General speaking, this reply brought him a nice surprise far greater than anything he had expected. Her open and positive attitude made him feel like she was a perfect teammate sent by destiny. This way, he no longer needed to fight the Church by himself. As for a safe shuttle route, Roland had been thinking about this for a long time — to avoid the Port of Clearwater and the Seawind Region; he had thought of directly crossing through the uninhabited land south of Border Town. After arriving at the mountains, he thought about taking a hot air balloon tour to cross the mountains, gaining direct access to the town’s hinterland. That way, he would from the beginning to the end not have to pay any attention to the Church, Timothy or Garcia’s forces.
The more Roland thought about it, the more excited he became. He suppressed his urge to immediately skim over the appendix and chose the witches and instead turned his attention to the present urgent matters that needed to be solved — after all, which kind of witches Sleeping Island sent was an issue for next month, but Border Town’s currently most significant problem was the housing construction.
Since the First Army had sailed to King’s City, an endless stream of refugees had arrived in Border Town. In order to prevent the disease from spreading, Roland had arranged an area west of the city wall all for them — there he had organised for long rows of wooden sheds to be built, providing a temporary place for the refugees to live in. Together with the serfs living on the other side of the Redwater River, their number already surpassed 8’000 people. In case the number of refugees will stay at the level of the last days, this number of people will most likely break through 10’000 in total.
Guaranteeing a supply of food for these people was not a problem. After all, since the end of the Months of Demons, Border Town had continuously imported food without interruption, but the accommodation issue was clearly a big problem. During the summer, it was no problem to live in a wooden shed, and besides shielding them from the sun and rain, it also offered an excellent ventilation, even though their number of mosquito bites might be higher. But once winter arrived, there would nearly be no difference between living in the sheds and under open air, the temperature outside would be the temperature inside of the wooden shed. If he was unable to let them stay in brick houses, Roland was afraid that most of the people wouldn’t survive past the long winter. In other words, Border Town had to build houses and dormitories for 10’000 people within the next six months.
Roland spread out a new piece of paper and picked up the pen.
He intended to take a part of the workers currently construction the Kingdom Avenue and put them to work building the houses. After all, it wasn’t a big problem if the road construction got delayed by ten days or half a month, but if the people froze to death within his territory, it would leave a stain on his achievements. Even when he had only recently crossed over and had no money, and none of the nobles wanted to help him, he was still able to insure that not one person died during the Months of Demons because from hunger or cold. So, now with the Witch Union and the steam engine, as well as substantial income and workforce, he naturally couldn’t allow such a situation to occur.
But at this moment, Carter suddenly walked into the office.
“Your Royal Highness, I have bad news,” Carter said with a serious face, “The chemical laboratory just exploded.”
Chapter 236 Chemical Accident
Roland immediately rushed towards the laboratory next to the Redwater River. Arriving at the scene, Roland discovered that the damage wasn’t as severe as he had imagined. At least the main building for refining acid completely lacked any damage, while the windows at the side building had shattered into pieces.
“My Lord, please save our teacher! He is so badly hurt, almost on the point of death.”
Seeing that Roland had appeared, the group of disciples immediately gathered around him but were soon stopped by his personal guards. Roland waved his hand, indicating that they don’t need to be so anxious, “Where are the others? Let me have a look at them first.” Then he turned Carter and whispered, “Where’s Nana?”
“I’ve already sent someone, so I estimate that she will be here soon.”
“Alright.”
Roland nodded and then entered the laboratory, under protection of his guards.
Kyle Sichi was lying on the ground, leaving a bloodstain on the ground, which extended from him to the side room, giving the general idea that the accident must have happened in the side room and that he had been dragged to the main room after. His face was only an indistinct mass, with blood and other liquids mixed together, which should have been caused by the strong acid which had splashed on him during the explosion. He was also missing several fingers on his hands, and within the flesh he could see the white finger phalanges.
The apprentices had already provided him with emergency treatment, letting Roland see that they had also met similar situations in Redwater City. Dragging the people away from the danger, binding the wound to stop the bleeding, then seek help… these measures were all done quite well. However, receiving this kind of injury, and only having herbal medicine and the body’s own healing ability as treatment, would lead to ten out of ten people dying.
Roland ordered his guards to wait at the door not letting anyone enter. Waiting for Nana’s arrival, Carter and he went into the side room, trying to find the alchemist’s fingers. Otherwise, even if the little girl healed his injuries, he would no longer be able to carry out his chemical experiments — which definitely would be a great loss for Border Town.
“It looks like a violent wind had swept through here,” Carter said and then pointed at his nose, “Furthermore, there is an unpleasant odor here.”
“That is the smell of nitrogen dioxide.” Roland carefully swept his eyes all over the room. Seeing that the all the windows were open, he concluded that the possibility of poisoning wasn’t large, at most, there were merely some leftover fumes which hadn’t yet vanished. On the test stage, one bottle laid broken on the table, its acid had flown over the table’s surface, gathered on the floor and left behind a damp patch.
“Remember as you search through the tools, never to touch them directly with your hands,” the Prince reminded Carter. “There are gloves in the closet.”
Since Soraya’s ability had evolved, he had also sent a dozen pairs of thin and anticorrosive gloves to the laboratory, but looking at the alchemist’s horrible injuries, it was evident that he had been working on the test object without wearing them. In case he had worn the gloves, even if the explosion had blown his fingers away, at least his fingers would still be within the gloves.
When Roland looked through the closet above the test stand, something unusual attracted his attention. After he had taken the unusually formed bottle down and taken a closer look, he was convinced that it was actually the liquor he sold at the convenience market — and the amount left inside showed that a lot of it had already been drunk, leaving only half a bottle behind.
Kyle actually brought white liquor into the laboratory? It is hard to imagine that an experienced alchemist would be drinking during an experiment!
“Your Royal Highness, Miss Nana has arrived,” a guard reported.
“Good, continue to guard the door, don’t let any of the apprentices enter,” leaving Carter behind, who continued to rummage through the chaos to find the fingers, Roland immediately went back to the main room.
“Is it him?” For Nana, treating this sort of level of injury was already nothing out of the ordinary. The little girl who had previously been so scared of seeing blood and fainted whenever she encountered terrible wounds, had already grown up a lot — whether it was in regards to ability, or courage.