The Defense of Jemili Village (1)
Jemili Village.
Simply by virtue of lying closest to the Grand Duchy, the place had become the pilot site for every new venture I was rolling out. In barely two months it had transformed into a space utterly unrecognizable from what it had been.
"Hey! When the Second Young Master was making the ondol, I was right there next to him…!"
"Oi, Old Man Mak. Quit the nonsense and haul the cement."
The wooden stockades that used to get half-wrecked every two weeks were gone.
Northerners—every last one of them an ace in his own right—hauled cement sacks without rest, mixing them with water, sand, and gravel in large vessels to produce concrete.
Whatever remained of the old wooden fences was recycled into formwork, and they brushed on surplus animal fat so the concrete would release cleanly when the time came.
If it were up to me I'd have poured the whole wall as one solid mass, but…
That was beyond the technology of a medieval world.
There was also no guarantee that monsters and wild beasts would politely wait while a concrete wall cured, so we mixed rammed-earth-and-concrete with concrete bricks as much as possible and ringed the entire village.
"Whoa. At this rate you could call it a proper little fortress."
In truth, the wooden stockades of the past had never been fortresses with any real defensive power. They had only been enough to slow monsters down a little.
In the North, where even ordinary reindeer were the size of a Matiz, there was only so much you could expect from a wooden fence against monsters.
But a concrete wall was different.
Stack these properly and they'll tank a missile strike.
The soldiers had already finished stress-testing them with warhammers, so nobody harbored even a shred of doubt about the performance.
I watched for a while, then turned my gaze toward the interior of the village.
Looking good in here, too.
The cement wave had not stopped at the walls. Cement products had been hauled into their homes as well.
Well, it's not like we're building entire houses out of cement just yet.
Their skill and experience with the material still weren't advanced enough for that, so unlike the simple stack-and-pour walls, the houses themselves remained early-model hanok style.
What sat on top of them, though, were roof tiles made of cement.
Before this, they just slapped together straw, mud, and wood however they could.
Roofs built solely to trap whatever heat they could manage. But the durability had been pathetic. I'd often received reports of roofs collapsing under the weight of heavy snow; the tile system we'd added was on a completely different level from the old shingle houses.
"Hey, get the male and female tiles lined up properly over there!"
"You've got to lash them tight or they'll come down!"
Convex male tiles and concave female tiles interlocked to form the classic tiled roof everyone knows. Smoke billowed from the chimneys between them, carrying the smell of gukbap—
A concrete wall surrounding a hanok village, and inside it Westerners stuffing their faces with gukbap.
Talk about a hybrid.
I looked at the hybrid I had created. Its appearance was about as mixed as mint-mara-tteok-choco-gukbap, but at least it was solid.
The villagers' faces had more color than before. Apparently the secret to human happiness really was a full belly and a warm place to sleep.
Soon enough this scenery will spread across the entire North.
The goal was for it to reach all the way to the Great Wall. The Great Wall was still impossibly far, but if we expanded one village at a time like spreading creep, one day this concrete barrier would cover the whole North.
I was soaking in that satisfying thought when someone came running from the center of the village.
"Goodness, Young Master! It's freezing out—what are you doing here?"
It was the village chief of Jemili.
"Ah, I was watching the village get a new look. And I really must thank you all. Everyone just took a kid's word at face value and followed along."
"Thank us? We're the ones who should be thanking you! Thanks to you, Young Master, we're living completely new lives!"
The chief of Jemili Village waved his hands as if the idea were absurd. Then he seemed to remember something.
"By the way, will you be staying the night here today?"
"Hmm. Looks that way."
If it had been around lunch, I could have forced the trip back, but inspecting every corner of the village's transformation had eaten the day. Evening already. Heading back would be rough; better to stay the night.
"Then please come to my house. If you don't mind, how about having dinner with us as well?"
"Shall we?"
Better that than imposing on some random household. There wasn't even a proper inn in a village this small, and staying at the chief's would be easier for everyone.
Following the chief to his house—
Looks like a hanok from outside, and the inside is pure hanok too.
The interior was completely different from before. And it wasn't just the scenery.
"Here you are—please eat!"
The chief and his wife set the meal out on a small table. Steaming white rice, seolleongtang, and boiled pork slices, all radiating heat.
Is this for real? Northern dinner food?
It was a different universe from the previous fare of bread hard enough to use as a weapon, unidentifiable vegetables and nuts, and pickled herring.
"You don't eat like this every day, do you?"
"Haha, of course not. Folks like us can't have meat side dishes all the time. But thanks to you, Young Master, we can stuff ourselves with meat soup every day!"
Suyuk required high-grade cuts, so they couldn't always have it, but gukbap made from long-simmered lesser cuts was something they could enjoy to their hearts' content. In the North, that translated directly into combat power.
"Ever since you spread ondol and this gukbap dish, everyone in the village says life is finally worth living. Strength just pours out of us… In fact, a pack of wild goblins attacked not long ago, and we wiped them all out without a single casualty."
"Oh, is that true?"
I hadn't seen it myself, but the chief's reaction suggested real results.
Truth is, I haven't seen a single living monster since I got here.
The only monsters I'd encountered in this world were dead ones. Given how weak this body was, running into a live one would put me in a pretty awkward spot, so maybe that was for the best—but I still wanted to see one for myself at least once.
I was diligently stuffing boiled pork into my mouth when—
"Chief!! Chief!!"
A huge commotion outside.
"You idiot, the Second Young Master is in the middle of his meal! What's all this racket?!"
A villager burst in shouting, and the chief roared back. But the first man wasn't the only one.
"Young Master!"
Max, who had come with me and been touring the village, rushed in as well. At first I thought maybe he was just hungry because I'd been eating alone. No.
"An attack! A monster horde is coming!"
"What? Now?"
"Yes!!"
What? A bug? The moment I wished I could see one for myself, they actually show up?
"Damn it!! I'll gather the village men at once!!"
The chief realized this was no time for dinner, flung down his spoon, and bolted outside. Soon the alarm bell clanged wildly, and the hurried footsteps of villagers filled the air.
I headed outside as well, asking as I went,
"An attack? What kind? I heard you already repelled one not long ago."
"Yes, I heard. But that was only a goblin pack."
Only a goblin pack? Something about the phrasing felt ominous.
"What's coming this time is an ogre. And it looks like a mutant ogre at that… We suspect the goblin pack may have been driven from their home by this thing and fled here."
Oh, for—
So I really had gone and performed a summoning ritual just by thinking about it. Even as the thought crossed my mind, I made for the center of the village.
There stood a tall watchtower, a lookout post for spotting monster attacks.
"Young Master!!!"
Jemili Village had no proper garrison, so a villager serving as a kind of civil defense met me.
"A mutant ogre appeared?"
"Y-yes! Would you like to see?"
"Yes. Let's have a look."
He handed me the village's only surveillance artifact. Issued by the Grand Duchy to every village, it was essentially a magic telescope—complete with night-vision function, no less.
And then—
There it is.
Before long I spotted the enormous monster charging through the darkness, ignoring perspective as it closed the distance.
What the hell is that size…
Even from far away the pressure was insane. It was nearly as tall as the trees beside it. A rough estimate put its height well over three meters, and it was long and broad as well—the presence was terrifying.
Holy shit. They've been surviving against things like that?
My heart hammered. I'd heard the stories. Northerners lived by competing with wild beasts and vicious monsters in an extreme environment. Death reports came in several times a week, but those had only been words on paper. This level of pressure was something else.
Then Max spoke, his face set hard.
"Young Master. You must withdraw."
"What?"
I asked, thinking I'd misheard. But Max repeated himself.
"This is no ordinary ogre. It is a mutant. Without proper equipment, it is impossible to hunt. In the worst case, the village could be wiped out."
So even the Young Master must get out. He didn't say the rest, but the words rang in my ears like an auditory hallucination.
Run? Is that what you're saying?
Maybe he was right. Incidents like this were common in the North. You couldn't put a price on a human life, but I carried knowledge that could save northerners, and I was also the Second Young Master of the Grand Duchy by blood. Getting out might be the correct call compared to the northerners who got swept away so often.
But.
But.
"When they call you up, you're 'our son.' When something happens, you're 'your son.' I refuse to watch that."
"Pardon?"
Just a story I heard until my ears grew calluses.
My mentor, the three-star General Octopus, had always said:
"When they need you, you're their own child, and the moment something goes wrong you're someone else's kid? No wonder our military is a mess!"
His temper had been absolute garbage, but at least he'd looked after the soldiers under his command with meticulous care. Maybe growing up under a man like that was why I simply couldn't choose to run.
"I'll command the villagers from here. Butler, help them as well."
"Young Master!!"
Max cried out. To which—
"Butler. This is not a request."
I looked Max straight in the eye.
"It is an order."
"…!"
Max's eyes flew wide. Then—
"…I obey."
He prostrated himself on the spot, then leaped down from the tower. I watched him go, then clenched my fist tight.
The villager who had been cowering in a corner asked, his voice shaky,
"Y-Young Master, aren't you afraid?"
Afraid?
Fuck, of course I'm scared.
Even the hardcore medieval northerners who'd grown up in this world were trembling. The delicate modern sensibilities of a guy from the twenty-first century had been shredded long ago.
But this was exactly the kind of moment you couldn't afford to look weak. I planted a hand on the villager's shoulder with a solid thump and said,
"Don't stay down there."
"Sir?"
"We die on our feet."
…Wait. Is that the line?