"Not much, Your Highness, there will only be two or three such demon beasts in each Demon Moon, otherwise the Changge Fortress will face big trouble. ”

"Very well, you're observing," Roland ordered Orion to stand up, "what's your name, doesn't look like a Greycastle man." ”

"I'm half Mogin, and everyone in the town calls me Iron Axe. ”

Mogin, a sandfolk in the desert southwest of the kingdom, is said to be the descendant of a sand giant. Roland searched his mind for relevant memories, and he didn't use the name of the clan, but the title, obviously not wanting to have anything to do with the Shamin anymore. As for why he came to this deserted place from the southwestern border, it is estimated that there is a series of bitter stories.

But that's not the point, the border town doesn't care about the background.

Roland clapped his hands, "That's all for today, Carter, reward each of them with ten silver wolves, and take them down." ”

"Thank you, Your Highness," the three of them said in unison.

After taking the people away, Carter Lannis turned back and said, "Your Highness, you are asking this, do you want to stay here?"

Roland was noncommittal, "What do you think?"

"This is absolutely not the case, Your Highness!" cried the knight, "according to Orion, it will be difficult for the wild boar beast alone to deal with. If you can't shoot a crossbow at fifty paces, you have to wait until you shoot at forty or thirty paces, which only the elite soldiers of the fortress can do. Coupled with the large number of them, there are no strong walls to rely on, and if you rely on the local guards to block them, you are afraid that more than one of the casualties will collapse. ”

"That's what you said before you met the witch, can't you think of the good side of everything?" Roland sighed.

"This ...... The witch is evil, but Anna ...... Miss Anna doesn't seem to be so, and as your knight, I must be realistic. ”

"Yes, what if I give you a wall?"

"What?" Carter momentarily suspected that he had misheard.

"I'll give you a wall, just between the foot of the northern slope and the Chishui River," Roland said word for word, "although it is not as majestic as the walls of the Grey Keep King's City, it should still be able to keep out the beasts." ”

"Your Highness, do you know what you're talking about?" the knight laughed angrily, "There must be a limit to nonsense, and if you don't leave then, then you can only forgive me for being rude." ”

"It's still three months, isn't it? I've looked at the past and most of the first snow here comes at the end of February, after the onset of winter. ”

"Three years is not enough! It takes a lot of workers to build a wall, and the foundation is rammed with mixed earth. Every one to two feet should be tamped, otherwise there will be a danger of collapse if the pile is high. It's still the simplest of earth walls," Carter shook his head, "and the masonry walls are even slower, requiring hundreds of stonemasons to chisel the stones into squares and build them piece by piece. Your Highness, every wall is built in this way, without exception. Letting the city rise between day and night is a story that only exists in myths and legends. ”

Roland motioned for him to say no more, "I see. You don't have to jump to conclusions so quickly, if there are no reliable walls by then, I will evacuate with you to the fortress of Changge. I didn't plan to give my life to this place. ”

The knight knelt down on one knee and said, "I will protect you to the death!"

In the castle garden, Roland took a sip of bitter ale and looked at Anna, who was concentrating on eating a cream pastry, and his mood recovered a lot.

He had decided to stop the evil beasts in the border town - he couldn't even hold the base camp, and he was talking about farming. To build a wall connecting the northern slope to the Chishui River in three months, it is necessary to adopt a rational plan and cross-generational technology.

Roland was not a whim, he had inspected the surrounding areas of the border town on the spot (although he did not go there himself), and he still had a clear picture in his memory - the foot of the northern slope of the mountain and the nearest part of the Chishui River were only more than 600 meters, which was simply a natural pass. The North Slope Mine is surrounded by debris from the rock layers mined from the cave due to perennial mining.

These gravel sections are grayish-white and rich in calcium carbonate, which can be used as limestone after grinding. And with limestone, it is equivalent to cement.

That's right, this hydraulic hard material that has changed the history of human construction has a wide range of raw materials, simple preparation, and is one of the real tools of the field.

Roland estimated in his heart that he didn't want to make concrete, not because he couldn't do it technically, but because the amount of cement needed to be consumed was too large, and he was not sure that he could calcine so much cement powder in three months. In addition, the toughness of concrete is poor, and it needs to be used with steel bars to become a complete body, so it is obviously not practical to make a concrete city wall.

If you want to save as much cement as possible and make use of existing materials, then rubble self-weight walls are the most suitable choice.

The so-called rough stone is unpolished stone, which has the natural appearance when it was first mined. Because the edges and corners of such stones are irregular, they cannot be built directly, and they need to be processed into bricks by stonemasons before they can be used. The rubble wall is made of cement as a binder, no matter how peculiar the shape of the stone can be piled up, and the gap between the stones is filled by cement, which saves cement and does not pick materials.

The general direction has been set in this way, but in practice, I am afraid that I will have to do it myself, Roland thought. Whether it is calcined cement or rubble walls, it is a completely new thing. No one had ever seen these things but themselves, and no one knew what to do. I'm afraid the next three months will be busy.

"Look. ”

Behind him came Anna's crisp voice.

Roland turned her head, only to see a small cluster of flames quietly appearing in her palm, and there was obviously no wind around, but the tips of the flames rose and fell, as if nodding to her. She shook her finger, and the flames slowly moved toward her fingertips like a toddler. Eventually, it rests on the tip of the index finger and calms down,

"You did it. ”

An incredible scene, Roland admired in his heart. It's not a magic trick, it's not a chemical trick, it's a real supernatural force. But that's not what attracted Roland the most - what stood out more than the flames was Anna's expression.

She stared intently at her fingertips, her lake-clear eyes reflected in the dancing flames, like a sealed elf in a sapphire. The traces of her torture had faded, and although she still rarely smiled, her face was no longer lifeless. A little sweat oozes from the tip of the girl's small nose, and her white and red cheeks exude vitality, which makes people feel happy even if they look at it.

"What's wrong with you?"

"Ah...... It's all right," Roland noticed that he had been staring at her for too long, and he looked away, coughing twice, "Then let's try to use it to dissolve the iron." ”

In the past few days, in addition to eating and sleeping, she will practice repeatedly in the shed, and that hard work makes Roland embarrassed - even in the face of the college entrance examination, he has never worked so hard.

It doesn't seem it will be long before she becomes proficient in this power, Roland thought. In this way, new projects that you have been thinking about for a long time can also be put on the agenda.