Urban Sanitation
Before me stood the villagers, led by Anna.
Ten households. Fewer than twenty people.
All of them had come out in full force, standing before me.
"Thank you."
Anna bowed first. The others bowed too.
Everywhere I looked—everything was made by DORECA.
Homes to live in, granaries filled with food, clothes on their backs.
All DORECA-made.
Higher quality than what they’d used before. And somehow, everyone looked… pleased.
"It’s thanks to the King."
"Never mind that. If Pshiny disappears, send word right away. I’ll lay rails here soon—train service will be up. Use that when it comes."
"A train?"
Anna tilted her head, clearly confused.
"You’ll understand when you see it."
"Understood. Truly, thank you."
Anna and the villagers bowed once more.
I waved them off, turned to leave.
Six child slaves waiting at the village entrance… weren’t looking at me.
They’d gathered in a group, doing something.
“What’s going on?”
“Ah, master.”
Shasri, the eldest, now fully settled into her role as the children’s leader, answered.
“We’re cleaning up trash.”
“Trash cleaning?”
“Yeah!”
Peering over the kids’ shoulders.
There were several pieces of wood.
Leftover from when they’d built the bathhouse and the storage shed—wood stripped off the original structure.
Vera was using her slave card to “dismantle” them.
“Ah, so the trash from DORECA gets erased by DORECA, huh.”
“Yeah!”
I nodded, watching the children erase the trash with their slave cards, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
☆
Walking through the wasteland with the child slaves.
On the way back from Anna’s village to Rebeck, the kids walked ahead of me.
Some of them held hands and sang.
Others wandered off in all directions—Arisa, Rirya’s daughter, dashed off in the direction of next Tuesday, then stopped to stare intently at a rock she’d picked up.
When not given orders, they looked like normal children. Like kindergarteners.
I wondered, vaguely, which version was better—kids playing, or kids working as slaves.
“Oliga.”
“Yes.”
Oliga, Svetlana’s daughter, looked straight up at me.
“Make a chair. Magic production’s fine.”
“Got it.”
Oliga pulled out her slave card, paid tenfold the magic, and conjured a wooden stool.
She set it down on the wasteland. The ground wasn’t flat, so it wobbled.
She sat on it without a care.
“Then… Irina.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Pat my shoulders.”
“…Yeah!”
——5,000 units of magic charged.
She froze for a split second, then her eyes lit up as she circled around behind me.
Irina slapping my shoulders with glee, the other five watching with envy.
A little out of reach, so they’re patting my back like they’re trying to reach something just out of grasp—doesn’t matter.
...Still kinda cute, but whatever. Doesn’t matter now.
Even kids are Eternal Slaves. Slaves.
I figured I should make them do something proper.
I stood up straight.
Touched the gem of the True Eternal Slave and pulled all six in.
(Owner-sama?)
Shasri’s voice, faint in my head, and the others—all puzzled, same as her.
“Faster this way.”
Six of them, still confused.
“Hurry back to Rebeck—time to work.”
The moment I spoke, magic surged into all six of them.
☆
Rebeck’s outskirts, the sun nearly set.
I spotted the familiar silhouette from a distance before entering town, so I stopped by there first.
“Risha.”
(Mother.)
Long enough to recognize her by shadow alone.
There she was—Risha, the first slave.
The hair cut during the creation of Eternal Slave (Sword), given as a slave’s gift, had grown back completely, returning her to the most “elven-like” appearance among the slaves.
“Ah, welcome back, master.”
“Just got back. What were you doing?”
“Um… garbage disposal.”
“Garbage disposal?”
I tilted my head.
Risha glanced briefly behind her. I followed her gaze.
It was hard to tell in the dim light, but there, piled high, was a massive amount of trash.
A mountain of garbage.
“…There’s really that much?”
The sheer volume was a little shocking. More than I could take in at a glance—probably enough to fill an entire baseball field.
"Who knew there'd be a mountain of trash here."
"Yes, all of Rebeck's garbage gets brought here. That's why we come by sometimes and erase what we can with DORECA."
(That's something Mama taught me.)
Ah, I see. That's how it works.
"Good work. Keep it up."
"Yes!"
Risha returned to sorting through the trash.
A half-cracked wooden house stood there—clearly something made with DORECA. She dismantled it with a wave, erased it.
More things followed, one after another, vanishing under her touch.
She watched for a while, then headed back toward Rebeck.
By the time she reached the town, the sun had fully set. Night had fallen.
Even so, Rebeck buzzed with life.
Main streets hosted several stalls. Men, likely done with their day’s labor, drank and laughed, loud and full of energy.
Fine. Let them keep going. The more the better.
But there was a problem.
What the child slaves had done. What Risha had done.
That’s when I noticed it.
The town… was dirty.
Trash scattered everywhere.
Not scattered—stacked up.
Probably trash waiting to be hauled away.
A townsman walked past it just then. Pinched his nose, hurried on.
This—can’t be ignored.
☆
Rebeck Palace, Office.
I called Yuria.
“What’s the current state of the trash situation?”
“The situation…”
“Describe it by volume.”
“…Then, like this.”
Yuria, her expression as flat as ever, walked to the blackboard.
She added “trash” to the bottom of Rebeck’s daily life gauge.
--------------------------
Rebeck
Clothing ■■□□□
Food □□□□□
Housing ■■■□□
Trash ■■■■■
--------------------------
“Wait. This is getting out of hand.”
“More precisely… like this.”
She added another mark to the trash column.
One square, two, three… eight, despite only five levels on the scale.
“Wait… what about the other towns?”
“Like this.”
“Mostly around seven… We can’t ignore the garbage problem. If we leave it, sanitation’ll go to hell—diseases’ll start spreading.”
“Just make tons of miracle cure.”
“Preventing illness is better than curing it. Besides, even if no one gets sick, the town’s still turning into this mess—can’t just look away.”
Leaving garbage lying around while trying to restore the world? That’s absurd.
“Waste disposal.”
“Normally, you burn it or bury it.”
“Or just dump it in the sea?”
“Doesn’t solve anything.”
She let out a dry chuckle. That really was pointless.
“Burying it’s not great either… so burn it.”
“Burning that much every day? That’s a nightmare. It just keeps growing… even if we built a stove, we’d need over a thousand souls of Lava.”
“Huh?”
“Huh?”
“The soul of a Lava?”
“That’s right. A stove, a public bath boiler—things like that. If we burn trash to make them, we’d need around a thousand souls. That’s why it’s a nightmare. Producing magic power drains it all at once.”
Yuria made a strained face.
The kind of despair only someone who understood numbers could feel.
But I’m different.
I’ve just found the ace up my sleeve.
“Build a crematorium. Gather every available slave.”
Yuria tilted her head, puzzled, but still obeyed, stepping out of the room to round up the slaves.