparable to how children played in the sand. That was especially the case right now. The foundation here is wet and weak. Thus, the land required clearing and gruffing. Not only that, the water at the bottom of the ground had to be drained to stabilize the foundation.

“Javier?”

“Yes.”

Lloyd turned around and faced Javier. Javier, who heard what he had to do, immediately got to work. He drew his sword and he stabbed the area on the ground Lloyd had marked.

Swish! Clack! Shank!

The mana circles hit one another and a powerful blast shot out of his sword. The force penetrated the metamorphic layer of rock beneath them. A one-and-a-half-foot wide hole was created, and it went down as deep as thirty-two feet, each hole standing thirteen feet apart.

Lloyd shouted. “Sir Bayern!”

“Yes, Young Master.”

Lloyd shouted, and Sir Bayern answered. He commandeered the civil engineers under him.

They brought with them some bamboo sticks uniformly cut thirty-six feet in length. Then, they inserted the vertical drains Javier had blasted one by one into the ground. The insides of the sticks were hollow like straws made out of bamboo. Next up, it was Ppodong’s turn.

“Ppodong!”

“Ppodung?” Ppodong, who was on standby, came running as he waddled his chubby butt.

Something gushed out of his two fat cheeks.

“Ppu-pu-dung! Blergh!”

Splash! It was all of the sand he had obtained in the river.

“Engineers! Transfer the sand into the vertical drains!”

“Yes!”

The civil engineers, who were waiting with a shovel in each of their hands, started to get moving. They charged at the mountain of sand Ppodong had spurted out. They scooped it up and tossed it into the vertical drains. The drains with the bamboo straw in the center became filled with the sand pile.

Good. Everything is going well. The construction site was bustling with movement.

Lloyd clenched his fists as he commanded the whole process. The vertical drain method, particularly the sand drain method, is working out just as I had wanted.

This method used to reinforce weak foundations was first introduced in 1936, and it saw massive technological advancement in the late 1940s. To be more specific, the method consisted of drilling long artificial holes in soft cohesive soil and then inserting plastic drain boards to drain water from the ground to accelerate consolidation.

But, of course, I can’t use this modern method as it is. He lacked the equipment to do so.

Thus, he decided to be clever about it. He bore vertical drains using Javier’s mana blast.

That was how Lloyd replaced the vibrating sand drain equipment with Javier, the silver-haired knight. Next, he filled them up with bamboo sticks and sand he had prepared beforehand.

So what he was doing was actually a combination of the sand and paper drain method.

Next up was Ppodong. Lloyd ordered him to roll on the ground. “Hey, Ppodong? Roll!”

“Ppodong!”

Ppodong, who weighed several tons, rolled around to his heart’s content. His massive weight moved on top of the strata, just like a wet roll of paper towels being pressed. The moisture soaked in the ground began to seep out. It was concentrated near the sand piles planted in the earth.

Rumble…The ground started to slowly sink. This place had been a wetland for thousands and thousands of years. For all those years, a huge amount of dead plants sunk into the water, remaining undissolved, and it resulted in a thick accumulation of fibers.

Once those fibers got soaked in a huge volume of water, they created a soft, mushy layer of what was known as peat deposits. However, the pressure from Ppodong was forcibly draining the peat deposits. The evenly placed sand piles accelerated the discharge of moisture all the more.

Squeeze…! The peat deposits got compressed as they drained, and their increased weight made them thicker. The consolidation phenomenon was taking place. Lloyd then ordered something that would accelerate the phenomenon.

“Hamang? Do you like bamboo straws?”

“Hamang!”

“Will you slurp it up then?”

“Hamamang!”

Hamang closely walked over to the bamboo straws planted around the ground. He then slurped the water pooled around the sand pile using the straws.

“Humung! Humu-mung!”

The water in the strata traveled to Hamang’s mouth in full. Hamang started to inflate like a giant balloon. The added weight put more pressure on the strata. The consolidation phenomenon accelerated. At this point, Lloyd and the soldiers moved to the next part of the construction. It was time to build the embankment that would wrap around the entire wetland.

“Ppodong! Spit!”

“Ppodung! Ptooey!”

Ppodong acted as their dump truck. He repeatedly stashed a huge amount of sand into his mouth and brought it to them. Afterward, the soldiers moved according to Lloyd’s instructions. They busied themselves with their shovels and built a strong foundation.

Of course, they built it just as Lloyd had designed it beforehand.

They should obviously do so. If we stack it up without order, the slope will erode after some time. Or the slope inside of the embankment will be fluidized because of the water leak. Or the piping phenomenon might destroy the slope by causing a landslide. All of these disasters would destroy the embankment and once it was crushed, the river would overflow and flood the reclaimed land, dooming it to become a murky swamp again.

In short, a meticulous design was imperative to prevent such awful situations that would prompt everyone’s happiness index to take a nosedive. The slopes of the embankment were created and smoothened as much as possible. Its height was set to its maximum, taking into account the ground that would sink due to consolidation. That naturally created a difference in the height of the front slope, which would block any incoming river water, and the rear slope which would be installed on the side of the reclaimed land. The sides that would hold the pressure in the rear slope incline were constructed as firmly as possible. Of course, Lloyd didn’t forget to press both slopes. The job was entrusted to Ppodong, who wholeheartedly rolled around the slopes.

“Ppo-do-dong! Ppo-do-do-dong!”

Roll! Ppodong perfectly embodied the role of a bulldozer or a roller. Afterward, Lloyd deployed his men to densely plant the grass in a single row. The roots of the grass firmly grasped the earth in the soil. This would prevent the earth from sliding down easily.

To finish everything off, Lloyd told everyone to carefully dig outside waterways to ensure that any rainwater would be drained through them.

After ten days of hard work…Finally, one section was finished. Woah. We did it.

Wiping his sweat off, Lloyd looked around himself. The murky swamps that were filled with all sorts of water plants no longer existed. The only thing Lloyd could see around him was dry land and firm embankments. This was it. He had finished reclaiming and building embankments in one area of the wetland. However, Lloyd couldn’t stop there. There was still more land to be reclaimed.

“Keep moving! Once we are done, I’m going to shower you with money!”

Encouraged by Lloyd, the engineers moved to the next section. The Maritz Wetland wasn’t composed of a single swamp. This vast wetland was instead composed of dozens of irregular swamps that spread all over the place.

Therefore, Lloyd decided to go about the construction, tackling one section, or a swamp, at a time. This geographical feature allowed him to reclaim and construct modules. Plus, the timing was perfect as it was the dry summer season. It hardly rained. The sun was out all day. So no weather could be any more perfect than this one for the reclamation project.

Thanks to that, the construction saw more momentum.

“Be careful of heat strokes! Make sure to take breaks! Give me a shout, and let’s get to work on the third section. Go!”

“Ahhh!!”

Lloyd, Javier, the summoned partners, and the engineers all became one for the construction. The process of digging, drinking, spitting, scooping, filling, piling, and pressing became second nature to them. They became skilled at their jobs. At first, the reclamation and construction of one section took ten days. However, with time, that period became shorter and shorter. From ten days, it was down to nine. From nine to eight. From eight to six.

Just like that, three months passed. The embankments got connected to be longer as days progressed, and everyone’s arms thickened with muscles. With each drop of sweat on their faces, the murky and humid swamps became drier. Originally, the Maritz Wetland was abandoned land filled with muddy swamps. Nameless creatures inhabited this place and erecting a building or doing farm work was impossible. The land was useless and was good for nothing. Just like that, the Maritz Wetland was treated as if it was nonexistent for many generations. That had been the case ever since humans began to reside in this land. For tens and thousands of years, the fate of this land was unchanged.

Everyone thought that it’d be the same in the future. It had been abandoned, and it would remain so. Just like how the sun rose in the east to go down the west, it was obviously the case. But all that changed now. Master Lloyd changed it. The people in the fiefdom and the baron and the baroness hurried to watch the marvelous scene unfold before their eyes. The useless, good-for-nothing wetland was transforming into a vast stretch of rice paddies and fields.

What’s more, this transformation wasn’t taking decades for it to be done. It was happening just within three months. The very person who was making the impossible possible was currently with them. It could be we’re experiencing a miracle that no one in history witnessed or thought was possible before. And just like that…The people’s impression of Lloyd was changing once again. Their feelings moved beyond simple courtesy into a sort of respect.

Ding Dong.

[Everyone in the Frontera barony is deeply impressed by the magic-like miracle you have performed. They greatly respect and praise you.]

[For that achievement, you have been awarded a large amount of bonus RP.]