Inheritor Of Magic: The Magi King

"Why don't you just use an armour spell when you're working to prevent getting greasy like that?" Wolfe asked.

"When you dismiss the spell, the grease still falls on you, so you need to shower anyhow. But more importantly, the spell reduces the feeling of stress and impact on the hands, so you can't accurately tighten bolts or avoid stripping out more delicate connectors. 

Even regular gloves aren't popular with most of the mechanics, except the latex ones, to keep your hands clean when we have them. I made a box earlier, but they go quickly on days like this when we're doing truck services." Ella explained.

"That makes sense, I guess. How are the mechanics we hired from the villages working out? I assume that they should have the skills to get the job done." Wolfe asked.

"They're incredible. They have gotten so used to making do with makeshift repairs that they have a wealth of knowledge on how to modify the equipment and still have it work, which has saved us a lot of time when we're trying to adapt it all to magical power."

Wolfe could see the nearby mechanics beam in pride at the comments from Ella, though they didn't stop what they were working on. They were great mechanics, but their ears gave them away every time. They couldn't hide the twitching when they heard something interesting or the way that they perked up when they were being praised.

"We have a map of all the villages that are in the Forest itself, so why don't we start with making a grid to connect those? We can make an efficient travel route not only from the Den but also between the villages themselves so they can trade freely. 

Do we have anyone who specializes in that?" Wolfe asked.

Though they were pretending they weren't listening, every eye in the room turned to one of the older Badger men, who sheepishly raised his hand.

"Badgers instinctively dig tunnels. We can't help it. But I also studied den design to prevent flooding and monster invasions, so I might be the best one around to design a set of traffic tunnels to connect the villages." He admitted.

Wolfe rolled out the map on a clean table and then set out a topographical map from one of the military trucks beside it so that they could clearly see the relative altitudes of the various villages.

The Fae Forest was fairly flat compared to the mountains to the north, but it still had a lot of hills hidden under its foliage, and some of the villages were halfway down the hills, while others were started at the top of a ridge.

The Badger quickly mapped out the best route to get from one to another, with minimal elevation changes in the road, so that they wouldn't have to pull uphill for far, and then added a series of shorter legs that would connect some villages and give a relatively direct route between all of the villages in the forest.

"I think that this will be close to the best routing that we can come up with at the moment. At least, I don't see any better routes.

I will still need to add some water sinks, pullout areas to allow large vehicles to pass each other and some other details, but this is my opinion on the basic route." He explained.

Cassie and Ella looked over the routing and measured the distances and the marked slopes, verifying what the mechanic had come up with.

"Nothing is marked as over a two percent grade, which is fine for even the most heavily loaded trucks, and I don't see any clipping issues, so it shouldn't accidentally surface anywhere. I would say that he did an excellent job." Cassie agreed.

"So, where should we make the entrance?" Wolfe asked.

The Badger smiled. "Right under the river. There is good bedrock down there, and we can easily pump out anything that leaks through the magical walls. But if we're invaded, we can collapse it and flood the tunnel in an instant."

The other beastkin chuckled at that. It was a common tactic when they built a village, either having the tunnel collapse and fill with rock or having the entrance fill with water. Both were very effective ways of keeping monsters out and then the villagers would dig a new exit to replace the one they decommissioned.

Every village usually had two surface entrances for such emergencies unless it was very hastily created, so flooding one wasn't a big issue as long as the monsters didn't make it inside.

Ella made a set of notes about the planned route and then turned to her mechanic with a smile.

"How would you like to be in charge of the infrastructure improvement project? You can start as soon as you find the staff members that you need. You can grab them from wherever they are available, and we will provide the Witches to keep the tunnelling machine running as soon as we finish updating the spells to eliminate everything but the precious resources." Ella offered.

The old Badger shook her hand. "With Witches running the tunnelling machine, all you really need is me to make sure that they're on the right course. I have an incredible sense of direction underground, and I can trace the route back nearly perfectly. If they're doing all the work with a magical digging machine, we can just walk along behind it and guide the direction how we need."

"Then we will call for the Witches tomorrow when your shift starts. For today, you can finish up the details of the roadways, and I will have one of the junior mechanics cover your assignments."

The other techs groaned at that. He was an excellent tech, and he took on a lot of the more difficult repairs. Repairs that would now be split between the rest of them. 

In their minds, the roadwork couldn't be finished fast enough.