Chapter 67: Chapter 65: The Trouble of Incorporating
The population of the Dragon Nest Tribe suddenly surged from over a hundred to more than seven hundred. Although, due to Austin’s natural boost as a member of the Giant Dragon Race and the lifestyle of the Dragon Nest Tribe ensuring they have enough to eat daily, the orc captives were generally content and even felt good living in the Dragon Nest Tribe, willingly submitting.
However, the management of these newly added six hundred people remains a significant issue.
Initially, after Austin transformed into the Dragon Vein Beastmen, in his excitement, he decided to launch a full-scale attack sweeping across nearby Beastman Tribes. However, at that time, he hadn’t thought about the aftermath of the battle, hence a lot of things were not prepared.
First is the housing issue. The Dragon Nest Village has expanded several times, but those ten or so simple grass huts can only accommodate about two hundred orcs at most. For more, new houses have to be built, and even the walls surrounding the village need to be dismantled and rebuilt.
In the process of constructing new houses, Austin once again felt the difference between having discipline and lacking discipline.
Due to time constraints, the task of building new houses initially involved the orc captives as well. However, instead of speeding up the construction, the orc captives ended up significantly lowering work efficiency.
The most fundamental reason for this is the lack of discipline.
The orc captives made a chaotic scene during construction, greatly hindering progress, which was in stark contrast to the cooperative building efforts of the Dragon Nest Tribe orcs.
"Indeed, orcs must go through the baptism of military training to clear away that idle and chaotic atmosphere before they can join the Dragon Nest Tribe."
Seeing the situation where more people led to less power, the construction site of the Dragon Nest Tribe was in complete disarray, further solidifying Austin’s commitment to implement his military-government policy.
Undisciplined orcs are just a pile of loose sand.
Perhaps as development progresses, this kind of collective, military-civilian integrated system might limit the country’s further development, but at this initial stage, it’s the best development system.
"It seems we can only cooperate through division of labor."
Eventually, out of helplessness, Austin had to divide the orc captives into several groups, specifically tasked with chopping trees and transporting supplies, while the collaborative work of house construction was handed over to the more disciplined Dragon Nest Tribe orcs.
If other tribes were waging war, the victors would consider the losers as slaves, casually leaving them clustered in a corner. Issues like sanitation and housing needn’t be considered. They’d squeeze them relentlessly in peacetime, and then gather them as cannon fodder in wartime.
Thus, no pressure would arise, but Austin’s Dragon Nest Tribe is not comparable to the other Beastman Tribes within the Kawa Great Forest.
Captives are seen as expendables in other Beastman Tribes, while in Austin’s view, they are invaluable assets.
It’s not out of some saintly sentiment, but rather that by integrating captives into the Dragon Nest Tribe system after military training, forming a collaborative military-civilian group, it can achieve maximum efficiency in both warfare and production, which is incomparable to the backward driving methods of other tribes.
The increase in the number of orcs brought numerous troubles to the Dragon Nest Tribe,
Chaos abounds in aspects like discipline, sanitation, and housing, and besides these, there’s one extraordinary trouble.
That trouble is food.
Orcs naturally have little leftover food stored, especially not two months after a cold winter. After annihilating those few Beastman Tribes, the collected food was only enough to sustain the orc captives for a few days.
Even though the Dragon Nest Tribe has always had food surpluses, the hunting activities over these two months have turned a large amount of prey into cured meat, along with gathering fruits and roots from outside, there’s enough to sustain the Dragon Nest Tribe orcs for several months.
But once the Dragon Nest Tribe’s population surged five to six times, that little food became insufficient.
The herd of wild oxen raised by the Minotaur Tribe is ultimately an exception, moreover, those wild oxen not only need to be used as labor for pioneering agriculture in the future, Austin even considers establishing a Cow Cavalry Corps in the absence of Snow Wolf Cavalry, thus the wild oxen cannot be moved.
Thus, even if the Dragon Nest Tribe’s animal husbandry has already seen some achievements, it’s still insufficient for the massive food shortage.
"The orc captives need to undergo the baptism of military training, inevitably shortening the time for out collecting food. Besides, the territory within a ten-mile radius can barely sustain two hundred inhabitants, looks like we can only expand outward... It’s inevitable then, luckily the Extraordinary Dragon Vein Beastmen have already taken shape, their combat power has greatly increased, so there’s no need to overly worry about safety..."
When Dragon Vein Beastmen appeared, Austin launched a war in a moment of impulse, beginning to expand blindly, without anticipating the bitter outcomes that followed.
"Sigh, I was too rash back then."
As Austin was worried and racking his brains to solve the food issue for the orc tribe, even preparing to use Dragon Vein Beastmen as the core to explore farther areas, a piece of good news arrived, thoroughly solving his current concerns.
After about a month and a half of planting, the first plot of land reclaimed by the river plain can finally be harvested!
Perhaps it’s related to the different Otherworld kudzu, or maybe the Magic Power contained in the air sped up kudzu’s growth, in any case, the kudzu in the first reclaimed plot of land finally grew successfully.
In the field, the once green vines winding along the branches had now turned slightly yellow, many leaves started falling, sporadically.
The whole field, originally lush and green like a summer forest, overnight changed to a scene of autumn desolation.
And this change also signifies that the kudzu buried in the soil is ready for harvest.
The first reclaimed plot of land is not far from the Dragon Nest Village. Stepping out of the village’s gate, walking southwest for about a mile, you can see a winding river, and the first plot of land sits beside it.
The harvest day stirred the whole Dragon Nest Tribe.
Big and small orcs gathered by the field, craning their necks to watch.
Even the orc captives undergoing training stole a rare moment of leisure, following the official members of the Dragon Nest Tribe, gathering by the field to watch the excitement.
On this significant day with special meaning, the orc instructors also ran to watch the excavation scene.
Among the anticipation of all, Vinek and others wiped their hands, grabbing wooden shovels, and dug in.
All the orcs held their breath, wanting to know whether the farming plan was a success or failure, no one knew in advance,
whether the efforts of more than a month were wasted or worthwhile.
As the shovel went down,
everything was about to be revealed.