Lord of Rot

Unlike Kro, Leech wasn’t nursing a headache. Ditching Kro had saved him a lot of grief, sparing him from Gelan’s inevitable complaints.

He rode his horse to the area temporarily designated for the new brickyard.

The brick kiln had already been erected. The masons were highly efficient, which was no surprise given that Leech was throwing money at the project.

The money he’d gotten from selling the horses in Mama City—funds originally from the Fishman crypt—was just enough to solve this pressing problem.

The masons were preparing clay—playing in the mud, basically. As for Leech... he only understood the concept. No one could expect him to actually fire a brick. He could give a rough description of a kiln and the general principles of brick firing, but that absolutely did not include doing it himself.

First, the clay.

There was clay alongside the rivers within Porcupine Territory. Its texture was fine, almost completely free of hard pebbles.

The carpenter’s apprentices had rushed to build cart beds. The excavated clay was loaded into these wooden beds on two-wheeled carts, which were then hauled by draft horses to the brickyard. This ”brickyard” was really just a patch of wasteland that no one ever visited, its only distinction being its proximity to the kiln.

Carpenters played a crucial role in Leech’s brick-making plan.

Compared to the high price of iron, wood was cheap and plentiful. Even with aggressive logging, the dense forests could support Porcupine Territory’s development for many years to come.

The molds for the green bricks were simple rectangular frames nailed together from planks, open at the top and bottom.

Slaves would pack the mixed clay into these frames and press it out, forming a moist green brick.

It sounded simple, and it wasn’t complicated to do, either. It was just hard, physical labor.

First, the soil had to be broken up. The excavated earth was very compact, like chunks of rock soft enough to be crumbled by hand.

Then, it was soaked in water and kneaded into mud. Doing this by hand was exhausting, so some apprentices in charge of the heavy labor chose to get in and stomp on it with their bare feet.

This was the raw material for red bricks. The only real trick was to add more dirt if it was too runny and more water if it was too dry.

Once the clay was ready, the next step was to use the ”molds” Leech had described.

The masons were the ones to start making the green bricks. Once they mastered the technique, they would pass the grueling work on to their apprentices.

A simple, level platform was built from stone. Making green bricks was exhausting work; constantly bending over would kill a man’s back and ruin his efficiency.

A flat wooden plank served as a work surface.

The mason slammed a lump of clay down.

He then packed the clay into the mold, used a Little Knife to slice away the excess stuck to the plank, and with a simple lift and a push, the formed green brick could be removed.

But they immediately ran into a problem. The green brick wouldn’t release from the mold. If they tried to force it out with their fingers, it would leave two deep holes in the brick.

Seeing this, Leech thought for a moment before saying, ”Go find some ash from under a stove. Sift it, then dust the inside of the mold with it.”

”Yes!”

The mason immediately ran to find some ash. After a few tries, the brick came out of the mold perfectly.

”Praise the Lord!”

The fawning praise arrived right on cue.

Production of the green bricks was fast. The formed bricks were laid out in an open space to dry; only completely dry bricks could be fired.

After watching for a while to make sure there were no more problems, Leech went to inspect the brick kiln.

The kiln was a Horseshoe Kiln. Porcupine Territory didn’t need a huge number of bricks, so there was no reason to invest too much.

More importantly, Leech only had a rudimentary understanding of kilns and couldn’t have explained a more complex design. His main principle was to build something that worked. He would leave pioneering and innovation to the craftsmen he inspired. Once they came up with real improvements, Leech would offer a cash reward and update the technology.

Entering through the kiln door, the front was where the fire was fed. It was equipped with a stoke hole and a firebox.

The kiln chamber was where the green bricks were placed for firing. It had loading and unloading ports for convenience.

To ensure they fired evenly, stacking the green bricks was a delicate process. They had to be arranged with gaps between them, not packed tightly together. The process would only be a success if the earthen bricks were fired into red bricks.

Red bricks: waterproof, cold-resistant, and corrosion-resistant.

Plus, they weren’t hard to make, as long as one was willing to risk failure and keep trying.

The rear of the kiln was the chimney.

Below the firebox was an ash pit. The ash from the burnt firewood would be collected. Whether used as fertilizer or as a component in building materials, it was an excellent resource.

The weather was excellent. Making and drying the green bricks took only two days.

And so, the first batch of green bricks was loaded into the kiln.

There were over 7,000 green bricks in total. A sizable pit had been dug out by the river; Leech planned to dig it deeper, fill it with water, and turn it into a fishpond—a good way to reuse the space.

They fed in the firewood, lit the fire, and began.

Even from a great distance, you could feel the terrifying heat.

Leech sipped a cold honey beer, watching the thick black smoke billow into the sky.

The firing process lasted for the better part of the day, from noon until dusk.

Then came the natural cooling period.

Two days later, it had cooled completely.

The masons entered the still-warm kiln and began hauling out the bricks with two-wheeled carts, each man quickly becoming drenched in sweat.

Now, the first batch of red bricks was laid out before Leech.

They were red because the iron in the clay had oxidized into ferric oxide during firing.

A mason picked up a red brick.

It cracked.

”Lord, this...” The mason didn’t know what to do. The idea of firing bricks had come from the Lord himself. They had never even considered such a thing before. ’The Lord can’t be wrong,’ he thought. ’So if something went wrong, the fault must be ours!’

”Try another one,” Leech said calmly.

”Yes, sir!” The mason obeyed, picking up another brick. This one was perfectly whole.

It didn’t even break when he slammed it on the ground.

”This!” The mason was stunned.

Before this, when anyone mentioned bricks for building, they were talking about stone blocks cut from a quarry.

And they used rice paste as mortar.

Lu Leiyi’s castle had been built that way.

Commoners usually lived in houses of wood or mud.

Some wealthier commoners might use rubble, but only for castles would people go through the immense effort of hewing stone into uniform blocks.

So when they saw dirt fired into stone, the masons felt they were witnessing a miracle. No, it was Magic!

’Could they build castles like this in the future?’ he wondered. ’No, these red bricks aren’t as strong as the massive stone blocks of a castle, but they’re certainly better than a thatched hut, a mud house, or a wooden cabin.’

’Praise the Lord’s wisdom!’

”Tally the condition of all the bricks,” Leech told the mason. Seeing the man’s helpless expression, he added, ”Go find Gelan. Have him lend you an apprentice to help you record everything.”

”Thank you, Lord!” the mason said, overjoyed.

The tallied results soon reached Leech. Of the 7,000 green bricks, only 5,305 had come out solid and intact. The rest were warped, cracked, or had other issues. A portion of them also had black cores.

The warping was a temperature problem. Leech was only an armchair general in this regard; the practical experimentation would have to be done by his subordinates.

The black cores were from incomplete combustion.

The cracks were likely because some of the green bricks hadn’t been fully dried.

After briefly explaining the likely causes and potential solutions, Leech left the brickyard. The first batch of 5,305 red bricks would be sent to the commercial district. Once they had enough, construction could officially begin.

To speed up the masons’ work, Leech assigned the batch of slaves from Linta Bay to focus solely on making green bricks. With four hundred people at it, the green bricks covered the entire brickyard in a single day, even spilling out to occupy a great deal of the surrounding empty land.

’Manpower really is productivity!’ Leech thought.

The group had to be reassigned the very next day, as they had already exceeded their quota in just twenty-four hours.

Tens of thousands of green bricks were fed into the kilns and fired.

The success rate climbed higher and higher as the masons rapidly learned from experience.

As stack after stack of red bricks piled up in the commercial district, the proudest people were not Leech, but the masons themselves.

They no longer had to worry about resource shortages, nor did they have to fly into a rage because someone had pilfered the rice-paste mortar for a snack. Leech’s invention had helped them create one uniform, miraculous red brick after another. They could already imagine beautiful red houses rising one by one throughout the commercial district.

The masons, holding the blueprints, would design large casement windows as per Leech’s request—windows that could be thrown open for light during the day and shuttered at night.

But just as all of Porcupine Territory buzzed with activity, Leech received some bad news.

His first real craftsman, Dwarf Fla, was dying.