Chapter 418: Thirty Days [ 1 ]

By the beginning of the second week, there was almost nothing left of the Old Western Garrison except its boundaries.

The first seven days had stripped away decades of neglect with a speed that would have seemed reckless if Sage hadn’t watched every stage pass inspection.

Ruined barracks had disappeared, collapsed warehouses had been dismantled, unstable workshops were gone, and the old magical accident zone had been excavated until only stabilized ground remained.

Even the partially ruined internal walls had been removed wherever Crown restrictions didn’t require them to remain. What replaced the ruins wasn’t yet impressive to look at.

The property had become an enormous construction field divided by stakes, marked pathways, excavated trenches and temporary material yards, but Sage could finally see the scale of what the System intended to build.

The Kingdom Construction interface overlaid the empty ground with dozens of planned structures, each tied to schedules that moved almost by the hour. Week One had belonged to demolition.

Week Two belonged to everything people would eventually walk over without realizing how much work had gone beneath their feet.

Drainage came first in several sections, connecting newly excavated channels to the Capital’s existing network while carefully avoiding the Crown-controlled passages beneath the property.

Water lines followed. Then came reinforced mana conduits designed to connect future facilities without forcing workers to tear apart roads whenever another building needed magical infrastructure.

Formation specialists worked alongside ordinary engineers, marking intersections where mana lines crossed water channels or passed beneath major foundations.

Sage spent half a morning watching one crew install protective casings around a mana conduit before another crew covered the same trench and road workers arrived almost immediately behind them.

Nobody waited unnecessarily. Nobody discovered at the last moment that another team needed access to ground already sealed.

The System knew every stage before the workers did, and the construction supervisors received updated schedules quickly enough that the entire site moved like a single machine.

The roads changed next.

The old military routes had been functional for soldiers, wagons and cavalry, but the new Headquarters required something broader. Main avenues were laid wide enough for two lines of heavy carriages to travel in both directions without blocking foot traffic, while smaller roads branched toward future facilities.

Space was reserved for plazas, pedestrian paths and loading areas. The main entrance from Western Crownway widened substantially, and another access point was prepared toward Old Military Avenue.

Sage noticed separate routes leading toward what the interface labeled as production and storage sections, deliberately keeping freight wagons away from the future public center.

Even before the buildings existed, the difference between the old garrison and what was replacing it was obvious.

The military had built a district to move soldiers and supplies. The System was building one intended to move adventurers, merchants, workers, materials and thousands of ordinary visitors every day.

The Royal Capital noticed during Week Two.

At first, people stopped because construction on this scale was difficult to ignore. Western Crownway carried enough traffic that thousands passed the site every day, and the ruined garrison had existed for so long that many residents had apparently stopped thinking of it as usable land.

Now its walls were being repaired, enormous quantities of material entered through the gates, and crews worked from early morning until evening. By the tenth day, groups regularly gathered outside whenever something interesting happened.

Children watched the cranes. Laborers returning home stopped to compare the project with sites where they worked. Merchants sent assistants to ask what was being built, and nearby businesses quickly realized that hundreds of construction workers needed food, water, tools and temporary services.

Street vendors appeared near the entrance without anyone inviting them.

Mina discovered the spectators and immediately joined them.

Sage found her one afternoon sitting on a low wall outside the property with three children she’d apparently befriended, all four watching workers raise a massive support frame in the distance. She had somehow acquired another construction helmet and was eating roasted nuts from a paper bag.

"Shouldn’t you be doing something?" Sage asked.

"I am."

"Watching people work isn’t work."

"I’m supervising."

Sage looked toward the actual supervisors moving around the site. "They seem to be managing without you."

Mina offered him a handful of nuts. "A beam almost dropped earlier."

"Excellent supervision."

She nodded proudly and went back to watching.

Boren had found a different way to experience construction.

He watched the money. Every evening, he reviewed expenditure reports with the fascination of a man repeatedly touching something hot to confirm it still burned.

Worker wages, materials, equipment rentals, specialist fees, transportation, inspections, magical components and countless smaller expenses passed through the Guild accounts in a continuous stream.

The efficiency of System construction made the project dramatically cheaper than conventional redevelopment, but "cheaper" remained a relative word when they were transforming an abandoned military district into a Kingdom Headquarters.

"The Guild is spending money faster than the buildings are rising," Boren complained during one meeting.

Sage looked out the temporary office window toward the construction site. "They’re rising fairly quickly."

"That makes it worse. Do you understand how hard it should be to spend faster than this?"

Pax continued reading a report without looking up. "You complained when the land cost money. You complained when demolition cost money. Now you’re complaining because construction costs money."

"I believe consistency is an admirable quality."

Sage left him to suffer.

By the third week, even Boren had difficulty claiming the buildings weren’t rising fast enough.

Sage visited the site early on Day Fifteen and found the foundations crowded with scaffolding, support frames and partially completed lower floors.

He returned the following afternoon after spending most of the day with Pax reviewing Capital information and stopped at the entrance because one of the structures he’d inspected yesterday had gained three floors.

Another building that had been little more than reinforced foundations now possessed exterior walls across most of its first level.

Hundreds of masons worked simultaneously in separated sections while cranes moved materials upward and carpenters followed behind structural crews.

Mana-assisted construction tools accelerated tasks that would have taken ordinary laborers far longer, but the greatest advantage remained coordination.

The System had divided large buildings into work zones, allowing multiple crews to operate at once without interfering with one another.

Then the central structure began to dominate everything around it.

Sage had seen the plans.

They hadn’t prepared him.