Civilization Chronicles: Rise of the Divine Creator

Lucas paid his employees incredibly well, but his expectations of them were equally high; as such, Laura had to learn fast, work hard, and achieve results otherwise she didn’t doubt her young boss would fire her.

Fortunately, while Lucas was a ’bit’ demanding, he did take the time to provide education and guidance to those who worked for him, rather than just dump tasks on them and expect them to figure it out on their own.

The combination of high-quality job training, ever-increasing expectations, and constantly growing levels of responsibility and authority had allowed Laura to grow from a decent worker, to a confident and competent manager.

Physically, the changes were even bigger.

Better clothes, better food, better housing, a better cultivation environment with better teachers, and a slue of other lifestyle improvements had polished Laura’s physique and looks quite a bit.

Two years ago, Laura had short dull hair, tired eyes, rough skin, slouched posture, and all the other common traits one would associate with a young woman who was poor and struggled every day to support herself.

Today, Laura’s light brown hair had grown out significantly and possessed a healthy sheen to it, her blue eyes shone much more vibrantly, her skin had smoothed and become more supple, and her body had filled out quite a bit, adding muscle where it was needed, and fat where desired.

Laura also stood straighter now, radiating a kind of confidence that only someone with real power could exude.

She wasn’t a devastating beauty who could stun others simply by walking into the room, but with a more than decent figure, including long legs and shapely hips, Laura certainly didn’t look like a poor orphan girl anymore.

Even when she greeted Blaine, introducing herself and her position, Laura spoke with authority in her voice, not the slightest bit intimidated by the fact that the man before her was both taller, older, and more experiencing in the current task she had been assigned.

As usual, time was running short, and things were being rushed, so Laura didn’t waste a moment on unnecessary pleasantries and immediately got to work, tasking her new assistant to put together as many local labourers and low-skilled craftsmen as possible while she focused on arranging the logistics of what would soon be 4 different work camps dedicated to rapidly establishing new forest villages.

Victoria and Laura had come to Falcon’s Bend together with 100 skilled craftsmen, many of whom were refugees from Redwood Town, Herald City, and Port Calden, as well as about 400 more generalized labourers. These people all belonged to what Lucas had dubbed the ’Urban Development Team’ and they were now quite experienced with the construction standards and practices the young boy demanded.

However, in order to meet the looming deadlines Lucas had set for this year, the two women knew they would need a lot more people.

Fortunately, with the financial backing of the Balfour Family, the budget for this project was essentially unlimited, so Victoria and Laura took a page from Lucas’ book and simply threw coins at the problem.

The local guilds, markets, squares, and basically everywhere else that people gathered in Misty City were soon filled with recruiters, calling for people to sign up to help ’build the future’.

Determined to prove his usefulness to his new bosses, Blaine also went all out, visiting all of his old friends and contacting everyone he could think of from his past jobs to gather more craftsmen and labourers.

Within 3 days, 500 people were recruited locally, doubling the number of workers Victoria had at her disposal.

Caravans set out that day from Falcon’s Bend, with Victoria Moore putting Laura completely in charge of setting up the 4 proposed villages.

As for why Victoria had given Laura such a huge responsibility even though the young girl didn’t have the necessarily experience, it was really because she had no other choice.

Laura needed to oversee and supervise the establishment of 4 small villages, each one planned to house about 100 people to start with, which seemed like a monumental task, until one heard about what Victoria had to do.

As Lucas’ Head Manager, and the one with the most administrative, logistical, and business experience currently in the boy’s employ, Victoria not only had to coordinate the overall project, she also had to oversee the construction of a whole new town, one planned to eventually house several thousand people.

In other words, Victoria had two tasks that needed to be taken care of simultaneously and she couldn’t do both, so she gave the ’easier’ one to Laura.

Each of these 5 locations was intentionally chosen because they were accessible off of existing dirt paths, but these narrow trails were obviously poorly maintained and couldn’t support large amounts of wagon traffic.

As such, Victoria’s first priority was widening and compacting these trails.

Putting in proper roads would have been preferable, but there wasn’t time for that, so she decided to compromise.

While the workforce she hired specifically to build the new settlements focused on that project, Victoria began recruiting a second group of labourers who would be dedicated solely to roadwork; she also sent a request back to Misty City for another batch of supervisors from the Urban Development Team.

This road builders would be based solely in Falcon’s Bend and would work from there out towards the new settlements, clearing, expanding, and compacting the existing trails into rough two-lane roads.

The best these teams would be able to do was create some simple gravel paths as the Rockwell Kingdom wasn’t capable of producing any kind of pavement material, but for now, it would have to do.

Recruitment didn’t stop in Falcon’s Bend just because work had started, of course.

Victoria and Laura continued their hiring spree and it wasn’t long before they’d snatched up another 1,500 people for the city, bringing the total amount of local workers they had under their employ to 2,000.

This was an astonishing number considering the total population of Falcon’s Bend was only about 40,000.

Lucas’ Head Manager had scooped up nearly 5% of the city’s residents, which didn’t sound like a lot at first, but actually represented a massive part of the transient workforce.

This was only possible because it was the winter months and many industries were shut down, leaving lots of free workers available; still, such wanton hiring caused something of a labour shortage in the city.

When the local business owners, managers, and foremen came forward to complain about the sudden lack of cheap labour, Victoria politely told them if they wanted their workers back, they were welcome to try winning them over.

In other words, she told them to go screw themselves.