“Excellent! That’s wonderful, Ramiris!”
“R-really? You mean it? I’m really that great, aren’t I?”
“You sure are! Our ambitions are as good as accomplished!”
“They are? Yeah, they are! I was just thinking that myself!”
We looked at each other and nodded.
“I’ll be counting on you, Ramiris.”
“And I’ll hold up my end of the bargain! It’ll be nothing but smooth sailing ahead!”
Smooth sailing, huh? Hopefully the boat isn’t made out of mud. We couldn’t shake on the deal, given our size difference, but I think our minds were linked up well enough anyway.
Accepting Ramiris’s offer, we decided to build the battle arena in the empty space on the southeast side of town, a dungeon spread out beneath it.
Our theater, meanwhile, would be put up on the northwest side, near where all our high-end spa facilities were. We had actually put up a gym, a museum, and so forth among all the luxury lodging over there, so all we really had to do was refurbish a previously built structure for the purpose.
So the dungeon and theater were in place, but we still had no arena. Geld wasn’t around, but I’m sure I could rely on Gobkyuu and his crew. With them, we’d doubtlessly have something in place by the Founder’s Festival—
“I’m not sure we can do this, Sir Rimuru.”
Oh, no? Yeah, guess not. I mean, any normal project like this would require several years of work. Asking for a finished arena in a month or so was kind of insane. Even with monster-level muscle on our side, I wasn’t so sure we could do it, either.
“Yeah… All right. Let me lend a hand, then. I’ll help move dirt around and process the metal infrastructure.”
I may not look it, but I did used to work for a general contractor. I didn’t have that much on-the-field construction experience, but with what I learned imitating the veterans, I wasn’t a total amateur. Besides, I had Raphael.
“Me too! Let me help!”
“In that case, allow me to help, too.”
“As you wish, Lady Ramiris.”
I suppose that meant I had the support of Ramiris and Beretta and Treyni, too.
Let’s get right to work. I opened up my blueprints among the tents that lined the area.
“Hmm… All right. I don’t see a problem with this.”
“Great. Better explain things to your beastmen, then.”
A lot of our nation’s beastmen were out working on remote projects, so I decided to give Alvis and Sufia the full explanation for now. We would meet together this evening.
“If that is what you seek, Sir Rimuru, it shall be done.”
“It sure will. We’ve got no right to complain!”
Once I explained my whole plan to them, they accepted with surprising speed. They also stated that I wouldn’t need to explain it again to the other beastmen.
“Um, really?”
“Sure, Sir Rimuru,” Sufia said. “You’ve given us all food to eat and a place to stay. We’d all be glad to help out with building this arena or whatever.”
“Besides,” Alvis added, “I hear that Sir Carillon will be involved in the festival you’re holding. We all would be delighted to help you out. I am a tad under the weather, so I will leave the rest to you, Sufia.”
“You got it!”
So Sufia would lead the beastmen on this job—and once that was decided, things proceeded at blazing speed. One order from Sufia was all it took to get the beastmen out of their tents. As they all lined up in formation, Ramiris nimbly transported all the tents into her labyrinth. We now had a large patch of empty land to work with.
Still a little wowed by this feat, I used Belzebuth, Lord of Gluttony, to consume parts of the lot I didn’t need and pare it down to a square, flat expanse. The steel framing came up soon after, and once it did, Gobkyuu and his crew stacked up preprocessed stones to fill in the walls. Within the day, we had walls so hardy that not a single hole could be found in any of them. This gave us a sturdy-looking underground space with a large door in the front of it. For someone from my “modern” era, the whole thing was wrapped up with unbelievable speed.
“W-wow,” Ramiris gushed. “My new castle… Oh, right! If you touch this door, it’ll take you to the labyrinth floor where the tents are!”
We all took a trip inside. There, we saw the beastmen’s living space, exactly as it looked up on the surface. Alvis and Sufia couldn’t hide their astonishment—especially since the air was kept refreshingly cool down here.
“Do we even need these tents now, I wonder?”
“I dunno, yeah. I assume it doesn’t rain in here, so I bet we could just sleep on the ground…”
They didn’t seem at all dissatisfied with this. I could see them and the other beastmen experiment with going back and forth between the real and labyrinth dimensions—all it took was a moment’s thought for them.
“So does it get dark in here at night?”
“Sure does,” replied Ramiris. “We’re linked to the outside from here, so I can even make it rain if you like!”
Man. She could do just about anything, huh? But it wasn’t like they were farming crops in here, so I just asked her to set up a normal day-night cycle for me. This whole space seemed a lot more useful than I guessed at first; I bet I could adapt it to other needs, too. We’d have to brainstorm some ideas.
Apparently reassured, the beastmen went off to help with the outside work. They’d pitch in with the arena, evidently, under the command of Gobkyuu. A lot of them were women and children, but that’s beastmen for you—they all wanted to work, and each one was stronger than a human, at least. Gobkyuu was giving them the basic manual-labor jobs, it looked like, but better-trained beastmen were on-site as well now, aiding in construction.
Treyni was supplying logs for the building (don’t ask me how she got them), while
