Chapter 148: New House II.
The group's toilet was a rather complicated matter that needed to be resolved carefully. However, the group still had not thought of the best solution, so they had to resort to the final method of using Takeshi's earth element, then creating an extremely deep hole and sending the waste down, with a bit of water at the bottom.
But while searching around, Aoto, who was familiar with the forest, found a type of moss capable of absorbing moisture and deodorizing very well, not to mention it could live in dark spaces without sunlight, and even exist near volcanoes or under the sea. This type of moss was extremely interesting; its fruit was as hard as iron and steel, as big as a thumb and incredibly heavy.
So they planted it around the walls; then this moss would eat the organic matter from the waste. If the waste was too difficult to decompose, the fruit of this moss, when enough time had passed, would fall and break that waste apart. This type of moss was humus-eating moss.
The seating area was made quite similar to a chair for sitting, but it was made of smooth stone found by Takeshi when probing underground. This stone had no known name, but it was ash-gray and very smooth. Naturally, in the middle was the hole.
Thus, the toilet was finished.
Returning to the group's rooms, everyone's room area was the same, all being rectangular. Since this was underground, they were quite comfortable, so everyone's room was about 30 paces long and about 15 paces wide. Such width seemed a bit redundant, but wide was still better than narrow.
Each room had a different arrangement, but the furniture was the same. Take Kazuka's room as an example.
At the end of his room, in the left corner, was his bed. This bed was made of stone but had been hollowed out. Following that were wooden slats nailed together, interwoven with each other. Initially, Airi thought of using wooden pegs, but later, seeing it was too bothersome, she bought iron nails and a hammer; in fact, there was no need for a hammer as the group could just press the nails down. Airi had planned this beforehand, so she did not lack any tools.
After finishing the bed slats, next was spreading the mat; the mat was quite soft and smooth, also quite high-quality. After that was a layer of padding, thick or thin depending on the season: thin, only one finger joint thick, for summer; thicker than a finger for winter. When the padding layer was spread out, then came the blankets and pillows placed on the bed. Everyone had the same color, which was purple. Initially, Airi wanted to get white, but white was too dirty, so she considered choosing black, but she did not like black, so purple was acceptable.
Next, in the right corner, was a large table. Although large, the quality was somewhat low; it was built by Kazuka himself. But he was also quite skillful; just looking at it, it was quite pleasing to the eye; it was just that if given to carpenters, they would probably take it away to burn. All the tables and chairs—generally the woodwork—were done by him. He made them very similar to those items.
On the table was a thick notebook consisting only of white paper and a pen so that if needed, they could write to remember; in the corner of the table was a glowing stone to see the writing clearly.
Speaking of glowing, the whole room was pinned at the top of the ceiling with two quite large glowing stones, but generally, this light was still quite dim compared to the necessary level.
In the middle of the room was a large table and a long bench; on the table were a wooden water pitcher, wooden cups, and a wooden tray. Naturally, it was still made by him; items like bowls and chopsticks were also made of wood by him.
On the two walls by the door were four large wooden wardrobes for clothes. These wardrobes were quite difficult to make; the moving joints of the doors were all made of wood by him—some were loose, some were quite tight and hard to open. But he was not a carpenter; doing it like that was already fine. In fact, making so many wardrobes was just because he was idle and to make the room less empty.
There was one thing done since earlier but forgotten to mention: the group wanted to make wooden faces to support the top, then make a few pillars so the residence would be less empty. But this was quite difficult, and looking around at the brown earth like that, it was a dark color. The feeling was certainly uncomfortable.
So Takeshi again with difficulty pulled stone blocks over; then they would meticulously align them, then swing the sharpest possible slashes to create the walls.
When Takeshi pulled the giant stone blocks over, the whole structure felt as if it wanted to collapse, but he had the earth element so he did not let it collapse, maintaining the structure of the space for a long time, which was exhausting.
Thus, the residence, which was initially compressed earth, now switched to being surrounded by stone, the color brighter and more pleasant to the eyes.
Afterward, when they felt it was finished, the group felt something was missing: the kitchen. Then in the initial room—which could be called the living room—at the left corner of the wall would be the kitchen; another door was established.
But using fire in here would create smoke and make the whole group choke to death, so a solution was needed. Using Takeshi's earth element, they would make a smoke conduit leading to a body of water quite far away; if the group had seen that lake initially, they probably would have stopped there.
First, create a water conduit to a large hole created by Takeshi underground, then the smoke conduit would circle up high and be plunged from above down. When the smoke passed through the long conduit, it would weaken; after reaching that hole crammed with water, it would disappear there.
Coming to the stove, the group used a heat-type stove. Use a very large fire-burning place, tightly wrapped with plastered earth; this made the stove even sturdier after the fire baked it, making the earth harder.
The place to put firewood in was quite complicated; it needed a door to open and close to put firewood in. So the group was at their wit's end and designed the firewood input as reasonably as possible. Then they used a stone tablet; the tablet had a stone handle. After that, they just needed to place it into the firewood input designed as tightly as possible to block smoke and hot air from rushing out.
Above was the place to put pots, pans, and so on. They again had to design it reasonably so that their largest pot, when placed in, would fit snugly with that pot-setting hole. It was fortunate because that pot happened to be the same size as the pan, so they could fit the largest pot and the pan in there.
On the two sides were conduits to two other small stoves where hot air was diverted. They used a stone tray; if one side of the stove was not in use, they inserted the stone tray into that very tight-fitting slot; that way, the hot air would no longer be diverted.
Around the stove was quite spacious, full of cabinets and more cabinets. But they were just empty cabinets; only two cabinets held their bowls and chopsticks. Pots, pans, knives, and so on that were not in use were hung on a nail.
Returning to the living room, at the right corner of the wall was another door. Here was a small and empty room. This room everyone left so that if in the future they found some useful plant types that did not need light, they would plant them here, but currently, there were none. There were only a few rotten logs; it seemed they wanted some types of mushrooms to grow on the tree trunks to harvest.
For now, everyone would go out and hunt animals to bring back for food.
The horse carriage was also hidden away; the only thing they brought along was a somewhat large mirror. This mirror was hung on a nail at the door of the octagonal room so that everyone when waking up could look in it, and they also added a stone shelf below for some hair combs.
The horse carriage was hidden inside the large stone block; the door was also camouflaged like the door leading down to everyone's house.
As for the three horses, letting them go was a waste—the group was poor after all. So they had to slaughter them for food to last for a long period.
As for the problem of their house being hot, replacing it with stone helped a bit, and Takeshi also led water around so it also reduced the heat.
Furthermore, since they were living in the forest, moving around would naturally leave traces. But hiding them was quite difficult, especially from those with sharp noses or those possessing an animal with a sharp nose accompanying them, so they were out of options.
But fortunately, Airi had also planned to live in a deserted place. So she had brought along many saplings, about 500 saplings.
Because the trees here were not too high, and going to places with high forests was very hard to find, she bought 500 extremely large saplings to plant around, aiming to create a humid place to make it harder for animals to scent them, and she planted them scattered over a large area of big-sized trees; if anyone were suspicious, they might only suspect it was a forest of large trees within a forest of small trees.
Specifically, these seeds grew extremely fast; just watering them for two days and they would sprout up. These seeds were created and sold by those with wood element powers; especially large trees for wood that grew so fast were in high demand.
Fortunately, this was because previously Takeshi was made a guard of Tharros city; to make it most realistic, he was allowed to go supervise everywhere and observe. This stuff was in the city warehouse; initially, he did not know. But after returning and telling Aoto, Aoto realized and told Takeshi to steal some; after all, no one would know.
So at this time, around the large stone block as big as four houses, there were many trees nearly 20 tharn high. The group tried to plant them so the trees grew as randomly as possible, also to hide the stone block. If anyone came, they would probably think someone had carelessly thrown seeds here and they grew up.
Inside the stone block area was quite dark, but dark was better than being discovered. Soon sunlight would not shine down for long, and the inside would be a humid place.
The foliage was wide, high, and large—it would take ten people and still not hug it all. It was quite ideal.
But naturally, when practicing, they had to go far away. The way to practice was to absorb energy from the outside; then the energy well would fill up and, like a rubber bag, stretch out making the energy well larger. When absorbing a large amount and pushing it out very strongly, that would make the energy gate expand gradually.
And absorbing energy meant absorbing surrounding energy; trees were also living beings but were lower-level organisms. So they would be sucked dry of energy and die.
In a large battle, all kingdoms did not want to become the center of the battlefield; the reason was simply because a large number of people constantly absorbing energy would sooner or later make that kingdom like it was suffering from a drought. Although energy from the surroundings would pour in when there was a gap, barren land needed a long time to return to normal, and a long time after a war—how could reconstruction happen after the war? So most between several countries there was usually a stretch of empty land surrounding them, or even larger spans; countries often reported and made appointments to have war there.