Chapter 663: Spectacle
"Also, I plan to build a landmark building in Neverwinter," Roland continued.
"A landmark?" Karl quickly recovered from his excitement. "Do you mean a striking building like a monument or a clock tower?"
"You could also call it a spectacle." As expected of the top figure from the former King's City Stonemasons' Guild, he could react so quickly to a new term. Roland nodded first, then shook his head. "But I'm not going to build a landmark with no practical value."
After the battle with the Church, the First Army suffered the most severe losses. Although Iron Axe reported that the army's morale was not affected, the family grief brought by the casualties was unavoidable.
In order to strengthen the confidence of his people, especially those from other places, he thought of spectacles, something that could make people marvel. Of course, some spectacles in history were built entirely to satisfy the rulers' selfish desires and did not benefit the builders at all. Even if they could show off national power, Roland would not do that.
"I plan to build a residential building on the south bank of the Redwater River, behind the industrial park."
Karl didn't speak. He obviously realized that this building would definitely not be ordinary.
Roland was very satisfied with his composure. "It will have about fifteen floors. Assuming three and a half meters per floor, the height of this building will exceed fifty meters. In other words, it's close to the height of four old King's City walls—that's already the most magnificent project you've participated in, right?"
He gasped. "Your Majesty, this can be considered a Tower of Babel!"
"It's not quite a Tower of Babel, just an ordinary high-rise building." Roland laughed. "But in this era, it's not an exaggeration to consider it a landmark."
The height of fifteen floors meant that it would be far taller than the castle. As long as you entered the territory of Neverwinter City, you could see this tall building at a glance. It could both symbolize the power of Neverwinter and make up for the current housing shortage. After all, the floor area ratio of high-rise housing is much higher than that of bungalows, which is why there are more and more skyscrapers in later generations.
"Can a residence really be built so high?" Karl seemed a little doubtful.
"For concrete, this is far from the limit." Roland pondered for a moment and said, "I will personally guide you to complete it."
Although the trades are different, the principles of mechanics and structure are still common. Before proposing this idea, he had already considered it from many aspects: the height seemed very amazing, but it was not actually so. For example, the Pyramid of Khufu, built more than two thousand years ago, was more than one hundred and forty meters high, and it was purely built of stones. China also had wooden pagodas over one hundred and thirty meters high—as long as the support is thick enough, height is not a big problem.
In later generations, in order to save materials, the volume of walls and columns would be reduced as much as possible while meeting the stability conditions, and Neverwinter City currently had an excess of cement production, so building a concrete building was a good choice.
In addition, if a tower-like design with multiple podiums is adopted in the structure, although it will occupy some extra land, it can greatly enhance the structural stability and reduce the construction difficulty at the same time.
As the saying goes, add more columns if the structure is unstable, and add more steel bars if the level is not enough. As long as the foundation is solid enough, it is difficult to collapse.
The final difficulty was the concrete pouring work—Roland had already considered this, that is, to let Maisie carry the hummingbird into the air, and the hummingbird would pour the concrete from the air with iron cans, which was not much less efficient than a pump truck.
Karl had previously had experience in building the Witch Building, which was also a concrete structure. This time, it was just a larger scale. Moreover, bamboo bars and iron wires would be replaced by real steel bars, plus the Witch Union as technical support, he was full of confidence in this.
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"Time's up, everyone put down your pens," Juan knocked on the table.
"Phew..." Evelyn breathed a sigh of relief. In this way, the second semester of coming to Border Town... no, Neverwinter City was over. In this year, she finally caught up with everyone's learning progress and participated in this final exam together.
She put away the charcoal pen and looked around—Anna was still absent. According to Wendy, she had reached a profound and mysterious realm. Ordinary people who saw the books she read would only feel dizzy and drowsy, as if they had exhausted all their magic power.
Candle was also looking at her. When their eyes met, she also gave a thumbs up, indicating that she did well on the test.
Nightingale, sitting at the back, still looked worried. Since there were no more quizzes, her grades had plummeted, which Evelyn found quite puzzling. According to her understanding, the other party was at least of noble origin and had received education earlier than most people, so she shouldn't be so bad at learning. After thinking about it, she could only think that it was because Nightingale's ability was too important, and she was busy dealing with things for His Majesty all day, which delayed her studies.
After all, the other party was a combat witch comparable to Ashes. If she were on Sleeping Island, she would almost be someone she could only look up to.
Others were happy or sad. For example, Agatha, Lucia, and Lily in the first echelon could always get high scores easily. Learning seemed to be an innate ability for them, especially Agatha, who was showing a tendency to approach Anna and Tilly. In addition, she was also a combat witch, which made Evelyn feel extremely envious.
As for the few at the end, you could guess from their expressions that, without accident, it would basically be Honey, Hummingbird, and Echo.
Of course, this did not include White Paper and Aisha, who had newly joined the alliance—they had not yet caught up with the progress and could only be taught separately by Teacher Juan for the time being.
But what excited Evelyn the most was Maisie—looking at the stunned little girl, she couldn't help but want to laugh out loud.
There were no multiple-choice questions on this exam!
Ever since the last final test results came out, Evelyn had been brooding over it. She thought that the goal she had set was very realistic, but she didn't expect to lose to Maisie by one point in the end.
For this reason, she also went to Juan to see if the score was miscalculated, but found that the other party's multiple-choice question accuracy rate was surprisingly high, and she lost indisputably.
In the following year, Evelyn spent most of her rest time studying.
Her ability was very quick to use. She usually only needed to go to the winery two or three times a week, and each time it took less than a quarter of an hour to release all her magic power. Even after she opened a bar, it didn't take up too much effort.
She never had fun with the playing card trio once, and she would always open a practice book to consolidate what she learned in the evening when she was free from mixing drinks. Even her favorite perfume collection, she restrained a lot. Only when new scents were on the shelves would Evelyn ask Candle to visit the convenience market once, just to achieve the goal she had set.
And this time, she was sure to win!