NOVEL NEXT Chapter 399: Unable to cross, unable to return
//An author's note to avoid confusion: Until the two plotlines converge, they might not follow the same timeline. In other words, a week passing for Peter doesn't mean a week has passed for Banjay. And worry not, this message doesn't affect the chapter's price!//
"Smoke, you say?" Makary raised his eyes and looked right across the table and at my face. "And not big enough to be from natural causes?"
I nodded my head as I stretched back in the chair.
In the week that I was away, the work on the new camp progressed smoothly.
With the injection of ten thousand fresh imperial workers, the work all around the camp sped up as if the project managers all stepped on the gas all over the camp.
Funnily enough, even though there were still two days before the next batch of workers would be given for us to manage, the temporary housing was already all nice and cleaned, ready to receive its next residents.
That didn't mean Makary's planners crammed all fifteen thousand men into a single housing project, though. Instead, they've already moved on to the second phase of the construction plan and started to split the camp into a total of nine districts.
For each of the districts, there was a housing project in the very middle, where all the services and roads connected. A project capable of housing five thousand people each with the addition of phase three houses constructed for those who would gain recognition of the supervisors by displaying exemplary skill, ability to learn fast or simply working harder than the others.
Out of the nine districts that would make up the layout of the entire camp in the future, only four were active, though, given how only with the next batch of workers coming in five days we would cross the halfway point of filling our ranks up.
But it was also at this point, with just fifteen thousand workers serving under Makary's engineers and architects, that the effect of scale finally started to kick in.
The task of setting up a whole new housing project, something that would take a massive amount of resources and up to even ten divisions of workers doing their best for several days in a row, now turned into a standard task that two divisions should be able to finish within three days.
But it wasn't just the housing projects that started to speed up. This truth applied to every single project around, from housing, through smelting arrays at various types of factories ending. Your journey continues with empire
On my way to the administrative building, I could swear I even caught a glimpse of what could be either a massive cathedral… or a damn school!
All in all, the new camp that I saw upon my return was nothing like the camp I had seen before leaving. This only made sense, given how there were now three times as many workers as during my last visit, or how it was the first time for me to see the new camp after several days, as opposed to monitoring its growth at all times.
By now, just by leaving the camp for a week, I've pretty much lost track and thus control over things happening in here, making it pretty damn challenging to get myself back into the flow of things.
A task that only grew harder when I ended up sitting with Makary in an otherwise perfectly empty and sound-isolated room, tasked with nothing more but giving a report of my progress.
"Don't take what I'm going to say too seriously, but I think I might've figured out both the secret of that damned place and also how to crack it," I revealed with a cautious smile.
"I'm all ears," Makary countered, interweaving his fingers before leaning forth over the table and resting his chin at the top of his cupped hands.
"First off, the bending of space. Or maybe it's the illusion that stops people from moving in the direction they think they do?" I lost track almost as soon as I opened my mouth. "No, let's just say that once you get deep into the plain enough, there's a force actively stopping you from going back."
Makary squinted his eyes before leaning his head to the side and giving me a look that substituted the need for him to ask about the obvious.
"Yes, it seems that using my portals allows me to circumvent this issue. But that's not the interesting part," I added before putting on a huge smile on my face. "And in all honesty, it's thanks to you and Leon for organizing those automatic haulers that I've managed to realize the truth."
"And that truth is…?" Makary's face changed to one filled with quite a fair dose of annoyance.
Even though he went along with it in the past, by now, Makary was growing quite tired of my tendency to spice things up with a little bit of dramaturgy.
"This force that stops people from going back," I mentioned before putting on a wide smile on my face. "It seems to only work on the level of one's consciousness. Or, to make it as direct as possible," I leaned my head to the side… only to then turn silent, giving Makary the chance to figure it out himself.
I gave him enough of a lead to do so. And with how I've figured it out without anyone pointing the peculiarity to me, I had high hopes for the mercenary leader to catch on.
"Autonomous driving?" Makary raised one of his eyebrows as he asked.
"Yeah," I replied and nodded my head. "I first noticed it when Claudy was parking the haulers in line with the buggy. While doing so, he could freely make them roll back the way we came from with no issue. I'm not quite sure if he realized the importance of that, though."
Just like I was now enclosed within a perfectly silenced room with Makary, Claudy was likely giving a report of his own to Etaria in some other part of the camp.
"What does that have to do with the smoke that you mentioned, though?" Makary asked, pulling his hands apart and then leaning back in his chair. "Wait, if that smoke was manmade, then doesn't that mean…"
I sighed before nodding my head.
"It's just my guess, but I believe not all those who tried to traverse this accursed land ended up losing their lives to it," I revealed my assumption before leaning over the table and slamming down my left hand on it.
"This is the barrier of the light so intense, it would fry the brain of anyone daring to as much as touch it," I explained, pointing at my left hand with a finger.
"We also know there's a force that disallows people from gaining distance to this barrier," I added, placing my right hand on its rim and then sliding it across the table towards my left, imitating a force that pushed everything towards the impassable barrier.
"So what you are trying to say is," Makary interrupted, most likely already seeing the point I was trying to make.
"That's right," I nodded my head before pulling both of my hands back and standing up, only to rest both of my hands on the table as I leaned over it. "I believe the people who managed to cross the plain and reach the barrier," I gulped down my saliva, "I believe they are all stuck, unable to cross the barrier and unable to return."