Herald of Steel



Alexander thought for a while about how to answer.

And ultimately decided to answer frankly.

This thing would be ultimately very hard to conceal, so he saw little point in hiding.

While also there was the fact that Alexander had plans to bring up a collaboration between Pasha Farzah, Lady Inayah, and him using this material.

So they would get to know about it sooner or later.

"This is called cement. It is a new type of mortar we found in Zanzan," He breezily answered, and then explained, "The engineers found that the stuff easily binds with stone. And so we decided to use it to make roads."

Alexander said the whole thing so lightly that he was seemingly not putting too much importance on the invention.

And the other members' curiosity also died down quite a bit hearing that, as they also had mortals of their own.

Though comparing their mortar to Alexander's would be like comparing a horse carriage to a supercar.

Yes, they were both four-wheeled vehicles capable of transporting men and material.

But there was a huge difference in how they did it.

For instance, these ancient mortars were made of crushed gypsum with water or even just clay, and their binding power with other materials was so weak that they could have never been used to make roads as quickly as Alexander did.

To put it into some context how fast Alexander could make the roads, the roman could build their 5m wide roads at 1,5m per worker per day, whereas Alexander could make his 8m wide roads at close to 3m per worker per day.

This was possible because, unlike the Romans, Alexander did not need to repeat many of the processes multiple times to ensure a smooth finish.

He would simply use the cement to bind everything and then use a heavy roller to flatten the structure.

In fact, if he had been able to use just concrete to make the road, he would have easily boosted that 3m per worker stat up to 10 or 15m.

But this fact was unknown to the other four, and would remain so for a while more, as would the world as a whole.

For now though, the open-top carriage slowly made its way through the largely shabby part of the town, the western district, which was ironic given it had been once designated by Alexander as the residential district, meant to house the public in a huge sprawling housing complex.

It was to be Alexander's magnum opus, showing to the world how Zanzan had transformed the squalid, slum, ridden city into a clean, thriving metropolitan.

The original plan had been to create a series of 4 story apartment blocks reminiscent of the old Soviet-style housing arrangement, with the ultimate goal of housing all the city's residents there.

But due to various factors, such as war, lack of materials, and other priorities, the project had been delayed again and again.

And it was only now that the project was picking up a bit of steam, as Alexander had designated men but more importantly a significant part of his cement production to the effort.

Some of the results of which he was already beginning to see as Alexander could spot a scant few sprinkling of the first concrete buildings rising up into the horizon.

But they were very very few in total numbers, being one of the very firsts of their kind, as for now, most of this part of the city still had mostly tents plopped all around, with some wooden houses also beginning to sprout up.

These belonged to a variety of classes of people, from the homeless, to slaves who were quartered here, to even housing the workers working on the housing project.

And Alexander for his part had allowed them to squat here, mostly because space in the city was limited, and decided to turn a blind eye to this until he could build up the buildings to relocate them there.

But even then, it would be wrong for Alexander to beat himself too much.

The time he had to develop was tiny- only six months, and even then, a 16 metre building made of brick, cement, and stone was very impressive to look at.

Something that even the Queen mother had her eyes drawn to when they were passing across one of them., as she pointed her finger and asked, "Lord Alexander, what are these buildings? I saw quite a few of them along."

She had been meaning to ask about the buildings for a while and finally could not withhold her curiosity.

Alexander turned to look at the building the exotic lady was pointing to, which had clearly been only very recently finished as evidenced by the absence of any paint on the walls, and even any window panels for that matter.

For now, it appeared only the bare skeleton of the building had been constructed.

"Oh that! I'm building these buildings to rent to the workers. I think they will be much better than the shambling shacks they used to live in before." Alexander frankly revealed.

And it appeared that it was something Pasha Farzah seemed to very much agree with.

"Oh! Alexander, you really have an eye for these things. Nice! Very Nice!" He praised with heavy nods as he then like a true moneybag, simply asked,

"Matrak could certainly use something like that. So how much does this cement cost? I saw you did not list it in the price list."

It appeared the pasha was of the mind to replicate these structures in Matrak, where temperatures in winter would reach as low as -20 degrees Celcius, and wanted Alexander to simply quote a price for this new mortal.

Which made Alexander inwardly groan, 'I really should invent Roman concrete.'

Alexander had known long ago that hiding the existence of cement was not possible given the extent of infrastructure development going on in Zanzan.

And so Alexander was of the mind to at least offer a substitute of cement to stave off the vultures who would be coming for this white powder.

To that effect, he had been trying to find the ingredients.

But up until now, he was having no luck.

Particularly, finding the volcanic ash that the concrete required was proving hard.

And so Alexander chuckled, "Let us discuss that later," and then quickly attempted to divert the topic as he then proposed, "Would my lord like to take a look inside?"

Pasha Farzah was of course interested to see the inside of a building he was thinking of replicating and figure out the ins and outs, and the build quality of the structure, and so readily agreed, "Yes, yes, let's."

So soon the carriage was halted, and the group got out of the vehicle to take a look around the building.

Which was surprisingly deserted.

Alexander had expected to see some workers here, doing something, but the huge plot was entirely empty, which he certainly found strange.

And it would be only later that he would learn this was the norm.

For it seemed that Diaogosis had divided the building project into two groups.

The larger group, consisting of about 80% of the workforce was responsible for the actual building.

While the second group was kind of like the internal decorators.

They were the ones in charge of furnishing the building with the appropriate doors and windows, with most of them being carpenters, along with some being tasked with putting the plaster on the walls, painting them, and sometimes even decorating them.

So what had happened here was that the first group had finished making the building, but the second group was yet to catch up, hence the vacant premises.

But for now, Alexander decided to put the, in his eyes- abnormality to the back of his head, and with his large contingent of bodyguards, entered the building premises.

Alexander felt his world get significantly darker as he entered inside, as he was inundated with the color gray, and hit by the distinct, musky smell of wet cement mixture yet to dry, as he then focused on surveying the layout of the building.

Which was very simple.

There were two entrances to the buildings, one at the front and the other at the back, along the length of which ran a 2m wide corridor, on either side of which was housed 4 flats, for a total of 8 residences per floor.

And between the middle of each of the 4 flats sat a common lavatory, whose pipe connected to the pre-existing sewage system underground.

Alexander introduced all these things as the nobles toured the premises, as then Pasha Farzah curiously asked,

"Oh? It's quite big. What's the square feet?" after he entered one of the doorless apartments and looked around, finding it to have 2 bedrooms, a common room, and even a small kitchen with a chimney attached to it.

"The whole building is 32m x 16m. So about 650 sq feet." Alexander readily answered to the agreeing nod of the pasha, who found the space adequate for a peasant or city worker.

"So many such buildings will you build? And how fast can you build them" Then from the side, Lady Inayah posed this, to which Alexander blatantly lied,

"For now only a few. I want to see how the people like it."

"And as for how quickly,....well, about one every month. That's why there are only a few of them."

Whereas the reality was Alexander planned to build a thousand of them, and he could build one around every 3 days."