Episode 30 — Don’t Just Dig a Well; Draw the Line of Civilization.
The day Leon was saved, I made a firm decision.
I’m going to wipe out that "old well" system—that unhygienic excuse for infrastructure where disease could spring up at any moment—from this land forever.
(…A classic hand-operated pump? As if I’d settle for that.)
In manga and novels, you always see the protagonist making a pump in another world and being treated like a hero. But from where I’m sitting, that’s nothing but a laughable "band-aid solution."
Are you really going to install thousands of pumps for a new city of thousands? Think about the maintenance costs, the part wear-and-tear, and above all, the risk of every household relying individually on an uncertain source like "groundwater"…
(…People really underestimate infrastructure. What’s needed isn't "individual effort," but a "centralized system.")
I turned to my PC and began evaluating water intake from the river. But my hands stopped almost immediately.
The projected population for the new city is several thousands, with plans to expand to tens of thousands in the future.
(…Let’s try a Fermi estimation.)
Assume one person uses roughly 200 liters of water a day for drinking, cooking, cleaning, and waste. If the population hits 10,000, you need 2,000 tons of water per day. Furthermore, considering agricultural use, fire prevention, and future industrial development, a simple "river intake" will dry up during the off-season.
(…It’s like trying to drink a giant cup of water through a tiny straw. The capacity is nowhere near enough.)
I suddenly remembered the city-building games I was obsessed with as a kid. Back then, all I had to do was click to connect pipes on the screen; if the budget ran out or the supply stopped, I could just hit "reset" and start over.
But now, things are different.
What’s on the other side of my monitor isn't a collection of pixels. Every single line I draw, every water-source strategy I decide on, carries the weight of the lives of Felsen’s residents.
If I fail, there is no "load data" button.
(…I need a mechanism that physically shatters the common sense of this world.)
I scrolled through the map and fixed my gaze on a deep canyon upstream.
From there, I could store a massive volume of water and utilize "potential energy" to send it to the city through natural pressure.
(…If I’m doing this, I’m doing it right. …Maybe I’ll just build a dam.)
The garrison next door was finished in a single day.
If I use a hybrid of modern knowledge and otherworld magic, even a dam should be constructible in a short period.
I typed "gravity concrete dam cross-section," "spillway design," and "intake tower structure" into the search bar.
The Translation Printer began converting thick slabs of modern engineering expertise into "Magical-Engineering schematics" that would appeal to local craftsmen.
With the master artisans in Felsen, even if they don’t understand the "theory" behind the blueprints, they should be able to shape it by combining magic and stonemasonry.
This isn't just a hack freelancer’s bluff.
This is a reproduction of the cold-blooded optimization I once used when I "integrated a legacy system into a modern cloud" to support tens of thousands of users.
I picked up the walkie-talkie on my desk.
“Bartos. I need some highly skilled craftsmen…”
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