The Dragon of Roads

Months flew by in the blink of an eye while I let my little pseudo-dungeons cook. We had worked together to make 30 of them, with some other trusted individuals creating lesser locations that could at least serve as lures for unsuspecting fae. The foray of fae into our world was a sucker punch, but we soon caught on to how they operated and we started to leverage it against them. Keeping them imprisoned is the only way to stop them, for a dead fae just makes room for a new one to spawn into existence to replace it. On that level, the similarities between monsters and fae is strikingly similar.

Unfortunately, we don't have any solid information about where the fae come from and their history. Anyone old enough to know the answer is keeping a tight lip on that information, and it is suspicious enough to make one think that there is an ancient pact that necessitates such silence. Alternatively, telling us could somehow corrupt our ability to combat them, which has merit if fae are just living stories. Spoilers don't allow for a plot to thicken.

My flight had not remained idle during this time. New children were created, and maybe I am playing favorites by not exhaustively going through the weeds on the circumstances on all of them.

I created Queen Contradora, a Dragon Paragon who would be in charge of all things Military for me. As a refresher, Dragon Paragons tend to be more powerful and less diverse with their capabilities compared to Dragon Consorts. They also prefer to spend more time in their draconic form. However, Contradora hatched as an adult in order to speed things up, which came with quirks to her personality. She prefers an orcish form as a mortal, she tends to be jovial, she pats people on the back way too hard, and she tends to ignore their concerns the whole while. She prefers to be a musclehead and just tells people to try harder as she pushes them back into the sparring yard.

I also created Princess Arendora, a Dragon Consort in charge of Research and Development, with It-Has-Pockets serving as the mortal contributor to that process. As such, Arendora prefers the mortal form of a troll, and she feels a kinship with them because they too like to find the best way to go about things. My workload had reached the point where I could not scale things up unless I wanted to devote all my time to crafting new things. With my latest ambition for prosthetics, I need a dedicated department to utilize my Abilities on my behalf via some modified whelps, and I would not trust access to such power to anyone but my children or companions.

Tamadora created Princess Keridora. While Tamadora was always intended to be in charge of anything related to Intelligence, she had been primarily focusing on collecting Traits via her brothel. Keridora has specialized in all things related to Traits, which has freed up time for Tamadora to pursue other ventures. Keridora is rather kind and free with her love, but she takes after her mother in how her temper knows little restraint when she is faced with evil.

Similarly, Kaisadora has created Dracodoro, who has specialized in everything related to all things Legal. The legal code for my empire is something that needs to be codified quickly, succinctly, and in a way that the average person can understand it. Justice for everyone is something I care about, and I tend to favor the spirit of the law over the letter. Developing that spirit and convincing the wild mishmash of cultures that I have cobbled together into my cities to accept it is his first hurdle.

Beyond that, more dragons are ever being made. I am cooking up my last King for Resource Management, which cannot finish soon enough. I really wanted King Logidoro sooner, but, unfortunately, the necessity for a functioning military, a police force, guards, and organized Adventurers had taken precedence. I have contracted out a lot of the logistics to mortal agencies, and some of them are on thin fucking ice for the rates they are charging me. Logidoro should finish up about the time the first generation of my draft birds for pulling wagons have reached maturity. He can corner the market on shipping and make my life easier.

As you may have noticed, I have a penchant for making roads, and that did fall by the wayside for a while whilst I tried to keep the world from falling apart. Now that there are a manageable number of fires everywhere, I have some more time to dedicate to making roads and the towns and villages that they lead to. However, my empire is vast, and I cannot and should not make every single building there is. The [Carpenters], [Masons], [Engineers], and so forth have been whining that I have taken their jobs, and, much to my vexation, they are not entirely wrong.

They need a chance to earn an income, to improve their Blessings, and to use the gifts that they have. All my people are provided with adequate food, housing, education, medical care, clothing, and so forth. However, sustenance for survival, even if it is well above squalor, is no substitute for having a purpose in life and the opportunity to build and shape the world around oneself. These people need enrichment, and so I have allowed them off the leash.

However, I have extremely strict standards. I do not tolerate shoddy craftsmanship, and they need to be certified if they want to work in my empire. They are permitted to have uncertified craftsmen working for them, such as apprentices and journeymen, but they risk more than just their certifications and license if their work is found to be substandard. If they intentionally cut corners to save a few coins here and there, then I will intentionally cut their heads from their necks to save a few headaches for me and mine.

That's right, I hand out the death penalty like candy if people go out of their way to commit fraud or otherwise prey upon others. It keeps my prisons rather sparsely populated, as I have little interest in redeeming a scumbag, all at the risk that they will revert back to their old ways just as soon as they are deemed fit to reenter society. I am far more lenient towards those who show actual contrition and confess well before they are caught. This stance has made me wildly unpopular in some circles and a hero in others. From my point of view, I try to build a society where everyone is provided with all the resources they need to pursue a path in life where they can thrive, and I simultaneously weed out those who would make it harder when they prey upon others.

That goes double for those [Nobles]. By the gods, you can't live with them, can't live without them! They are literally the source of civilization, such that monsters don't just spawn under your bed at night. However, if [Nobles] are good at one thing, it is begetting, especially bastards. However, illegitimate children can still have some sort of [Noble] Blessing, which is all I care about. Outstanding individuals can be granted a [Noble] Blessing as a Dual Blessing, but that costs a great deal of political capital, which is seemingly far less of a metaphor than what I had thought it to be. Either way, I hold [Nobles] to strict standards, and some houses have truly listened to the words that come out of my mouth when I have to admonish them.

Simply put, [Nobles] are better than most everyone else, because, at least in my empire, they are trained from birth to be experts at what they do. Gone are the days where being a [Noble] is a life of leisure and constant soirees. Being firstborn is just a head start, not a guarantee of inheritance, for the [Noble] families are slowly learning that merit is the only thing that matters.

Naturally, this indisputable fact is something the common people appreciate, and merit is all-encompassing in relation to a person's ability and character. I can teach a good person how to be an expert at something, but I can't teach an expert at something how to be a good person if said expert is already a jerk. As such, while there is and will always be competition, showing one's ability to cooperate and work for the greater good of society is a great way to get noticed and to secure the limited slots at advanced institutions. There is nothing wrong with choosing a simple life of mediocrity, but for those with ambition, I need to ensure that those who crave power above all else never get it. That's why I have at least a dozen different forms for "training accidents" and other such things when misfortune mysteriously strikes the power hungry.

In short, my empire is coming together nicely and I am cultivating the culture and attitude of my people. At times, that takes the form of quiet murder in a back alley for people who are unfit, and the rest of the time it involves fostering those who demonstrate value. This has left my coffers in dire straits. Without breaking any promises, I have found ways to expand revenue generation without taxing the average person.

Roads themselves are, of course, free to use, and so is entry to a city. More than 90% of taxation is upon business owners, which just cuts out the headache of trying to tax each and every person and ensuring no one cheated. Wages are low because so much of what people need is already provided for them, all at my expense. This means that most people spend most of their income on the goods and services that various businessmen and merchants have to offer, which helps ensure that money changes hands quickly and that industry is booming.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

The last thing I want is for people to amass huge sums of wealth and just sit on it like a greedy dragon on its hoard. For some, money becomes an addiction, and the need to amass it is a disease. No matter how many rules I have and how much I try to help people grow in such a way that they don't contract such an illness, there seems to be no end to the supply of greedy bastards. Such individuals have provided Iresdora with ample opportunities to see if Toothpickle can separate heads from necks.

But enough about such troubles, at least for now. I have very different troubles that have less to do with people and more to do with geography, migration patterns, angry sea creatures, and the forces of nature. This world, the planet itself, is Gyldvir. I am on the continent Rubioco, which is rather isolated from other continents. Rubioco stretches pretty far to the north and south, and it is not nearly as wide as it is tall. That makes for vast differences in climate, which in turn has led to a diversity of biomes and lifeforms. Some of those forms in the far north are large and territorial. Such a lack of docility means that the local fauna has taken offense to my latest ambition.

And by that, I mean they cause a ruckus as I try to create a bridge from this continent to the one at the north pole, which has a lot of different names, but I go with "Lacra", which shares some etymology with "alacrity", specifically in how there is little to be found in that place. It is a land full of monsters and no permanent settlements. On a clear day, from the northernmost point of Rubioco, you can see the southernmost point of Lacra. Well, the southernmost on this side of the planet, as I am sure it has many "southernmost" points in localized regions. Either way, it is not completely unfeasible that a bridge could be built from one side to the other.

Reality is more complex. Plate tectonics are a consideration, for I don't want continental drift to snap my bridge in a few decades or centuries. Seismic activity, tidal waves, storms, and sea ice are all valid concerns as well, for while my magic and aptitude is powerful, even an enchanted bridge is not invincible. I also have to consider terrorism or some army coming here to occupy it and put a toll on the road, which has not been unprecedented, even in the short history of my empire at that point. While I do love murdering such armies that get rather possessive with my roads, considering how dangerous and stressful this region already is, I do not want to compound such issues.

Now, one may think to simply sail across the ocean, but the ocean has no civilization or Adventurers to cull the monster population, and so said monsters grow to be ancient, powerful, cunning, and tenacious. It is a perilous journey at the best of times, and what goods that do make it from one continent to another are exceptionally valuable. This also means that some races are mostly only found on one continent, as getting a large enough population to another continent to have enough diversity for breeding is unfeasible, especially in the face of discrimination and xenophobia.

However, a bridge would help to skirt that issue. There are big nasty monsters in Lacra, but it is a much smaller and isolated region than the open ocean, and thus, more manageable. I will need to find a way to daisy-chain civilization up there and keep it supplied, for most people are capable of doing "fuck" and "all" when there is snow and ice for 10 months out of the year. It would not be a very alluring post or place of residence, so I would need to offer incentives.

I am not so arrogant as to believe that I am the first to ever come up with this idea. The coast is littered with abandoned settlements, the ashes of failed empires, and the corpses of ambitious explorers. I have spent a good deal of time researching all of that, and, sadly, there is very little to go on. For some reason, dead people are not considerate enough to write down about the collapse of their societies, and the scant survivors tend to tell tales of dubious credibility.

The situation is far from hopeless, but it will take a lot of planning, coordination, and the appeasement of nature. The biggest obstacle is just making a bridge that long without support for the deck. Sure, I can use fancy magic to anchor that load onto objects placed on land, but that technique can have issues when done at scale. The ocean is pretty deep here once one goes off the continental shelf, so building islands would be challenging. Likewise, said islands would interfere with migration patterns and ocean currents, which would bring far more pushback against me than I would like.

I have considered a tunnel. I certainly have the means to dig one that is several miles long, even with the diameter needed for it and the millions of tons of displaced rock that would create. Part of the issue is that the grade would be extremely steep, and so it would have to be ungodly long to keep the incline manageable. I could also find compromise and elevate the tunnel, such that it would have piers for support in the depths of the ocean. At that point in my life, I had very little experience with such construction, and much less for doing it while angry sea monsters are attacking me.

My [Spatial Manipulation] was not strong enough to maintain a portal of the size and power needed to facilitate teleporting people across. There is something about the barrier of the ocean that makes the mana cost for such undertakings spike to untenable magnitudes. I could use it to stretch and relocate space, such that I can effectively make the distance shorter, but if that somehow flickers for even an instant, my bridge will collapse.

It is puzzles like this that really require the ol' thinking cap. I am The Dragon of Roads, not "The Dragon of Boats", so a ferry service is clearly out of the question. Additionally, where we would see a ferry service, sea monsters would see an all-you-can-eat buffet, which has merit only in the context that I could somehow make people more inclined to travel by road than by boat. Flying over the gap is right out, as there are way too many predators that lurk within the ever-present clouds in that region, and financing the summons and beasts that can fly there is outside the means of customers to afford.

With sailing and flying off the board for the average person, that just leaves my bridge. My bridge cannot span the gap without some form of piers, and the middle of the gap has a trench that is too wide. I cannot go under the trench, as that is too deep such that man and beast alike would be exhausted when trying to climb up the other side. A deep tunnel with elevators (or a series thereof) would work only if the traffic were light enough, and I predict that it won't be. However, there was something to that thought that got me to thinking.

I cannot make a single portal to span the gap. I can make a series of portals that change elevation. Keeping every portal open all the time would be expensive, but rotating the route in a given direction such that it keeps pace with traffic would allow a block of people to move forward without interruption. If each chunk of tunnel were sufficiently long enough, then a great many people could fill one up before the portals cycled. This essentially works the same as a lock on a canal, just with portals and roads. As such, there would be a vertical stack of horizontal tunnels with portals positioned to lower them down to the tunnel beneath them. With these tunnels being relatively close to one another, other than on the vertical axis, the cost of these portals would be acceptable.

The lowest tunnel would span the entire gap. I would need emergency exits, a way to cycle out the air, a means to handle fires or leaks, and solutions for a whole host of other concerns, but it would work. Additionally, if a very large caravan came through, they could cough up their own mana to help fuel all the portals being available for them at the same time such that the whole procession could continue without interruption. With proper sensors, the portals would be closed when not in use and they could activate based on something approaching. That is a whole can of worms to ensure it cannot be abused or manipulated, especially by unauthorized individuals, but it is doable.

This plan also bypasses most of the flora, fauna, and forces of nature I would have to deal with. Earthquakes could still be an absolute bitch, but I had a plan. If I made an outer tunnel that was totally dedicated to self-repair and an inner tunnel that was focused on bearing the load of people traveling through it, and I suspended that inner tunnel within the outer one, then the inner tunnel would have all sorts of mechanisms available to it to dampen any seismic activity.

With some clever manipulation of space, I could define "up" in the gap between those tunnels as every direction away from the center of the circle that is their shared cross section. This is a feasibly cheap and effective enchantment, and it would ensure that the inner tunnel naturally stabilized to rest dead center. Furthermore, it would be just a single step further to make sure that the load of the inner tunnel would be dispersed everywhere on the inside of the outer tunnel, rather than straight down on itself, which would prevent the inner tunnel from snapping like a twig and it would help ensure the outer tunnel does not collapse from forces on the outside. At that point, I just need to ensure that the material of each tunnel doesn't crush itself under the immense strain, which is easily doable, even without enchantments, via obsidisteel.

Torborg worked with me to hash out all the pesky physics and math. Most of the time, I could brute force my way past those issues by throwing a lot of magic at something via enchantments and a gratuitous supply of mana. However, this particular project was more prone than most to being cut off from its supply of mana, and so we needed to squeeze every last drop of efficiency out of it. Then we would have a fun time repeating something like this all over again in an archipelago that connects Lacra to the "Far West", the "Land of the Setting Sun", and whatever other euphemisms that land goes by.

Such territory is already hotly contested by the other flights, and it had been politely yet sternly made clear to me that, while my roads and a few establishments along the way would be welcome and accepted, I would not be permitted to expand my empire to that continent. I found myself content with that limitation, at least for a while, and so I kept to my promises to play nice with the other flights. How they ever managed to cross the gap to get here to Rubioco is a mystery (other than Encrodecro, who explicitly told me that he used [Crypt Walk] to get here).

With a good plan ready for this bridge, I could finally get back to my passion of creating feats of civil engineering on a colossal scale. The fact that this would ultimately lead to a new cashflow to help stave off bankruptcy for my burgeoning empire is both completely unrelated and a very happy coincidence.