Chương 22: Walls and Soap

"Place that one here."

"Hup." Following Karath's instructions, two adult orcs lifted a large section of timber and carefully lowered it into a prepared hole. They moved as quietly as possible. Other orcs carried stones the size of human heads and arranged them around the wooden post. They were repairing and reinforcing the settlement's palisade. During the three-week monsoon, rainwater had washed away several sections of the already ineffective wooden barrier.

In truth, the palisade surrounding the settlement had never been intended to stop monsters attacking from outside. Its main purpose was to prevent children from wandering beyond the village while playing. Many creatures in the forest could crush even the bones of powerful orcs in an instant. To construct defenses capable of resisting monsters like those, the tribe would need something closer to a proper fortress wall than a wooden fence.

Such a massive project would inevitably create a great deal of noise, drawing the attention of countless monsters. If the construction could be completed in a day or two, the risk might have been acceptable. Building a wall around the entire settlement, however, would require an enormous amount of work. Attempting to construct defenses against monsters only to attract those same monsters would defeat the entire purpose. The surrounding land was also filled with trees.

Even inside the settlement, individual trees grew in scattered locations. Because the orcs had lived there for generations, the trees inside the village were relatively sparse. Beyond the palisade, however, the forest was dense. Constructing a proper wall would require clearing many of those trees, and felling them would create even more noise. For that reason, the orcs used only trees that had already broken and fallen to the ground.

When they needed living wood, they limited themselves to cutting branches in ways that produced as little noise as possible. The monsoon, however, had created conditions suitable for building a simple stone barrier. The storms had scattered countless branches around the settlement and broken several small and medium-sized trees. More importantly, the construction of the drainage ditches and well had unearthed a large quantity of stone.

A crude barrier made from earth, wood, and stone would be useless against the true monsters that dominated the forest. At the very least, however, it could buy enough time for the children and female orcs to escape.

"Fill the gaps with mud and let it harden!" As usual, Karath had been placed in charge of the project. He ordered the orcs to arrange stones of similar size and shape, then fill the empty spaces between them with mud. Fortunately, after constructing the earthen houses and drainage channels, the adults had become accustomed to following Karath's instructions. Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit. The work proceeded without any serious problems.

The construction of the simple stone barrier lasted for nearly a week. Considering the orcs' tremendous labor capacity, that was a surprisingly long time. However, the mud between each layer of stone needed time to harden, which made it difficult to shorten the process. Not every tribesperson could participate, either. The adult males still needed to hunt and scout, while roughly half the women remained responsible for cooking, childcare, and other daily work.

Even so, after a week of effort, the settlement possessed a crude stone wall approximately two and a half meters tall. Karath had designed entrances at both the front and rear of the settlement. If one side was breached, the tribespeople could escape through the opposite gate.

"Haa." Beginning with the drainage ditches during the monsoon, then continuing through the well and the defensive wall, an entire month of construction had finally ended.

"Keh heh heh. It looks extremely sturdy!"

"It would probably collapse immediately if something like an ogre attacked."

"It should at least give us time to evacuate the children."

"It will also stop weaker monsters from sneaking inside and harming them." The adult orcs continued debating the newly completed barrier after the week-long project. Fortunately, their opinions were largely positive. Karath had only been able to persuade them to construct the wall because his previous achievements had earned the trust of both the chief and the tribespeople. In the past, no one might have agreed to help him. Karath watched them discuss the barrier for a while, then quietly left.

Hearing their reactions was enjoyable, but he still had work to do. It was a project he had repeatedly postponed, but now there was finally a reason to attempt it. It might provide a solution to the problem that had killed more members of the Bloodclaw Tribe than almost anything else. Until the settlement possessed a stable supply of water, however, the project would have been meaningless. Karath had been thinking about it since the day he reincarnated. It was time to make soap.

The basic process of making soap was not particularly complicated. Creating clean modern soap required several chemical materials and specialized tools, but primitive soap could be produced through a much simpler method. First, wood or grass was burned to create ash. The ash was used to make lye water, which was then mixed with animal fat and poured into a mold until it hardened. The scent and texture would naturally differ depending on the plants and animal fat used. One question remained.

How did Karath, a former engineering student who had studied computer science rather than chemical engineering, know any of this? There was a deeply tragic story behind that knowledge. Like many other engineering students, Arnold had once been a perfectly ordinary computer science major who regularly wore checkered shirts and corduroy pants. That did not mean he had spent his entire college life that way.

During his freshman year, while he still dreamed of romance and an idealized campus life, he had briefly entertained sweet hopes of finding a girlfriend. Computer science had possessed the beautiful gender ratio of two women for every eight men. There was no need to explain which side held the eight. Naturally, every woman in the department who possessed even above-average looks received an overwhelming amount of attention from the male students.

Looking back, the department might have been no less primitive than the Bloodclaw Tribe. Arnold had been an ordinary, timid engineering nerd. He had no courage to join a competition that resembled a struggle for dominance on the Serengeti. He continued through college while hiding his romantic hopes. Then, during the second semester of his freshman year, he met her in a general education course titled Chemistry in Everyday Life. She had looked like an angel.

Arnold was assigned to the same group and finally had an excuse to speak with her. Their group project was titled Chemical Reactions in Soap and the Creation of Natural Soap. There were four people in the group, but Arnold barely noticed the other two. Keeping the angelic girl's face in mind, he threw himself into completing the project. The report he wrote received an A+, earning enthusiastic praise from everyone in the group. During the project, they had made natural soap.

Arnold presented his soap to the girl and confessed his feelings. The result was simple. He never saw her in the classroom again. Not long afterward, he enlisted in the Army.

"Damn, my eyes sting." The bitter smoke from the burning grass must have entered his eyes. Something kept running down his cheeks. Karath shook his head vigorously to clear away the useless memories filling his mind. Making soap again after so long had apparently brought the past back to him.

"It is ready." While he was lost in thought, the grass he had set on fire had already burned completely into ash. Under ordinary circumstances, reducing everything to ash would have been a disaster. Since ash was precisely what he needed, however, the result was perfect. Karath gathered the burned remains, placed them inside a clay vessel, and added water drawn from the well to create lye water. He then took the animal fat he had received from the women while they butchered meat the previous evening.

After melting it over a fire, he poured it into another vessel. Using a small wooden stick, Karath stirred the mixture repeatedly until the lye water and fat blended together. Finally, he poured the liquid primitive soap into a mold he had prepared by firing clay into the shape of a container. Once the mixture cooled and hardened, the Bloodclaw Tribe would possess its first bar of soap.