10. First Experience
10. First Experience
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"Looks like I really need to get properly strong and boost my stamina too."
"...."
From last night's ordeal(?), he realized it deep in his bones.
That he was still sorely lacking.
Human women—like Luna or whatever—he could handle as many as he wanted, but when it came to non-humans, say Noblesse or Bari or elves and such, forget stamina—his physical strength and power fell woefully short.
And yet, the women he was hooking up with kept piling up; just yesterday, he'd had his first night with Yu Ina and officially(?) entered the honeymoon phase.
Truth be told, she seemed pretty straightforward sexually with zero immunity, so he'd let his guard down a bit.
He figured if he just groped her a little, he'd have her in the palm of his hand to toy with, and sure enough, during skinship, she showed exactly that vibe.
But once they got to the main event and she got a taste of dick, bam—she awakened as a full-on predator.
Last night alone, he was pinned in place, unable to budge, getting milked for hours on end.
And that was just one Yu Ina; going forward, he'd be banging Yeonseo regularly too, and besides them, there were still Eun-hye and Tae-hee, the head of the Yu Family, waiting in the wings.
"You lewd bastard. Acting all high-class and cool on the outside, but inside you're packed full of horny demons."
"...So, why are you whining this to me? And badmouthing your wife to other people is super tacky."
A grumpy voice came flying from across the way.
It was such a pleasant tone that just hearing it was a treat for the ears, but the speaker herself didn't look too thrilled.
"Well, you're my woman too. What's the problem?"
"Yeah... But who's jealous? You deliberately telling me this to make me jealous or something?"
"Didn't really think of it that way."
"No surprise. As if you'd ever think at all."
"Nah, I do think."
Yeonseo clicked her tongue and took a drag on her cigarette.
Already her third one just sitting here.
By now, the buses with the posters plastered on should be cruising around for ads, so her smoking pose would soon spread across the whole city.
"Anyway, whatever. I'm busy, you know? I made time because you said it was important."
"You're acting all high-maintenance."
"'Cause I'm a high-maintenance girl."
With that retort, she stubbed out the cigarette she'd had in her mouth on the table.
"So if you got nothing else to say, get lost. I'm in the middle of class right now?"
Yup. Sihwan had ditched his ongoing class and bolted straight to Yeonseo's office.
"Who cares about that. They were teaching guild stuff—like what activities to do, how to do 'em. Got nothing to do with me."
"You said you were making a Guild?"
"My underlings'll handle it."
"...."
What the hell.
"It's gonna flop~."
Yeonseo delivered her verdict like that and rose from the sofa.
No more chit-chat, time to get back to work.
Handovers to start with, and a mountain of tasks piled up.
"Hold up. Still got more to say."
"Gonna spout more weird crap?"
"Just hear me out."
"...."
After a moment's hesitation, she sat back down on the sofa.
A chance offered with a sigh.
Sihwan continued.
"You know what I did yesterday at the bus stop?"
"How would I know? I wasn't in the Slums."
"Huh. Anyway, I made the stops and the buses, so now we gotta run 'em for real. For a trial period, we'll do free rides for about a month. But there's a problem."
"Problem?"
"I'm scouting every corner of the city right now, and it's way too slow. Because of the people."
"Well, can't be helped. It's a road people use."
Most roads were wide enough for buses since carriages passed frequently.
But they were pretty tight, and even then, mixed with carriages and people jaywalking all over the main streets willy-nilly, they couldn't hit top speed—that was the conclusion from the trial runs.
"We need countermeasures. You've ridden in the car, you know how fast it is. To make it worthwhile for hauling people or goods, it needs to zip around, but right now folks are clogging the roads. At this rate, zero appeal."
"Hmm."
More practical than he'd led on.
She sank into thought.
As the city's boss, she knew full well how crucial logistics were.
She could roughly guess the massive boost to city development from advanced transport like buses.
From that standpoint, the issue Sihwan raised was pretty serious.
For fast logistics, you need clear paths—no obstacles—and even with self-driving, packed roads full of people meant no proper operation.
"Got it. Guess I'll have to pull some strings."
"You? How?"
"I'll issue an administrative order banning foot traffic in the central lanes. For now, we'll do that and work out fixes step by step."
"Hmm... Leaving the center clear... But that'd just make it one-way, right? We need at least two-way minimum."
"That's why we work out fixes step by step. If you wanna do it your way, you'd have to widen all the roads from scratch, and that means demolishing a ton of buildings. What're you gonna do about all that?"
"Bari can handle it."
"Not about whether she can do it—the city's whole layout changes. Might even have to tear down the walls and expand the city boundaries entirely."
"Exactly, and that's what I'm saying Bari can solve."
"?"
Yeonseo tilted her head.
Sihwan sighed in frustration.
"Listen up. What you're worried about is: widen the roads, gotta demo nearby buildings, rebuild 'em, but that overlaps with other buildings, so the whole city layout gets wrecked, eating up time and money like crazy. Right? But what I'm saying is, just scale up the entire city as a whole. The land outside the city is all yours anyway."
"...?"
Still not getting it.
She was even furrowing her brow a bit, like 'What kinda bullshit is this?'
"...For example, say we need to widen roads by 1.5 times. Normally, you'd demo surrounding buildings and expand the road to 1.5x, messing up the existing city grid. Tons of complaints, costs a fortune, takes forever.
But what I'm saying is scale up the 'entire city' as one big object by 1.5x.
Scale the Academy 1.5x, nearby shops 1.5x, city hall 1.5x—everything 1.5x. Then the roads get wider too. No grid mess-up. Get what I'm saying?"
"Hah... so like... making an apple 1.5x bigger, you're treating the whole city like one object and scaling it 1.5x?"
"Yeah. Finally getting it."
"...That even possible?"
It might sound simple at first glance.
Noblesse can create from nothing depending on skill—what's the big deal?
But creating an object, scaling it, and scaling an entire city packed with tens of millions of objects? Totally different ballgame.
Take a house, for example.
Scaling it up doesn't just enlarge the visible walls—the buried foundation pillars grow too.
And not just grow—they move.
Say one side was 10 meters with pillars at the corners: pillar spacing 10m.
Scale 1.5x? Side becomes 15m, pillars now 15m apart.
Meaning the pillars grow underground and shift about 5m.
And that's not all? The building's space coordinates change outright, so every buried pillar, every basement—everything moves.
Scale that to the whole city, and there's no way the ground holds; worst case, mega-sinkholes swallow districts, or massive quakes hit.
Plus, furniture and fixtures inside.
Sofas scaling up? Fine. But toothbrushes, cups, spoons, forks ballooning? Disaster.
Instantly Reading to classify 'stuff that scales' vs. 'stuff that doesn't,' predict movements of thousands of shifting/growing underground pillars, the ground shocks and results, and tweak on the fly to prevent issues.
Could anyone pull that off?
Who could handle that computation load?
"Even the head of the Yu Family couldn't do it."
A 'computer'—meaning 'the one who calculates.'
To her, unaware of such a being or concept, it was pure pipe dream, impossible to swallow.
"She couldn't, obviously. That's why I keep saying Bari's gotta do it."
"...."
"Anyway, that's why I came. We're expanding the city."