Chapter 28: The Proper Way to Approach a Groundhog

With the massive groundhog in tow, he left the camp and walked all the way to the base of the earthen slope on the northwest side of the riverbend peninsula.

This was the starting point for the canal. Just five or six meters beyond the other side of the slope lay the upper reaches of the Anzeno River. Once the canal was built, all it would take was to break through this stretch of earth, and the river would flow straight down, cutting across the peninsula and irrigating a thousand acres of land.

Already, a canal more than five hundred meters long had appeared at the foot of the slope.

It was a roughly trapezoidal channel, about two meters wide at the top, one meter at the bottom, and just over two meters deep.

The terrain of the riverbend peninsula was not particularly undulating, which made canal construction relatively straightforward: even in the highest areas, only three meters needed to be dug, and in the lower spots, a meter would suffice. The excavated earth was then used to raise the banks.

If Ulian’s plan succeeded, this canal would connect the upper and lower reaches of the riverbend, slicing the peninsula in two and turning it into an island.

If, day after day, the canal were deepened and the embankments raised—and perhaps even a wall built along its length—then the peninsula would become a secure, expansive farm.

With just a few people patrolling, the villagers would no longer need to fear wild beasts from the forest attacking their homes or their crops being trampled.

Yet, given the current population, the scale of this project was somewhat unrealistic; Ulian’s blueprint had assumed a thousand people.

Therefore, in the first phase, Ulian only needed to dig a two-kilometer canal to connect several small lakes in the peninsula’s center and drain the excess water from the northern marshlands.

The geology of the peninsula was relatively soft. Most sections could be stabilized with yellow clay, but some areas were so loose that water would wash them out, requiring stone and branches for reinforcement.

As a result, progress was far from ideal. Even with a fifty-man crew toiling for a week, only five hundred meters had been dug.

If this were a proper little town, and he was a landowner with some spare wealth, Leo would already have begun researching cement formulas. But here in the riverbend, the entire village lacked even a decent craftsman. They were dirt poor, making do with whatever they had.

“See this? Can you keep digging from here, all the way to the foot of those distant hills?” Leo brought Freya to the end of the canal, pointing toward the mountain’s base in the distance.

“Digging holes? That’s what I’m best at!”

Freya made a few tentative scrapes, then looked up at Leo, making sure she wouldn’t be scolded.

“Go on! Keep going!” Leo encouraged her.

Relieved, Freya flung herself to the ground, her front paws rapidly scooping soil before her.

Whether hard, sticky clay or loose, sandy dirt, it all yielded to her sharp claws as if it were nothing more than styrofoam, easily pried up and kicked behind her by her hind legs.

The canal lengthened before their eyes.

Leo watched from the bank, grinning from ear to ear. Was this a pest? No, this was nothing short of an excavator!

This was the correct way to utilize a groundhog!

Here I am, in the Middle Ages, and I have my own excavator!

In truth, Freya was more like a combine harvester; her four paws blurred with speed, and hard earth and sedimentary rock vanished before her, reduced to fragments that sprayed out behind her.

Dig, dig, dig!

What joy!

Freya dug with her tongue lolling and features flying, like a carefree husky set loose.

By the time the team of canal workers arrived, Freya had already dug dozens of meters ahead.

The crowd stared in shock at the bear-shaped behemoth, with only a stripe of black fur visible above the canal, as clods of earth flew ten meters and pelted their faces.

Fifty men, united in purpose, dividing the labor and both digging and chiseling—yet their progress could not match this one groundhog!

“Why are you all standing around? Get moving!” Ulian, who had come along, was the first to recover, immediately chiding the villagers and urging them to follow the groundhog—removing excess earth, shoring up the canal walls, and preserving the groundhog’s efforts before the cold groundwater could seep in.

Last night, he had been wondering how to send away this gluttonous druid; today, he only wanted to feed her more!

Satisfied with the bustling scene, Ulian, hands behind his back, sidled up to Leo with a grin. “Boy, where did you find this ground mole? She’s quite the worker!”

“She’s a bear—a druid in bear form!” Leo corrected him sternly.

“Of course, of course, a bear!” Ulian agreed readily.

As long as she could work, he didn’t care if she called herself a bear or a chinchilla!

Leo recounted his encounter with Freya, describing in detail the boar-men's size, attire, and weaponry.

Despite his rustic appearance, Ulian was a seasoned scout who had manned a wildland outpost for five years. He knew the cultures and habits of many tribal peoples.

From Leo’s description alone, Ulian could deduce the boar-men tribe’s military strength and civilization level.

The more details Leo offered, the more precise Ulian’s intelligence became.

After Leo’s report, Ulian instinctively maintained a look of calm command; only when he saw no one was watching did he sigh, a heaviness in his demeanor.

“This is a problem. These aren’t kobolds we’re dealing with.”

Leo, unwilling to accept defeat, asked, “How much of a problem?”

“We can’t handle it alone.”

As the villagers approached, the two men fell silent, each gazing toward the distant waterfall.

With their own “excavator,” the canal’s pace was transformed—even the fifty men hauling earth and building the banks struggled to keep up with Freya’s speed.

But this particular excavator had a mind of her own; if she hit a tree root, she had to gnaw and taste it, and if she found a pretty stone, she had to stop and play with it.

Sometimes, she would simply stop digging and, when Leo checked, he found her buried in the dirt, fast asleep.

What could he do? Only keep promising her delicious treats.

In just one morning, Leo had pledged the camp’s entire food stores to Freya.

They dug all the way to the base of the mountain—a rocky ridge extending several hundred meters into the peninsula, blocking the canal’s path.

Leo was about to explain the next steps to Freya. According to Ulian’s plan, at this point the canal would veer eastward along the mountain foot, looping around to join a small lake south of the ridge.

This would greatly increase the canal’s length, but their current team had no means to tunnel through the rocky ridge—a stone tunnel was simply out of the question.

But the digging groundhog, upon reaching the stone wall, showed no sign of stopping. She leaned against the stone, clumsily extended a claw, and scratched a circle on the surface. Then, with both paws, she pushed along the circle’s edge.

The hard stone, under her claws, crumbled like a rice cracker; the circled section, under immense force, shattered, and large chunks fell away, rapidly forming a basin-sized hole.

Freya kept enlarging the hole, and in less than five minutes, her head had disappeared into the stone.

What an invincible tunnel-boring machine!

Leo could only watch in utter envy.