Chapter 404: Oscar and Julia have a Field Day

After the meeting they all went their separate ways and Joshua headed home for the day. It was already getting late and he needed to make a few calls about the upcoming plans for the new base. The first thing Joshua did was call up Oscar to see if he was available to help work on the town. Although Oscar had several projects going with different guilds for the most part he just managed teams that went out and officiated the work. The robots the system gave did most of the building while Oscar and his group just had to come up with the design for the robots to build off of.

The moment Joshua called him the old man seemed to brighten up even though Joshua was just going off of his voice alone. It seemed like Oscar had been waiting for him to call ever since he heard about the successful subjugation of the large town. Joshua found out that it didn't come as any surprise to the old man who instantly agreed to bring a team along to check out the area and start planning a design for it the following day. After that they spent over an hour discussing all the things that Joshua had just finished going through in the alliance meeting. He wished that he had just brought in Oscar from the get go so he wouldn't have to go through the whole conversation twice.

Unluckily for Joshua he had to go through the entire conversation a third time when it came to getting Julia onboard. She was so excited at the chance of getting involved with building another town that she talked far longer than usual and said a bunch of architecture jargon that Joshua had never heard of. It took a while for Joshua to finally finish the conversation and get some rest for the next day. With the excitement from the two main individuals Joshua knew that things were going to be interesting in the morning.

After a good night's sleep and a quick morning clean up followed by breakfast Joshua made his way to James Town where he planned to meet up with Henry, Julia, and Oscar. He didn't go directly to the sight because he was going to have to give Oscar and the people he brought along to help him out access to the area. Otherwise they wouldn't be able to come through the portal and might end up teleporting to some unknown location. Considering that they weren't explorers that could end up being a death sentence.

When Joshua got there Julia was already there excited for the day. It was one of the rare occasions where Joshua saw the woman away from the rest of her group, she was in an extremely talkative mood as they waited for the others and Joshua could see that she was looking forward to getting started. They didn't have to wait long with Henry showing up only a few minutes later followed up by Oscar and the rest of his working crew. There were about a dozen architects with him and the amount only got Joshua wondering how many different architects it would take when it came time to rebuilding a city. That was going to take a long time even with the system help and Joshua highly doubted the six month grace period would be long enough to set up an entire city.

"Well it's good to see you again Joshua." Oscar said with a giant grin on his face as he noticed him and Julia standing together. There were a few other people from the guild working around James Town, but for the moment the place was fairly empty. "It's nice to see you as well Julia. I hope you two are ready for a long day. From what I could see of the territory when watching the large subjugation broadcast I'd have to say this could be my hardest challenge yet."

"It's good to see you as well Oscar. I'm glad we'll be working together again." Julia said with just as energetic of a smile as Oscar's. Henry simply nodded in introduction since they had already met in the past while also acknowledging the others that came along with Oscar.

"It's been a while, but I'm looking forward to seeing what you guys come up with for the new territory this time around. You'll have even more support this time since the entire alliance will be helping out with the project." Joshua explained getting short nods in return, but Joshua could see the excitement in all of the architects' eyes.

"That's great to hear. With a project of this scale it will take a while to get set up, but for now we need to focus on the design of the town. Best we get to it, it'll take several days to get things going." Oscar explained. Joshua nodded before entering the names of everyone in Oscar's group into the system and giving them guest access to alliance territories. This way they could go inside. Joshua was planning on opening up James Town to explorers outside of his own guild in the future after they finish clearing out all of the territories nearby, but this was a way to give access to people outside of the guild without inviting them into the guild or alliance completely.

With everyone set Joshua created a portal that took them straight to the area just outside of where the large town was located. When they all stepped through the portal and arrived they could see the massive change in scale when it came to the size of the location. The area for this town was at least three times the size of James Town if not a little bigger. There were far more natural resources that could be useful for a town nearby such as the river that cut through the area. Having a natural water source gave this town a leg up on other territories.

The town itself had been completely cleared out. There was not a single building left, not a single paved street or other types of infrastructure from the old town. The alliance got the system to clear all of that out ahead of time. They needed to design the town with defense in mind and the original town clearly didn't even have that as afterthought. Plus there were a lot of useless structures in it beforehand. With a clean slate they could build everything to where it could both survive in this new world on its own while also protecting future inhabitants from beast.

With everything cleared out it just looked like a massive dirt patch with a large river flowing through it. The area was in between a plains territory and the mountain behind it so the greatest threat for beast to approach from was obviously the mountains while the greatest threat from a territory war would be from the front and the sides. In the end they would have to protect the base from all angles, but they could prioritize different types of protection depending on the location. It was clear that a strong wall would need to be placed around the entire area, but there needed to be space for the river to cut through the town along with a small portion of space between the buildings within the town and the mountain at the back.

"Well this place definitely has a lot of promise. I can already see some unique structures we could build to help protect the town." Oscar said with a smile as Joshua opened his system interface and started searching for something. When he found it he quickly selected and brought up a huge map of the area so that all of the architects could see it.

"This is a map that you guys can use that shows not only the terrain in the local area, but also anything nearby. It details underground as well if you're worried about structural integrity in some spots." Joshua explained before he selected something else in the system menu. "These are all of the materials that Nathan, Naomi, and other members of the support portion of our alliance gathered to help build the town. You can have the system bots bring them out at any time if you plan on building anything, but I'm guessing you guys will want to set up a design first."

"Yep, now that we've got a good look at the surroundings it shouldn't be too much trouble to figure things out. I've already got a good idea in mind in how we could use the environment as a way to defend the town." Oscar said while admiring the surroundings.

"Really? I thought the environment would be more of a detriment when it comes to the town's defenses." Henry said. He seemed a bit surprised by Oscar's perspective. Joshua could tell why since he and Isabella had both thought that they'd have to plan out how to defend the town from the creatures coming from the mountains more than anything. Most of their planning was about that entire situation.

"True the mountains can be an issue, but once you claim the territory and figure out what kind of beast live up their then we shouldn't have much trouble planning out defenses against it. With this much space and materials it'll be easy to create a good defense. However we can use the river to our advantage to create another type of defense around the town." Oscar said while pointing out everything on the giant map.

"You mean like a moat of some kind?" Julia asked as she could see what Oscar was going after.

"Yep, it might not help with flying beast, but having a large moat around the entire town could slow down any land based beast that try to attack the town. It'll also create a natural choke point for most people if they try to break through in territory wars. We would just have to create a few bridges around the town for entrance." Oscar explained.

"I can see that working since we've already got the water source, now all we have to do is make it, but large beast could probably walk straight through the river if given the chance." Henry said. He seemed to already like the idea of a moat. It made it so that there were structured entrances to the town that they could easily guard. Three would be enough to keep any traffic coming in and out of the town from getting to chaotic.

"Even if all the moat ends up doing is slowing them down then that's more than good enough. The slower they move the more time that the turrets will have to mow them down. Not to mention the other town defenses that could easily get involved." Oscar said with a shrug. "I think it's the best natural defense you could ask for in a location like this one."

Joshua just stood back and listened to Oscar, Julia, Henry, and all of the other architects describe the best way to set up the large town and realized just how much of a task it was going to be from all of the different things that they were pointing out. Even if they could get everything set up the way they wanted to the first task that Joshua was going to have to deal with was the mountain range behind the town. It was time to go out on another expedition.