There was a reason why Theo evacuated this bunch right during his own retreat.
And sure, save for the very few, pretty much none of the forty men Theo brought were the kind of able-bodied youth one would want in a rapidly developing frontier.
Still, as the members of the upper echelons of the politics and economy, they would be neatly lined up for the king's faction to gobble up once Theo left.
And this particular bunch had all one thing in common.
They reached the top of their respective social ladders through their own skill, rather than relying on their families or inherited assets.
Sure, they used those perks of their birth and initial social standing, but still. They climbed to the top not through the feats of the past but through the ingenuity of today.
And now, with Theo's single whistle and then a wave of his hand, they've all rushed straight to their tasks.
In a colony of merely a hundred and fifty, consisting of mostly Zestra and laborers, a group of fifty high-rank managers swarmed out, ready to destroy any semblance of order and to upturn the entire colony.
And while that was likely to upset some of the laborers who got used to their routines…
It had to be done.
Not because Theo wanted to use fifty people to squeeze out every bit of productivity of the one hundred and fifty existing colonists. No. Those men were here not to manage three workers each, but to establish a framework within which the thousands that were scheduled to soon arrive could seamlessly integrate.
"It's going to be quite the bother, but they know what they are doing," Theo explained as he pressed his hands against his hips and stretched out. "Oh right, how is it going with the breach?"
Zestra shook her head.
"We are working on it. But with only so few hands…" she shrugged her shoulders.
Theo shook his head.
"No, I didn't ask to blame you," he shook his head again. "Consider it merely my curiosity. After all," Theo winked at the golden-haired fox-girl, "who knew, maybe you've been incredibly lucky or something?"
Theo took a deep breath as he looked over at where the majority of the camp laborers worked hard to cut stone and then toss it down the mine's main slope.
Some blocks crashed down and exploded into a cloud of dust and broken-off pebbles. Other blocks somehow managed to survive the ordeal or split into a bunch of bigger chunks.
And both would find their use, seeing how whenever the stonecutters would take a break, the laborers below would hurry to drag the bigger chunks to one pile, while sweeping the pebbles and stone dust over to the other pile.
Beyond that, pretty much the rest of the workers within the camp would either work on cutting the bigger chunks of the stone into pieces that were easier to manage, or tossing the pebbles and the stone dust straight into the massive fires within an enclosed, stone-brick structure.
"How about the news from the south?" Theo changed the topic as he finally turned his eyes away from the industry Zestra managed to set up in the place. "Judging by the distance, he should be back with the report already."
"As of today," Zestra shook her golden head, "still no news. We believe he should appear sometime soon."
Garda Fold was located far more to the south than the royal capital, pretty much on the furthest point of the kingdom away from Theo's stepdad's seat of power. With the decreasing control of the crown, however, the power of the local counts grew exponentially. And counts, riddled with issues and poverty on their own, rarely had the time or presence of mind to mind the outskirts of their domains.
In other words, located at the very far end of the kingdom, Garda Fold was surrounded by lands where bandits and brigands wielded heavier and more direct power than the lofty lords. In which case, if Nick was late…
'Well, he went pretty damn far off, so it shouldn't be a surprise if he got delayed and had to move the schedule a bit…'
Nick, Lorien, and Jorgen.
The three people that exhausted the limit of who Theo could share his ability with.
Having no idea where such a restriction or rule came from or any other clues about his system, Theo could only do his best with what he had. So, rather than questioning the reality, he adapted and kept one of them by his side at all times… while sending the other two as far north and south as he, with all his rich prince's powers, could send them.
And to a degree, the news each of them would bring could be even more important than the situation at hand.
'Within this camp, I can do something. But if they bring bad news…'
In all the time he spent after reincarnating, he only managed to map out most of the more popular royal lands. With so few people capable of reading the death timers, scouting the average numbers took an ungodly amount of time.
And yet, throughout all those years, Theo prevailed, now awaiting two more reports that would decide everything.
"Well then, not like we can do anything if he's late," Theo shook his head, forcing himself back to the reality of the moment. "Let's hope that Nick's alright and move on."
As if to play out his words, Theo started to move away from the slope-side factories and down the natural path created by a hundred and fifty people walking through, on a daily basis, for the last two, three months.
"How's the landing pad?" he asked as he continued down the path, "And the camp, did you…"
"It's all done, my prince," Zestra grinned as she bowed down in a playful nod.
Then, as if she orchestrated the timing of her answer, their group took a turn around a hill, only to reach the exact two places Theo was worried about.
"Woah…"
The factories were built for efficient use of limited manpower, making them perfectly well-organized… yet, weirdly out of scale with only so few humans using them.
The camp, on the other hand, was just massive enough to cover Theo's needs.
Before Theo's eyes lay several dozen rows and columns of half tents, all neatly arranged into groups of eight, all facing a central, shared spot in the middle while surrounded by naturally developed footpaths.
'They even went ahead and built them into the ground…' Theo's eyes twitched, as a sense of pride started to blossom in his chest.
Even after all the long hours of trying to teach his allies even a fragment of his knowledge and expertise, Theo still faced a wall.
As a prince in a hostile kingdom, he couldn't afford to create the things essential to demonstrate the forces Theo wanted to tame. In other words, without a practical example, Theo's words remained mostly as… just that, words.
Save for a few extremely profitable ideas that Theo fully commercialized, obviously.
'Still,' Theo swallowed something hard, 'to see them actually implement what I taught…'
The tent's design was crude, ugly, but also extremely practical. With the uniformly sized pieces of wood serving as either the poles or the frames, the cloth completed the design, stretching upon the wooden frames and staying loose at the entrance.
'I wonder if they made a saw for cutting wood in one of the factories,' Theo thought, resisting the desire to look back.
Still, it wasn't just the camp.
No.
Behind the long sets of rows and columns of sets of eight tents, there was a huge plaza.
No, more like a massive, perfectly flat field of wildflowers surrounded by four neat lines of cozy stone fence.
And right as Theo looked over, the whole area filled with a blinding light.
His lips twitched.
'Would you look at the timing of that?'
Just as it came, the light vanished before Theo could even flinch, too short for his eyes to even be hurt or his vision impaired. The only thing that changed with this momentary explosion of light was the field.
Because where there used to be wildflowers, now stood a massive crowd of likely around a thousand people, all in rather uneasy moods and some in quite ragged clothing.
'Huh?'
Noticing the state of some of his arriving subjects, Theo snapped on alert.
"What the hell…"
Before he could ask, Theo habitually took a glance up above everyone's heads, where the great majority shared the same, mercilessly ticking clock.
And for a moment, he froze.
"My lord?" Jurgen called, already by Theo's side, only to see Theo squeeze his hands down into fists, only to then powerlessly relax them as he stared, wide-eyed, at the thousand-or-so clocks, all synchronized to show the same time.
"We just lost a week."