How much steel would that take?
Alvarez raised his head and muttered to himself.
"Heh, can't picture it, can you? Neither could I, so I made a serious estimate. The result was something even I could hardly believe—you know, the steel used for these basic facilities alone would be enough to put a lid over Blood Port."
"That isn't an exaggeration or some kind of metaphor. I mean it literally. If all that steel were melted down and forged into iron plates, it could cover the entirety of Blood Port, and the plates would be no thinner than the plate armor worn by the knights under your command."
Alvarez stood speechless in the street. Bright sunlight fell over him, while the shadows of steel pipes stretched beside him.
He looked up at the sky, imagining it as a vault of steel.
"No, that can't be possible. There may be many gas pipes, and they may be thick, but they can't possibly use that much steel..."
"That's because the only thing you can see when you look up is the gas piping. Do you know how many pipes lie beneath our feet?"
"B-Beneath our feet?" Alvarez jumped in fright and hurriedly backed away several steps.
"See those round things in the street over there? Those are manhole covers. Open one up, and you can climb inside. Blood Port looks huge from above, but its sewers below are just as densely packed. Apparently, there was once a terrible disaster here, and much of Blood Port's ground collapsed. When the lord rebuilt the city, he repaired the sewers as well."
"They say the sewers were built entirely according to the streets above. Every drain on every street corresponds to pipes below—pipes everywhere. Some drain rainwater, some carry sewage, some carry steam, and others