Chapter 395: Running Away

Adrian immediately snapped his head up. He looked at Serena in horror, and then he looked at Claire.

Everything single thing that was Earth-related to the word ’Daddy’ immediately flooded into his mind. The internet culture, the memes, the sheer, unadulterated cringe and the roleplay aspects of bed time activities.

He grit his teeth.

’Your mind is dirty,’ Adrian told himself. ’Cleanse it. She is just a child. It is an innocent word.’

But no matter how much he tried to rationalize it, he just could not hear that specific word in an innocent way anymore. The damage from modern internet culture was irreversible.

He exhaled so loudly that everyone standing there could hear him do so.

"No, Aria," Adrian said quickly, his voice entirely flat. "Do not call me that... do not ever call me Daddy. Just call me Papa. I really, really like it when you call me Papa."

Claire smirked at his obvious discomfort.

"What about us then?" Claire asked innocently. "You said you don’t like being called Emperor."

Adrian didn’t even hesitate.

"Just call me Emperor, please," Adrian pleaded. "Call me Emperor. Call me Lord. Call me whatever you want, just not that."

Before they could say anything else to tease him, Adrian just started walking forward at a very brisk pace. He stared straight ahead, hoping against hope that they would just drop the cursed subject entirely because this was definitely something he did not wish to explain or talk about in front of Aria.

Claire and Serena looked at each other behind his back. They both chuckled and giggled quietly to themselves before they finally started walking to follow behind him.

Adrian walked out of his mansion’s private compound and out into the open streets.

He took a moment to just take in the atmosphere of his city.

There weren’t many tall buildings or busy shops built right near his mansion. The immediate surrounding area was mostly just clear, empty land. But there was one specific thing that gave this quiet residential zone a very unique, premium feel to it.

It was the roads.

The roads here were extremely well-laid. They were made of thick, flat, chiseled stones that had been meticulously placed flat on the ground by his construction crews. They didn’t have a perfectly uniform, geometric pattern, but the slightly jagged, interlocking stones looked very beautiful and natural.

It was entirely different from the smooth cement roads or the black, sticky bitumen asphalt roads that he remembered from Earth. Modern roads were all uniform, and they were sleek and beautiful in their own way, but Adrian honestly liked this rugged, historical stone pathway much more.

He looked around at the large, empty plots situated near his mansion.

Each and every single empty plot here was absolutely huge. These specific parts of land were basically meant for very important, wealthy people if they ever wished to buy land and build their own massive luxury houses near the Lord’s estate. This was prime, highly sought after real estate. Well... it would be in the future since it wasn’t exactly highly sought after yet.

Until now, no one had really spent any money on building private houses here.

And that was entirely by design.

Adrian had already explicitly instructed Cassius and Burke to make sure that all of the city’s construction manpower was focusing entirely on building high density apartments and expanding the central market area. Housing the massive influx of peasant refugees and building the local economy was the priority.

Because of that strict zoning rule, this specific neighborhood was pretty much underdeveloped.

But it did not matter to Adrian. It was a really calm, quiet place to live, at least for now.

Adrian walked further away from his estate and headed straight toward the bustling center of the town.

As he moved closer to the commercial zones, the ambient sounds of the city got noticeably livelier. He could hear music, shouting, and sounds of people basically just bargining.

He could see the massive wooden apartments looming in the distance. They were huge, blocky complexes shaped in a wide ’U’ shape, featuring a central open courtyard. They were packed with multiple identical cubicle rooms in the middle, and each building stood exactly four floors tall.

None of this housing was made using expensive stone and mortar. There was no modern cement used either. Every single one of these massive apartment complexes was made entirely out of treated wood harvested from the forests nearby. Originally, Adrian did use his dungeon to make things faster and to skip a few steps but after the first few apartment complexes were built, he let the guys cut their own trees and this basically gave birth to the lumber business and gave a huge boom to the carpentry industry in oresfall.

As Adrian stared at the wooden apartment complexes, he couldn’t help but think to himself about the long term logistics.

’These things are incredibly quick to build and cheap to mass produce,’ Adrian analyzed internally. ’But their overall structural integrity will definitely start to go down after just a few decades of weathering and rot. Wood just doesn’t last forever in a tropical climate like this.’

He shrugged slightly.

’But it is fine for now. They serve their purpose of getting thousands of homeless peasants off the streets, and they will continue to perfectly serve that purpose for a few more years for sure. After the population stabilizes and we secure enough stone quarries, I’ll think about knocking them down and upgrading to proper masonry.’

As he continued walking with the girls trailing behind him, he started to see the first few retail shops.

These small storefronts were all situated slightly away from the main, chaotic central market, which meant that these were all private, independent shops. They were businesses that were actively being rented and managed directly by the local citizens of Oresfall.

They weren’t exactly state run businesses that Adrian personally funded and just hired random people to man the counters for him.