Chapter 149: A Few Spars And The Brewery's Construction Progress

Hearing Lucius's words, John was a bit thrown off.

~shing~

Taking this opportunity, Lucius parried his attack and pushed him back. John though was well experienced and recovered in less than a second, using the moment of being pushed back to turn it into a roll.

~thud~

~DENG~

Lucius's next attack missed and hit the ground instead. John got up from the ground with a leap and slashed back at Lucius, whose sword was pointed downwards. But just when it was a few inches from him, Lucius tilted his body back and let it fall to the ground.

But before it hit the ground, Lucius used his hands to cushion the impact and sprang back up. While this hand made the sword in his hand fall to the ground, Lucius kicked the base of the sword with his leg, sending it flying towards John.

~DENG~

Unfortunately, the power of that attack was mediocre and John was able to block it with this own sword and knocked the blade away.

~deng~deng~thud~

The sword clattered against the ground before coming to a stop against the wall of the training hall. Lucius knew that he had lost this round but did not mind it. Till now he had been unable to win even once against John, which showed the level that he was at.

"That was actually good! You did not give up even after losing your sword. It was defiantly a smart move, but it would have been better if you had a spare weapon with you. So make sure if you ever do this in a real fight, you have a secondary weapon with you." John praised.

"I'll keep that in mind, lieutenant John." Lucius said.

"Please, like I said before… Just call me John. It feels weird when you use the title like that." John said with a chuckle.

"Alright, John," Lucius replied.

Lucius then relaxed for a bit before beginning the next round. 

"Oh yeah, you were asking something before?" John questioned, remembering Lucius's words.

"Yes, I asked if you were able to catch any more Bore Shrew at the brewery," Lucius answered.

"Bore Shrews? Hmm… I think the workers managed to catch three of them. But they are some pesky buggers, managed to chew through the box they were kept in. I dunno if they catched more though now." John replied.

"Hmm… I see. Send them to me if they find any more of them." Lucius stated.

"Okay," John said, not questioning what Lucius was intending to do with them.

To John, it was simply not his business, and plus Lucius was his lord and superior. There was no way he would ask about it unless Lucius spoke about it first. Having heard John's response, Lucius simply nodded before entering a sword stance.

The two men sparred for about four more rounds before stopping. Nearly two hours had passed since this and Lucius was now tired. He returned to the mansion while John himself went to the brewery to check up on things.

Since the workers had been promised bonuses, they had been working for longer shifts, even extending it past the sunset when it was dark. With the help of several torches and braziers, the darkness was no problem.

What they simply did was that to divide the kind of work they did into different hours. Then in the day time they would assemble the building itself, while during the dark they would instead cut and make the parts of the Brewery that were needed.

This made the working far more efficient and they were able to do a lot more work than before. And since they were working till late at night, John needed to be there to supervise as well. Although a steward was there all the time too, John being there meant that they would have extra security too.

It was not like they have had not had any intrusion attempts at the site either. A few thieves had managed to sneak in from the forest side but were caught when they got into the main fenced area. 

The fence around the brewery was over three meters tall, made out of wooden logs that were covered with long sheets of canvas. While this didn't really prevent people from entering it, it did manage to hide what was going on in there.

Of course, this was just a temporary thing and a solid stone wall was also being built alongside it. This stone wall would be even taller than the current fences and would be five meters tall while having a thickness of about one and a half feet. 

One would think that this was a bit of overkill and that the expenditure would be too much, but surprisingly, it was not. Among the workers they had gotten, two of them had gifts that were specialized in the manipulation of stones. 

While they couldn't freely manipulate them like it was clay, they were still able to do things, such as making small grooves and notches on them. This had made the construction far easier, as they didn't even need to have symmetrical stones.

They could simply put the stones together, use their gift to make grooves and notches that interlocked and then manipulate it again to make the said groove disappear. This would essentially cause the two stones to fuse together, turning them into a solid wall.

Because of this, they needed no mortar or cement to make the wall and the cost of materials went down. The only restriction in this way that this greatly depended on the Aether capacities of the workers.

Fortunately, these workers were older and experienced. Since Aether capacity grew with age by default, the two workers had a lot of it and due to their experience, they were able to use the Aether frugally, which prevented any excess waste.

This optimized their Aether use and allowed them to work longer times, which in turn sped up the building of the wall.