I woke up the next day with a full schedule. Yesterday's meeting had gone on for hours, a taste of how atrocious the next meeting would be. It took a lot of work to agree on a design with eight different races and various cultures and thoughts.
We all agreed that segregating or districting the races would be wrong, so we had to choose another way. Ultimately, we decided on a typical city design with some of our modifications.
My main focus was a sustainable and scalable design. I wanted to maximize utility, comfort, and prettiness. As such, my main contribution was the city layout of a circular grid design. A circle in the middle contains the town hall and government buildings, and six main streets are equally spaced, spreading out from the middle.
After the initial circle for the town hall, rings of roads would connect the six main streets at regular intervals. This was similar to a circular spider-web design, but with this, we could district blocks by activity and create easy access everywhere.
I didn't interfere much in the other parts of the discussion. I just wanted to use my technological knowledge to build a city that would withstand scale and technological advances.
We finished city planning, and we now had to do the work. My job was all the heavy lifting. The others could do the same things I did, but I was a lot faster. With a deadline in a month, we wanted to get the foundations laid.
Of course, not only did I have to contribute to the construction, but I was also appointed as head of the military. We had hunters and some high-ranking people, but none of them could protect the village like I could.
The village would be better prepared for accidents by organizing and training them as a unit.
Garth, the other leaders, and I would be going away for the discussion. We agreed to keep our discussion a secret as we didn't want to be influenced by the outside. Each leader would be looking out for their own, and if they had time to discuss amongst themselves, that could introduce prejudice.
I copied this idea from the Constitutional Convention of America. As a previous American, I deeply understood history and government. While I wasn't a social studies or history major, I took college-level government and history courses.
The point of history is to learn from it, so I took what I learned and applied it. While American ideology influenced my ideas, the U.S. government was not a good template for Greyhound.
Greyhound was a city-state, not a nation. There is no point in applying a national government to the city level.
I helped around the village from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily. After 5, the guards had training time.
We already had regular guards on rotation, so there was no need for any reassignment. I needed to lead the group on team training activities and help where possible. Besides being strong, I classically trained in martial arts, weaponry, tactics, and magic from a young age.
Most of my knowledge of the world came from my past life, but all the skills I had built up were due to my education and experiences here.
The guards comprised eight people from each race on an offset schedule. These ten were, on average, more vigorous and had more experience, so it wasn't like I was building them up from nothing.
I aimed to establish a chain of command and focus on team building, individual cooperation, and squads. I didn't have enough time to focus on everyone Individually, so when I sometimes lectured about martial arts or magic, it was broad and applicable to everyone.
I also appointed a vice-commander, Vera Ordais. She wasn't the strongest but showed the most unity and leadership capability to take over in my stead. That said, she was still a seventh-ranked warrior, third-strongest of the orcs.
Along with the guards, under my tutelage, came all the war and hunting animals. Grey and Arion were already the pack and herd leaders before they came to Greyhound, so their leading the animals was a natural choice.
Vesper was in a similar boat, but the Eagles and Rex made tough competition. Not only was the leader Chimera Eagle a rank eight, but Rex was also close to breaking through.
The airborne animals split up into three groups. The hunting birds followed Vesper, the eagles followed their leader, and the other miscellaneous units were assigned under Rex's care. Rex was still young, so I didn't trust him to lead a big group. His squad only consisted of six other birds.
On the topic of Rex, he was close to breaking through, so I wanted to guide him before the month-long time limit expired.
With my packed schedule and a weekly trip to Umpedes to check up on the guild, I barely had time to sleep. I was okay with it, though. Recently, I had too much free time and needed more direction.
The increased workload kept me busy and distracted me from depressing thoughts. Seeing the others improve also increased my motivation to get stronger. I'd been slacking in my cultivation, even though I did an hour daily. My last breakthrough was more than a year ago.
In the dungeon, I recovered my ability and advanced to the eighth rank in 3 years. After coming out of the dungeon, I had only broken through one level in the odd year after Greyhound. And it would be around another six months at my pace to break through.
Compare that to the dungeon, where it only took me six months to recover to the fifth rank and two and a half years to break through to the eighth.
To break through faster, I sacrificed my sleep for three more hours of daily cultivation. It wasn't like I needed sleep in the first place.
The toll on my body wouldn't be more than usual, but a side effect I noticed was that bags were starting to appear under my eyes.
It wasn't too noticeable yet, but it was there if you looked closely. When I first noticed in the mirror, I'd crafted. A similar image flashed in my memory when I saw the bags under my eyes.
A face in the mirror, heavy bags under the eyes; I couldn't distinguish the face, but it wasn't a still image—memories of staring at the bags under my eyes, blurry and indistinguishable. It was just one face, but it went through different life stages, from a small child to an adult adult.
Constant dark bags weighed heavily against the tanned skin. The eyes were also all the same, black and dull, reflecting the mirror's image.
Those memories didn't stay around, but the image of the dark bags remained. Whenever I looked in the mirror, I could see them on my current face.
I wasn't concerned about my looks(if anything, I thought the bags looked sick), but it did make me wonder how I got those bags in my memories. How I got these bags with my current body was also a mystery.