Chapter 38
#38. The Toilet Revolution
The lord's office at Winterwald's Grand Ducal Castle.
The heart of the North was bustling as usual, spinning without pause.
"Your Highness, I have good news!"
Knight Commander Cedric began his report with a bright expression.
"Tarkan has safely regained consciousness. The five thousand orcs we captured and confined are also obeying Your Highness's orders without issue. Not a single one has resisted."
Kylan took a sip of the warm tea Eleanor had boiled using her solar mana and nodded.
It was black tea imported from the southern continent at great expense.
It was a luxury Winterwald could enjoy only after achieving a surplus budget.
'Mmm. This is the stuff. I could never have dreamed of such indulgence back when we were suffering from a deficit.'
Kylan winked at his wife, conveying his gratitude.
He did not care whether the vassals saw him or not.
"I'm glad to hear he has regained consciousness."
After wrecking the entire rampart on his own, Tarkan had the nerve to shamelessly try to go AWOL.
There wasn't a more despicable offender anywhere.
Fortunately, Tarkan appeared to have received intensive care and was now ready to live the life of a respectable worker in Winterwald.
The cost of feeding them would be something, but compared to the labor they would provide, it was practically pocket change.
Once the reports concerning the orcs had been neatly wrapped up, Viscount Argen, who had been waiting nearby, stepped forward with a grave expression.
Dark circles hung heavily beneath his eyes.
"Your Highness… It's a tremendous relief that the orcs are under control, but the situation in the new city is not good at all."
"Hmm? Has something happened in the new city?"
Viscount Argen pulled a thick statistical ledger from inside his robes and looked deathly pale.
"The population… has grown far too explosively. Compared to immediately after its completion, the population inside the new city has increased nearly fourfold."
It was only natural.
Adventurers and merchants were flocking in from across the continent.
And with nearly five thousand orcs being incorporated into the city as well…
There was no way it could be anything but chaos.
"The new city's infrastructure is utterly unable to keep up with the population explosion. We are especially short of sanitation workers."
The new city Kylan had built together with Eleanor was magnificent, but it was still under development.
Apparently, the cleaners could not remove filth nearly as quickly as it accumulated.
"Tsk. The sanitation problem is only going to grow more serious."
"Just as Your Highness says. Complaints are flooding in over the indiscriminate public urination of newcomers. Businesses are already pouring out complaints about foul odors, and above all… the incidence of disease caused by poor hygiene has doubled in the past month!"
Once Viscount Argen finished his report, the atmosphere in the conference room grew grave.
"If an epidemic breaks out like this, it will be disastrous."
"What if the merchants can no longer stand the stench and leave…? What are we to do, Your Highness!?"
Everyone looked at Kylan with anxious eyes.
Good grief.
Even solving all their problems was a problem in itself.
The vassals had no doubt that Kylan would work another miracle this time as well.
'Damn it. The disease rate has doubled?'
Kylan was no longer in the mood to leisurely sip tea.
His beautiful wife had gone to the trouble of establishing a medical mutual-aid society and steadily increasing the territory's tax revenue.
If they failed to get the sanitation problem under control, they would end up eating through all that money on medical subsidies.
That was not all.
What would happen if the smell in the heart of the commercial district was not the scent of food, but the smell of human shit?
Naturally, it would only be a matter of time before commercial key money and rents plummeted.
If the adventurers left because the city was filthy, the merchants would have no choice but to pack up and leave as well.
'This… could end up costing us an enormous amount.'
On top of that, there would be epidemic quarantine measures, relief-supply distribution, and medical-staff deployment.
None of those problems could be handled automatically just because Kylan sat in his chair and said a single word.
He could already see mountains of approval paperwork dancing before his eyes.
'The moment an epidemic breaks out, we're guaranteed another hell of overtime.'
Kylan's gaze fell on his wife, Eleanor, who was seated beside him with a serious expression as she took minutes of the meeting.
Perhaps it was only his imagination.
Her beautiful platinum-blond hair and flawlessly clear skin looked a little more lackluster than usual.
'I can't force my pretty, beloved wife into another overtime hell!'
More importantly.
If he and his wife stepped in human excrement while taking a stroll through the new city together, it would be a catastrophe.
Having made up his mind, Kylan lightly tapped the table.
The conference room fell as silent as the grave.
Everyone's eyes converged on one place.
They really were vassals who listened exceedingly well.
"……The health of the people is more important than anything else."
The heavy voice of the Grand Duke of the North rang through the conference room.
It was the voice of a lord who could not sleep for worrying about his people's health.
Or perhaps the voice of an exhausted man whose nerves had been frayed by overtime.
"When the population grows, the facilities must naturally grow to match it. We cannot leave the people of the territory to suffer in filth like this."
The vassals' eyes sparkled.
They were wondering what kind of magic he would perform this time.
Kylan issued an order to Viscount Argen.
"Viscount Argen. Tear up the entire city at once and begin large-scale construction to lay underground water and sewage pipes. And build public restrooms throughout the densely populated areas."
"The, the entire city? But Your Highness! Digging up the ground and burying pipes will require enormous labor costs and manpower……!"
Viscount Argen was in the middle of speaking when he suddenly sucked in his breath.
Cedric's eyes beside him also grew so wide they looked ready to pop out.
"Don't tell me……!"
Cedric's gaze wandered through the air.
To dig underground waterways and put up buildings across sprawling Winterwald, ordinary manpower would never be enough.
Even if thousands of able-bodied men worked on it, this major construction project would take several months.
But as it happened, not long ago…
Had five thousand tireless musclebound monsters not just fallen into Winterwald's hands?
An overwhelming surplus of labor, enough to handle both rampart repairs and urban redevelopment at the same time!
'Did His Lordship…… foresee all of this?!'
Cedric shuddered and rubbed both arms.
When His Highness had ordered them to capture all five thousand orcs without killing a single one, Cedric had thought it was merely an expression of mercy.
But he had been wrong.
His Highness had foreseen the sanitation problems caused by the population explosion, along with the epidemic crisis that would follow.
He had taken in the orcs as the manpower needed to solve the problem in one stroke!
"Ah…… Faced with Your Highness's unfathomable foresight…… this old servant kneels once again!"
Cedric wiped away tears, overwhelmed with emotion.
Viscount Argen also sniffled and clenched his fist tightly.
"I shall obey! We will put the five thousand orc laborers to work and begin digging up the ground first thing tomorrow!!"
Kylan wondered inwardly, 'Why are they doing that again?' But there was no harm in letting them burn with loyalty on their own.
"Good. Then get to work."
With that brief order from the Grand Duke of the North, Winterwald's sanitation revolution began.
***
Midwinter arrived across the entire continent.
But Winterwald, infamous as the coldest place in the world, was instead enjoying a warmer winter than any resort in the South.
It was all thanks to Grand Duchess Eleanor's 'artificial sun,' which brilliantly adorned the night sky.
"Winterwald's new city… really is an incredible place."
Aria of the Blue Shade, master of the Green Mage Tower.
Even though the war with the orcs had ended, she had remained in Winterwald instead of returning to her home in the South.
The Grand Duke of the North had offered her an additional commission.
[Please help my wife with her magic training.]
He was the Grand Duke of the North, of all people.
It was a request from the benefactor who had helped her complete the Heart of Verdure.
She could not refuse.
Moreover, Aria herself had an academic curiosity about Eleanor's extraordinary solar mana.
That miraculous mana raised the growth rate of vines and plants to absurd levels.
If she researched it properly, she could advance the Green Mage Tower's development by several generations.
"Hmm-hmm~♪"
After finishing another enjoyable magic lesson with Eleanor, Aria walked through the new city's streets, humming happily.
She could stroll about wearing nothing but a thin robe even in winter.
"Why is the ground so flat and smooth, too? Even when carriages pass by, they don't kick up a single bit of dust."
The roads, paved by mixing slime with soil, boasted a quality that rivaled even the Imperial Capital's.
"Meat pies for sale! Freshly baked pies bursting with juicy meat!"
"Oh! That bread smells wonderful. And those skewers look incredibly tasty, too?"
Aria wandered through the streets with an excited expression, buying and eating street food like a traveler on holiday.
Even though nearly two months had already passed since her arrival.
The lively laughter of the people, the spotless streets, and the new buildings rising proudly with a blue sheen.
Everywhere she looked, it was a flawless city with nothing to criticize.
Then, suddenly.
"Hng…… hmm. Grrrrrrk."
An ominous sound rumbled from Aria's lower abdomen.
"Ah, ah! My stomach……"
That's right! Even the continent's greatest plant mage had one serious, secret problem these days.
That problem was that she was suffering from severe constipation.
Because she was delicate and sensitive by nature, she was extremely reluctant to relieve herself in an unfamiliar place after leaving her home tower.
"Even so…… for a refined young lady like me to use a chamber pot in someone else's house is a bit……"
The servants of the Grand Ducal Castle might hear the sounds she made while relieving herself…
The thought alone sent chills throughout her body.
She was so self-conscious that she could not relieve herself at all.
That was why she had gone out of her way to buy a house in the new city.
'Ugh…! This is bad. My house is too far from here…… It would be awkward to enter someone else's shop and ask to borrow a chamber pot. But I can't exactly crouch down and relieve myself in some secluded thicket, either……!'
In the end, Aria clutched her stomach and hurried toward her house with an awkward, half-crouched gait.
But when she was passing through the center of the shopping district.
She saw people lined up in front of a building beside a large, newly constructed open lot.
'What's that place? Is it a newly opened bakery?'
Unable to contain her curiosity, Aria grabbed a passing merchant and asked.
Having to use the toilet was one thing.
She still had to find out about the new eateries that had opened in Winterwald's new city.
"Excuse me. What does that place do? Why are all those people lined up?"
"A public… restroom, I think? Anyway, that's what it is."
"A public ……restroom?"
A public restroom.
It was an unfamiliar term she was hearing for the first time in her life.