After resting, the Holy Servants pressed on and soon entered the forest.
The moment they entered, several veterans in the group frowned.
"Something's wrong!" said the Veteran leading the team. "The road through these woods was repaired very recently."
"What's wrong with repairing a road?" asked the young Crusader riding in the same wagon.
The Veteran nodded toward the ground nearby. "You can see fresh soil here, but it doesn't hide the hollows left by tree roots. Trees used to grow here. Someone cut them down, dug out the roots, and turned the ground into a road."
"Isn't that how roads are built?"
The Veteran sighed at the younger man's question and pointed ahead. "Look down the road. How many patches like this do you see?"
The young Crusader looked ahead and sucked in a sharp breath.
Along the straight road, such marks covered both sides, leaving only a narrow strip down the middle untouched.
It looked as though many trees had stood here not long ago, only for someone to fell them all in a short time, dig out even their roots, then fill the roadbed with earth and gravel.
This was no small undertaking. The road stretched beyond sight, and there was no telling how many trees had been removed to rebuild it.
"Does Hamlet Town... have that many workers?" another Veteran asked doubtfully. "It would take a thousand people to do this, wouldn't it?"
"Perhaps more than a thousand." The captain's face was as still as water. "If they can muster that many people to build a road, this 'town' is far larger than we imagined."
He drew out the word "town," his sarcasm plain.
In this world, a "town" generally had only a few hundred residents. One with over a thousand was already substantial. At an