Industrial Revolution of the Mage Lords

Chapter 189 A sudden landslide

Asdalen stood in the specially erected awning beside the playground, watching the heated competition. He turned to Harvey in confusion and said, "Sir, I don't quite understand why this sport is... uh, called rugby? Aren't olives an oilseed crop grown in the hills of the southern coast?"

Harvey laughed awkwardly and said perfunctorily, "Uh uh... I just made up the name. Aren't olives round like this? You can call it a rubber ball if you want."

The olives grown in the southern hills of this world are indeed not the oval-shaped ones with pointed ends that Harvey had seen in his previous life. Instead, they are round spherical fruits, mainly used to extract vegetable oils, which serve as a cheap oil instead of animal fat.

After all, this sports game that Harvey put together on the spur of the moment, whether it is called football or rugby, is actually not very appropriate, because the rules and gameplay were changed and randomly combined together by him.

It's not that he hadn't thought about playing the sport strictly according to the rules of football, but these soldiers, who were once refugees in the wilderness, had never played a ball game and couldn't understand the rules of football in a short period of time. I'm afraid that the "offside" rule alone would be enough to stump everyone, including the referee.

So Xavi could only simplify the rules and gameplay of the sport as much as possible, changing it into an easy-to-understand mess.

The opposing teams are still organized into teams of eleven. Except for the goalkeeper who can only move within the baseline, the remaining ten players can form any formation to attack or defend.

The game adopts a round-based system. Participants can use their hands and feet. The goalkeeper of the attacking team kicks the ball to the players in the front line. After receiving the ball, the forward will try to move forward as much as possible, no matter if he runs alone with the ball or passes the ball to other players who are moving forward. As long as the defense intercepts him and seizes the ball, this round of attack will be declared a failure, and then the offense and defense will be switched.

If you can successfully break through the defensive line, you need to send the ball to the bottom line together, and then throw the ball into the goal frame to count as an offensive score.

So in Asdalen's eyes, this group of soldiers was like a real hand-to-hand combat on the battlefield. They wore heavy leather armor and helmets, and flexibly arranged various offensive or defensive formations according to the organization size of ten-man teams. In the fierce physical confrontation, they obeyed the on-the-spot response of the team commander, constantly adjusted and changed various tactics, and had a lot of fun.

Asdalen watched for a moment longer, then said thoughtfully to Harvey, "Sir, I think I understand why you invented this competitive game... These participants, former non-commissioned officers, have surprisingly quickly mastered and applied a variety of highly effective offensive and defensive tactics!"

This is much more effective than having him and Pierce force these tough guys to sit obediently in a night class, yawning and forcing them to learn the old-fashioned military combat theories written in books!
Reiner, who was usually gentle, said with some concern, "But they're so excited. What if they start fighting over the ball? Most of them have awakened their bloodline talents."

Harvey chuckled and said nonchalantly, "Ordinary physical altercations are fine, as long as they're within the rules. If someone gets hurt accidentally because you can't control your strength, or if someone gets injured accidentally, the military doctors in the camp are just sitting around doing nothing, so they'll have something to do."

"However, if you're unwilling to accept your loss and start a fight after leaving the field, that would be considered a violation of military orders, and you'll have to stay in the confinement room and calm down..."

Xavi is not worried about any conflicts breaking out when this sport game is launched in the army, but he still needs to pay attention to this issue when it is promoted to the general public. The destructive power caused by "football hooligans" is still very strong, and this bad habit needs to be nipped in the bud in advance.

After watching the game for a while, it was almost noon, so Harvey got up and prepared to return to the castle for lunch.

There was a sudden commotion at the gate of the military camp, and several defense soldiers, led by a non-commissioned officer, hurried to the playground.

"What happened?" Harvey asked with a frown.

"My Lord, a section of the western wall has suddenly collapsed!" The sergeant in charge of defending the western section of the wall reported to Harvey with a look of panic on his face. Harvey stood up suddenly and said in disbelief, "What? The wall collapsed?"

……

When he led Reiner and others to the accident site of the city wall tower defense, Haru, the director of the construction department responsible for building the city wall, had arrived in advance. He was sweating profusely and directing his workers to pull over the alchemy beast responsible for construction and lifting, and quickly lifted the collapsed city wall stones to check if there were any soldiers unfortunately trapped underneath.

"When this ten-meter-long section of wall collapsed, luckily there weren't any patrolling soldiers passing by. But we're still unsure. All we can do is clear the entire collapsed area and see if there are any survivors..."

Haru trembled as he approached Harvey, muttering with a look of fear and confusion, "When we built the city wall, we strictly followed your drawings and requirements. There's absolutely no problem with the proportions of concrete and stone... and we've already driven thick steel bars into each section of the wall. Logically, this shouldn't be..."

Harvey did not intend to directly suspect this honest director of the Construction Department. After all, no one working on projects for the lord these days was brave enough to cut corners and enrich themselves under his nose.

Moreover, only a short section of the wall collapsed, so it was impossible that it was caused by an earthquake, a landslide, or a mudslide.

"Look! There is a big hole at the landslide site! What's going on?" The worker in charge of cleaning up the landslide site screamed, and everyone quickly gathered around to check the situation.

Only half of the solid base of the collapsed wall remained, and the other half fell directly into the dark hole. Looking down, you can see countless broken stones filling the hole.

Harvey nodded to Reiner and asked him to release a few wolf spider alchemists to crawl down along the edge of the pit.

These alchemical beasts were equipped with the magic matrix of the Eye of Reconnaissance by Harvey, and they can share vision through Reiner's alchemical connection ability to achieve reconnaissance effects.

"Oh my God! Sir, at the bottom of the pit... there's a giant worm! I only saw half of its body, which was pressed down by these rocks. The remaining half is even deeper..."

The two defense soldiers who had awakened their bloodline abilities immediately asked Harvey for permission, climbed down flexibly with their weapons, and returned to the ground a few minutes later.

"Sir, it is indeed... it is indeed a very large insect, larger than... larger than the thickest and longest ice python I have ever seen... but it is motionless, as if it was crushed to death by the huge rocks that collapsed from the city wall."

Harvey immediately recalled that when he first explored the northern slope of Jackdaw Ridge, the ruins of the ancient black wizard tower located at the current location of the territory castle... It seemed that a huge pit suddenly collapsed, causing the entire ruins to collapse and sink.

Could it be that this section of wall and the remains of the Mage Tower were caused by this giant underground creature accidentally collapsing the ground buildings while drilling underground?
He looked around the landslide scene and suddenly found that among the gray stone slabs were several black stones, which were very similar to the building materials of the castle in his territory.

"When the Ministry of Construction was building the city wall, did they mix this... black stone leftover from the castle construction into the normal materials?"

(End of this chapter)