Chapter 269: Floods Recede

As the next morning dawned, the rain began to let up, and the sun began to peek through the clouds, while the monsters retreated to their ocean homes.

The residents of Marimgar waited nervously to see how their new fields made out after the flash flood, but they could see that there were still some tuber plants and other crops sticking up out of the water in shallower areas.

Some of this was definitely their fault, for knowingly planting everything in a flood plain around the river. But that’s where the city was situated as well, and they needed to keep the crops close enough that they could cultivate and protect them.

However, this was also a great opportunity, if they got to it on time.

When the floodwaters retreated, it was almost guaranteed that there would be fish, and perhaps even sea monsters, trapped in the last remaining puddles, as they had been too slow to return to deeper waters and had ended up isolated.

That was natural any time that there was a flood, but you had to get to the fish fast, before they died and began to rot, if you were going to eat them.

Even then, it was questionable, as who knew what sort of toxins they had found in the floodwaters. But if they ran it through the processor in the Hall of Heroes, they should get back safe food.

So, there were options, even if things weren’t perfect. All that they had to do was wait while the water retreated, and hope that they had some sort of crop to salvage.

Or enough fish to replace the lost crop.

That didn’t take away from the massive amount of cleanup work that had to be done in the city, though. The main floor of every building had flooded, and anything that hadn’t been removed on time was destroyed.

It was a major setback for Marimgar, and one that they couldn’t really afford.

Kalli didn’t have the points to completely remodel the buildings again, though she could likely manage to redo the main floor of most of them without too many issues. However, having everyone band together to do the work would be best.

Most of the main floor space had been empty anyhow, as it was not prime real estate. The walkways were on the mezzanine level, and most everything else was built above that, so the ground floor was essentially the basement space, reserved for heavy industry, and shops that didn’t rely on walk in customers.

They just needed to clear all the mud and anything else that had gotten into the buildings from the main floor.

Surprisingly to Kalli, as she came downstairs to inspect her workspace, she found that the building had actually been fairly well sealed. There was a water line half a metre up the walls, but the amount of mud that it had left behind was far less than she had feared.

The system store had an industrial-sized floor cleaning squeegee, the size of a push broom. And with that, she could simply sweep all the mud out the front door, leaving only minor cleaning to be done to bring the rest of the shop back to acceptability.

The System sold the brooms as a ten pack, leaving plenty for whoever got there first.

It was just a given that she was going to need a hundred or more of them, but she didn’t need to set that many out at once.

They would come looking for them, as long as she left enough out for them to see the advantages.

The water wasn’t even fully retreated before the Hall of Heroes was flooded with the level 0 residents, looking for cleaning supplies to get started on their daily work shift. But not only them, everyone who was above ground from the Hive City was here as well, and the Ark Commanders were sending more.

A hundred squeegees were not going to cut it.

Kalli bought another hundred, and then spent a point to get an entire cubic metre of "Shop Rags". One more point got a five gallon bucket of Mop’n’glow cleaner, that was supposed to be diluted 100:1 for sanitation purposes.

That should be enough to get them going.

No, buckets. They needed buckets for the cleaning solution.

Now, they were ready to go.

Everyone who left did so with a bucket containing a small amount of cleaner and a squeegee, plus an armful of rags. That would get them started on cleaning anything that they could, while the workers who would normally be on shift could report any areas that needed more work than just cleaning.

The textile mill was one that Kalli was worried about, given that there were so many machines in the single floor building. But as it turned out, the building took almost no water.

The bay door sealed tight, and they stuffed the man doors with oil soaked cloth, creating an improvised batten system. The water had gone half a metre up the walls, but very little had gotten inside the building.

Truly genius work on the part of the tailors.

At least that was one primary manufacturing facility that didn’t suffer extensive damage during the flood, so they could be up and running again within a few hours, ready to ship goods.

Just having something to do, goods to ship, would be enough to help the city feel a bit more normal, and already the shops that were not on the ground floor were operating at full capacity, serving the influx of people who had come to clean.

Kalli had never seen so much action in the city before, with people going in every direction, even outside the walls to check on what was left of their crops.

The damage was just as bad as it had looked, but they actually found that while much of the ground was completely waterlogged, it was draining better than expected, though a few fields did require them to do some digging so they didn’t turn into ponds.

The volcanic rubble around them was trapping the water in.

But once that was done, they were well on their way to having their productive crop land back, and there were plenty of surviving plants.

The fish had eaten the upper parts of the tuber plants, though it was clear that many didn’t win the fight, going by the blood soaked into the dirt. That could also be from the monsters coming to harvest them, but the cleanup crews weren’t worried about that.

The octopus monsters were too smart to get stuck on shore, and they disliked spending much time in fresh water.