I woke up with a guttural groan from a dry throat. Despite sleeping for at least half-day (I wasn’t sure how long I was out after returning from my lovely meeting with the gods), I still felt like hammered shit. My body still ached with pain all over.

“Rummy! You’re awake!” Emma shouted excitedly as she kissed me on the cheek. I felt some moisture from her eyes. Sigh, I’d been an uncool husband. I’d made my future wife upset with my recklessness.

I groggily said. “Sorry to worry you, love. But I’m alright. Just a bit injured.”

“Hah!” Skera dismissively chuckled from outside the cart. “You were unconscious for one and a half days! I was just about to pronounce the Knight’s Last Rites for you!”

Dang, 36 hours? I wondered if it was the result of this Dream Pull thing, or it was because of the near-fatal injuries I’d sustained. Either way, was my hearing off, or did Skera offer to bury me like a real Knight?

Emma glared at her friend. “No need to ruin the romantic moment, Skera!”

“Although I’m very touched that you would bury me with honor like a real Knight.” I smirked at her.

Skera blushed a little bit. “Well, too bad you didn’t die. So you won’t get that treatment from me!” She huffed and left the cart. Lol. Damn tsun-tsun~

I struggled to sit up against the cart. Holy Gandalf, my ribs were sore. “Any other attacks after I killed the Tyrant?”

Skera shook her head. “Maybe it was the deafening noise, or the mercy of the Gods above, but the goblins and the wolves stayed far away after that battle.”

Well, definitely not the latter one, that was for damn sure. But luckily, we were spared a follow-up raid. That would’ve been bad. I was worried that the convoy couldn’t fend off another attack without me, but no need for that, apparently. Now, onto more important matters.

“Did we manage to harvest anything good?”

Emma smiled and flicked my forehead. “You almost died and you still worry about loot?”

I sported a boyish grin and replied. “Yeah. Duh!”

“We recovered all the mana crystals. You shaved off a corner of the Expert-level life-elemental mana crystal, but it’s very much intact.”

YES! I DIDN’T LOSE MY LOOT! SUCK IT, TYRANT!

I calmly replied. “That’s great news, darling. If we’re lucky, maybe we can get my apprentice back on his feet. Did you ask Sapphire about it?”

“I did. She said that it’s not impossible, but…”

“She’s not a healer with life elemental affinity.” I finished.

Well, considering how mana-intensive those Expert-level spells must be, it was wise to wait until we have completed a proper city wall before blowing all of Sapphire’s mana on reviving Prompto from his coma. Who knows when the next goblin raid might be?

***

Alright, time to get up and make Sapphire construct a proper city wall. No, I wasn’t content with some common earthen wall that relied on <> to have any military value. No. It was time to throw in some modern engineering razzle-dazzle into this operation. I planned to build this world’s first steel-reinforced concrete wall.

The plan started with 2 roughly-circular concentric earth walls ~4m and ~5m tall, with the gap in between dug down to 1 meter below ground level (Thanks to Sapphire). For ease of access, the inner earthen wall had the necessary stairs for defenders to go up on the wall. The outer earthen wall would serve as a crude parapet to protect the defenders from arrows. I got Sapphire to dig out merlons for future defenders to fire their Garands out of.

I then inserted a mesh of perpendicular steel rebars between the gap of the walls. Lastly, I’d fill in the gap with concrete. The settlement area on top of the hill wasn’t large- it was roughly 0.20 square km- half the size of Vatican City, the smallest country in my old world. So the estimated length of wall I needed would be 1.6 km (I solved for the radius via the equation: area = r^2*pi, then double it and times pi for circumference).

I did consider building a star fortress or a polygonal fortress, but I simply couldn't afford it. I had barely enough material for just a plain wall, and I even had to skimp on the rebars. It was definitely a future upgrade option though. Same with watchtowers- good idea, but too poor to build it.

Even with magical help, building a wall ~1600 meters long, 4 meters high (plus 1 meter of foundation and footer), and 1 meter thick would be a massive challenge. But the investment was definitely worth it- if that pissed-off Elf (who’d recently become our neighbor, by the way) ever decided to throw a horde of mana-beasts at us, earthen walls ain’t gonna cut it even if Sapphire cast <> on it until she’s blue in the face. In addition, concrete melts at ~1550 Celsius, which should hopefully make it fire-proof against whatever world-burning threat that the Pantheon warned me about. So it was a needed insurance against 2 potential enemies down the road.

Of course, this project took a while to complete, considering that my construction crew mostly consisted of children (good thing child labor laws weren’t a thing in this world~). In the meanwhile, Sapphire’s walls would suffice for security. Skera’s squad and Loki’s harem pack would patrol the perimeters and crush any incoming raids. If there was a big raid from multiple war parties, we would fall back on the walls and let my MG-42 do the fighting. And if anything like that Tyrant showed up, I have stored a few big rocks in my storage ring to replicate my dive bomb (hopefully with better results).

On a related note, I sincerely hoped that the Elves would leave us the fuck alone, at least before we finished that wall. And if they were to attack a completed wall with machine gun posts, there’d be hell to pay (a famous saying from my old world came to mind: “We’re gonna build that wall, and we’ll make them pay for it”).

***

Everybody was busy these next few months. In order to make my knockoff of Roman Concrete, I had the kids gathering pebbles, limestone, and pumice from nearby deposit sites. Skera was there to protect them and to carry a vast majority of the load. Meanwhile, I was on top of the earthen walls inserting the rebars. Sadly, we didn’t have enough steel to get the classic mesh that I’d preferred, but a couple of perpendicular rebars welded together should be an okay substitute (or at least, better than nothing).

Once I had the rebars set, I made Roman Concrete from the stockpile of materials my crew. First off, I baked the limestone in a kiln I uh… imported… from the city for a couple of hours to drive off the carbon dioxide within. Then I dropped the resulting quicklime into water (and caused a fun bubbly chemical reaction) to make lime paste.

Next, we needed to add ground pumice into the mixture. I had Cornelius, that traitorous little shit we captured on our way out of Carnwennan, help out by crushing and grinding the pumice with a rock. Seeing the rat bastard chained up and pounding pumice day and night did fill me with some satisfaction. After mocking my dream as an impossible suicide, the least I could do for him was to force him help me make it come true. Plus, we needed every hand on deck for this project.

After that, I mixed the pebbles, the lime paste, and the grounded pumice with some saltwater to make my knockoff Roman Concrete. I knew the pumice wasn't classic Polanza (since I was nowhere near Italy), but I hoped there would be enough silicic acid in there to get the polanzannic reaction I'd need to make the concrete "Roman".

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Fun fact: it took scientists centuries to figure out how Roman Concrete was so resilient. As it turned out, the secret sauce was seawater. Apparently, the salt in seawater was needed to cause a chemical reaction that leads to the creation of a mineral called tobermorite in the molecular gaps of the concrete, making it sturdier and more resilient than most modern concrete.

Unfortunately, the Acheron River is freshwater; so no salt there. I’d brought a lot of salt, but we needed most of that for food preservation. So I had to make do with by harvesting what little salt the blood of the mana-beasts and goblins had by boiling it after we’d drained it. It wasn't a lot, but the best part about Roman Concrete was that I could wash it in saltwater after it was done and reinforce it that way. Well, that was a problem for future Rummy.

I’d make my concrete mix on top of the earthen wall after using <> to carry the entire stockpile up the wall. After I was done with the batch, I’d get my helpers to dump it in the gap. This went on for several months until the wall was finished. Good thing Roman Concrete took 180 days to dry~

For the city gates, I ended up deciding on having a front gate facing away from the Acheron, and a back gate facing the river and into a pier roughly 250 meters away from the back gate. Plagiarizing off of the Romans once more, the gates would be made in the fashion of the Roman Arch. The gate would be 2 layered- the outer gate would be made of a thick and sturdy oak, and the inner gate would be a portcullis (a metal cage-like gate) made of steel. They would be pulled up and dropped via a chain system.

I could literally feel this project turning my hair grey, and it wasn’t just from the concrete. Holy Gandalf this was a lot of work. I wished there was an easier way to do this. But people who make compromises and shortcuts in the Wilds tend to die young, so that thought was never seriously considered.

Meanwhile, Emma, Nairi, and Darrak had a different project: town buildings. After all, we need housing for 97 people and I was too busy building that damn wall. We’d also needed warehouses for storage and a big forge-smithy for all the metal products we’d need. They were pretty new to the process, but after going through it with them a few times, I could rely on them to build stuff that wouldn’t tumble down after a week.

Since I was hogging all the concrete precursors, they’d have to use something else- fired bricks made from clay and sand baked in fire. Emma magically assisted with spells like <> and <> (Thanks to her massive mana talent and fire affinity, that spell is basically free for her!). We started building longhouses that could fit 20-25 people each. Each building had brick walls and a roof made from wooden frames and ceramic tiles made from the clay.

Since the kiln I borrowed from the company was in use for quicklime production, the housing team had to build new kilns for the bricks and roof tiles. After building a couple of kilns, they were able to mass-produce bricks and tiles. Without Emma’s magical assistance, the amount of trees they’d have to chop down for firewood would’ve been massive. For mortar, I had them make lime mortar from limestones and sand. Luckily for us, we were blessed with plenty of limestone deposits around the Narrows to support both projects.

In addition to the wall project, I was running the sewer project too. After all, it took a while for my other helpers to collect and stockpile enough materials. And after I was done setting up the rebars, I had free time. Plus, I was getting sick and tired of having to shit in the woods while Loki watched my back (I’d do the same for him). So I had Sapphire dig out an underwater canal that diverted the Acheron River towards the settlement and back into the river in a semicircle fashion (with <> walls of course). Then I built a couple of outhouses with drainage into the cavern. It’s a crude imitation of a modern sewage system, but it’ll do for now.And if we ever needed water in case of siege, we could get drinking water from upstream of the drainage system.

We also needed an emergency escape tunnel in case the defenses were breached. The problem was that if the enemy knew about it, they’d infiltrate from the escape tunnel (the sewer was flooded, so that would be a bad point of entry for the besiegers). So my brilliant plan was to have the tunnel run right through the den of Loki’s new pack. Yes, my pet wolfie already had a litter of 10 pups and the lucky bastard wasn’t even a year old yet. I wasn’t jealous at all. No siree~

Anyways, any intruder would have to fight through a freezing den of ice-attuned and territorial wolves. Loki’s first mate, Freja (In keeping with the Norse theme, I’d decided to name the Champion wolf after the goddess of Love and War), was also Champion level. So the den would be adequately defended even if Loki was out hunting. Hell, even if they could overpower Loki’s pack, the ensuing battle would definitely alert the whole town.

My settlement defense plan heavily featured Loki’s pack as a mobile strike force that could either harass invading hordes or raid nearby nests. In fact, I planned to have Skera train up a couple of the older kids and pair them with their own wolf pup (I knew using child soldiers was immoral, but giving them a free puppy should make it OK~). Just like that, I’d built this world’s first and only wolf cavalry!

Tali was busy with her own projects. She established the farms (I’d also provided her with a classic isekai trope advice- the Norfolk crop rotation system!) and fisheries (we ate a lot of fish during the first few months while the crops were growing), effectively setting up the food supply system from scratch. Every time I saw her personally plowing the field using <> with the rest of the farmhands, I felt contentment knowing that I picked the right boss to work under. Fuck those “managers” who couldn’t bothered to actually get down from their corner offices, get their hands dirty, and support their underlings. Tali was not a leader driven by ego, but by a singular desire to get the job done.

At last, after a little bit over a year, we finally finished building the town. The reinforced concrete wall was completed, along with longhouses for the kids, my personal house for my future family, and forge-smithy for my future projects. It was hard work, but the rewards were 1) worth it and 2) not taxed away by some arrogant noble who hadn’t done shit for it.

On the summer solstice of the 257th year of the Imperial Calendar, the town of Pridwen was formally established. The town, named after the famous shield of Artorius I, the First Emperor, would eternally protect the weak and the downtrodden from the beasts inside and outside of Carnwennan. Every year, we’d celebrate the Founding Day of the town on the summer solstice. It was a tradition I’d celebrate and cherish until the day I’d die.

With my promise to Emma fulfilled. It was time to marry that girl and get started on that harem!

Field Inventory

Primary Weapon

M1D Garand v.2.0 [Christened Severance Pay]

MG-42 General-Purpose Machine Gun v.1.0 [Christened Lady Vengeance]

Secondary Weapon

Colt M1911A1 Semi-Automatic Pistol v.3.0 [Christened Aurelia]

1x mithril parrying dagger [Christened Swordbreaker]

Armor

Crystal-modified dragon leather body armor set {<>, <>, <>, <>, <>, <>}; Crystal-modified dragon Leather boots lined with wolf fur { <>, <>, <>}

Mana Crystals

1x Adept-level fire elemental mana crystal

1x Adept-level ice elemental mana crystal

1x Adept-level space elemental mana crystal

1x Expert-level earth elemental mana crystal

1x Expert-level space elemental mana crystal

Stash of various mana crystals

Misc.

Salvaged armor parts and weapons

1x storage bracelet, 2x goggles

Utility belt, grappling hook, rope, dark green cloak, field satchel, puppy backpack, waterskin, rations, boarskin map and steel knife

1x .45 ACP steel centerfire pistol suppressor

1x .30-06 Springfield steel centerfire rifle suppressor

1x crude telescopic sight

10x en bloc clips of .30-06 Springfield armor-piercing ammo

5x magazines of .45 ACP hollow-point ammo

6x belts of 150 .30-06 Springfield armor-piercing ammo

Spare ammo

3x mithril dagger

1x male mutated Champion wolf mana-beast [Christened Loki]

1x female Champion wolf mana-beast [Christened Freja]

2x female wolf mana-beast

10x mutated wolf mana-beast puppy