The Lord Demon King is Unfathomable!

Chapter 1695 477: City of Quagmire (Part 2)

Just as people were all talking at once, someone who actually understood what was going on finally stood up.

"What do you lot know!" The speaker was a foreman from a textile mill. He looked at this bunch of short‑sighted fools with open disdain and barked in a rough voice, "That place might be a dump, but there are plenty of Lizardmen in there!"

The drunken miner couldn't help talking back.

"What good is having a lot of them! Their claws aren't even suited for work!"

"That's just because they don't have tools suited to them!" the foreman retorted. "What if that envoy from the Gutaf Kingdom really does have the ability to whip them into shape? That's tens of thousands, maybe over a hundred thousand laborers!"

Someone in the crowd immediately caught on.

"Makes sense…"

Lizardmen can't work with Human tools—so just give them Lizardman tools and they'll be able to work, won't they?

But precisely because they'd thought of this, everyone quickly grew tense again.

Tens of thousands of laborers…

Those beasts aren't going to come and steal their jobs, are they?!

In fact, even before Princess Aileen marched out, Thunder City's labor market had already shown signs of saturation; it was just that the war and the issuance of war bonds had papered over many problems.

However, their worry didn't last long.

The foreman snorted smugly and quickly tossed out an even more tempting angle, dispelling that faint trace of misgiving that had just sprouted in their hearts.

It wasn't actually his own idea; he'd heard it from his boss.

Not everyone needs to wait for announcements from City Hall. For those who truly have clout, there are plenty of channels to get information.

"…Besides, don't just stare at those Lizardmen. How His Highness the Prince uses them has nothing to do with us, but the decree clearly states that Mr. Sak is going to build a 'city' in the swamp! Saint Sis above, do you know how many bricks, how much timber, how many people that'll take?!"

"Even if the Gutaf Kingdom can really whip that bunch of mud‑soaked worms into shape, it's not like the job can be done by tomorrow. I'll put my words right here: the sweetest cream on this cake is still going to fall into our laps in the end!"

Those words were like a lamp of wisdom, instantly lighting up all the laborers and craftsmen in the tavern.

That's true!

Building a city means countless orders and job openings!

The atmosphere in the tavern shifted in an instant from confusion to frenzy. People began excitedly discussing what slice of this new construction boom they might be able to carve out for themselves.

This is roughly the beauty of an economic upcycle: even those whose lives are as small as dust can keep open hearts and yearn toward the light.

Listening to the chatter around him, an architect sipping his drink shook his head and lazily voiced his happy worries to the Apprentice beside him.

"We're in for a lot of work this time."

The Apprentice froze for a moment.

"Isn't good business… a good thing?"

The middle‑aged man grinned, took a swig of fragrant beer, and squinted out the window.

"Of course it's a good thing… but our opponents aren't simple. If we don't give it absolutely everything we've got, it'll be hard to even get a spoonful of soup out of this feast. I'll bet you anything that 'Invincible Group' in the city is going to be in meetings till midnight again tonight."

"'Invincible… Group'?" The young Apprentice was even more confused and asked blankly, "What's that? Are they really that impressive?"

"'Impressive' doesn't begin to cover it…"

The architect took another drink, and a rare hint of awe flickered in his eyes. "Those guys are like monsters that appeared out of thin air."

For ordinary people, working twelve hours a day is already the limit, but those monsters can keep going twenty‑four hours straight, and they don't even rotate shifts!

And that's not all!

Their construction techniques are top‑tier too; their building speed is faster than the speed some people can tear houses down.

He considered himself fairly well‑traveled, having gone to many places to learn the trade when he was young, yet this was his first time seeing workers like that lot.

Relying on that death‑defying drive and near‑miraculous skill, they rapidly became the most efficient construction company in Thunder City.

Fortunately, their scale seems limited and they can only take on so many sites, or else they would have churned everyone else straight into unemployment.

It's said that several construction firms in Thunder City that were on the brink of collapse came back from the dead thanks to a few tricks secretly learned from them.

They then pushed on toward the other city‑states along the Vortex Sea coast and strong‑armed their way into monopolizing the construction market all along the Northeast Coast, forcing the local peers to put down their bricks and pick up Firearms to fight for business.

And then—

There was no "then."

They ran into the same problem the Green Forest Army did.

The Campbell Duchy, after all, is a Duchy perched on the Demon King's head; here, farmers are no less familiar with Firearms than with hoes.

Soon, these Campbell people who had gone overseas to start businesses were startled to discover that they were not as weak as they'd imagined?

They certainly couldn't outwork those death‑defying "big dumb oafs" of Invincible Group, but giving the neighbors a beating turned out to be pretty easy.

If that's the case, why bother building houses anymore!

As for what happened after that, that's another bout of "bloody storm" having nothing to do with the Demon King's quest for hegemony…

...

Workers who can run twenty‑four hours nonstop obviously can't be normal Humans. Those monsters who opened the eyes of the Thunder City citizens all came from the Great Graveyard and were "Pseudo-men."

Or, to be more precise, they were mushroom folk grown from the roots of Gray Wind.

That was a story from several versions ago, which can be traced back to the Flame of Destruction Calmandes's invasion of the Maze.