709: Chapter 504: Building the Road as We Go_3 709: Chapter 504: Building the Road as We Go_3 “Forward march!” With a command,
Two heavy footsteps rged into one, dust flew, and the earth seed to tremble slightly.
Massive custom-made steel cables were all taut, creaking and groaning.
The astonishingly heavy road roller began to turn and rumble forward.
Its speed was not fast, but certainly not slow either—settled at four kiloters per hour, equivalent to the walking speed of an average person.
Everything was still in a trial run state; adjustnts had to be made according to the actual situation.
Now, stability was the priority over speed.
Once operations normalized, they would gradually increase the speed.
This applied not only to the Giant Elephant Treants but also to the following migration army.
This was the first phase of the migration army—adaptation.
The main goal for this stage was to get the entire migration army operating smoothly and to acclimatize the civilians to this continuous mode of travel.
The Giant Elephant Treants pulling the road roller were certainly not wandering aimlessly in the wilderness; they followed a clear path: an eight-ter-wide black channel with a faint scent of decay, stretching onward into the distance.
All they needed was to move along this marked path.
The channel was naturally thanks to the efforts of Luna of the Half-Moon colt.
The task had begun not after the agreent with the Blood Claw Legion was settled but as soon as Luna gained the Corruption Furnace and realized her advantage in road building.
For other segnts, there might have been questions about the route, but not in the Thacel territory they were crossing.
They had only one path they could take, which was to forge a new road on the north bank of the Is River, leading straight to Ruitawen City in the Amu Kingdom.
There was no direct trade route between these two cities, and Darama had two options if he wanted to travel to Ruitawen City.
One was by water, upstream along the Is River.
It was relatively smooth, but the journey was long and winding, stretching nearly six hundred kiloters.
The other land route was to travel through Zasas Road to Saladas and then make a detour to Sarei Road.
The forr was three hundred and fifty kiloters, while the latter was two hundred and eighty kiloters, making the total distance even longer than the combined water and land route.
Another key issue was that most parts of these two paths lay within the territory of Saladas.
The re assembly of the migration army had already stretched them to their limits; how could they possibly allow passage through their lands?
This was the main reason Darama had been checkmated by the Warlord Nobles; they had relied too heavily on Zasas Road and the Is River transport.
Being in the heartland of Thacel, once the routes at both ends were blocked, they were imdiately surrounded.
Originally, Zalanda had pinned his hopes on breaking through the blockade with Gaven’s snoel, aiming to detour through it to bypass Saladas’s blockade.
However, as the migration progress advanced, they found that nothing was faster and more convenient than taking advantage of the situation on the north shore of the Is River to break through a direct trade route to Ruitawen.
The straight-line distance between the two sides was three hundred and eighty kiloters, and the initial road carved out by the Half-Moon Colt totaled four hundred and ten kiloters, which was basically a straight shot.
Following right behind the Giant Elephant Treants was the Flank Pioneer Army.
However, these cavalry were not wielding swords, shields, and spears but pickaxes, hoes, shovels, and baskets—tools for labor.
The newly appointed captains and commanders were giving their final instructions.
“Our main task is to fill holes and level stones.”
“When filling the holes, use materials on hand, primarily broken stones supplented by soil.
Lay a layer of stone, then a layer of soil.
Don’t level it flush; it should be higher than the surrounding road surface, forming a mound.”
“The leveling of stones is to be handled by spellcasters skilled in the Soft Stone Technique.
The soil and stone affected by the Soft Stone Technique make for the best paving material.
Dig them all out to be used as filler for other holes, with priority given to the ones ford after the road roller has passed.
They should also form mounds, which will be reinforced by Lord Giant Elephant Treant.”
“Here’s a hole that needs to be filled.”
“There’s one here too.”
“This area has collapsed on a large scale; we need a lot of soil and stones, quickly!
Our flank wagon team is about to co through.”
The knights and rcenaries adapted seamlessly to their new tasks, not only showing no resistance but rather excitent.
This mode of road construction completely overturned their understanding.
They divided into two groups; two-thirds of them led the way, searching for any visible gullies and filling all of them slightly higher than the surrounding terrain, waiting for the Giant Elephant Treants with the road roller to co and compact them.
One-third followed behind, responsible for filling those holes left by the road roller, mostly from the burrows of gnawing creatures.
The thod was the sa as the previous one, leaving the final compaction to an extra Giant Elephant Treant.
With its weight of over fifty tons, it would repeatedly march over the area, compacting the road.
As always, both ordinary thods and magic were deployed, with the forr as the main force and the latter as support.
Four kiloters per hour might not sound impressive for just making distance—as even an old man walking could outpace that—but when it included road construction, it was nothing short of miraculous.
And this was just the starting speed, not the maximum.
This once-ford earthen road was much sturdier than one might imagine, as it was followed by a fifty-ton behemoth that left no trace of deformation after passing.
Ordinary comrcial roads might not even withstand its trampling, and the power of a one hundred and fifty-ton road roller was certainly not for show.
When the Road-Building Team was almost a kiloter away, the wagons of the Flank Pioneer Army, pulled by two Tough nags, slowly rolled out, oddly without a Coachman.
Nonetheless, they moved orderly along the freshly built road.
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