Regressor of the Fallen Family Novel - Chapter 331 (New)

Chapter 331

Adam let out a heavy breath as the weight of the timber on his shoulders pressed down.

“You doing okay?”

“I’m, I’m fine.”

“Don’t kill yourself over it. You’re going to be here for a long haul!”

“I’m really alright!”

“Sprightly for your years, aren’t you? Keep that fire going!”

Adam felt a brief flash of irritation at the boisterous clap on his shoulder, but he quickly found himself chuckling. It wasn’t meant to be mean-spirited; it was just a friendly gesture that had nearly knocked the wind out of him.

Dwarfs and beings carved from living stone.

Only a few years ago, such mythical creatures were confined to the pages of children’s stories. Now, they were scurrying and stomping about right in front of him. And he wasn’t seeing them as a daring traveler, but simply as a day laborer on a build.

He had heard whispers of the massive shifts occurring across the McLain Kingdom, but for Adam, life had mostly just become less complicated. He had spent too much of his time simply trying to keep food on the table to pay attention to politics.

Yet this construction site was a theater of wonders unlike anything he had ever imagined. It made him feel fortunate to have signed up for the shift.

For instance…

“Hey, what’s the holdup? Squad 13! Are you just going to stand there and watch the clouds?!”

“I—I’m moving! I’m on it!”

He had apparently lost himself in thought again. Adam snapped his eyes away from the stone golem he had been watching and got back to the task, spurred by the bark of a dwarf foreman.

While working through the winter was grueling, the sheer strangeness of the project kept his eyes wandering. The supervisors didn’t give him a hard time for his curiosity; almost every other laborer was just as distracted.

At the northwestern edge of the McLain Kingdom lies the Teresa Gorge. It is a vital artery connecting the northern Esperanza Duke Territory to the northeastern reaches of the Empire, as well as the eastern terminus of the Hunter’s Way.

Inside the kingdom’s side of the gorge, a massive workforce was busy erecting a formidable stronghold. Dozens of dwarfs were directing the flow of labor, and no less than four thousand workers toiled under the winter sun. Furthermore, scores of five-meter-tall rock creatures lumbered through the mud, hauling massive boulders or entire stacks of timber. Every motion was perfectly synchronized, moving with the efficiency of a fine-tuned machine.

“Squad 13, pick up the pace!”

“Squad 7, slow down! Is that the best you can do to inspect those logs?!”

One particularly ‘stout’ dwarf seemed to be the heart of the operation. Every time he made a gesture or a shout, the rhythm of the work would adjust, tightening up the slack and smoothing out the chaos.

Small merchant caravans making their way through the Teresa Gorge often pulled their horses to a halt just to stare at the impossible scene.

“Who builds a fortress in the dead of winter?”

“They’re clearly in a hurry.”

“Right here?”

“Do you think they’ll start charging us a toll once the gates are up?”

“Doubt it. That would kill the trade route.”

The merchants’ talk always started with coins but quickly shifted to pity for the locals.

“The people of this kingdom must be suffering.”

“Exactly. Imagine being forced into hard labor during the freezing months instead of resting at home.”

“I’d heard the new rulers were iron-fisted. It looks like the rumors were true.”

However, despite the merchants’ assumptions, the laborers hauling wood and stone mostly carried wide grins, even as sweat froze on their brows.

“The coin is excellent, so I’m not complaining.”

“The King has given us steady pay when the farms are frozen. It’s a blessing.”

“Right you are. And honestly, where else are you going to see a show like this?”

“True!”

“Wait, look! They’re starting up again! Watch this!”

“Incredible!”

As the stone-movers leaned on their tools for a momentary break, they turned their attention toward the rising walls of the fortress. There, several figures stood dressed in flowing, oversized robes that looked entirely out of place in the muck of a construction zone.

“Earth Wall!”

As the mages in brown robes shouted with intense concentration, the ground beneath them began to heave as if struck by a tremor. Slowly, a massive wall of packed earth rose five meters into the air.

Before the dust could even settle, mages in red robes stepped forward.

“Solidify the foundation!”

“Fire!”

“Fire Ring!”

As they chanted, the new earthen barrier was bathed in a roar of intense heat. Once the flames died down, mages in green robes took their turn.

“That’s the spot. Earth and fire units, fall back! Bring the temperature down!”

“Ice!”

“Ice Fog!”

As the scorched earth was rapidly cooled and hardened, the process of building the fortress’s core—usually the most time-consuming part of masonry—was finished in a heartbeat. It was a sight that left everyone breathless.

“I never dreamed I’d see mages working a construction site. I thought they spent their whole lives hiding in towers.”

“Me too. And they’re actually working hard, not just showing off.”

“It’s because of those people over there.”

Adam gestured toward a group of brown-robed mages who wore a distinct pattern of odd dolls on their clothes. With simple waves of their hands, dozens of massive rock creatures fanned out, hauling supplies and stacking the masonry for the walls.

While the spectacle of mages raising walls was grand, the rock creatures were the true workhorses. They handled the dangerous, grueling tasks that usually resulted in broken bones or deaths on a site.

“Welcome, Master.”

“Yes. Is the progress holding steady?”

“Perfectly, sir. No setbacks.”

The moment a powerful-looking, middle-aged mage arrived, the scale of the magic shifted.

“Rise!”

Vwoooooooom.

Grroooooooowwwwl.

Boom!

In an instant, thirty new rock creatures burst from the soil. These were even more massive than the ones already working.

“Whoa!”

“Look at the size of them!”

“One man did all that…?”

“Is that the Archmage?”

“I’ve heard the stories! The greatest wizard in the land!”

Clayton’s singular effort dwarfed the work of a dozen lesser mages. But then, another figure arrived.

“Sorry I’m late!”

A young woman with bright blue hair ran up, still rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

Kugugugugug.

Boom! Crash!

Twenty more rock creatures, slightly smaller than Clayton’s, climbed out of the earth.

“…What?”

“Did she just do that?”

The workers were stunned. They knew the Master could do it, but what was this young girl capable of? Had they known her true identity, they would have been even more shocked.

These smaller rock creatures moved with a fluidity that the larger ones lacked. They darted among the workers, helping with delicate tasks and acting as the precision tools of the project. Their graceful movements even forced a gasp from Clayton as he watched.

“She’s starting to manage them with more finesse than I do.”

“They have their own strengths, Master. I find twenty is the most I can move with this much detail.”

“Haha, don’t be modest. That’s pure skill.”

At only fifty years old, Clayton—an archmage of the younger generation among superhumans—spoke with genuine pride for his student. To him, her growth was entirely logical.

His apprentice had a talent that went beyond merely reaching archmage status before she was twenty. Controlling twenty rock creatures as if they were extensions of her own body required a level of concentration that most mages couldn’t fathom.

Normally, a mage would set a rock creature’s behavior with a predetermined spell and just pump in mana. Controlling dozens at once usually meant they could only follow the simplest of orders. But she was moving all twenty as unique individuals.

‘Maintaining twenty at once is like having twenty different brains,’ Clayton thought.

He also knew that the small, unassuming look of her golems was a deliberate choice by Viktor to hide the true extent of her power. Because of that restraint, their movements were even more impressive, showing the master-level control hidden beneath the surface.

‘Where did a child with this much potential come from?’

It was truly mind-boggling. Moreover, Viktor himself was a wielder of aura. These two siblings, born to parents who had been slaves, were both standing on the threshold of superhuman status while barely being twenty.

‘With that hair and that power… maybe they really do have the blood of dragons in them,’ Clayton mused with a quiet laugh.

Still, Clayton remained alert, shielding his student with his own awareness as she focused. He scanned the area for anyone who might be paying too much attention to their specific techniques.

Listening to the ‘whispers of the wind’ he had cast to gather the rumors of the camp, he was relieved to find the laborers were focusing on the spectacle rather than the secrets.

“What’s the deal with the other mages? Why are they working so hard?”

“It’s a contest, can’t you tell?”

“Ah, they’re trying to see who’s better?”

“Exactly.”

The workers’ perceptions were slightly off, but it served Clayton’s purposes.

“Keep the foundation deep and the fill solid. Growth happens when you push against your limits; discovery lies on the other side of struggle.”

This was the mantra Clayton had spread through the Mages’ Guild. The students of the Golem School had already outpaced their peers from the other four towers because they had been subjected to the relentless work schedules demanded by Logan and Clayton back in the McLain days.

At first, they had complained bitterly. But when they saw the results in their own power, they began to push themselves even harder.

Now, the McLain Royal Mage Battalion had effectively drained the talent from the prestigious five towers of Grange. Only the old, stubborn wizards who couldn’t change their ways were left in the towers; the young and ambitious were all out in the mud, building fortresses.

‘We might actually finish ahead of schedule.’

Clayton grinned as he watched the magic flow. He knew that while this fortress was a shield for McLain, the neighboring nations would see it as a sharpened blade pointed at their throats.

Just as the walls in the north began to take shape, a formal, biting letter of protest from the Empire’s capital arrived at McLain Castle.