Chương 19: After the Deluge

Rain continued pouring from the sky. To borrow a painfully common expression, it was as though a hole had opened in the heavens. When work on the drainage ditches first began, the world had been submerged in darkness, as if the sky had been painted with black ink. The orcs had been forced to continue digging with only the faint moonlight reflected in the falling raindrops.

"Rokta!"

"Ogar!" However, after losing themselves in repeated battle cries and military songs, the darkness gradually began to recede. Karath could not tell whether so much time had passed because everyone had become intoxicated by the work and singing, or whether they had simply begun near the end of the night. He had been wandering through dreams when the sound of rain awakened him, after all. Regardless, the important thing was that the night had passed and morning had arrived.

The damned storm clouds and relentless rain still blocked almost all sunlight, but working during the day was better than working at night. At the very least, they could see their surroundings more clearly. While wandering through uneven undergrowth in near darkness and constructing the drainage ditches, the orcs had repeatedly tripped and fallen. Every time it happened, they simply laughed heartily, climbed back to their feet, and resumed working.

They truly were heaven-sent laborers that any American first sergeant would have adored. Now that visibility had improved, however, the number of falling orcs decreased considerably.

"We will begin working inside the settlement now!" During the night, they had more or less completed the long drainage ditch running along the settlement's outer edge. Although the orcs had formed a permanent settlement, it had not been built through modern construction methods, so the ground naturally possessed a slight slope. Fortunately, their ancestors had chosen a relatively level area, which made the incline difficult to notice.

Karath had been considering drainage ditches for some time, so he had already studied the subtle changes in elevation. He directed the construction so the ditch followed the slope from higher ground toward lower ground. Completing the outer ditch did not solve everything. As he had already considered, the settlement had never undergone any proper leveling work. There were naturally countless depressions inside the village where water could collect, and those places could easily cause flooding.

"Chief, have your group begin here and dig a channel all the way to the drainage ditch we made earlier!" Karath turned toward another group.

"Grandfather Jark, please level the ground over there! The rain has already turned everything into mud, so it should be easy!" Since they were already constructing drainage channels, Karath decided to level the ground at the same time. This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. They had no machinery and were working entirely by instinct.

Once the rainy season ended and the children resumed running everywhere, the ground would probably become a crater-filled disaster again. Still, the work would remain effective until the end of the monsoon. That was better than doing nothing.

"Uncle Galon, Aunt Gerina, and Mother, please follow me." After assigning duties to the other adults, Karath ordered a small group to accompany him. During the outer construction, his main responsibility had been ensuring the ditches followed the natural slope. The work inside the settlement was different. One problem remained that Karath needed to handle personally. Without him, the work would become extremely difficult.

As he led the adults toward the intended location, he noticed one of the orcs leveling the ground while walking directly toward the same area.

"Do not go over there!"

"Huh?" Karath shouted in alarm, but he was already too late. Crack! Splash!

"Grah!" The orc disappeared into a trap. After the Horn Boar invasion, the children had installed far more advanced traps throughout that section of the settlement. There was one task Karath absolutely had to perform during the internal construction. He had become the leader of the mine-clearing unit. The torrential rain continued without pause for three days. Fortunately, because the orcs had spent the entire first day constructing drainage ditches, not a single flood occurred inside the settlement.

There had been several minor incidents when orcs fell into traps during the construction and leveling work, but nothing serious happened. Completing the ditches on the first day did not mean they could relax. The channels and ground had not been reinforced with cement or concrete as they would have been in the modern world. They were merely trenches carved through mud and could collapse at any time. For the next three days, Karath and the adult male orcs worked in three rotating shifts.

They continuously inspected the drainage ditches, repairing any section where a problem had appeared or seemed likely to develop. An enormous amount of rain struck the settlement, but because of their efforts, none of the houses collapsed and no major damage occurred.

"Good to see you again, sun!" For the first time in three days, sunlight appeared in the sky. Karath had seen the sun almost every day of his life, yet after only three days without it, the sight felt strangely wonderful.

"Karaaath! Come plaaaay!" The children had been confined inside their homes throughout the downpour. Now that they had finally been released, they excitedly rushed toward Karath early in the morning. In the past, preventing children from leaving their homes during heavy rain would have been almost unthinkable in the orc settlement. Back when they lived in huts that could collapse during any flood, keeping a young orc inside could result in the child being crushed beneath falling timber.

The earthen houses, however, had proven that they would not collapse easily. Once the orcs understood that, they refused to let the children go outside. With chaos spreading throughout the settlement during the storm, no one knew what might happen if the children ran around recklessly. Apparently, Karath had not been included in the category of children while he commanded the drainage construction. In any case, being trapped indoors for three days had caused the young orcs' blood to boil.

They possessed even more energy than usual. Today, however, Karath could not allow them to waste that energy and stamina on games.

"Today, we are going to play something new!" The children had another task to complete.

"Huh? What is it?" Karath smiled brightly at the younger children staring at him with innocent curiosity.

"First and second squads will play the ground-leveling game!" Then he handed the three shovels he had prepared to the third squad, the hulking thirteen and fourteen-year-old adolescents who had undergone their second maturation.

"The third squad will play the tunnel-digging game!"

"Waaaah! A new game!" To any reasonable observer, Karath had clearly announced the beginning of hard labor. The children in the first and second squads, however, remained completely delighted.

"What do we do in the tunnel-digging game?" The older boys were at least mature enough to show curiosity, but none of them expressed any resistance.

"First and second squads, wait here for a moment! Third squad, follow me!" Karath led the third squad toward the settlement's outer edge, where their work needed to begin first.

"Watch what I do, then follow my example." Like a seasoned drill sergeant, Karath demonstrated his refined shoveling technique and began excavating the ground.

"We have three shovels, so three of you will dig at a time. You will work in three rotating groups and continue without stopping."

"Why do we need to take turns? Can we not just keep digging?" The older boys were accustomed to making traps alone or in pairs, usually with their bare hands. Karath smiled cheerfully at the question.

"Because you need to dig very deeply!"

"How deeply?"

"Very deeply. Much deeper than any of you are tall."

"Deeper than our height?"

"Yes." The members of the third squad would have to dig an extremely deep hole that day.

"Are we making some new kind of trap?"

"No." What they needed to build was not a trap.

"We are going to dig a well."