Chapter 11: Construction Will Commence

TL: A_Passing_Wanderer

ED: Chrissy

So many things were happening at the same time. Especially with the miners, as they expanded and secured many mining sites producing various minerals. This couldn't have happened without the map Kim Gi-Wu brought from the future.

Also, the invention and mass production of several brand-new articles were expedited. This was made possible by Kim Gi-Wu passing on the knowledge whenever he had time to the tribe's expert artisans.

Even so, the role of supervision and management still fell upon Kim Gi-Wu's shoulders. Even today, he was making his rounds in the industrial zones to ensure that all industries were functioning as he intended.

The first place he stopped by was the shipyard located by the river.

'We gotta build a cargo transport ship as soon as possible.'

In modern times, the difference in efficiency between the sea and land transport was as much as 'thirteen times'. In other words, it was thirteen times more expensive to transport cargo through land than through container ships.

But in current America, they didn't have animals suited for transporting cargo like horses, never mind things like locomotives or trucks. It didn't take a genius to figure out that the difference between transporting cargo with ships and on land would be incomparable in such a condition.

However, the tribe lacked a proper means to traverse the river at the moment. The current era's shipbuilding technology could only get them literal wooden rafts fashioned out of logs and not much else.

'Hah-ah... When will we get to construct a large ship like a galleon, I wonder...'

Never mind a galleon, they might not even get to complete a damn sailboat at the rate they were going.

For now, though, the basic shipbuilding industry had to be established first.

Fortunately enough, the level of the basic carpentry tools such as saws and planes had improved by a great deal until now.

There was no material to make ropes, for now, so threads made out of pure cotton were used as a substitute. Only after did they expand their influence to Central America can they get their hands on Manila hemp. The plant where the fiber for the rope could be extracted was only found in tropical regions, after all.

The last thing to be manufactured was the sail. After that was complete, they could earnestly start the basic shipbuilding process.

Unfortunately...

"Hmm..."

"Great Chief. Is this not to your liking?"

"...Well, it's fine. For a first try, it's pretty well made, actually."

Before Kim Gi-Wu's eyes was the very first boat with a sail attached to be constructed by the Creek tribe's shipbuilders.

Unsurprisingly, the resulting article fell well short of his expectations. Even so, he wasn't all that disappointed.

He never expected to feel full after taking the first bite of the cherry, after all. The priority right now was to allow the workers volunteering at the shipyard to continue gaining experience.

Once their experience level reaches a certain point, they should be able to build even bigger and better boats.

Kim Gi-Wu stayed for a very long time to point out the inadequate parts of the first-ever ship built by the Creek artisans. That's how much he was invested in the shipbuilding industry.

The expressions of the men listening to his explanation gradually cramped up, but Kim Gi-Wu didn't pay any heed. That's because the rapid growth of these shipbuilders equaled the expansion and enrichment of the Creek tribe itself.

Now that the tribe's scale had explosively grown, he simply had to repeatedly hammer home the importance of shipping goods and making it easy to travel. Even now, so many sectors were crying out for help in this regard.

All this was an unavoidable side effect of the tribe's scale growing far too quickly.

"I will assign more workers to the shipyard. Make sure to build many more ships and gain experience that way, everyone."

"Yes, Great Chief."

The expressions of the workers finally eased, thinking that their Great Chief's nagging had finally come to an end.

Kim Gi-Wu put the shipbuilders behind him and left the shipyard altogether.

"Great Chief. You should think about taking a short break, sir. At this rate, you will really harm your health."

"Why don't you take a break first, Upright Tree? You have more work than me, don't you?"

"I'll think about it when you also take a break, Great Chief."

"In that case, I guess we won't be taking any breaks for a long while. Let's work our asses off, then! Hahaha!"

While sharing a banter or two with Upright Tree, Kim Gi-Wu headed to the next location in his itinerary. Now that he thought about it, it had been already over six years since Upright Tree began working for him. This young Creek warrior was probably the closest person to Kim Gi-Wu in the tribe.

The next location they headed to was the kiln. It was also located by the riverside, making it only a stone's throw away from the shipyard.

Before they could reach the kiln, though, Kim Gi-Wu spotted many bricks neatly stacked in an open field nearby.

"Just seeing them alone already fills me up," muttered Kim Gi-Wu.

"Great Chief? Are you planning to eat them?"

"Who's going to eat those hard rocks here, dude? It's just a figure of speech."

"Figure of what, sir?"

"Mm, it means... Eh-whew. Never mind. Just follow me, will you."

Even as they stood around sharing a banter, bricks were being baked inside the vigorously-burning kiln.

Fine mud carried down by the river was the main ingredient of the bricks being baked. More kilns were currently being constructed alongside the river right this moment, too. Many of these newly-built kilns were scheduled to be utilized in baking bricks.

Out of the three necessities in life, clothing and food had been taken care of to some degree. But the state of residential districts remained an eyesore.

This was the reason why, as soon as some spare manpower was found, Kim Gi-Wu hurriedly deployed them to bake as many bricks as possible.

'It's time to extensively renovate the residential area.'

Kim Gi-Wu thanked and encouraged the artisans in the brick-making factory. There wasn't much to supervise them in this operation, so he didn't have to spend a lot of time here.

The next place he visited was the cement factory built right next to the kiln.

Honestly speaking, the production of cement wasn't that difficult. Clay could be found abundantly by the riverside, after all. And thanks to the increased number of miners and transport personnel, plenty of limestones were being mined and transported to this location.

The limestone was crushed to powder, then mixed with the river's clay before the mixture was cooked. Meaning, it needed to be baked, too. The ratio of the limestone & mud mixture was around 2:1.

Then, the resulting mixture was added to water with a rough ratio of 5:2, which should become the hardening cement as modern humans knew it.

And finally, this morning saw the completion of the experiment on finding the correct ratio for the cement mixture.

"It's quite sturdy."

"Yes, Great Chief! This is truly a revolutionary product, sir! I'm convinced that you are indeed sent from the skies, Great Chief. Otherwise, how would you even know the method of coming up with such a thing!"

"Hahaha, please calm down, Wide Grassland."

The manager of the cement factory, Wide Grassland, couldn't hold back his excitement while animatedly talking to Kim Gi-Wu.

His excitement was the result of him realizing how incredible this newly-invented item actually was. Up until not too long ago, his job used to be grinding stones to make stone tools. And that's why he knew how difficult it was to work with stones.

To think that there was a type of 'stone' that could be shaped any way you want like mud before it hardened like actual stones! Not only that, but it also had the property of sticking to other stones, too.

Tears were automatically forming on the edges of Wide Grassland's eyes just from thinking that he contributed to the invention of this incredible product.

"From now on, you'll be getting a continuous supply of limestone. And you will have to turn them all into 'changing stones' later. Heh, don't resent me for it got down the line, got that? Hehehe."

"No, Great Chief! Use me any way you see fit, sir! This Wide Grassland swears to work for you until my whole body crumbles apart! Hahahaha!"

Cement was renamed 'changing stone' to indicate it's a stone that could change shapes.

With this, they were manufacturing bricks and cement properly now. Kim Gi-Wu thought that he should get the large-scale civil engineering projects off the ground once the operations of the factories had gotten big enough.

Afterwards, he went around checking the status of the other operations currently underway right up until the end of the day. But even on the next day, and the day after that, Kim Gi-Wu still had to go around supervising various other operations yet again.

*

The population reaching six hundred thousand obviously wouldn't result in a day passing by without an incident of some kind.

In a way, this shouldn't have come as a surprise. The marketplace had grown in scale lately even though there was no currency and people were still relying heavily on bartering to trade.

"Did you say that someone sold a sack of flour half-filled with dirt? And the seller is feigning ignorance by saying that he never did?"

"Yes, Great Chief. Incidents of fraud like this one are increasing in number every day, sir. The problem we have now is determining whether it was a real fraud committed by the seller or the buyer was trying to blackmail the other party."

"Hmm..."

Maybe not having an established set of laws was to blame here for all sorts of new incidents happening every day. Should he say that the variety of scams were getting more creative lately?

As for filling half the grain sack with dirt and selling it off, it was a fairly popular method of scam going around these days.

Since the buyers couldn't open the sack and check the contents thoroughly while making a purchase, they were bound to get scammed more often than not.

"More and more incidents like this one are happening in the tribe, sir. We need to come up with a way to deal with these situations."

"Incidents of residents from other tribes getting severely overcharged compared to the price found in the city of Great Beginning are on the rise as we speak, Great Chief. They are still unaware of the food prices, after all."

"And due to the differences in language and culture breeding misunderstandings, small conflicts are often escalating into a full-on brawl as well."

The more Kim Gi-Wu listened, the crazier everything seemed to be getting. The public order would only get worse the longer he took his time thinking up countermeasures.

Things like this would build up momentum over time. Once events went out of control, unstoppable chaos would eventually start and nothing would be able to control it.

"Looks like we'll have to assign more people to the public order offices. First of all, we'll extend the training center, then construct the Supreme Court."

"Great Chief, when you say the Supreme Court...?"

"We can't keep solving the residents' conflicts through fists, now can we? To help the public order offices function smoothly, we need to create guidelines they could follow."

"Ah, I see. I understand what you're alluding to, sir. We shall abide by your ruling."

Now that the population had grown explosively, they had no choice but to create laws and enforce them on everyone. It'd be unfair to assign different levels of punishment when the crime committed was the same, after all.

After this discussion was over, Kim Gi-Wu was finally able to bring up the topic he'd been dying to talk about. "And so, we shall now begin the wide-scale construction projects. Mobilize every spare manpower to this task. We shall start first from the stronghold of the Creek people, the city of Great Beginning."

The Creek tribe's central village had been given a grand-sounding new name – the city of Great Beginning.

Since this city would serve as the starting point for the Creek's dominance in the future, such a name seemed like a good fit.

"Some of you may have already heard about it. About the invention of building materials called bricks and changing stones."

"Yes, we heard it, Great Chief. When I saw them, I was reminded once more that they were items devised by none other than our Great Chief. They were that amazing to behold! Haha!"

"Hahaha. You keep kissing like that, and you might wear out my ass eventually."

"Your ass...? Heok! Are you having a tummy ache, Great Chief?!"

The moment Kim Gi-Wu finished his joke, Excellent Mind and the rest of his fellow management team jumped in shock and worry.

From their perspective, Kim Gi-Wu's health was more important than anything else, after all!

"... Never mind. I'm as healthy as you like, so don't worry about me." Kim Gi-Wu smiled awkwardly and dismissively waved his hand.

Maybe it was still a bit too early to throw around a simple joke like that?

He was reminded of this stark reality once more while staring at the worried face of the Ritual Chief, Excellent Mind. Not wanting to dwell on it any further, Kim Gi-Wu quickly changed the topic. "Since many people are still not aware of what bricks and changing stones are, allow me to explain."

He began explaining the simplified version of the characteristics of bricks and cement, then painted a picture of the transformation they would bring forth in the future.

Once his presentation came to an end, countless warriors attending the tribal meeting gasped out in sheer amazement.

"To think there was something that amazing existing under the sky!"

"Indeed, Ritual Chief's amazement is well deserved, sir!"

"Great Chief, are we also going to develop other villages beside the city of Great Beginning?"

"Of course. Not just the Great Beginning, but we will transform all of Creek's villages in the future, too!"

"Oh, ooooh!"

Kim Gi-Wu's declaration caused the expressions of hope to float up on the faces of all the warriors present. They did a complete 180 from a few seconds ago when they were wrestling with countless issues within the tribe.

But this was merely the beginning. Once the construction projects had progressed to some degree, their hope would one day transform into certainty.

After the tribal meeting resembling a war zone ended, Kim Gi-Wu headed to his office before plopping down on a wooden chair.

It was rather stiff and hard to sit on, but when he thought about taking a little break, it suddenly felt supremely comfortable.

'Urgh. I'm slowly dying here...'

It felt like his whole body had turned into a piece of soggy tissue. He'd dearly love more than anything else to close his eyes right now and catch some sleep.

"Lord Great Chief! The item you mentioned the last time, the completed article has arrived, sir!"

Unfortunately, he couldn't do that. Excellent Mind showed up to interrupt this brief rest, that's why. [1]

'Not giving me a moment to rest, huh? Eh-whew.'

He thought he could figure out why most kings and queens in the history books kicked buckets well before their time. They were probably assassinated by overwork.

But Kim Gi-Wu felt his fatigue disappear completely when he clapped his eyes on the article held inside Upright Tree's hand.

"Hoh-oh."

< 11. Construction Will Commence. > Fin.

[1]: The author did write 'Excellent Mind', but I think he meant 'Upright Tree.'