AWDC Chapter 24

Chapter 24: Tool Production

The desert greening project would begin with road construction. John was put in charge of this construction.

It was thought that he could handle construction supervision because of his military experience. The road construction surveying had already been completed, so the course design was finished. All that remained was to build it according to the plan.

John had just gotten married, so he wouldn’t be able to enjoy his newlywed life, but he would have to endure it.

“Although you’ll be living apart from your wife, that just means the honeymoon feeling will last longer,”

Roy teased John, who looked glum after being appointed as the construction manager.

Well, I also saw the bride up close at the wedding and thought she was a beautiful person.

Living apart from someone like that would certainly be painful, I thought.

I left the road construction to John and started something else.

“Toma-san, how about this?”

Ladapole held a steel ring with a diameter of 3 centimeters. I inserted it into a smaller ring that I had made separately. A steel ball was sandwiched between the two rings. When I twisted the ring with my finger, the outer ring started to spin smoothly.

“Wow, this spins really well. It’s like a top.”

What we were making was a bearing. We were thinking of using this for the axles of the wagons.

The axles in this world used iron, but the structure was simply two rings with oil applied to make them slide. The rotating parts wore out quickly and became unusable.

In this construction project, a large number of people and materials had to be transported by wagon. However, with the axles we were currently using, we would have to replace them after just one round trip between the village and the Lean Ridge.

That would be too inefficient, so I had been working on developing bearings.

I knew the precision was still low and the hardness wasn’t sufficient, but I thought it would be good to actually use them and make improvements as we went.

“There’s still something else I want you to make.”

I handed him three sheets of paper.

“Huh, what’s this?”

“That’s called a trolley, and it’s a tool that can carry heavy loads even with just human power. It’s perfect for transporting soil and sand from tunnel construction and waterway excavation.”

I was doing such preparatory work.

Four months later, I was on the Lean Ridge.

Far to the south, the Alps mountains, capped with white snow, stretched out.

Even in the summer, seeing them covered in snow, I knew the elevation must easily exceed 4,000 meters.

In front of them, there was a chain of mountains ranging from 2,000 to 3,000 meters in height, although they were not snow-capped.

The Mulan River, sourced from the Alps, flowed down as if weaving through those mountains.

With this Lean Ridge in front of me, the river changed course significantly to the east again.

“If only this Lean Ridge weren’t here, the Datar Plateau would have become a fertile plain,” I muttered.

If there were no Lean Ridge, the Mulan River would have flowed through the middle of the Datar Plain.

But the Lean Ridge forced the Mulan River to go east.

In the past, the Mulan River must have discharged water and sediment all at once at the exit of the Lean Ridge.

A vast alluvial fan, 300 kilometers north to south and 150 kilometers east to west, was formed, stretching from the Datar Plain to Toriholi Village and Milona Town.

Probably more than 10,000 years ago, the mountain-building movement that created the Alps drastically changed the topography and climate of this area.

The oceanic plate that pushed in from the south collided with the plate of this continent and subducted.

The southern side of this continent, which was collided with, rose thousands of meters to become the Alps and high mountains.

The impact reached this northern land, the Lean Ridge and the Datar Plateau, even 500 kilometers away, raising them by more than 10 meters.

The area around Toriholi Village, which barely escaped the effects of the uplift, and the Datar Plateau had a difference in elevation of 10 meters.

And the Datar Plateau and the Mulan River were separated by a cliff as high as 30 meters at its maximum.

In the past, the Datar Plateau must have often been flooded by the Mulan River, sinking to the bottom of the water or becoming a large riverbed.

Now, not a single drop of water from the Mulan River was supplied.

In addition to the fact that it rarely rained inland, the mountains towering to the south and west blocked the rain clouds.

The Datar Plateau became a dry area, a desert, cut off from both the blessings of rain from the sky and the flow of water from the Mulan River.

“Toma, you’re here again,” Jim said, looking exasperated.

“No, I just want to check again and again to make sure there are no mistakes.”

I was afraid that this tunnel construction would fail even by a small chance.

“You’ve shown us magic many times before. You’ll definitely be able to build a tunnel, too.”

When the previous Lord Robertson was granted this Datar Plateau, none of the nobles envied him, it was said.

This land was abandoned by the people.

That’s why the current Lord Robertson and Sir Roy Keene had a strong desire to prove themselves.

That feeling extended to their retainers and villagers.

It became a belief that permeated the lord and his retainers.

“You can do it,” Jim said again strongly.

Jim trusted the technology I had created so much that he called it “magic.”

“Yeah, I’ll do my best.”

I gratefully accepted Jim’s encouragement.

“Listen, even if you show weakness in front of me, don’t show it in front of the workers!”

(Toma should be able to turn this land green with his magic. I want to help the lord and my father, who have struggled so much carrying the burden of this poor village. As a son, I want to make those nobles who used to make fun of my father look back in shame.) That was Jim’s feeling.