CH1005

With just how much work there was going to be to do, morning started early that next day as they made their way out to the swamp, with how it was to be built settled in Ben’s mind.

While ecological destruction was never going to be something he would personally classify as ‘good’, that was basically what building any large enough settlement would come down to, and on that world in particular, it was hard to really feel it would matter. With hundreds of races arriving there, along with whatever tag-alongs managed to join in the form of animal and plant life, there was no such thing as a natural ecosystem on that world, with no inch of it not feeling the mark of so many alien ecologies that left what would live and exist in any stretch of land a constantly shifting mess as some creatures died out and new ones moved in. Looking at it that way, there was little he could do to the world that would be worse than what had been happening to it ever since the first group of gods and believers landed down on it. The damage was already done.

And yet, despite that, that didn’t mean that Ben wanted to play a part in ruining it any more. He had no qualms with clearing a bit of land to build something, but radically altering entire miles of ecosystem for his own convenience was a bit too much for his taste, especially when there were sure to be unexpected consequences for such things. Sure, he could drain the water from the land, drying it out and making sure it wouldn’t be able to return to its current state, but any ecosystem also played parts in the ones around it too. Without the swamp there, chances were just as good that it would mean the new town he was going to create and any surrounding communities would start to flood depending on the season, if not suffer under other consequences he couldn’t predict. Why risk it when he could instead build something to exist in harmony with the land itself, at least to a greater extent than what they could currently hope for, and with those desires firmly in place the two of them began building what they needed to, going across the total area of the land and driving colossal stone columns into it, the first step in their construction.

Each one thicker than he was tall, hundreds of them were placed and secured, down deep enough to hit bedrock and leveled out once they were, each pillar looking to be the same height as they peeked out over the trees, all for Ben to begin the next step of enchanting on them. With the enchantments needed being simple, the designs of them needed to only do one thing. Move the air around them.

One of the few concerns he had about building in that area was the smell. Not horrible, yet undeniably one of decay, it wasn’t going to be a pleasant stench to live with and thus he dealt with it the easiest way he could, choosing to blow it away.

While the pettiest parts of him thought to aim it at the city who’d specifically rejected the refugees, he held himself back. No matter what flaws their mayor and some council members held, not everyone there deserved to deal with such a thing and he instead broke up the flow of gas instead, sending it off in either directions where there were no other settlements or else to ones that were too far away to ever reach, with a bit of mana crystal to power the effects and ending that part there.

Once done, when he flew above the tops of the other pillars again, he could instantly tell the difference, one problem dealt with as they moved onto the next. The pillars were placed to keep them from having to eradicate the swamp. From there, they needed to add a platform on top of it to build on, going to some of the extra land Phixth had managed to secure them to mine it.

Ben had asked for room to grow and he’d gotten it, with a few hundred meters to a few kilometers of space around the total swamp to work with and of it, the two had found the best spot they could to dig for materials, Thera picking a far smaller swath of land than what they otherwise would have had to destroy and dug deep into the ground below, getting all of the stone they’d need as a small mountain if the stuff floated in the sky above them, undoubtedly drawing the eyes of anyone else who might have been near enough to see it before it was flown back over and flattened out, going back for more in two more trips before the thick plate that would sit atop the pillars was in place, structurally strong enough to build a city on.

Yet also not done. The point of building the platform was to keep from destroying the swamp itself, but no access to sunlight would kill it all the same, something else he wanted to avoid and worked to do so as from there, Thera cut holes into that new platform. Not everywhere, Ben was more than particular about where they needed to go, but enough to let anyone see the ground below as they walked through it, giving them the next materials they would need as buildings were constructed from there.

Similar to what he’d done with the jötunn, he built a series of apartment-like complexes throughout the new area, focusing on density of housing while at the same time making sure neighbourhoods were broken up with plenty to do. Restaurants, shops, and other stores were all given a place, creating various gathering points and leisure activities for the people who would live there, and while he didn’t dedicate churches to any one god, he made sure the land had a grand enough communal church for those who wanted somewhere to worship that he personally shaped statues of each god for, even if he let his favouritism slip through in some designs more than others. They had the body of the town shaped and down in what would have seemed like a snap to anyone watching, but with the main structures finished came the far harder part. Making the finer details.

A task so challenging that, now that he had the space, Ben pulled from his rings some things he’d been forced to spend the previous night making as materializers of all sorts came out, activated upon their release to begin spewing the endless materials that were going to be required. As skilled as Ben himself was in the act, there was simply too much for him to make even if he used all of Thera’s mana as well, allowing them to divide the work from there as he shaped what was needed and managed the materializers while she moved what he was creating into each building, creating the new workflow between them.

Pots, pans, plates, cutlery, furniture, pipes, and more. There was so much that one of his materializers could just spit out in the shape he needed from the start, requiring at most a few more minor modifications depending on what items were going to what family, given the vast swath of differences might exist between any two people, but that didn’t mean there was nothing to do. While all of those were going, he had raw materials being spat out to shape with his magic for other tasks and other items that required more effort than he wanted to build into a materializer. Spitting out string and yarn was easy, but he needed to be the one to weave it all into bedding and blankets and clothing, all of it floating in the sky around him as his powerful mind devoted a fraction of his attention to that task, making sure that everyone would move in with things to wear and a warm place to sleep.

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Toys needed to be made for children and books and other bits of entertainment for the adults, as well as enough of that same reading material to fill a library as he both recreated some of what he’d read as we well as created his own copies of his various educational books, piling them up around him, eventually forced to stop just long enough to give Thera a circlet for her thought speed to let her keep up with the sheer demand of it all. It felt nearly endless right until it wasn’t, letting them move on to their next task; laying down the various pipes they’d made and that Thera had taken around town.

That was something entirely on Ben as he brought forth something that seemed to barely exist in that world before then, though on a much smaller scale for the wealthy and powerful or city-states with robust enough infrastructure to handle it. Plumbing, both to bring in water and take out waste, as well as the treatment facilities for both.