The World Dragon's Heir

Chapter 618: Fine Design

As the Knights began to disperse to plan for their evening activities, Dominic found a chance to explore the area himself, and take a quick look at the arena venue before the tournament started.

He had left the design stage entirely to others, so he had no idea what it actually looked like inside, only what he could see from the outside.

The Knights were right about the whole area being set up like a large fairground, and the closer Dominic got to the building, the more vendors and other shops he found set up for the event.

They even had merchandise shops from some of the Knights already in place, selling small pennants for the crowd to wave when their favourite came on the field.

It was quite impressive, given the short time that they had to get everything in place, and a testament to the innovation of the locals.

Not only had they managed to create a functional market around the arena, they had already begun altering their sales to match what the people wanted.

A shop that had been selling sweets had turned their sign around and was now selling meat buns and pierogies.

Though, they hadn’t erased the old sign, so perhaps that was part of the plan all along. Sell sweets during the day, and savoury snacks in the evening, when everyone was actually hungry, and more sugar was only likely to give them a stomach ache.

Dominic stopped to grab an egg bun from one of the stalls, and a coffee from another.

It might not be a healthy meal, but it was tasty, and he had a lot of day left, so there was no harm in a coffee or two.

At the doors to the arena, the hired guards stepped aside to let him through, which caused a brief moment of chaos as others who hadn’t seen who had been allowed in tried to follow him.

The grounds were set up with precisely trimmed turf over sandy loam, giving good grip, but a soft enough surface that a knight landing on it wouldn’t be seriously injured by the impact.

Most of the time.

Fortunately, they had healers ready, as well as alchemy potions, and the sport was actually much lower in injuries than Dominic had first expected.

The Knights were professionals, and they had taken hundreds of similar strikes over the years. They knew how to take the hit properly, and how to fall to minimize damage.

Their armour was also designed to protect their neck in the event that they took a bad tumble from their horse and landed headfirst.

The design would limit the crushing force, as well as the lateral movement of the head, transferring most of the impact to the shoulders. It was only a small change compared to what had already been designed for use against blunt weapons, but it was an important one.

The seating was standard for a stadium or amphitheatre, with rows of benches circling the field, each higher than the one in front of it so everyone could see.

The only real upgrade that had been made was that there were extendable sunshades at the top, which could be pulled out to put most of the crowd out of the direct sun.

Or rain, Dominic supposed.

They wouldn’t cover the best of the seats, but everyone in the upper half should be relatively sheltered from the elements.

Jousting matches typically didn’t stop just because it was raining, and the spectators would compensate for it if they didn’t want to get wet. But if it was likely to rain, most of them would bring a long jacket or a canvas tarp to use as shelter while they watched.

“Your Grace, is it to your liking?” One of the team members from the Infrastructure group asked as Dominic stood by the entrance to the stadium floor, admiring the design.

“Indeed. It looks like you thought of everything, and included the best elements from arenas all over.”

The man nodded. “We’ve also got an [Area Barrier] orb built into the security room, so that the whole roof can be sheltered from the rain. It will need a mage to keep it up, so it’s not necessary to activate it all the time.

But if it starts raining too hard during an event, we can shelter the spectators and continue the show.

Hopefully, that will reduce the number of delays during future functions.

Too many times, we’ve run into cases where things were running a week or more behind schedule simply because of the weather. Now, Wistover is expected to get a lot of rain this season, and we can’t have every event being delayed.”

“I knew that I was right to leave it to your team.

That it exactly what we needed. And I see that you even built lighting into the stadium, so events can run well into the evening hours.”

The worker smiled. “That was at the insistence of Engineer Marcos. When he was in school, he was on a date at a cricket match, and they called it on account of poor light just as he was about to get somewhere.

He’s still not forgiven shoddy stadium design for that night.”

“Have you gotten to speak with Lord Blackwell yet? He’s the Infrastructure Advisor appointed by the King, and I know that he has some larger scale ideas for the region.”

The worker sighed, then nodded. “Yeah, we spoke with him last night. He’s definitely got ideas for the region, and some of them are going to take much more than what our team is capable of.

I know that the King sent more teams here for the adjustment period, with the Envoys settling in, but they’d better hang around long enough to take on the roadwork projects that Advisor wants done.

A road between here and the main highway at Lympsbury isn’t a small undertaking, no matter how much magic the team has.

The new roadwork machines will make it possible to do in a year, but that’s about it.

Asking any more of them is pushing your luck.”