Her Beasts Volume Four

Lukewarm Reception

Iris began to guide Ares towards the business district, explaining as she went

"We decided to start with the business district when we constructed the roads. It is smaller than most of the other areas in our city, but it is frequently used by our citizens. The market frequently has males who use the market stalls to sell the extra items from their hunts, foraging, or crafting while the more permanent shops like Holly's Tea Shop are always busy.

The city walls are a bit simpler to make than the houses since they don't require basements to be dug out or roofs to be built over them. We don't even have to worry about them drying as we can just layer the clay and stone bricks and leave them to dry where they are. Of course, the sheer size of the walls means it will still take a good while for the walls to be built, but I think that will be alright.

The roads are fairly similar, but we have just been using a mixture of mud and stone bricks. We already had dirt roads from when we first started building our city. So, we just had to take the dirt we had piled up and mix water with it before layering the stone bricks onto the ground. Luckily, that has been progressing quite quickly, so the business district roads are already completed. We will be starting on the housing district next and the farming areas will be left for last. They aren't used as often so they aren't as high of a priority.

Still, I think our business district is starting to look quite nice. I hope to encourage more of our citizens to open their own shops, eventually, but even just this much is a huge improvement to how things looked this time last year."

Ares looked thoughtfully across the business district and couldn't help but admire it. His city didn't have a business district, nor did any of the other cities he had ever visited. It just wasn't common for there to be buildings dedicated to shop fronts like here. A street or two might be lined with shops, the witch doctor's home, a combat area, and some areas for temporary shops to be set up, but that was about it. Ares wasn't sure if it was necessary to waste space and resources on something like a business district, but he couldn't deny that this one had a certain amount of appeal to it.

"Are you not planning to make a combat arena? It seems like it would be a good place to host events during your festivals. The field was alright last time, but I can't imagine it is an ideal situation to continue with."

Iris shook her head as she replied to Ares's question

"No, we are planning to build the combat arena, but it will have to wait until next year. While we could devote all of our workforce to building, I prefer to have some of our citizens work on things like farming. Developing more slowly while still being able to enjoy luxuries is more ideal than forcing everyone to struggle for food and work themselves to death just to progress more quickly."

Ares wasn't sure what to say about that. While cities had more regulations on how things could be built, it wasn't exactly normal for the leaders of the city to control the development to such an extent as to be the primary employers. Ares's parents would only set aside resources and crystals to pay for the projects that they were most concerned with. It was their citizens' responsibility to ensure they were housed and fed, not theirs.

Seeing Ares's silence, Iris chose to change the topic instead of dwelling on topics that were clearly of less interest.

"The males that were sent over to help with the road construction have been hard at work as well. We've already figured out the best path to take in terms of speed, safety, and efficiency. Luckily, the river isn't between our cities so we won't have to build a bridge anywhere. We have decided to build some wells next to the temporary lodgings along the roads, though. It will save significant amounts of time since we won't have to worry about the road sticking close to the river and it guarantees there will be a source of water, even if the river dries up one day. Landscapes do have a habit of changing over time and I'd rather this project be one that can be beneficial in the long-term."