Rome Must Perish-Chapter 317 - 196 Nix Tribe Sightseeing (3) —— School

Xibarita sighed, "This road built by the Segestica people is really awful. After running back and forth a few times today, I reckon this cart needs to be repaired again. Akegu, when will our construction team properly fix this road?"

"It’ll probably take a while. Right now, the Public Works Department is focused on building wooden bridges and expanding the settlement, so they don’t have the manpower to fix the road yet."

"Oh..." The old man responded, sounding a little disappointed.

Akegu changed the subject: "Uncle Xibarita, I noticed that a couple of days ago your transport team was mostly using ox carts to haul timber, and those carts carry a lot. How come you’ve switched to donkey carts recently?"

"Isn’t it obvious? Ox carts, though slower, can carry more and are steady and reliable... But it’s all that old Volenus’s fault. He went to our captain and said, according to the Political Affairs Hall meeting, that the oxen will soon be allocated to the Labor Department. They want to use them to plow fields, so they must be well-fed and can’t be overworked..." Xibarita complained.

Akegu didn’t join in the grumbling but instead gently advised, "Uncle Volenus isn’t wrong. Cultivating the land is the most important task for our tribe..."

"Of course, we know farming is crucial, so everyone agreed to switch to donkey carts, and we’ve even assigned people to feed those oxen properly, preparing to hand them over to the Agricultural Department when the time comes. It’s just that we’ve spent so much time with those oxen that we can’t help but feel a little attached..." Xibarita sighed again.

Akegu’s eyes darted around before he suggested, "Uncle, if you love oxen so much, why not keep a few at home in the future?"

"Of course, I’ll raise cattle in the future! And not just cattle—I’ll raise donkeys, horses too! I have fifty or sixty acres of land; I can totally afford it!" Xibarita declared confidently.

"Right, right," Akegu quickly echoed in agreement.

Suddenly, Xibarita let out a "Huh," raised his donkey whip, and pointed to the roadside. "Speaking of Volenus, there he is!"

By the roadside fields, quite a few people were scattered about: some inserting wooden stakes, some pulling ropes, some measuring distances, and others bent over recording... Although their tasks were different from what the villagers typically did, their focus and hard work were the same.

Xibarita clearly noticed this and, instead of calling out to Volenus, excitedly remarked to Akegu, "Volenus and his team are working pretty well—it’s only been a few days, and they’ve already reached here. Looks like they’ll finish soon, and by then we can—"

Akegu interrupted him, "Don’t forget the lands on the north bank."

"Oh, dammit!"

As they spoke, Rochemnix also watched the fields, which were dotted with wooden stakes. Seeing many peers among the busy crowd, he curiously asked, "What are they doing?"

Akegu explained, "They’re assisting the adults in surveying the lands, mapping out every inch of our tribe’s territory. Once complete, the land will be divided among all the tribesmen..."

"That sounds complicated. In our tribe, nobody divides the land—whoever wants to farm just farms. But we’ve only got mountains, no flatlands and rivers like this..." Rochemnix muttered.

Xibarita chuckled, "Little one, let me tell you, the land must be carefully surveyed, no room for errors. If, during land division, someone gets a bit more or a bit less, the tribesmen will be upset, and that could lead to big trouble!"

Rochemnix stuck out his tongue, glanced at the vast fields, and remarked, "Surveying such a big area must be really hard, right?"

Akegu replied, "Once you learn the method, it’s not hard at all. When you start school, you’ll study this, and you’ll understand by then."

Hearing this, Rochemnix grew even more eager to attend Nix School.

The donkey cart eventually arrived at Westeni, where a scene opposite to Snowdonia unfolded. Here, instead of dismantling the settlement’s wooden walls, people were repairing and reinforcing them. Many were also digging trenches and setting up caltrops... Once again, it was a bustling spectacle of labor.

Akegu led Rochemnix off the cart, thanked Xibarita, and walked towards the settlement gate.

At the gate, fully armed soldiers stood guard. Recognizing Akegu, they didn’t question him and let the two pass freely.

Rochemnix glanced back repeatedly and remarked enviously, "Look at that armor—how majestic!" 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ𝓋𝑒𝑙.𝑐𝘰𝑚

"If you join our tribe and come of age, you might get the chance to wear that armor and become a grand Heavy Armor Infantry soldier," Akegu said. Having spent so much time with Maximus, he had some inkling of his leader’s aspirations. Though it sounded like a joke, it was actually a probe.

Rochemnix shook his head, his mood dampening. "My father and my tribe’s people would never allow it."

Alright, this would take time... Akegu made a mental note to himself, steering the conversation away. He guided Rochemnix to the settlement’s central area and into a noble’s residence.

Kefisofon happened to be teaching in the courtyard. Hearing that Akegu needed him, he stepped forward to greet them.

Kefisofon had not only been one of Akegu’s teachers but also adhered to Maximus’s directive that Secretariat members return to school for further studies when off-duty. Akegu respectfully saluted and said, "Teacher Kefisofon, this is Rochemnix, son of Karsipengpas, the leader. He just arrived in our tribe and has been assigned to the Secretariat. However, he can neither read nor do math, so the leader instructed him to begin school first."

The son of Karsipengpas... Kefisofon glanced at the curious, wide-eyed Rochemnix and fell into thought. After a brief pause, he said, "Understood. I’ll make arrangements for him. By the way, how’s the wooden bridge construction in Slodia coming along?"

"When I left, all the bridge piles were in place. The next step is laying the deck... Engineer Spukala mentioned that the framework of the entire bridge would be roughly finished within two days."

"I’ve heard it said before—the Romans have the best bridge-building techniques in the Mediterranean. When they come here to build bridges, I must find time to observe carefully," Kefisofon said with anticipation.

The reason Kefisofon was so interested was that the Cultivation Department had temporarily relocated to Westeni. With the Nix Tribe’s major construction efforts underway, he realized the department’s primary contribution lay in establishing and maintaining the school for educating the children. As the temporary school was in Westeni, the Cultivation Department moved there for convenience. Kefisofon would return to Snowdonia for any Political Affairs Hall meetings.

Maximus had agreed to this, making the Cultivation Department the only one among the Nix Tribe’s nine departments to operate outside Snowdonia.

As Kefisofon and Akegu talked, Rochemnix became entranced by the children studying in the courtyard. Over forty children sat on the ground, facing a black-painted wooden board filled with white writing. In front of each child lay a square wooden frame filled with fine sand. The children, holding thin wooden sticks, were diligently replicating the white words from the board onto the sand...

So this is the school Ak Country spoke of? It looks so interesting! Rochemnix’s eyes gleamed with excitement, practically itching to try.

.....................

While Rochemnix traveled towards Westeni by donkey cart, there was another group he didn’t encounter in the Nix Tribe.

At the midpoint where the Kupa River flows from Snowdonia to Westeni, the river makes a sharp 90-degree northward turn. At this northern riverside bend, Capito, along with craftsmen, had spent days surveying and selecting the Public Works Department’s workshop site, which Maximus had approved.

Today, over twenty conical mounds appeared on this flat riverside land, with Sistos and the other blacksmiths preparing the next one.

They inserted a thick, long stick upright into the soil, then used it as the center to lean numerous wooden pieces of varying lengths and widths around it, forming a conical structure. Dried branches and hay were then layered outside, filling in gaps beneath the wood. Afterward, the team fetched mud from the river and smeared it onto the branches, layer by layer, sealing the structure completely airtight, eventually crafting another conical earthen mound...

"We’re supposed to be blacksmiths, yet here we are playing with mud. If our peers found out, they’d die laughing," one blacksmith grumbled.

"This isn’t just playing with mud—we’re making charcoal. Without charcoal, we can’t smith iron," another blacksmith consoled him.

"It’s not just the lack of charcoal—we don’t even have stone bricks. Without them, we can’t build furnaces and definitely can’t smith iron!"

"I heard that at the tribal meeting, Capito made a mistake. He forgot to bring up the stone brick production until later when he consulted with us, then ran off to confess to the leader—"

"No wonder he’s been looking gloomy these past few days, always hovering around the brick pits, supervising the work. Killerbus and the bricklayers seem even more exhausted than us. Unlike us, who just ’play with mud,’ they’ve really got it tough. Sefaroyis and his crew, though—they’re usually as slippery as eels but came up with such a clever method for making charcoal."

"Sefaroyis and his crew have been making charcoal for decades, so they’ve got their own tricks. Killerbus and the other bricklayers are quite experienced too. But unfortunately, brick-making isn’t as straightforward as charcoal making; no matter what, it takes one to two months to produce stone bricks."

"Yeah, I get that, but it takes so long. By the time the bricks are ready, the bridge will be finished, and people will be praising the carpenters. Meanwhile, they’ll think we blacksmiths are useless, unable to produce anything in all that time."