Chapter 772: Volume 23: Rising Winds and Swirling Clouds, - 9: Gone with the Wind
Komer seemed to be leisurely strolling along the ramparts of Bruce Fortress, reminiscing about the time a few years back when he, along with Puber and Ilot, had hurried past this place like homeless dogs fleeing from Homer to the Caucasus. Who would have imagined that the strategic fortress of Bruce in the Busen Plain would now be under his feet? How quickly time and circumstances change, often too rapidly for people to comprehend, right?
Bruce Fortress had become unrecognizable from the days under Homer’s control. The river port dock had expanded several times over, now bearing the responsibility of handling the continuous influx of iron ore and high-quality smokeless coal from the hinterlands of Leon. Bruce also leveraged its superior geographical location to become a true regional distribution center for goods, and the floating bridge over the Nissai River had turned the once desolate southern bank into a bustling area centered around the bridge tax inspection office.
Bruce was no longer merely a fortress. While its military function continued to be reinforced, considering it still faced threats from Homer in the north beyond the Great Greenland Forest, the commercial function of the civilian sector was on a steep rise, seemingly poised to surpass the fortress’s military importance. South of the Nissai River had become a settlement for the half-beasts, among whom the more intellectually agile and skilled individuals were no longer content with simple, crude, and low-wage physical labor such as mining, logging, and transporting. The competition from the barbarians motivated a small portion of them to adopt the mentality of mortals, to think and learn if they desired a better life.
The success of mortal merchants in both Bruce and Muscat enlightened these awakened half-beasts to the realization that whatever mortals could do, they could do as well. Not daring to engage in highly technical fields like brewing, manufacturing, or smelting, they saw activities such as logging, quarrying, and processing—labor-intensive industries—as not beyond their reach. The agency of Caucasus Bank had long spread across the entire Caucasus Region. If a group of brothers could scrape together enough resources and muster the courage to borrow a sum from the bank, starting a small logging yard, quarry, or lumber processing plant seemed far from impossible.
Once this notion took root in the minds of the half-beasts—though it was just a tiny minority who entertained such thoughts—it signified the evolution of civilization, or so Komer always believed. When the first logging yard operated by half-beasts went into production, like mushrooms after the rain, a series of rudimentary workshops run by half-beasts sprang up around the tax inspection office on the southern bank of the Nissai River. While their operations were modest, even rudimentary compared to those run by mortals, it was a start nonetheless. Especially as they backed onto a market primarily composed of the half-beast settlements in Leon, they still held their advantages.
Of course, this represented only a minuscule fraction of the 200,000 half-beasts in Leon; the vast majority were still engaged in their traditional occupations—mining, transportation, logging, processing, construction, heavy labor. Even with competition from barbarians, they maintained a firm hold over their dominant positions by virtue of their early advantages.
The booming development of the southern bank couldn’t have been achieved without the support and guidance of Bruce Fortress’s administrative assistant. Komer was quite pleased with that young man named Heber. Puber really had some talents among his classmates at Phoenix City College. While they might have been frustrated figures elsewhere, they seemed to shine brightly under his leadership.
The development of the southern bank was indeed thriving, but when compared with the older districts on the northern bank of the river, they weren’t on the same level. Although military convention dictated that the development of streets and markets should not approach the castle, the market streets rapidly extended along the official road leading from the Busen Plain to the castle Door. The area around the river port dock also quickly flourished. The tactics Komer had used in Ugru were now being reenacted by Heber in Bruce. The primeval forest swiftly receded, as numerous logging and processing yards helped thick trees metamorphose rapidly from flora to construction materials, leading to a surge of buildings erected from the ground up.
Each evening, as the sun set in the west, the entire area north of the castle was enveloped in the smoke of cooking fires. The number of bakeries in Bruce had reached an astonishing thirty, second only to Ugru and Mattdam. This figure alone was proof of the dramatic increase in the population residing in Bruce, whereas there had been only eight bakeries a few years before and considerably smaller in size.
If the Nissai River and the Catania River were like two belts wrapped around the waist of the Great Caucasus, then Bruce was undoubtedly the navel of the Caucasus. With its back to the Forest and face to the river, with Leon as a base of primary product production and a significant consumer of essential goods, favorable water transport conditions, and the newly accessible pathway through Little Greenland—although not immediately commercially viable—the value of this river route would surpass that of the Catania River once the magical beast problems around Lake Nissai were resolved.