READ NOVEL ONLINE Chapter 341: On with the tasks for the day
Between Fay demanding a few more minutes of sleep, Selene taking her time silently judging and making fun of us, and then Etaria whose question never seemed to end, by the time I finally managed to get going with my tasks for the day, I was more than an hour late.
Thankfully, contrary to the mercenary supervisors on the site, planners at the headquarters, or even the quart's leaders who were the last link within the chain of communication, my presence wasn't necessary for the work to progress.
Contrary to the quart's leaders, I wasn't there to give direct orders to the men. Contrary to the brigade officer, I didn't need to manage a whole group of hundred men while on the task. Unlike the mercenary supervisors, I didn't need to act as the link that connected the management at the headquarters with the brigade officers, passing over the tasks each brigade was to complete.
No.
When I arrived over an hour later than I was supposed to, the work had progressed quite a lot from what I saw by the work's end the day before.
True to its nickname of a man dump, the housing site was bustling with an extremely high concentration of men.
Judging between what I could see and what I could only guess, there had to be at least over three thousand people on the site, making up over half of the total manpower we could use at the camp.
A dump for manpower where the headquarters would throw every brigade that wasn't immediately needed somewhere else.
And with that many men at hand, the work continued at more than just a satisfactory pace.
'They finished only about forty tents by yesterday, but there's like what, a hundred by now?'
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With each tent fitting a total of twenty-five men, we only managed to provide housing for a fifth of the men under our rule. But with how things were going, it was only a matter of time before a whole two hundred of those makeshift shed tents would be completed. And then…
'I wonder how everyone will act when they will find out just how much better the next level of their housing will be,' I thought, smiling at my thoughts before continuing down the road, trying to get closer to where people actually worked.
Soon, I stepped into the crowd, joining the flow of people moving from one place to another, all busy with their respective tasks.
Some dug the free earth from the piles left by the excavators and then shoveled it over to some simple carriages only for a merc on a huge quad to appear a moment later, bind the cart over to the back of his vehicle before hauling it off, god knows where.
On the other side of the path, a whole brigade was busy unpacking the last few piles of wooden planks provided by the early woodcutting initiative that I was to check on later.
I went deeper and deeper into the crowd, looking around in search of any major problems or faults… But while there were a whole ton of minor defects that the health and safety department on the other side of the gate would never allow…
This was the advantage of being in a new world and working with people who weren't protected by the inhumanly complex and compounded laws of labor.
And so, tens if not hundreds of small, minor defects of the housing went unnoticed. I could see some of the mercenary engineers making faces whenever they noticed an imperfection… In the end, though, the temporary status of this place was a point strong enough to stop those perfectionist engineers from nagging everyone around them.
By the time I've reached the busiest area of the whole section… I finally realized just how wrong I was about the progress of the project.
The temporary housing has long since been completed. With forty tents finished after the whole of the first day, I expected maybe ten or twenty more to be near completion after just a bit over an hour of work…
But either by the favor of excessive manpower or maybe due to the simple fact that some of the imperials were now used to their job and knew what to do… Or maybe because of some other reason that I failed to notice on the spot, the workers have already moved on from the shoddy shed tents of the first level and already moved on to the first phase of constructing the lodging of the higher grade.
Contrary to the first and simplest type of tents, the upgraded version consumed a whole lot more of much more diversified resources. While the basic tent only needed some steel frames, a bit of wood for the floors, a ladder to move around between the floors, and finally some tarp to cover it all, the next generation of housing was actually a lot more advanced.
First, its walls were out of much denser steel frame to which workers would bolt down the rainproof coating and the freshly dried and chemically treated planks. The empty gaps within the steel frame would then be filled with modern isolating blocks.
The inner structure of the shed would then be covered by a thin, decorative piece of plywood, making up for a thicker, more stable, and much more secure lodging.
All of those expensive improvements made it much easier to keep the shed's insides warm and cozy, even allowing the installation of two windows on each of the shed's longer sides.
The housing of the second level was designed to ultimately have a stove for both heating the place and cooking, a sanitary room installed as soon as the camp would develop proper plumbing, and then actually some basic sort of furniture like beds, stools, and tables.
All of those changes over the initial design turned the shed tent into an actual, small but cozy home that could comfortably fit a quarter of a brigade each. But the construction of this improved version of the lodging…
'Just a single look at the resource pile prepared for each set is enough to picture the difference.'
The basic tents required a bit of steel framing, some tarp, and a little bit of wood. And when all of those materials were gathered on the spot one could barely spot them amidst the sea of grass.
But when I looked over to the massive piles of materials of all kinds resting by the holes prepared, each of the piles was pretty much the size of a small, family car…
"Great work, guys," throwing the bad thoughts to the back of my head, I approached the small gathering of the mercenary supervisors. "I never would've expected you to finish the temporary housing so quickly," I praised while looking over my shoulder to the long line of those shoddy shed tents.
"It's actually a pity we didn't get to finish it yesterday," the oldest of the supervisors stepped out and nodded his head. "As for the new ones…" the man looked over to the side and hesitated for a little. "We can finish, give or take, forty of them. And we should be done with that by the dinner, but…"
The look of anxiety grew on the man's face.
"What do you need?" I pulled out a simple notebook and a pen, clicking on it right as I raised my eyes and looked at the man.
"Isolation blocks," the soldier answered without even a hint of hesitation. "Without them, we can only build empty frames. And due to the nature and weight of the build, if we leave such empty husks for more than a day or two…"
This time, the man failed to finish his line of thought.
"If we leave them unfinished, they will all start collapsing by day three," another mercenary stepped up and filled the gaps in the story. "Honestly, in two days it will be one hell of a risk to enter inside. This might be counterintuitive a bit, but the isolation and the plywood on the inside serve to stabilize the entire thing and better support its weight."
I lowered my eyes to the notebook and jotted down a few notes.
"So, isolation blocks on priority," I summed up the request. "Anything else?"
The mercenaries looked over at themselves.
"Actually, we have more hands-on board than we can handle or find the work for. Do you think you could get the folks at the headquarters to stop dumping all of their free manpower on us?"