by Ryota Hori
And while that land didn’t belong to Count Salzberg, it did neighbor his own. In which case, one could expect to see Epirus receiving that land’s blessings, too. At this point, Count Salzberg wasn’t bent on eliminating Ryoma. He realized using him would net him more profit than removing him would.
Firstly, Ryoma maintaining peace in the peninsula already meant Count Salzberg had to spend less on fighting off the monsters that wandered in from Wortenia. Getting rid of the monsters altogether wasn’t possible, but it alleviated his burdens somewhat. And when coupled with the possibilities that came with developing Wortenia, the profits stood to be large.
With that in mind, getting rid of Ryoma at this point seemed unprofitable. And Lady Yulia nodded wordlessly at Count Salzberg’s explanation. She didn’t have a concrete reason to overturn his decision...
♱
It had been two months since Ryoma established his stronghold in the Wortenia Peninsula and got rid of the pirates. The season was approaching summer, and the sun shined in the heavens, radiating a smoldering heat over the land.
A group of one hundred was heading south, cutting a way through the trees as they did. They were divided into three groups. One group cut through the trees and made sure the ground was stable. The second paved the cleared way with stone. The third kept watch and made sure the former two teams were safe.
Their work was swift and efficient. Each member understood their role and they worked while splitting the labor equally.
“Alright, start chantin’!” Lione exclaimed.
“Our mother earth, extend thy strong arms and protect us, your beloved children, from harm! Stone Wall!” Several dozen people started chanting at once, and then slammed their palms against the ground.
This was a low level earth element verbal thaumaturgy spell, often used to block enemy arrows and thaumaturgy. But this time, they didn’t cast this spell to defend themselves.
“Dig it up!”
At that order, the soldiers reinforced by martial thaumaturgy tied the two meters long, three meters wide slabs of rock that rose up from the ground with rope and began pulling it down into the ground. They then dug up the foundation that was buried into the ground, revealing a large stone wall that was nearly 5 meters in length.
Finally, they neatly and carefully placed the ten centimeter thick stone slabs onto the sand-covered foundation. With five rows of the stone slabs placed neatly together, they formed a paved stone road.
“Alright, we take an hour’s rest here! Guard squad, rest in shifts!” Lione ordered them, which made everyone sigh with relief.
“Phew... We’re about half done now, right?”
It had been ten days or so since they started working on this task. A long road of flagstones that lasted some thirty kilometers extended from the direction they came in. They didn’t need to prepare the flagstone’s shape, and so their width and height was uniform. All they had to do was set them together.
On top of that, they used a low level thaumaturgy that was easy to learn and depleted relatively little prana. Considering the expenses that would usually be spent on procuring and ferrying the materials for the road, this was an extremely efficient method.
“Do ya think the fortress’ construction is going well?”
Lione turned around at that question, finding herself face to face with Mike, who was rubbing his mustache with a smile.
“Boltz is in charge of it. There won’t be any problems.”
“I’d bet. And thankfully, we’re blessed with good weather... Maybe too good, even.” Mike added and glared up at the sun.
Bad weather would mean their construction work would take longer, but the intense sunlight made the physical labor harsher on all of them.
“Just ten more days or so, yeah?” Mike asked.
“Right. We’re about halfway done, so that’s how long it should take.” Lione nodded, turning her eyes to the road paved by stone walls. They had to cut through nearly fifty kilometers of forest, and pave the road with those walls. This work would take them twenty days or so.
“Still, it’ll take less than a month... I swear, I’ll never understand how the lad’s brain works.”
If they were to go about this labor in the usual way, it would require thousands of workers. They’d need to obtain the needed stone, and then work on cutting it into the right shape and carrying it over. The expenses and time required would be absurd.
Indeed, in this world, the roadworks Lione and her group were working on right now usually took years and a startling amount of funds to complete. No one would believe they could complete it within less than a month. Ryoma’s ideas turned this Earth’s logic on its head.
“Well, the town’s mostly coming into shape, so all that’s left is the elves.” Lione concluded.
“You think that’ll go well?” Mike directed a doubtful glance at her.
“Well, I dunno. They hate us humans like the plague... But hey, the boy’ll figure it out somehow, right?”
Lione turned her glance north and whispered.
“After all, that boy is...”
The small whisper that left her lips didn’t reach Mike’s ears.
And around that time, Ryoma Mikoshiba shifted his focus primarily toward developing the Wortenia Peninsula. In preparation for the day when the cinders of war would blow onto his land from the east...
Afterword
I doubt there are many such readers left, but I welcome any new readers who picked up the series with this volume. And to those of you who have kept up with the series since volume 1, it’s been four months since the last volume. This is Ryota Hori, the author.
I am writing this afterword during the later stages of February. The passage of time is frighteningly fast. How did you all spend this time? It’s allergy season for me, and my hand is constantly stuffed in the tissue box as of late.
But let’s do away with trifling topics like the author’s health. To those of you who begin reading from the afterwords, I’ll give an outline of this volume’s plot, as always. Firstly, volume 6’s biggest draw is that our protagonist finally entered the titular Wortenia Peninsula.
This is a complaint that’s been floating around since the web novel days, but we can finally say that the title of the series is not misleading. All the conditions for this war record story to begin in earnest are in place, which is a huge relief for me as the author. I’m sure our good Mr. Mikoshiba is as relieved as I am.
Well, he can only be relieved for so long, as he will soon have to contend with many internal and diplomatic challenges. Such is the fate of a protagonist that’s graced with both a strong body and a firm intellect, so expect to see him being tested to these limits in the future.
In addition, this time, the focal points are the efforts of Ryoma as well as other established characters like the Malfist sisters and Gennou. But another major part of the story is the slave children, such as Melissa and Kevin. The despairing environment of slavery, and by contrast the single strand of hope found in that situation. I hope that you will read the story while imagining their suffering and feelings.
And lastly, finally we have the fantasy setting staple of elves. And of the dark variety, at that. They’re only briefly featured in volume 6, but look forward to more developments regarding them going forward.
Also, I’d like to use this chance to deliver an update regarding the Record of Wortenia War manga adaptation, with volume 1 set to release next month. After the first chapter’s publication during October of last year, you will likely be reading this afterword in March, by which time we will have reached chapter 5.
During the first few months, I dreaded the possibility the manga might be canceled. But thankfully, that didn’t happen and volume 1 will be out for sale soon. As the author of this work, I am endlessly thankful for that.
I hope to see the number of this series’ volumes — both in manga and novel format — grow in number going forward.
In addition, this volume was focused on Ryoma and his
group, so I’d like to apologize to those of you who are curious as to Asuka’s and Kouichirou’s fates. I’ve already started working on what happens to Asuka next, but following Kouichirou’s exploits will be difficult, given the flow of the story. Look forward to seeing more of that side of the story in the next volume.
Lastly, I would like to extend my thanks to everyone who helped bring volume 6 to life. Starting with the editors, and to everyone else who were involved with the work on this volume. And of course, to you readers — I can only continue working on this series thanks to your support.
I will work hard on getting volume 7 to you as fast as possible. I hope you will continue to support Record of Wortenia War in the future.
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Copyright
Record of Wortenia War: Volume 6
by Ryota Hori
Translated by ZackZeal
Edited by Nathan Redmond
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2017 Ryota Hori
Illustrations Copyright © 2017 bob
Cover illustration by bob
All rights reserved.
Original Japanese edition published in 2017 by Hobby Japan
This English edition is published by arrangement with Hobby Japan, Tokyo
English translation © 2020 J-Novel Club LLC
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property.
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Ebook edition 1.0: May 2020