Alan shared with everyone that he had set up a base in the prior tier. He was light on the details, not because he didn't trust them, but people couldn't even accidentally betray information they didn't have. They knew that there was a small farm there as well as some other potential resources, but that was it. There was a grand plan, but Alan wasn't ready to share it yet. There were some things he needed to check on, just in case the Network was running it differently with this tutorial.

Tamee had become an incredible asset, but she was limited in what she could share. She could only base things on past tutorials, and not what she had been informed by the present one. The Network had run these thousands, if not millions, of times before, and occasionally it tweaked things. He and Tamee had come up with several ideas of how to maximize his advantages, but which ones ended up being feasible would depend on what he found when he checked out the unlocked areas.

Alan filled them in on his immediate plans. "While I will need to leave you for a while, I'm not going anywhere yet. Partly it's because I want to stick around until we see how Chrisly's family reacts, but also because there are things I need to help with before I head out."

"Do you need anything from me to get started?" Roger asked.

"Yes, but Lyonel, I won't need you guys for anything at the moment. However, if you want to see what I am up to, feel free to join me."

Gerry and Samson agreed to join him, but Lyonel and Hector begged off. They probably wanted to discuss things with each other in private, or maybe they just wanted to explore their new semi-freedom. The two mages were more interested in what Alan was going to be up to.

After that was sorted, Roger repeated his question. "So how can I help?"

Alan listed some things he would need. "Can you send me a few people and supplies? I'm looking for anyone you can spare with construction experience, a few of your farmers, and maybe a couple of people who like digging. I'll also need some wood and nails, and can you have those delivered to the waterwheel."

The mayor said he could get it done and Alan set out with his two followers. It would probably take Roger a little bit to get everything arranged and delivered, but it would give Alan time to get a better look at what he was working with. He saw the man leave shortly after they did, no doubt to find people to give orders too. It occurred to Alan that they should see about getting the man an assistant to help run around for him. It was something to mention the next time he checked in.

The nearby river didn't flow through the village, but it formed a boundary on the north side of it. One of the first side streets they had created ran right up to its banks. The waterwheel was built there on the same side as the village. At this point, the water was almost forty meters across and the bank was steep. There wasn't a good place to cross here and the construction had ended up being tricky since the water was almost a meter below the top of the bank.

Alan wasn't aware of any of the difficulties with putting it in place, and he wasn't interested in that at the moment. What he was looking at was how it had been constructed. It was a fairly basic design. There was a metal shaft that ran through a hole in a stone block. That single stone was fairly large, at least a meter on a side. Moving it must have been quite the chore. It also wasn't the only one. There was a whole stone structure built into the ground, made from good size rocks that had been mortared together. The entire thing was about two meters high and three meters long.

The metal shaft was sticking out and spinning freely, with what looked like a counterweight on the end. The current in the river wasn't too strong here so it was probably making a single rotation every minute. That wasn't all that fast, but it would be okay for his purposes. The issue he was going to have was that it had been built directly on the river. A proper industrial waterwheel should have been built with a separate millrace that would allow the flow of water to be stopped. It would be difficult or outright impossible to modify the wheel, or attach anything to the shaft while it was still moving.

This was clear evidence of what Roger had mentioned. The villagers were all good people, working hard to make the best of their new life, but they weren't experts. Alan had only a little experience with such primitive technology from some of his deployments to developing nations, but even he could tell that they had made several mistakes. They weren't problems with the construction method, the blueprint and the Network had made that solid, the issues were with everything else about it.

Fortunately the issues wouldn't derail his plans, but he would need to talk to Roger about what he'd seen. It was important to know their limitations for future projects. This waterwheel wouldn't be particularly useful for running a mill, but that wasn't what he wanted it for. He needed irrigation. A common method of irrigating crops was to dig trenches from a nearby water source and then allow that water to flow into channels in the fields to water the crops. The amount of water could be regulated by gates to prevent overwatering or even flooding.

The issue here was that the land was at a much higher elevation than the nearby water source. If they had an electric pump then the issue could be dealt with easily, but due to the number of fields and the distance involved, a manual device wasn't practical. The waterwheel was an easy solution. The wheel could raise the water above the ground level. As it was designed now, the slightly curved blades of the wheel wouldn't hold water. Instead, he would need to rig up buckets on the wheel to carry some water that would be dumped out near the top. With the addition of some gutters to catch the water and troughs to carry it, the problem would be solved.

Samson and Gerry chatted with Alan while he considered the best way to rig everything up. He didn't bother explaining it yet, he wanted to wait until his helpers arrived. He could have most likely built most of what he wanted by himself, but he also wanted to teach them about the process. The more knowledgeable the villagers were, the better they could prevent future problems from cropping up. It would also hopefully go much faster. The mayor was good at his job, so it was only about twenty minutes before people started showing up, most of them bringing some of the supplies with them. The first couple people to arrive were sent off again to procure some buckets, something Alan hadn't thought to ask for.

Once everyone was assembled and their materials were there, he outlined his goal. The diggers were given the first, and probably hardest task. They had to dig trenches from here all the way to the closest fields on either side. Making their work even harder was the fact that they needed their trenches to have a slight angle so that water would flow down them. It wasn't the end of the world if it had some flat sections, but any rise in the level would ruin their efforts. Once those two groups knew what to do, Alan addressed the remaining workers.

"So here's the plan. We need water that is at an equal or higher level than your fields so that it can be easily directed to water your crops. The river is so far below the ground level that digging a trench low enough isn't feasible. Instead, we will use this wheel to carry water up and deposit it into a basin."

"How does the wheel get the water into a basin?" One of the farmers asked.

Alan held up one of the buckets. "With these. As you can see, the water runs right off the blades of the wheel, they aren't very effective in lifting the water. If we attach some of these buckets to the side of the wheel, then as it turns it will naturally lift the water up for us. When the wheel turns enough, the bucket full of water will begin dumping its contents. If we set something to catch the water, then our problem is solved."

The villager's looked between the bucket and the wheel, and Alan could see them picturing how it could work. The first thing they needed was a place for the basin. Yes, the water didn't actually need to collect in anything, it could be sent immediately into the trenches going to the fields, but he had other plans that required a collection tank. There was an obvious place to put the basin, right on top of the stone blocks holding the waterwheel shaft in place.

Once he had pointed out what was needed, the construction crew got started on building a tank for the water. One of the farmers got sent out to get a special type of sealant they were using in the village to make things watertight. This process was going to be inefficient enough that they didn't need to waste anymore water. Seeing that they would be able to handle that portion of the job, Alan got started on the second problem, attaching buckets to the wheel.

If they could have frozen the wheel in place it would have been a simple task, instead, Alan would have to try and do it while it was turning. He posed the question of how to best deal with this to the group, but no one had a better idea than holding onto the wheel and trying to get it done before they fell off. So it was that Alan found himself with his legs clamped around the edge of the wheel as it spun around and he pounded nails in with a hammer to fasten the bucket to the rim. Aside from not falling off and the once a minute dunking, the hardest part was using the hammer inside the bucket, the cramped space meant he couldn't get much force behind each blow, so it took even longer.

The buckets they had to work with were simple, but that ended up being an advantage. The sides weren't sloped at all, so he was able to get several nails in the side to hold it in place. The bucket was angled so that it would exit the water in an almost vertical position. This meant that it would hold more water coming out, but it would also start dumping the water sooner. Figuring out the perfect angle would maximize the amount of water in the bucket while also allowing it to be carried to the necessary height before disgorging its contents. No one had the time, or the math skills, to work that out theoretically, so Alan had simply eyeballed it as best he could.

After affixing the first bucket, which had only taken seven dunkings and two falls, Alan let the wheel carry him back to the water and let go before swimming back to the shore. He watched with everyone else as the bucket dipped down before emerging back from the water, almost full to the brim. The angle hadn't been perfect because it started to pour out slightly before what would be the top of the basin. That was okay for the first bucket, the slight inefficiency wasn't worth taking the bucket off and reattaching it again, but it showed him how to modify the next one.

It took him about two hours, but he managed to rig up ten buckets. In that time the basin had been crafted, but the sealant would need a while to dry. The construction crew had created a rectangular tub that took up the whole roof of the stone blocks holding the shaft in place. It was two meters wide, three meters long, and only a single meter high. They had also rigged up a platform and ladder to access it. Eventually they would need to cut some holes in the container for piping, but that could wait for later.

Currently, he was sharing with Samson and Gerry the measurements he would need. The next part of the construction would be figuring out the sizes for the gutter assembly that would collect the water from the buckets and send it into the basin. That was something they could handle while he went to talk to the blacksmith. Alan hadn't had a reason to visit the man before this, but some of the villagers were able to send him in the right direction. It helped that the village only had like four side streets.

Smith, as the man was hysterically named, was a straightforward man that had some decent skills. He was no Helga, but for what Alan wanted he should do just fine. For the initial project, he simply wanted two pipes that were each about forty centimeters long, but they needed a ball valve near the end of them. As expected, the man had never heard of such a thing, but Alan was able to explain it well enough that he could get to work on it. It might take him a few tries, but as the owner of the village, and after leaving a handful of gold, Smith promised to get Alan something by the end of the day.

Returning back to the waterwheel he was pleased to see that the trench diggers were back. There was now a path for the water to flow to the fields, but they would also need to dig channels for the water to enter in the fields. This would also only cover the two closest fields, but later trenches could be dug to extend the irrigation to some of the others. It was no doubt possible to make it work for all of the fields at some point, but that would come some other day.

Now Alan got the farmers involved. They had been watching over a majority of the process, contributing as they could, but Alan had wanted them to understand how everything would work, so he hadn't set them a larger task yet. This was their opportunity. Rather than counting on a dirt trench, Alan now wanted them to lay the thin wooden boards they had collected along the bottom and sides. They were also given more sealant to make it as watertight as possible. When it was done they should have a stable path for the water from the basin to flow into their fields.

Meanwhile, armed with the measurements that the mages had gotten, Alan worked with the construction group to build the gutter that would collect the water from the buckets. It was overly large to handle the chaotic area where the water would drop. The whole gutter funneled down to another trough that emptied into the basin. It wasn't meant to have a significant amount of water in it at a given time, which was good because supporting the thing was a bitch. It would have been impractical to put vertical supports down to the bottom of the river, so they made do with diagonal braces and a couple of supports into the small strip of land between the shaft building and the water. The whole thing also got a treatment to seal it up.

There had been no sign of trouble, although Chrisly still should be on his way back, so that was as expected. With nothing to do but wait for Smith to finish the pipes, and the sealant to dry, Alan left them with one more project before heading off to his next task. If everything worked as planned, they should end up generating more water input than they needed. To account for that possibility, they were going to cut a notch out at the top of the basin that fed into a short trough that ran above the river. If it worked correctly, then if the water got within a few centimeters of the top, it should start draining back into the river, preventing an overflow.

After everything he had them do already, he trusted them to finish that part on their own. He, Samson, and Gerry instead went to the end of the road closest to the town dungeon. Because of how the street was angled, it was actually farther north than the other end, but the river's nearest crossing point was farther to the south. That meant that anyone trying to get to Dewhurst would take the southwest exit out of town, while anyone heading to the forest or the dungeon would go out the northeast. It was here that Alan was planning on expanding.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

After trying to find a good spot for the boarding house, Alan had realized that most town buildings could only be built adjacent to one of its roads. Since the current main road was only two hundred meters long, they were running out of space. The addition of some side streets that they had worked hard to make had helped deal with their expansion, but they were going to need more room. This meant the street needed to keep going.

Now, you couldn't just build a five hundred kilometer long road and make the village enormous. There were also restrictions based on the level of the settlement, but as a tier four village, they had a lot more room available than they were using. All they needed was a longer road. Not only would it help with the village's growth, but as any Roman could tell you, roads were the key to everything.

Back on Earth, making a road was a big deal. There was digging and leveling, layers of materials, and eminent domain issues. Earth construction workers also had serious machinery to help them get all this done. The Network, or at least Elstree, didn't have any of that, but they also didn't need anything as fancy as Route 66. A simple well hardened track of dirt should suffice. That was still a lot of work for someone with the tools they had, though.

There was grass to tear or dig out, then dirt to tamp, and possibly rocks to move. Most of this process could actually be done with simple foot traffic, as evidenced by the small paths that were starting to appear from the infrequent caravans, but it took time. After almost two months those tracks were still in their infancy, however, and weren't nearly big enough to count for anything. Alan was looking for a real road.

He didn't know of any fancy engineering tricks that could help them here, instead he was hoping to rely on magic. He had checked in on the possibility with Tamee, but her answer had been indifferent. She didn't see any reason why it shouldn't work, but she hadn't heard of it actually being done. She did admit that it wasn't something she really paid attention to, so her opinion was worth little, but it was good to know it wasn't an outright impossibility.

With an aura reading ability over a hundred and eighty, plus a mana handling skill approaching a buck fifty, Alan thought he could make this work. He had used raw mana to accomplish tasks before, and he thought he could do so here. Standing at the end of the road, he encouraged both mages to try and watch what he did. Neither had aura reading yet, but they did both have mana handling, which was kind of interesting. They had gotten the skill for handling something that they couldn't properly see.

The first thing Alan did was to apply heat mana directly to the roots of the grass in the section he was hoping to clear. He could have used fire mana to burn the grass, but that would have certainly spread to a larger area and would have possibly led to the whole town burning down. Instead, a relatively minor increase in temperature should serve to cook the roots, which should kill the whole plant and make extracting it much easier.

Next he studied the aura of the dirt itself. He noticed a few spots where larger rocks disrupted the natural flow and encouraged the dirt beneath them to loosen up and let the stones sink down. The description sounded simple but it was the work of over twenty minutes and it left him sweaty and out of mana. Mana load was activated and he had some water while he waited for the energy to continue.

In the same way that he had pushed the rocks down, he then coaxed the dirt into rejecting the now dead roots of the plants, forcing them up and out of the ground. A living plant would have been able to resist his attempts, forcing him to use significantly more mana. His efforts were instantly rewarded as all the grass in a patch as wide as the road, and extending perhaps three meters past it, suddenly fell over. Samson and Gerry were nice enough to pick it all up and make a pile of it on the side. No doubt someone would find a use for dried grass stalks.

The last part was something no one else here would be able to accomplish. Everything up to now he could probably teach to Samson, and possibly Gerry, especially if they could pick up aura reading. What that would give them was a nice patch of dirt. In order to make it a road, the surface needed to be hardened, and for that Alan would use his mana enhancement. The aura was already there, but it needed to be stronger and denser. Figuring out how to do that took another chunk of time.

Adding mana to strengthen the overall flow was easy, figuring out how to add in new lines to the pattern to make it firmer was the hard part. However, he finally figured it out and was rewarded with a main street that was now two hundred and three meters long. It had only taken him about an hour and a half. That wasn't bad, but it was far too long when the plan was to make a lot of roads. Most of that time had been spent figuring out the process, so once his mana was restored, he tried it again. This time he managed to extend the street another three meters after only thirty minutes.

If Alan worked a full twelve hour shift, doing nothing but this, he could add over seventy meters of road a day. That may not sound like much, but the current street was only two hundred, so it would be a marked increase. It still wouldn't allow him to build roads connecting far off points, but he could probably get it to the town dungeon in about a month.

Samson and Gerry had been able to detect some of what Alan was doing, which made him think that the aura reading skill wasn't too far away for them, but they wouldn't be able to help yet. Fortunately, Alan wasn't trying to build Main Street all the way between villages. It was far wider than what he had in mind. The village road was wide enough for two carts to pass each other with plenty of room, and even some more for pedestrians. A road through the wilderness would only need to be just wide enough for two carts to pass, and even that was a luxury.

For his initial efforts, he would be happy with something just under two meters wide. It would allow a single cart to travel quickly and easily, and if they did run into someone coming the other way, it was only grass on the sides, so they could easily move one to the side while the other passed. Eventually he would like to widen it, and possibly add drainage ditches on the sides, but that was a distant future project. If they got to that point he would probably also start trying to replace the packed dirt with real stone.

That was all for the future, however, now it was about extending the town's main road. After repeating the process several times he had extended the road by over fifteen meters, which should be enough to open another area to place a building. Samson and Gerry had left to check on Lyonel and Hector. They had given up on trying to detect exactly what he was doing for now, and they wanted to see if there was anything more productive they could be working on. It meant he no longer had helpers to clear out the grass, but Alan used his gust spell to blow it off. It cost a little more mana each time, but it also meant he was less reliant on others. That was going to be important when he set off by himself. It was also a nice reminder of the spell, which he had mostly forgotten about.

Originally, he had used gust to give himself a boost while running. Since then, he hadn't even used it for that purpose, let alone tried to incorporate it more into his fighting style. That was something else he could work on. It's not like his days were already filled with more things than he could accomplish, so what was one more thing.

It was time for a break from adding to the road, so it was a good time to check on the progress of the irrigation project. The trenches connecting the basin to the fields had been lined with wood and the sealant was still drying. It was only slightly tacky, so there was a good chance that the Network was also somehow speeding that up. The diggers and farmers were now working on digging small channels through the fields for the water to run through once it was flowing.

At the waterwheel itself, the buckets were all still attached and picking up water only to dump it back into the river again and again. The gutter and trough assembly was finished, but they weren't going to install it until the rest of the system was set up. There wasn't a mechanism to stop the flow of water once it was in place. This was almost the same problem the waterwheel itself had, except once the basin was finished getting set up, it would naturally allow the water to flow out again.

The next thing he checked on was the blacksmith. True to his word, Smith was just about done with the pipes. Truthfully, he was done with the actual pipes, he was still finishing up the ball valves. They were close to being completed, so Alan chose to stay and watch the process. The man was good, he worked efficiently and with confidence, but he didn't have the same spark that Helga did. For the tools and equipment the town required, the man seemed able enough, but Alan wasn't sure if he would measure up when it came time to make weapons for people. That was a problem for the future, however.

Alan planned on getting a meal to go from the tavern, but upon seeing him, Cook claimed his attention. She wanted to make sure he was doing okay, and to know if he wanted any more cooking lessons. It was actually surprising how glad she was to see him. Alan had thought she might have held some resentment towards him for not sharing any of his secrets with her before, since she had taken him under her wing and all. Instead, he sat in the kitchen enjoying a meal as she mostly talked and he contributed every now and then. It cost him half an hour of his time, but it was worth it for the joy of a simple and honest interaction with another person.

Since he was already in a social mindframe, he also checked in on Roger. The mayor let him know that the efforts at clearing some new fields were going well, and they should have at least one ready to go sometime in the morning. He also reminded him about the chicken eggs. He couldn't just hand the eggs over and presto, there would be chicks. Once they were removed from his nipple ring, they would need to be kept warm. Without heat lamps or actual mama birds, Alan chose to rely on magic again.

Roger directed him to a small section of land that he had gotten some farmers set aside. It was a square area about four meters on a side with a short wooden fence around it. It should serve to protect the eggs until they hatched. He spent a little time preparing the ground. He repeated his process for getting rid of the grass, but he only reinforced the dirt aura, choosing not to add more lines to it, which would have fused the ground. He instead left it as simple topsoil.

Alan's last efforts at magical diagrams had been both grand and resource intensive. This would not be, and he had plenty of the quartz powder left from the last job. There were five chicken eggs, and he had the choice of one larger circle or five smaller ones. In the end, he chose to do five smaller ones. That way if something went wrong with one, maybe the others would still be okay.

The circles would be relatively simple. The eggs needed three basic things to hatch, well four actually. They needed heat to keep them warm, humidity to keep them from drying out, and they had to be turned several times a day to prevent the embryo from attaching to the side of the egg. The last thing they would need was time, which was the biggest variable since he didn't know how the Network would affect the hatching period. Two Socks had gone from a pup to an adult wolf in about a month, so who knew what would happen to the eggs.

Time wasn't anything he could affect, and a farmer would simply have to turn the eggs every now and then. The heat and humidity were Alan's job to deal with. The first circle he set up ended up creating a hot and humid mess that made a Florida summer seem like a cool late autumn day. The second circle was a good temperature, but it was so humid that the water was condensing on the dirt. Alan kept that in mind for future agricultural uses, but once again set about undoing his work. Doing these circles in dirt was really not efficient, it was hard to separate out the quartz powder again.

The third test turned out well. It was hot, but properly so, and the air had a good level of water in it. After copying the diagram four more times, he placed an egg in each one. He then explained what was required to the watching farmers. It was a little surreal to explain farming to farmers, but it was something he had often done as a Green Beret. Not many people realized how much instructing was a part of their job, and it wasn't always just about fighting.

Hopefully the five eggs would give a mix of male and female chickens. If they ended up with five of one sex then their plans for self-replicating meat were finished. The odds of that happening were only one out of sixteen though. Hopefully they would get two males and three females. Alan wasn't a breeding expert, but it seemed like having two different parents would be better for keeping the genetic diversity up.

It was now night again and they hadn't heard anything from Dewhurst. It was still early, but Alan couldn't keep his nerves from building. To distract himself, he got back to work. Armed with the pipes that Smith had made, he gathered his workers up again and they made their way back to the waterwheel. It was late for them to be working, but they were eager to see what was next.

They drilled two holes in the sides of the basin, towards the bottom. Then, using a lot of elbow grease, Alan managed to wedge the pipes into the holes, until the spigots at the end were positioned over the ramps they had built down to the two trenches. They were a tight fit in the wood, but they weren't going to rely on that to keep them in place. They had a tar like substance that they spread liberally on both sides to seal it. Once that was set, everything would be ready. The supports for the gutter system were already in place, all they would have to do was fasten it down and water would start flowing.

There were still several hours until morning, and after everyone else left, Alan felt his nerves returning. What if he had miscalculated and Chrisly returned at the head of a new and more powerful group. What if it wasn't just Chrisly, but his whole family. That shouldn't be possible with the restrictions that were usually in place, but his worries didn't listen to logic. Another possibility was that the villagers returned as heads in a bag. That would kill morale in the village, and he knew himself well enough to know he would feel responsible.

Instead of letting his mind come up with worse and more fantastical ways that everything could go wrong, he went back to extending the road. By the time morning came, the road stretched almost three hundred meters. He had made further improvements to the process and could do it almost twice as quickly now. It had also boosted his aura and mana skills significantly.

If this was a fairy tale then the rising sun would have silhouetted the returning villagers. Unfortunately this was the real world, and besides, the sun rose on the wrong side of the village for that. Instead, the sun simply brought light, and a crowd around their water project. Word had spread throughout the day, yesterday, and almost a quarter of the town was there to see if it worked.

Alan and the construction crew got to work setting up the gutter system and fastening it to the supports. It was wet work as the water poured down on them, but it also meant it started filling the basin long before they were done. Once the last nail was in place, they all watched as the water was dumped in the gutter running parallel to the wheel, which then collected near the middle before running down the trough to empty into the basin. The water level rose slowly but surely.

When it was half full, Alan and Gerry, on opposite sides of the basin, opened the spigots. Water then started flowing out onto the ramps, and then running down the trenches. It was not a fast process, but that was okay. It didn't need to be fast, it just had to work. Alan monitored the water level in the tank now that the pipes were open. It was still rising, but much more slowly than before.

It took almost ten minutes before the water really started to enter the fields, and the first little bit simply dampened the ground at the end of the wooden frame. As it continued to flow, though, a small stream of water started to form in the channels they had dug. It was working, the fields could now be watered as needed. The spigots would allow them to determine when the irrigation would take place, and when not in use the water would just end up flowing back into the river. There was a lot of back slapping of the people who had helped out, and everyone got on with their day with some extra pep in their step.

Alan was also pleased with their project, but he was growing more concerned as the day went on and the missing villagers hadn't returned. Perhaps Chrisly had been attacked by a monster on his way back and was dead in the grass somewhere. Or maybe he had lied to his parents about what had happened and they knew nothing of his demands. Alan's mind was spiraling and it was with great relief that he heard a runner tell Roger that a caravan had been spotted on the western road.

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