Herald of Steel

Uzak then excused himself, by very straightforwardly bidding his goodbye, “My lord, then please excuse me as I prepare the necessary equipment and men for the new construction,”

“Umm, work hard.” Alexander gave the permission with a curt nod.

And then hung the same bait he had hung for Jazum and Krishok, “And once the three projects are completed, I will make you a shorder (Baron)!”

“As long as I have enough cement I won’t need sleep, my lord,” The stonemason gave a wide grin as he bowed, his zeal for work tripling.

“Mmm, I will increase production drastically soon. So be ready,” Alexander promised the man and thus finished his tour for that day.

Over the next days, Alexander would observe tipper carts, carrying clay and gravel moving along the already half-compacted road layers, and dumping their contents behind them that would be used to form the road’s outer layer.

After these materials were felled on the road, the heaps of material were spread out with planks by workers and then a thin layer of the cement would be sprinkled on top.

Soon afterward a second horse cart, carrying water barrels would be used to drizzle the road, wetting the cement and causing it to start reacting with the surrounding sand and gravel and binding them together.

And finally, horse-drawn rollers would be driven over the wet road to evenly spread out the cement and smooth out the surface, thus producing a smooth stone road.

With this production process, one extra care had to be taken which was to make sure that the final geometry of the road had slightly sloping sides, to allow for rainwater to be drained outwards and away from the road.

“My lord, I can confidently say that there exists no road in Adhania as beautiful as this one,” Uzak would confidently claim, then going even further to claim that no road in the world was so beautiful.

“And to think that you intend to make all the roads, as beautiful, no even more beautiful than this one! Ohhh!” Uzak cried out in happiness, his artisan spirit singing at being not only able to witness but also contribute to the constitution of such a milestone project.

Alexander only smiled and nodded at the fanboy, instead his mind catching on the word ‘all the roads’.

The fact was even Alexander did not know the exact length of the road network he had commissioned.

Only the rough paths along which they were to be made.

But even then it would not be wrong to praise the roads not only for their quality but also their quantity.

For to say the length was anything less than grand would be a gross understatement.

These roads were not just simple straight roads that connected point A to point B.

But more like city block roads, with each straight line containing multiple branches of roads, who themselves had many splits attached to them.

So if seen from above, the roads would not look like the straightforward, single lines one would typically expect in a medieval city, or the narrow, twisty- turny curves of a compact, dingy city, but much more like a modern city’s road network- rectangular and grid-like.

And achieving this intended effect was not easy for Alexander.

Previously a house might be situated on a one-man alleyway that the people living there would call a road, whereas Alexander’s renovations aimed to make the houses have roads on all four sides, or at least two, much like modern-day apartment blocks.

And this was certainly an ambitious project as space inside an ancient city was really minimal.

For example, ancient Rome housing a million people (1,000,000) was just 40 square km, and people were able to cover the end-to-end of the city in about an hour on foot.

Compare that to a modern city like Dallas with a similar population which has an area of 1000 square km,

And this was the same case for Zanzan.

Small dingy houses, huts, and shacks littered the side of the streets, occasionally supplemented by shops and workshops of various kinds, all trying to edge closer to the buildings opposite of the street and, choking out the road in between them.

There were open slaughterhouses, fishmongers, and all kinds of unspeakable filth littered the streets, from animal guts to dead animal bits to various house wasters to even human excrement,

And to rectify these problems, Alexander knew he had to remodel the entire city.

There was also the consideration of planning for the future, where, according to optimistic projections by Alexander, the population would balloon soon after, and so, now that Alexander had the opportunity with the population being relatively low and docile, he decided to apply extensively urban reworking to this haphazard, chaotic city.

Thus he laid out his first set of instructions to Uzak, who was in charge of making both the roads and sewage system, and it commanded him to demolish the many slums and dilapidated houses all around the city and start making roads through some of them.

And though some objections were first made, they did not rise up in arms for being made homeless as many would expect.

Instead, these voices very quickly died out.

And there were basically three large reasons for this.

First, it was because Alexander was the one giving out free food, medical, and even jobs to everyone. So the people either obeyed him or starved. And it very much helped that the pasha had a literal army under him to silence any detractors.

Second, it was because a huge number of the houses demolished were ownerless and thus by default owned by Alexander.

This happened because the owner either died, left the city, or was captured as a slave

And the third and last reason was because Alexander had promised all of them new houses. This promise was easily verifiable as they could personally go and see the construction works going on, and many even worked on them, which reassured the populace.

And thus, combining the three factors, the populace was generally peaceful about all the infrastructure developments.

But how extensive were these renovations?

Well, quite a lot actually.

First and foremost came the roads.

According to Alexander’s designs, there would be four main roads, with each of them having many lanes, streets, and walkways connected to them, like branches of a tree.

These four huge main ways would be like the arteries of the city, connecting the four major parts of the city all to the city center.

One of the arteries, being connected to the most number of smaller tributaries, came from the west, where the new residential district was being-made.

This western road had many branches, one on each side every twenty meters, which themselves were connected to others, forming the characteristic grid-like city roads.

This made the western part of the city have the most amount of roads and was Uzak’s current sector of operation, as directed by Alexander.

Another road went from the port on the southern side of the city to the center.

This would be where all the ships docked and loaded and unloaded their supplies, and Alexander planned to build the road to reduce congestion of all people and horse-drawn carts entering and leaving this part of the city.

This was also where the industrial district of the city was planned to be located, to be littered with workshops, kilns, and furnaces, intentionally chosen for its proximity to the sea for ease of transport of goods and services. ．

There was already some evidence of that, as both the cement and brick-making kilns were here, and Alexander planned to place the industrial and production heartland of his city here, and make it be littered with workshops, manufacturing plants and kilns, and furnaces.

And to help with that, Alexander had plans to build tens of huge warehouses along the port to store all the raw and manufactured materials.

The next road, according to Alexander’s plans came from the east, which ran through the part of the city famously known as the city underbelly.

It was the place where the dregs of society would accumulate and was home to all kinds of immoral establishments, offering pleasures of both the flesh and mind.

Entertainments like gambling dens of all kinds, ranging from playing various kinds of dice games to animal fighting bets, to many drinking parlors that doubled as brothels, so housing the city’s famous red light district, this part had it all, making it the immoral party center of the city.

No self-respecting woman would be caught anywhere here, while most male bachelors would be.

But currently, this once ‘great’ part of the city was close to ruin.

The war and famine had hit this entertainment district particularly hard, and business was almost non-existent.

For example, before Alexander came, there was no food to host the drinking parlors, people would listlessly play dice to pass the time or distract themselves from the crippling hunger pangs, money having lost most of its value and women would only whore for food, not coin, something few would be willing to part with.

And so Alexander had decided to capitalize on this momentary weakness and destroy it.

Yes, not remodel it, but destroy it, with his official reason being the sector suffered from the same problems as the rest of the city, too narrow streets, congested buildings, and squalid conditions.

And while the real reason was much more strategic- to root out the rats that had lived there for generations out of their holes