Chapter 36

"Hey, Ars. Can I say one thing?"

"What is it, Brother?"

"Your hideout is really lame. It looks like a prison cell, you know."

I was insulted by my brother, who had just been officially hired to help with the work.

He was criticizing the hideout I had built.

But, I couldn't deny what he was saying.

In fact, it really did look like a prison cell.

My hideout was a building I had constructed when I was developing the forest.

When I built this hideout, I didn't want to spend too much time and effort building it far from home in the forest, so I used magic to quickly create it.

However, building a structure all at once often leads to failure.

So, instead of building the structure itself, I built walls.

I erected three walls, each 5 meters high and 5 meters wide, in a U-shape, standing vertically from the leveled ground.

Then, I added another wall with an arched entrance to form an O-shape.

The roof, which didn't touch the ground, was the only part that required a lot of effort, as I had to make and stack bricks myself.

In short, the hideout I built was a cube-shaped, or what could be called a tofu architecture, which was incredibly lame.

Incidentally, the walls were nearly 2 meters thick.

So, it wasn't entirely wrong to say it looked like a prison cell.

"...Don't underestimate me, Brother. I'm a man who grows every day."

Until now, only I and the Valkyries used the hideout, so I hadn't really cared much about it.

But, he was right; this wasn't good.

Having a prison-like structure on a vast piece of land wouldn't look good.

Thus, from my brother's one comment, I decided to renovate the hideout.

* * *

"First, let's try that method."

Apart from the hideout, there was another event that piqued my interest in architecture.

It happened when I went to town with a merchant.

In the town we visited, there were no wooden buildings; most were brick structures.

The town was expanding its outer walls, and I often saw people involved in construction.

The bricks I had made were also being used in the town.

Naturally, I was curious about how they were made.

The inn where my father and I stayed was newly built.

It wasn't for the laborers working on the expansion but for merchants, and it was recently constructed due to the economic boom.

I paid close attention to this inn.

The inn wasn't particularly large.

The entrance faced the road, but it wasn't very wide, and it was a long, narrow building.

The building itself was two stories, with a reception counter and a staircase next to it upon entering.

The ground floor had a dining area, kitchen, and the innkeeper's living quarters behind the counter.

On the second floor, rooms lined one side of the corridor.

There were six rooms, but each wasn't very spacious.

If you placed a bed, the room's space would be reduced by half.

I carefully observed the inn where we stayed.

I didn't just look around; I used magic to investigate.

I spread a thin layer of refined magic power through the bricks used in the inn, gradually covering the entire building.

My affinity with earth-type magic probably helped, as the magic power easily seeped into the bricks, and I successfully infused the entire building with magic power in a short time.

Then, I activated the magic.

The [Memory Storage] magic.

I just thought of trying it out while staying at the inn.

But, it worked better than expected.

I instantly and perfectly memorized the entire structure of the building.

It might be similar to how computer-generated graphics are used to display building designs.

The entire graphic was input into my brain.

If I could recreate this perfectly memorized inn, my brother would surely be surprised.

With this thought, I decided to conduct an experiment to recreate the inn.

* * *

The first time I tried to create a building with magic, I used up all my magic power and fainted.

From that experience, I hypothesized that the magic consumption for building structures depends not on the area or the amount of materials but on the spatial capacity.

I don't think this hypothesis is wrong.

However, this time, I want to build the structure all at once, breaking away from that hypothesis.

This idea came from using magic and [Memory Storage] to understand the structure of the inn.

I infused magic power into the bricks of the existing building, grasped its structure, and memorized it perfectly.

At that time, I was memorizing the shape of the building, not the entire space.

I think that when I tried to create a building from my mental image, I wasn't clearly aware of the internal space.

I was always imagining the building from the outside.

I believe this was the reason for the unnecessary consumption of magic power.

However, this time, I have memorized the entire structure, from the stairs to the width of the counter.

If I can reproduce the shape with magic and then use the magic, I should be able to avoid wasting magic power.

With this thought, I quietly refined my magic power and channeled it into the soil of the ground.

I infused the soil that would be used for the inn with magic power.

From my past experience with magic, I felt that the amount of magic power required for construction would be sufficient without waste.

I took a deep breath to steady myself.

I concentrated and continued to manipulate the magic power.

When I learned and used magic arrays before, it was difficult to reproduce them from what I had seen.

But this time, it's different.

I memorized the structure of the building not through visual information but through magic power.

I just need to reproduce the shape of the memorized magic power.

I changed the shape of the magic power to match the structure of the inn, carefully and smoothly, without the fatigue of creating a magic array.

I maintained my concentration and used magic power to build the entire structure, and finally, I converted that magic power into bricks for the finishing touch.

"...It's done. Success."

In this way, I built the inn in an incredibly short time.

Thank you for reading.

Please consider bookmarking and rating if you enjoyed it.