Chapter 103

“What exactly is wrong with it?”

“Well, I guess the first thing I didn’t like about Dakart… is the stench.”

“Dakart?”

“It’s the name of the mining town that was ceded by the principality. Didn’t you know about…?”

“I didn’t know about that.”

This is the first time she noticed this fact, and it makes Yuri chuckle.

If it is a small village with a population of less than a hundred, it may not even have a name itself. However, if it is a ‘city’, such a thing is impossible.

And yet… if you ask me, I never cared about names.

Even when I was discussing the cession with Duke Theodore, the new monarch of the principality, I think we only referred to the city as ‘mining city’.

“Well, the name is fine. If the city was rebuilt by <Kikyou> hands anyway, it would be better to name it something else, right?”

“Yes, you should. In that case, I would like it to be named after Yuri-sama.”

“When you say the stench is bad, is it as bad as in Nildea before?”

The cities of Yuritania and Ulysses are equipped with sewage systems. In this world, excrement and sewage are stored in jars and when they are full, they are disposed of by a disposal company. The more people live in a city, the more jars there are in the city, spreading an unbearable stench throughout the city.

The unbearable smell that Yuri felt in Nildea in the past is still burned into her memory. Even if she wanted to forget it, she couldn’t seem to do so.

“No, the stench of Dakaat seems to be even worse than Nildea.

Can I finish the story after I’ve finished eating? Sister made these madeleines with her own hands, but I’m afraid they won’t taste as good…”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Of course, you can wait until you’ve finished eating them.”

It certainly wasn’t the kind of talk you want to have when you’re eating baked goods.

After Sinon had finished her second madeleine, which she savored slowly for several minutes. Yuri asked Sinon about the rest of the story.

I heard that about eleven thousand people are living in Dakart, a mining city. In any other city, more than 90% of the population would be human, but in Dakart, less than 20% of the population, roughly 2,000 people, are dwarves.

In addition, the excrement that these dwarves produce, according to Sinon, is the cause of the great stench that is incomparable to that of humans.

“In the meantime, the beast that I borrowed from sister, Kirin, dared to record a point some distance away from the city of Dakart as its [Transfer Point].

So when sister uses [Transfer Magic] to visit Dakart in the future, please be sure to bring someone from the <Water Lily> with you and let them use [Purify] first before entering the city.”

“Thank you, I’ll keep that in mind.”

If the population is 11,000, then the city itself is about half the size of the Nildea of the past.

If the size of the city is that large if you ask the <Water Lily> to expand the range of [Purification] and use it once, you can remove all the filth and stench from the entire area. 

“It’s not that I don’t like the stench. The stench was unbearable, but if you put up with it for ten or twenty minutes… you’ll lose your sense of smell and be able to ignore it.

The next thing that bothered me after I entered Dakart was the ‘strange amount of walls’ in the city, and also the ‘lack of wide streets’.”

“Hmmm… I wonder how much of the latter is ‘no wide streets’?”

“I believe there is not a single street in Dakart where a carriage could pass each other.”

“―――What? It’s really that bad?”

“Yes,・・・・・・it’s that bad.”

Because there is no standard for size, the carriages and wagons that are commonly used in this world vary in size from object to object. The width of the carriage is usually around 1.5 to 2 meters.

“Arrange the main streets should be the first thing to be decided when designing a city. How in the world can you make such a terrible city?”

“This is speculation. Maybe they didn’t even design the city of Dakart.”

“What…?”

“First they build a wall around the city, and then they build a lord’s house in the middle of it.

Maybe―――I think that’s all they did in the city of Dakart. It must have been completed by the people who started living in the city later, building houses and stores in any place they wanted. This is why the streets in the city are all narrow and unnecessarily curvy, and why there are so many dead ends.”

“Unbelievable…”

Yuri couldn’t help but hold her head in her hands when she heard Sinon’s words.

Yuri’s not a designer, but she used to work in the construction industry.

As someone who has also done some design work, Yuri was dazzled by the fact that such a huge project as building a city was being carried out under such a sloppy plan.

“I wonder why there are so many walls.”

“I can answer that question, too, if you’d like me to speculate.”

“I’d like to know.”

If it was the opinion of <Kikyou>, a professional architect, even if it was a speculation, it would be of great help.

In fact, if it was speculation that came from Sinon’s actual investigation of the area. It’s probably a pretty good bet that it’s the truth.

“Dakart was probably initially intended to be a small city of about 1000 people.  I think that the number of people grew unexpectedly, and the size of the city was later expanded again and again.”

“Oh, I see. That’s why the wall is still there, isn’t it?”

“Yes. That’s what I think.”

Once the wall is built, the population limit of the city is generally determined at that point.

So, if the population increases later, the only way to increase the capacity of the city is to create a new ‘walled area’ outside the wall.

A wall that can withstand a demon attack, is not easy to remove.

So every time the city is expanded, the old walls are left behind in the residential areas. The result is a city with an inordinate number of walls.

“This is unplanned at its finest…”

“I’d like to see the face of the lord who thinks it’s okay to have such a terrible city!”

“You didn’t look too happy about it, did you?”

The entire mountain region that was ceded from the Duchy to the Yuri Empire this time is the land that Duke Drapon has owned for a long time.

And the face of the Duke Drapon that I saw at an evening party some time ago was, how should I say it, an impression of an ordinary mature man with a ‘warrior’ face.

It’s a rather common face, so unfortunately it’s not very interesting.

―――Well, it’s no use remembering.

As long as Duke Theodore has created his own, there’s no chance to meet Duke Drapon anymore.

“When you think about installing water and sewage systems and redesigning the city from the ground up. I think it would be quicker to build a new city on the premise that this one will be disposed of.”

“I agree. I also inspected the mines as well as the city. I visited the mines as well as the city, and they were just as bad, so you might want to be prepared for that.”

“How bad is it?”

“I think there’s a high probability that even a minor earthquake will cause a cave-in.”

“It’s beyond repair…”

Yuri never experienced one of these since she came to this world, so she guessing this is a place where earthquakes don’t happen as often as they do in Japan.

However, it’s terrible that the structure can’t withstand even a mild earthquake.

“Moreover, no consideration was given to ventilation in the mine. It’s kind of amazing, isn’t it?”

“… At any rate, I now understand that all the miners in Dakart are suicidal.”

Sinon’s words made Yuri’s head spin again.

A mine shaft is a sophisticated facility that requires careful consideration of how to circulate fresh air to the end. If there is insufficient ventilation, not only will the miners run out of oxygen, but there will also be a serious problem if toxic gases gush out.

If they are digging without considering this, then even though they call themselves a ‘mining city’, they must have built only short tunnels in the mines of Dakart.

I’ve heard that silver production has been declining in recent years. It is only natural that if you dig only in the areas close to the entrance, the production would drop blatantly.

(If they don’t have the technology, why don’t they just use open-pit mining instead of building tunnels?)

Unintentionally, Yuri thought about that.

… With the way things are going, it is questionable to what extent the proper treatment of the mine water is being done.

If the city were to be damaged by mineral poisoning, there would be no way to stop it. It would be wise to replace the city with a city built by <Kikyou> as soon as possible.