Chapter Sixty-One: The Kobold Craftsman

"Is there really no other one?" Before heading back, Justin led the group for another round nearby.

"I already told you, creatures like the Fromicore are very rare!" Tina smiled as she took his hand.

"What a pity! I guess we’ll have to return to the base for now." Justin sighed. "I was hoping to get another Knowledge Potion out of this."

Now that he knew Wolf could kill a Fromicore, the earlier danger had slipped his mind; instead, he found himself hoping to encounter another one.

They returned safely to the base, not meeting any more dangerous creatures on the way.

"Alright!" Upon arrival, Justin summoned the kobold chief. "The squad is yours again—take them out hunting immediately and gather more fresh meat!"

"Howl~~" The kobold chief responded with a deep growl. All the kobold crossbowmen and patrols assembled at once, and, under his lead, set off.

"Tina, I’m going to start building the city walls. Feel free to wander around inside the base, but don’t go outside the walls," Justin said, preparing to get to work.

"Okay!" Tina hummed a tune and skipped off toward the fields to help her parents.

Justin resumed construction of the city wall, but after laying a single layer, he found his stock of stone bricks nearly depleted. If he went upstairs to make more, by the time he had enough, it would already be night. The wall would only get so far today.

He paused, then suddenly had an idea.

He quickly returned home, dismantled the workbench, stored it in his virtual backpack, and set it up again beside where the kobold miners deposited the stone.

"Wolf!" he called to the werewolf, who was patrolling nearby on his triceratops, keeping dangerous creatures at bay.

Wolf hurried over. "What are your orders?"

"See if you can use the workbench. If you can, help me process those rocks into stone bricks and stack them over here," Justin instructed. "You make the bricks, I’ll build the wall—let’s finish the inner city wall by tonight!"

"Understood!" Wolf strode to the workbench, scooped up several rocks with his massive arms, and placed them on it.

With a clattering sound, the workbench whirred into action. In no time, the rocks vanished, replaced by several new stone bricks.

"Excellent!" Justin's face lit up.

"But who’s in charge of security?" Wolf asked without turning, feeding more rocks onto the workbench as he worked.

"Well..." Justin considered for a moment. "Since I’m not the only one who can use the workbench, this should be easy!"

He hurried to the icehouse, grabbed a supply of fresh meat, then made his way to the kobold den to recruit ten kobold artisans in one go.

The kobold artisans looked like kobolds with the heads of sheepdogs, each carrying a stone hammer and, surprisingly, wearing a fiber tunic.

As the only kobolds who knew how to dress themselves, they truly lived up to their craft. But could they still be considered kobolds? Weren’t kobolds supposed to be mindless creatures, incapable of making clothes?

Shaking off his doubts, Justin issued an order: "Use the available materials to build a few more workbenches in the open space. Then, have five of you produce stone bricks while the other five use the bricks to build the wall!"

"Howl!" The kobold artisans sprang into action. One replaced Wolf at the workbench, making stone bricks, while another grabbed some finished bricks and hurried off to continue the section of wall Justin had started.

The remaining eight kobold artisans began hauling iron and copper ore to the warehouse, loading them into the smelter. Once they’d forged iron and copper ingots, they immediately combined them with timber outside to build more workbenches, then got to work producing more stone bricks.

It took several hours to construct a total of five workbenches, but with all five producing bricks at once, the pace picked up dramatically. Five artisans churned out stone bricks nonstop, while the other five carried them tirelessly to raise the city wall.

The only drawback was that anything produced by kobolds didn’t grant Justin any crafting experience. If he wanted higher crafting skill to make better tools and weapons, he’d still have to grind skills himself. He couldn’t use shoddy equipment forever—he aspired to a full set of epic gear to live grandly in this new world!

The five artisans making bricks worked so quickly that the other five could barely keep up carrying them away. Naturally, Justin didn’t idle—he collected the surplus bricks in his virtual backpack and joined in the construction himself.

As the sun was setting, the four walls—which he had expected would take until nightfall—were already complete!

Though not vast, the sturdy ten-meter-high stone walls now encircled the entire base, filling Justin with immense pride. For now, it was only a modest inner city defense, with just a few houses and some fields and warehouses inside—but one day it would surely grow into a magnificent, sprawling city!

Each of the four semicircular city gates had a defensive bastion, and each bastion could be manned with twenty kobold soldiers.

Justin immediately ordered the artisans to work overtime making crossbows, then used fresh meat to recruit eighty kobold soldiers, armed them all with crossbows to convert them into kobold crossbowmen, and distributed them evenly among the gate bastions.

"Now it finally feels like a real castle!" Hands on his hips, Justin admired his handiwork.

"Wow! The walls are up in less than a day? It’s a miracle!" Borint, returning from the fields, stared in disbelief.

"For Kien, this is nothing!" Tina declared proudly, as if she’d built it herself. "Wonderful! With these walls, we can walk safely within them and not worry about those ferocious beasts breaking in!"

"If only our village had walls like these," Borint lamented. "I remember once when a beast from the Demon Forest left the woods to hunt in our village. Because we lacked defenses, nearly a hundred innocent villagers were killed—including my good friend Undy."

"Let’s not dwell on the past," old Harlin said, shouldering his iron hoe with a hearty laugh. "With such a miraculous lord as Kien, perhaps one day we’ll turn this dreadful Demon Forest into a beautiful city!"