A New Life In The Beast World-Chapter 97: House Designs

"So... Liz..." Serena started, trying to have the right words to ask the blue snake. It gazed at her unblinking, tilting its head and Serena just decided to go straight for it. "Who were you before all of this?"

"Who was I?" Liz tilted its head to the other side, seeming almost confused by the question.

"Um... yeah." Serena mused sheepishly. "Were you a beastman before? What was your life like?"

Perhaps there was a reason Liz’s soul was used. Serena knew it was to stabilize the system. But the why and how still was left unanswered. Plus she was curious to know what Liz was like before.

"Hmm..." Liz paused for a minute before blinking hard a few times. It then gazed up at Serena. "I’m not sure. I mean I know I made a deal with fewrfhery, but the memories are hard to find... Oh I remember something. There was this cu-"

Before Liz could finish its explanation it disappeared from sight with a flash. Serena was temporarily blinded, closing her eyes on instinct. And when she opened them once more, she was meant with a system notification.

[System Error. Currently Rebooting...]

[Please Be Patient]

Serena frowned at the sight. The creator of the system was definitely hiding something from her because the moment Liz started talking about its past life, this happened.

She wished she could’ve gotten more information from Liz before this happened. A clue to who it was before it became a part of this system. But all she had was that Liz made a deal with the creator of the system.

Which meant the creator had incredible power in the world - likely a god as expected from her theories. The question was what kind of deal did Liz make.

Was it a simple case of Liz repaying a debt after death or something more? A connection between them... Her eyes widened at the thought. Wait, that was it!

The original owner.

She knew she was jumping the gun a bit on this one, but perhaps the original owner could be the reason for her being here. She could’ve made a deal with some kind of god to have someone take care of Kiro in exchange for her soul.

And Serena wouldn’t put it past the original owner to do something like that. She had become crazily protective of Kiro, especially towards the end of her life. So much so that she got into a fight for the first time in her life.

Which ironically also was a catalyst to the original owner’s death.

Serena ran a hand through her hair in frustration. She kept getting an answer for something only to get hundreds of more unanswered questions. And she doubted Liz would be able to confirm her suspicions once it was back.

No doubt that stupid creator was putting a lock on that information now. Which of course begged the question why. Which made Serena shake her head.

No point in trying to solve that one. Serena huffed to herself, picking up her fallen pen. Might as well get back to what I wanted to do before I learnt all this...

Because she knew she wasn’t going to get any answers to her questions any time soon. So, she might as well do something productive to distract her curious mind.

She quickly opened her notebook to a blank page before grabbing the city planning guides from her stack of books. She opened them up to the pages she needed before she set them aside and turned her attention to her first task.

Creating suitable homes.

She already had most of the water system already solved, however, she had yet to complete the most important part of it - how to get water around the city. However, for that she needed a home design first.

That way she would have a clear idea of where all the water needed to be pumped too. Additionally, the size of homes, stores, government buildings, warehouses, storage units and other buildings for the city needed to be taken into account too.

Essentially, she needed basic designs and sizes of all buildings and where she was going to place them within the city keeping in mind she needed roads and space between buildings to prevent possible fires from spreading around the whole city, all so that she could have water flowing to the right areas.

Farmlands were already close to done - she would just use canals and floodgates to control water flow to them. But getting water into the city was a bit more complicated.

She wanted to make use of aqueducts, but needed to properly lay that out. Otherwise, it’d be a mess because she’d be making use of gravity to pump water due to limited technology in this world.

Not to mention, she also didn’t want the drainage system and clean water system to get mixed up. That would be a massive disaster. So, building designs needed some preparation first.

She wanted to keep the designs of all the buildings simple and practical for now. Technology and resources were limited, so she also needed to take that into account. Doing unnecessary fancy things would cause more trouble for them.

She split homes into two categories - one for single beastmen and another for families.

Single beastmen homes would be simple one storey buildings with a main room, bedroom and wash room on the one side and a kitchen area on the other side.

Under the kitchen would be a cellar room similar to the underground part they had in the hut right now. This would be used for storage. Thatch roofs would be removed to prevent fire hazards with a flat brick roof taking its place.

Originally, she planned to use tiles instead of thatch for the roof part because it lasted longer, but a problem came in the form of making said tiles. They’d need a kiln to make them.

And while she had the basis for making a kiln, right now it wasn’t something she wanted to test run. Especially when the fire temperatures needed to be regulated to properly make things inside the kiln.

Besides, using a flat brick roof had an advantage. It could be used as an area to hang clothing or perhaps even have a mini garden on it. But she’d leave that choice up to the person living there.

She’d just give them the space to do things on the roof.

Lastly, come the toilet. She was going to have an outhouse setup with it being separate from the house. It did mean people would have to walk to go to the bathroom, but it’d be closed up and sewage would be far from the clean water.

Which limited contamination of the water supply. Of course, there was the issue of dealing with said sewage too, but she’d deal with that one in time.

She sketched a basic plan on the house, adding notes about it as she worked. It took her about two and a half hours of writing and sketching before she was finally done.

Her wrist was aching by then, not used to writing for so long. The last time she’d written so much was back in the academy when they were required to take notes on their lessons or write exams on paper.

Technology was not allowed then to reduce the chances of students cheating. Especially during the Career Exams they took when they were fifteen. A set of exams which would decide their whole future.

Serena put the pen down for a moment, getting up to stretch her muscles out and grab a drink of water. When she was done, she got back to working on the family homes.

But not before checking the system notification. Which was still the same. Serena sighed at the sight, shaking her head. It would be a while before she saw that blue snake again it seemed.

The family house had a similar structure to the single beastmen homes, however instead of being one storey they were two. This way she could optimize space without making the homes too wide. 𝐟𝚛𝕖𝚎𝕨𝗲𝐛𝚗𝐨𝐯𝐞𝕝.𝐜𝗼𝗺

The ground floor would be divided into a main room, wash room area on one side, kitchen area on the other as well as two rooms for storage and for cubs to sleep.

Cubs were downstairs, one to prevent them from falling down stairs and two to give their parents some space. The kitchen area too would have a cellar area as well as underground tunnels to escape to the inner city during raids.

Meanwhile, the first floor would be divided into more rooms, mostly bedrooms. She’d have the main master bedroom with the biggest space and then about four other rooms which could be used for whatever the family needed it for.

But it’d likely be split amongst the beastwomen’s mates. Serena was pretty happy with the overall design, however, one thing did concern her about the family homes.

Which was that it’d be hard to make standard homes because some females had more mates than others. She could probably go with an average. Problem was, she didn’t know the average.

Guess that’s tomorrow’s task. Serena yawned, setting down her pen once more. I can meet with the Council and get their opinions on the designs.

But for now, she needed some sleep.