Herald of Steel

Chapter 637 Viewing The City’s Progress (Part-1)

As Alexander’s leisurely days turned to weeks, he began to notice the three had become much more aggressive in their desire to sleep with him.

In fact, the more the time for Cambyses’s conception approached, the more the trio seemed to want to spend more time with him, with even Mean skipping overseeing the housework to get frisky with Alexander under the sheets.

Alexander had first thought this eagerness was because they had missed him very much over the last few months.

But that idea did not seem to hold water as with the passage of time, the girls did not slow down their advances as one would expect after sating their lust.

But instead, they began to get even more aggressive with each passing day, to the point they were willing to try even some extreme plays involving things like melting wax, where Alexander would pour hot, melted wax on the girls’ luscious boobs, perky nipples, and even the crotch.

Or bondage plays like the wooden horse where they would be naked or with underwear on a wooden triangle and feel the wedge dig into them, or rope plays, where the girls would have their limbs bound tightly in different ways, all of which worked to present themselves as a helpless prisoner to Alexander, allowing him to do whatever he liked to them.

Alexander was at first a bit confused by this overly eager attitude, not understanding where all this love was coming from, until one day Gelene accidentally let spill the beans during a particularly steamy session.

“Ahhh, yes…make me pregnant…I too want to give master a son like sister Cambyses,” Gelene in her lustful stupor had screamed out as Alexander came inside her.

Hearing which made Alexander raise a slight eyebrow.

Of course, this was nothing too unexpected, as Alexander guessed the other girls seeing Cambyses’s burgeoning belly could not help but feel both happy for her and also a bit sad that it could not be them.

Alexander would always make them apply the legummum, which acted as a spermicide, both before and immediately after each session, so getting accidentally pregnant was not really possible.

And even if they could manage to fool Alexander during this process and get pregnant, still the legummum was capable of inducing even late-stage abortion once processed in a certain way.

So the only way for them to realistically get pregnant would be only through Alexander’s permission.

But Alexander was very strict here.

He wanted his main wife Cambyses to give birth first, preferably to a son, thus solidifying her and her child’s position in the family, before he would think of having children with others.

Now, there was no rule stating the main wife had to give birth first.

In fact, it did not matter when she did, just that she did.

But Alexander preferred his firstborn to be Cambyses’s and hence he kept all the relations with his other women sterile for the time.

“If you want to be pregnant wait till Cambyses gives birth twice. Then I will let all three of you conceive.”

And as he came to know about their desires, Alexander was very clear in his deal to them.

Alexander wanted to give Cambyses two chances to produce a son before others had their own kids.

And if Cambyses had two consecutive daughters, well then Alexander would have to accept that his successor would have elder siblings.

There was nothing he could do what that.

While for the trio, upon knowing Alexander’s deadline, they seemed to calm down and get off their heat.

They at least now had a time frame and given that Cambyses was already close to delivering once, it meant they would be able to conceive in another year or two.

So at last the intensity of those night attacks decreased and Alexander finally had some time to give his little brother some rest.

Now, Alexander of course did not spend all his time engaged in debauchery.

He also did some work.

Not much, but he did, holding meetings and going over policies.

But primarily over the following weeks and months, he went on various tours across the city, in order to see how everything was going.

He first visited the construction site of the apartment complexes and was pleased to see quite a few of them were already complete, standing tall and magnificent, with their shiny white painted walls glistening under the golden sun, the rows of four-story buildings seemed to exude a profound sense of strength and safety.

The very first of these were even starting to be furnished with doors and windows and it appeared the building would soon be ready to accept its first inhabitants.

Alexander first viewed these complexes from the already completed new, wide, roads, and then decided to go over to meet and talk with those in charge.

Here he made conversation with the foreman, asking him about the project’s progress and what kind of problems he was facing.

Then he toured the insides to inspect the build quality, and found they were built mostly to his specifications.

“Small merchants, artisans, and city guards should get first priority in obtaining these flats.” And as he toured, he made a note to himself on how to distribute these flats, choosing the groups possessing rare skills and those economically more significant to be favored more.

And after coming out of the flat, lastly, with kind of half an agenda at propaganda, he exchanged some pleasant words with laborers there such as the bricklayers and cement mixers working there, asking them about their working conditions and life in general, which made these poor folks be over the moon.

“The lord is so nice. Never thought a noble would actually talk to me.” The minimum wage men would say to themselves, recounting the experience several dozen times to anyone who would hear, from his family members to friends to even acquaintances.

While the man who was being praised, Alexander, after inspecting the apartments, moved to see the aqueducts, several of which were under construction.

And much to his delight found many seemed close to being complete.

The huge overhead structures ran 10 meters high and were several meters wide, with some running for several kilometers all the way from deep inside the Cisran hills, where they would collect water from the large and fast-flowing spring waters, which would sometimes be as much as hundreds of gallons of water per second for each aqueduct, and then transport them all the way to the city.

To do this the aqueducts would be built with a slight reclining slope so that the water would flow gently from the hills to the city under the effects of gravity.

A key point here had to be the word ‘gently’ as a very fast-flowing rate of water would erode the structure quickly.

Furthermore, these aqueducts would have many stone bars pointing out of them along many points, its job to catch large-sized garbage like the carcasses of dead animals like goats, sheep, and even cows or large boulders that could fall into the water.

After all, given the water would travel for several kilometers under the open sky, it would be very common for it to be contaminated by all kinds of rubbish, dirt, leaves, to even dead birds and animals.

Anyway, after the water finally arrived at the city, it would be collected in humongous overground tanks or reservoirs, with there sometimes being multiple of them.

And down below, many huge pipes would be connected to them, all working to distribute this collected water across the city to many designated outlets.

These outlets would be in the form of giant wells or fountains, from which people would be able to collect the water at their convenience.

This was of course quite a primitive way of distributing water to the city, and Alexander already had future plans to divert a part of the water to bathhouses and public latrines, to industries such as dying, and lastly to private houses, such as his own and other nobles, thus finally giving him some kind of running water,

But developing such complex underground delivery networks and mechanisms to control and direct the flow of water would take some time, as pipes needed to be made and the ground underneath dug to lay them in.

And so for now, Alexander settled for the current arrangement, with tens of large wells spread throughout the city, with their greatest concentration being around the western district which was designated to be a residential area, they being fed by multiple aqueducts, many of which provided water to multiple such collection points simultaneously.

Well the aqueducts were supposed to work as per the above description.

As up until now, these magnificent structures were yet to be completely made operational.

So as Alexander looked up, he saw many of them ending abruptly in the middle of the sky, while many workers and beasts of burden worked around it, the latter mainly working the huge cranes that lifted the huge stones and many bricks that were needed to build the thing, while much of the former was on perilous scaffolding, laying bricks and stone layer by layer, applying the cement as mortar between them and extending the structure towards its eventual goal bit by bit, brick by brick.

And seeing such a huge structure get built piece by piece right in front of him, Alexander could not help but feel a surge of achievement and a sense of accomplishment.

‘Once it’s finished I will be grand!’ He said to himself.