Chapter 155: Building a Factory

Although it was merely the construction of a factory, this place was, after all, situated in the wilderness.

Aside from the workshops intended for production and construction, as well as the housing to provide shelter, a certain degree of defensive infrastructure had to be built first.

Rather than guarding against petty thieves climbing walls to steal, Leo needed to be much more vigilant against raids from bandit groups and alien races.

Therefore, he prepared to follow the structural standards of the Three Riverbend Encampments and construct identical defensive walls around the oak forest.

First came the walls, trenches, and watchtowers, and only afterwards the buildings.

Inside the perimeter walls lay both the construction site and the resettlement zone for the refugees.

Having already constructed three militarized villages, Riverbend was well-practiced in this endeavor, and building a smaller version now was exceptionally easy.

Most of the refugees had previously participated in infrastructure projects; once conditioned and given simple instructions, they immediately knew what their duties were, proving to be qualified laborers.

The several refugee leaders selected by Ulyan also worked exceptionally hard, striving to demonstrate their worth in front of Leo.

Leo's pack of puppy pups had all followed along, hauling several cartloads of cement with the assistance of the Riverbend infantry.

Once the convenience and reliability of this novel building material were proven, it was immediately accepted by Ulyan.

However, Riverbend's production capacity was limited, and its infrastructure was largely completed, meaning there was temporarily no demand for cement.

As for the Solovy Knight's Domain, construction had temporarily ground to a halt due to the refugee wave, rendering them unable to utilize it either.

These few cartloads of cement constituted the entire stockpile accumulated over this period.

Before setting out, Leo had instructed Fisa to increase the mining of raw materials for cement and prepare to have them shipped directly to the construction site for on-site burning.

A group of little Kobolds had participated in his cement research from beginning to end and had already mastered the currently optimal cement formula.

Finally achieving a sense of survival value and gaining recognition, they became extremely energetic.

A group of humans learned how to burn and apply cement under the supervision of these little Kobolds.

Yet, lacking Olivia's supervision, these puppies rapidly reverted to their wild nature, rolling around in sand, gravel, and mortar from dawn until dusk, transforming their golden coats into the appearance of stray wild dogs.

Some of the pups were so caked in cement that it formed hard crusts on their fur without them even noticing.

Leo was forced to temporarily shoulder the responsibilities of a parent, tossing them into a small stream every evening to wash clean before allowing them back to sleep.

For the militarized camp walls, the foundations consumed the most labor; aside from ramming earth in the center, the exterior had to be encased in a heavy layer of stone.

This was essentially an early form of stone city wall, though executed with shortcuts due to insufficient labor and technology—effectively building only half a wall and severely scaling down the design.

Ramming earth, quarrying and processing stone, and masonry work were all far more troublesome than felling trees to build wooden walls, and they also required a certain level of stonemasonry skill.

Without hundreds of young, strong laborers freed from the constraints of farming, building a stone wall was completely out of the question.

The Western Watchtower, though appearing modest, had consumed the efforts of nearly a thousand able-bodied laborers and took an entire year just to erect its main structure.

The remaining auxiliary buildings were gradually added year by year afterwards, and most of them were wooden structures.

However, with the advent of cement, the difficulty was more than halved; the rammed earth layers could be directly filled and reinforced with pebble concrete, eliminating the need for massive amounts of manpower and time spent on manual compaction.

For the stones of the outer masonry layer, artisans no longer needed to process them with excessive precision; they simply needed to be stacked together with cement as a binder.

In places where stone was particularly difficult to handle, wooden formwork was erected directly, and cement was poured to fill and repair the gaps.

Such a hastily constructed wall certainly possessed low durability, but Leo's requirements were even lower—as long as it did not collapse in the short term, it would suffice.

The height of the newly built camp wall climbed at a visible rate, and its slope was even steeper than those of the three Riverbend encampments.

Due to the limited skill of the refugee craftsmen and their unfamiliarity with using cement, the surface of the stone wall appeared extremely rough and uneven, even more crude than the cement riverbanks Leo had seen in the countryside during his childhood in his past life.

The quality of this batch of cement was mediocre, barely meeting the standards for construction, and Leo did not even dare use it to make cement bricks for building walls, fearing they would collapse under their own weight.

Moreover, Leo estimated that within three to five years, the walls would become brittle and flake off, requiring repairs all over again.

Even so, for the present moment, it remained a genuine stone city wall—an insurmountable barrier for refugees and ordinary bandits alike.

It provided not only defensive capability but also a profound sense of security, along with the morale and sense of belonging that came with it.

As the camp walls rose, recruited refugees entered the encampment in successive batches, naturally mingling with quite a few scouts harboring ulterior motives.

Gazing at the stone city wall before them, all of them fell into profound shock.

By what virtue or ability did a mere refugee band like theirs warrant the construction of a ring of stone walls for defense?

In the face of overwhelming strength, any petty schemes were instantly extinguished.

Leo did not have the newly arrived refugees join the construction site directly; instead, he had the original refugee leaders teach them the rules of Riverbend.

Life in the refugee camp differed little from a sweatshop; working, eating, sleeping, and even bathing all occurred at fixed times.

Rules such as queuing for meals, refraining from public urination and defecation, avoiding brawls and fights, and desisting from theft and robbery were equally crucial.

These were precisely the things the refugees lacked entirely.

Many of the strong refugees had cultivated the habit of letting their fists do the talking, and the primary task of the refugee leaders was to help them break this bad habit.

Those who proved entirely incorrigible could only be driven away.

Building an encampment was extremely heavy physical labor, and one could simply not endure it without a bit of strength.

Leo certainly did not expect these newly arrived refugees, who had just fled the far-northern fields or pastures after months of starvation, to have the strength for heavy labor.

Even Ulyan knew to fatten up the refugees with some concentrated feed when he first recruited them.

Therefore, apart from following the refugee leaders to familiarize themselves with collective living and rules, they were temporarily assigned only auxiliary, light tasks.

Their primary physical labor involved carrying various containers to water the foundations of the newly built camp walls to prevent them from cracking due to drying.

Only a small number of young, healthy, and quick-witted refugees were able to swiftly join the construction workforce, though even then, they merely participated in preparatory tasks such as gathering and transporting cassava roots.

The construction of the cassava processing plant proceeded very rapidly; aside from the camp walls which required massive manpower, building the houses did not take long.

The Riverbend sawmill had even directly processed a large batch of semi-finished materials, floating them downstream with the current.

The laborers fished them out and assembled the main framework of the buildings much like playing with building blocks.

Soon, the crude cassava flour production workshop officially went online, commencing operations even before the reeds for roofing could be fully gathered.

Sun-drying, peeling, crushing, soaking, grinding, and sifting—six processes across three workshops, entirely devoid of machinery, crafted completely by hand using purely natural methods, making it both green and eco-friendly.

The only drawback was that the toxic wastewater was poured directly into the small stream, killing off large patches of small fish and shrimp.

Yet, the environmental damage caused by such a small workshop was tenfold less than that of a 1990s rural small-scale enterprise.

The toxicity of the wastewater after soaking was inherently low, capable of killing only the smallest fish and shrimp.

Once flushed into the stream, it was diluted into nothingness before flowing even ten meters.

By the time it emptied into the Anzeno River, it had completely lost its toxicity, an impact equivalent to someone urinating in the upper reaches of a great river.

The factory was not large, roughly forming a square with sides three hundred meters long, equivalent to the campus of a small or medium-sized school.

Furthermore, the camp wall was built on only three sides, while the side facing the stream temporarily featured only a simple wooden wall, facilitating future expansion across the river as development progressed.

The cassava processing plant required abundant water, and this small stream met the requirement perfectly.

A factory of this scale could accommodate around two thousand people living and producing within its grounds; any more would result in overcrowding and hinder production.

Any surplus population would have to be resettled elsewhere by Leo.