My Friends Got a Crown and a Fortune, I Got a Pregnant Wife and Stopped a Kingdom’s Collapse

Added: 2026-05-18

[00:00:00]Guys, I want to start by apologizing for the audio issues in my previous videos.

[00:00:05]That problem has now been fixed, so you can listen to the stories without any underscores or quotes. Enjoy the video.

[00:00:12]Last night, my name was Kaito Moryama, and my biggest problem was not magical rot, but an argument with my friends over an old computer. Renji Sato insisted that any normal person could hold a throne if you gave him a crown.

[00:00:24]and an army. Daiic Corros laughed and said that real power was not in the crown but in money. We launched an old kingdom building game about a doomed kingdom. The scenario had an almost mocking title. The fall in 90 days.

[00:00:37]Renji chose the king because he thought ruling a country was just giving orders with a smart look on your face. Dichi chose the Duke because the rich always win. I chose a random role. A magnificent mistake. The screen flashed.

[00:00:49]The room collapsed into darkness. And the last sound I heard was Renji shouting that now he was really going to become the best king. When I came to Renji really had become the king. The only problem was that he did not know how to manage ministers and army taxes and a council that lied constantly.

[00:01:05]Dichi woke up as a duke. He had mines, warehouses, and a title. But he did not understand accounting debts, interest, logistics, or why a wealthy duche could be dead on paper. And I did not wake up as a hero, a knight, or a mage. I woke up in the body of an ordinary laborer from the lower district of the capital with debts a rusty wrench in my pocket and a pregnant wife beside me. The air in this hole smells of sour rot and despair. I open my eyes and see a ceiling above me that is planning to kill me in about 3 minutes. An excellent start to a new life. A cold system window flashes in my head. Exactly 90 days remain until the kingdom completely falls. A wonderful timer for a guy who ended up at the very bottom of the Capitol social ladder. But right now, the global apocalypse does not concern me at all. My eyes are fixed on the thick wooden beam directly above the bed. It has been eaten to the core by glowing blue mold. This filth is called magical rot. It devours stone wood and human health. And right now, it is preparing to drop hundreds of kilograms of rotten debris onto our defenseless heads. Beside me, Mio coughs my pregnant wife in this world. She sleeps badly, clutching her stomach while ceiling dust falls directly onto her pillow. I try to move her closer to the wall, but the bed is as narrow as a toolbox. Mio flinches and horarssely asks if the roof is leaking again. I look at the wet stains above us. Saving the world will have to wait. H first, I need to make sure our house does not crush my wife before dawn. My capital consists of 12 copper coins and a rusty adjustable wrench in my trouser pocket. Not exactly much for the future savior of civilization, but I have something better than stupid magic.

[00:02:42]My system skill is called inspection and repair. It does not let me throw fireballs or fly, but it shows me the hidden physics of everything around me in the form of precise diagrams and numbers. The beam above us gives another disgusting crack. I activate the skill.

[00:02:57]The space before my eyes is traced with thin white lines of gravity vectors. I see the stress points. The rot has completely eaten through the central support node. The durability indicator is glowing red. The entire weight of the roof is currently held up by a prayer and a piece of old spiderweb. Time to act. I carefully sit Mio in the driest corner and give her the blanket. She gets angry but quickly understands if I miss the support point, we will be buried together. I jump out of bed and grab the old heavy dresser. The load vector shows that a straight vertical prop will snap in half. The weight needs to be distributed at a 45° angle. I push the creaking furniture, bracing my feet against the slippery floor. My back explodes with sharp pain and my joints crack under the unfamiliar strain. My new body is as weak as a starving cat.

[00:03:43]With a horrible screech, the dresser lands exactly in the calculated red zone. The wood sags, but the dresser redirects the roofs weight into the neighboring stone wall. The load graph jerks and finally turns green. The graph turns green. Behind the wall, the neighbor immediately starts swearing in a muffled voice. He clearly does not like that his house is now holding up my roof. Let him endure it. At least his stonework is not crumbling alive from rot. Mio sits up on the bed and catches her breath. She does not cry. She simply looks at the beam as if she is already choosing what she will use to fight off the rubble. The roof has merely taken a few hours delay. If I do not build a proper rigid frame, we will still end up under the debris. I order my wife not to move and go out into the backyard. The locals proudly call this place a magical waste dump. The acrid fumes immediately make me nauseous and my throat burns as if I am swallowing rust. I need to act quickly. Blue glowing mud squatchches under my feet. One fall into a puddle like that and the skin will be covered in chemical burns. I step carefully over dry islands of trash scanning the area.

[00:04:48]The neighborhood scavengers have already dragged away everything shiny and valuable, but they are fools. My skill easily highlights what ordinary people consider useless junk. I need durable objects from a pile of stinking slime. I pull out 2 meters of thick copper wire and a couple of sturdy rusty pipes.

[00:05:06]Perfect construction material for someone who understands strength of materials. On the way back, a local ragged thug with a knife blocks my path.

[00:05:14]He brazenly bears his yellow teeth and demands two coins for the right to cross his trash territory. Cheap racketeering.

[00:05:20]I do not even consider arguing or fighting with him. Any scratch in these conditions will lead to blood poisoning.

[00:05:26]I silently toss him the copper. This pathetic money no longer has any real value. When this whole rotten economy collapses into the abyss in 90 days, his coins will become ordinary pieces of useless metal. But the copper wire will save two lives right now. I return with the loot. Mio meets me at the threshold pale with fever. She asks me to run, but she is already holding the lamp herself and pointing out where the floor is less rotten. Her soft curves press tightly against me, throwing off the rhythm of my breathing. I dryly ask her to sit in the corner and not interfere with my calculations. The girl pouts in a fence, calling me an insensitive blockhead. She silently sits by the wall and begins tearing old cloth into strips. If the beam breaks loose, at least we will have bandages. Not a bad start for a team. I assemble a classic structural truss for rigidity. The load vectors shift from red to green. The work is hard. Every turn of the wrench makes my muscles burn. All night I twist homemade braces in the darkness under the dim glow of the rot. My hands are quickly rubbed raw and bloody. Dust clogs my lungs. The cough tears at my throat. But by morning, the life-saving structure is fully ready. The skeleton made of copper ties and rusty pipes is fixed dead solid. The house no longer makes death rattle. Creeks. We did not die under our own roof. Mio exhales calmly for the first time all night. I look at the filtered stain of mold and understand the house was only the first breakdown.

[00:06:52]In the morning, the girl wakes up from a terrible attack of dry coughing and nausea. That is a clear sign of the first stage of magical fever. She urgently needs clean water or the toxins will kill the child. I grab an empty wooden bucket and step out onto the narrow, crooked street. At the communal well, a long line of equally poor wretches has already formed. They are obediently waiting for their morning ration of poison. The water in the well glows a disgusting blue because of a dense layer of magical condensate.

[00:07:20]Drinking this poisoned filth is like swallowing crushed glass. Boiling will not help here. My engineering skill instantly gives me the chemical composition of the liquid. The sediment has a strongly alkaline nature and a massive unstable magical charge. This water slowly dissolves organs. I silently push forward through the crowd and fill the bucket with glowing sludge.

[00:07:39]The neighbors twist dirty fingers at their temples. They openly laugh at the madman's behavior. A local old woman spits at my feet, declaring that I have voluntarily decided to poison my pregnant wife. Laugh fools while you still have teeth in your gums. This water can be purified with chemistry.

[00:07:56]The real problem is that my empty house does not contain a single gram of suitable sorbent for assembling a filter. I need charcoal and clean quartz sand. I will have to search for them in the yard. I do not manage to walk even 10 steps before three sturdy guys in leather jackets block my way. They are the local ruthless debt collectors working for the crime boss Fat Papa Billy. They are the true masters of this filthy district collecting attacks on life. The leader contemptuously spits on the ground and demands that I repay 500 coins of old debt, an insane sum in my skinny pocket exactly 10 coppers ring.

[00:08:28]Sadly, the collector coldly states that if I do not pay today, my wife and I will be thrown out onto the street and the house will be taken for scrap paper.

[00:08:37]The leader punches me under the ribs.

[00:08:39]Pain folds my body in half and the bucket of poisonous water almost flies out of my hands. He leans closer and quietly promises to return in the morning. If there is no money, they will take the house and Mio will be sold for the old debt. I do not answer. Any fight right now will leave me with an infected wound, an empty bucket, and a wife without water. They leave laughing. I lift the bucket, wipe the blood from my lip, and hurry home. Find dirty sand from the street goes into use after I wash it thoroughly. Then I take pieces of charcoal from the old stove. Mio watches every movement. She does not understand the wire and charcoal, but she is already lining up empty mugs.

[00:09:15]Fear gives way to work. The problem with standard purification is that toxic mana particles have too fine a fraction. An ordinary sand barrier simply will not catch them. The liquid will remain deadly dangerous. But I know very well what the local arrogant mages do. Not understand at all. Magical energy has a pronounced magnetic moment. That property can easily be manipulated. I wrap an old clay jug with the remaining copper wire. Loop after loop. The result is an extremely primitive but functional magnetic trap. The structure looks like a trash can. Mio covers her stomach with her hands. When the blue sludge goes into the jug, she is waiting for an explosion. I am waiting for the wire to take the excess charge onto itself. The toxic liquid hisses through the layers of sand. Mio bites her lip and still does not move away. A bad sign for panic-prone people. A good sign for the future bastion. The copper wire instantly heats up, taking the entire magical charge of the liquid into itself.

[00:10:13]Inside the old jug, the true magic of pure science happens. I carefully watch the outflow from the filter's tiny hole.

[00:10:20]Crystal clear water begins to drip slowly. No sharp chemical smell, no horrific blue glow, and no poison. I place a mug under the stream. I confidently hand the water to Mio. The girl distrustfully takes a tiny sip, squeezing her big eyes shut. Then she greedily drinks the entire contents of the mug to the very bottom without spilling a single drop. The nausea immediately retreats before the triumph of basic multi-stage filtration. My wife's pale cheeks rapidly turn pink before my eyes. Her breathing becomes steady. The medicine worked. Mio throws herself around my neck, but immediately lets go and looks at the mug. There is no longer a miracle in her eyes. There is calculation how much of this water the street needs. She quickly asks whether the filter will be enough for the neighbors children. So much for the weak pregnant wife. I was still thinking about survival while she was already counting people. I show her the overheated mesh. The copper strands are glowing red and smell burnt. It is too early to celebrate. Our first source of life is dying before our eyes. Mia wants to help and reaches for the jug. I intercept her hand. Not romance, not heroism. It is just that this thing will burn her fingers down to the bone right now. The homemade purification system sparks maliciously. The copper mesh inside has overheated and is ready to melt. My makeshift filter is too weak and catastrophically quickly clogs with mana sediment. To cure my wife completely and give Billy's bandits a hard answer, I need serious industrial scale. You cannot win a cruel war for survival with one small jug. I must immediately start thinking in terms of urban infrastructure. I dropped to my dirty knees and enthusiastically begin drawing a detailed map of the district's pipes on the dusty floor. My system skill allowed me to see the utilities hidden deep underground, straight through the stone walls of neighboring shacks. I see the sewer, the water supply, and old heating mans. I run my finger along the pipelines on the floor.

[00:12:14]One valve feeds an entire alley. The second drives poison into the well, and the third runs under Billy's house. I open my system interface. The global timer counts down. Relentlessly, exactly 89 days remain until the guaranteed fall of the kingdom. The numbers glow red.

[00:12:31]There is nowhere to run. I look at the pipe map on the floor and place the first cross beside our shack. The lower bastion will begin from this place. It will be the only safe place that survives when the rest of the magical world turns to dust. To start, I need direct access to the hidden underground pumps. And for that, I will have to clash hard with the criminal bastards who still consider this district their personal property. My gaze falls on the heavy metal tool. I grip the old adjustable wrench tightly and look at the flimsy door. Outside the street is growing dark and Billy's men are already gathering in the alleys. Tomorrow they will come for Mio and for my head. Let them come. I will not meet them with a sword. I will meet them with pipes boiling water and every mistake they do not know how to see. I squeezed the adjustable wrench and looked at the door. Tomorrow these streets would learn that pipes can bite too. Morning began not with coffee, but with the flimsy door of my shack flying off its hinges.

[00:13:26]Three brutes in leather armor burst inside, wreaking of cheap booze and open threat. Their leader kicked the broken bed and roughly demanded that I repay the debt of 500 copper coins. In my pocket, a pathetic 10 coppers jingled.

[00:13:38]The situation clearly smelled like an imminent funeral. Mio retreats to the wall and covers her stomach with her palms. The leader sees her fear and immediately draws the wrong conclusion.

[00:13:48]Everything here can be taken by force.

[00:13:50]The bandit brazenly offers to take my wife as payment for the debt. My blood boiled, but I forced myself to think coldly. My gaze fell on the loaded crossbow in his thick hands. The inspection skill immediately highlighted the overtightened string and a deep crack in the trigger mechanism in red.

[00:14:06]One careless pull, and this combat toy would simply shoot him in the eye. I stepped forward, shielding Mio with my back, looking straight into the leader's eyes. I calmly advised him to remove his finger from the trigger if he planned to live until evening with his sight intact. I explained to him that his own weapon would him before he even managed to blink. The brute only burst into loud laughter at the pathetic threats of a beggar laborer. With a crooked smirk, he demonstratively pulled the trigger. A loud metallic crack rang out. The steel bow snapped in half, flying straight into his forehead with the force of a solid horse's hoof. The crossbow bolt helplessly ricocheted off the stone floor, throwing up a spray of sparks. The bandit howled desperately, dropping the broken weapon and grabbing his heavily bleeding face with both hands. His partners recoiled to the wall in primal terror. They decided I had used a hidden curse. In the local slums, basic knowledge of physics was always confused with black magic. While the brutes convulsively tried to recover, I issued my ultimatum harshly. I promised to repair the heating system in the mansion of their boss, Fat Billy, in exchange for the debt being written off.

[00:15:11]In addition, I demanded that they bring me a sack of clean construction sand.

[00:15:15]The bandits exchanged nervous glances.

[00:15:17]Fat Billy's main magical boiler had been leaking continuously for 3 days already.

[00:15:22]The local crime baron had promised to boil alive any subordinate who failed to solve the problem before sunset. My insane self-confidence gave me a tiny chance to survive. The bandits roughly grabbed me by the shoulders and led me through the most rotten alleys of the lower city. The air here was so dense with blue manafumes that it could have been cut with a knife. People were dying from disease right on the filthy roadsides clutching empty mugs in their hands. My system skill worked without stopping analyzing every inch of the space around me. I carefully looked at the rusty pipes under my feet and saw nothing but red stress points. The entire local heat network was one giant and extremely unstable powder. Keg Billy's mansion turned out to be an old rebuilt pumping station. Inside the heat was absolutely unbearable. Expensive wooden furniture cracked from excess moisture and hot steam. The owner himself sat in a puddle of his own sweat on a huge chair. The guards huddled against the walls while toxic fog rolled out of the basement. The enormous magical boiler in the center of the hall roared, threatening to blow the entire building into tiny pieces. Two half-trained mages poked it with rusty staves trying to freeze the metal with spells. It was complete idiocy and engineering amateurism. I pulled my old adjustable wrench from my pocket and confidently shoved the mages aside, ordering them to stop this cheap circus.

[00:16:39]My skill instantly highlighted the safety valve on the rear wall of the boiler clogged with mana rot. The system data screamed that the pressure inside exceeded the norm exactly three-fold.

[00:16:49]Billy rasped that if I blew up his house, he would personally feed me to hungry rats piece by piece. I ignored the threat and dryly asked for a bucket of icy wellwater. I demanded 10 minutes of absolute silence. I did not need magic. I needed to properly exploit the benol difference in temperature. A guard doubtfully handed me the bucket. I did not hit the petrified rot with a wrench to avoid causing a spark. I simply poured all the icy water sharply onto the red hot brass node of the old valve.

[00:17:16]The metal contracted violently from the thermal shock. Inside the heavy mechanism, there was a loud and pleasant crunch. The petrified plug of toxic rot gave its first crack. I struck the rusted lever with the wrench as hard as I could. A whistling stream of poisonous blue steam hit my right hand directly instantly burning the thin skin almost down to the flesh. I clenched my teeth from the searing pain, but did not let go of the lever. With a creek, the valve opened fully. The needle of the old pressure gauge jerked and rapidly crawled downward, releasing the load.

[00:17:46]The enormous boiler finally stopped humming and trembling. The unbearable heat in the spacious room began to gradually subside. Fat Billy wiped cold sweat from his forehead with obvious relief. But the crime boss immediately narrowed his little eyes like a predator. He no longer needed a random savior from the street. Now he needed a personal unpaid engineering slave. The fat man impiriously ordered his guards to throw me into the dark, flooded basement. He declared that I had to fix another leak down there and at the same time serve as a good dinner for the rats. He was not even planning to remember writing off my debt or giving me a sack of construction sand. Two brutes grabbed me under the arms and roughly threw me down the slippery stone stairs. The heavy oak basement door slammed shut behind my back with a clang. Dirty technical water here reached almost to my knees, giving off the incredibly vile smell of stagnant sewage. In the darkness of the room, dozens of red eyes suddenly lit up.

[00:18:40]Monorats the size of dogs had smelled fresh blood. From my burn, they began to tighten the circle. My skill picked out a vibrating pipe in the darkness just below the ceiling. It was in perfect hydraulic resonance with a powerful working pump behind the wall. I quickly estimated the pressure vectors in my mind. All I had to do was slightly disturb this fragile balance of the system. With my foot, I felt along the bottom of the puddle and found a long piece of heavy rusty rebar. Swinging it back, I struck the weakest point of the vibrating pipe with all my strength. The thin worn metal could not withstand my blow and burst with a loud crack. A powerful directed stream of industrial boiling water struck from above straight into the pack of hungry mutants. The monsters being boiled alive squealled desperately, thrashing in the boiling technical water. From the sharp pressure spike inside the closed room, the old wooden basement door simply flew outward. The rusty door lock tore off its hinges. The path upstairs was completely clear. I slowly climbed the stairs and entered the main hall wrapped in a cloud of thick steam. I stopped right at the feet of the stunned Billy who had not expected to see me alive. My burned right hand was bleeding heavily, staining the floor. But I looked at the fat crime boss with the icy gaze of a man who completely controls everything happening around him. I quietly informed him that I had just reconfigured his lower water pump for inevitable self-destruction. The node no longer released pressure. It accumulated it in hidden reservoirs. I added that if I did not come back in 24 hours and unscrew one small bolt, his luxurious mansion would simply fold inward into its foundation. Like a pathetic house of cards, Billy's fat face instantly turned pale. He loved his expensive paintings, soft carpets, and personal safety, far more than his illusory power over a beggar district of slums. I harshly demanded that he immediately give me a sack of clean river sand, high-quality charcoal, and officially write off all my debts completely right here and now.

[00:20:37]With trembling hands, the mafia boss gave the necessary order to his personal guard. A couple of minutes later, I calmly left the mansion with an incredibly heavy sack of valuable resources on my back. But I understood the laws of the street perfectly well. A local bandit would never forgive such brazen blackmail from a simple laborer.

[00:20:55]I had to stay constantly alert on the way home. My worst suspicions came true.

[00:20:59]Just around the next sharp corner, five armed collectors tightly blocked my path of retreat in a narrow, dark stone dead end. Predictably, Billy had decided to take his resources back and kill me the moment I left his personal territory.

[00:21:12]The bandits slowly drew their long serrated knives from their sheets. They had numbers and steel. Behind my back, I had only a sack of sand, and in my hand, an old wrench. For any person, the situation would have seemed completely hopeless. But I noticed one detail.

[00:21:26]These idiots were standing in a tight group directly on an old drainage hatch of the heating man. The very same man I had deliberately overloaded in the basement. I made a quick faint forward, throwing my heavy wrench straight at the massive valve on the brick wall of the dead end. The iron mechanism turned under the impact with a creek. The cast iron hatch under the armed bandits feet flew upward with a deafening boom. A giant column of scalding white steam burst out of the ground under enormous pressure. The collectors screamed shrilly, dropping their knives and trying to cover their cooking faces with their hands. The powerful shock wave easily hurled their heavy bodies against the brick walls. One of the bandits tried to get to his feet, blindly waving his blade in the dense fog, but his lungs had been burned by hot air, and he collapsed into a dirty puddle with a groan. I understood perfectly well that this was only a temporary tactical victory. Billy had lost his best fighters, but he would never accept losing face before the entire criminal bottom of the district. I calmly walked up to the wall, picked up my faithful tool from the ground, and silently stepped through the thick white fog.

[00:22:29]None of the defeated enemies even tried to stop me. The local beggars on the street pressed themselves against the dirty walls of the houses in wild terror. No one in this cursed district had ever dared to fight back against fat Billies. men. I walked through their elite punishment squad without even drawing a sword. Behind my back, someone whispered that Billy's men could fall, too. When I reached my alley, I stumbled into my home shack, barricaded the door tightly with a chair, and collapsed helplessly onto the floor. My physical strength was already at its absolute limit. Mio gasps when she sees the burn on my hand. A second later, she is already boiling water, tearing clean cloth, and ordering Barney not to stomp around in the doorway. She washes the wound so carefully as if she has been dressing wounds all her life. I hiss from the pain and Mio hisses back demanding that. I sit still. Her hot, uneven breathing touched my neck. It created an extremely awkward but exciting social tension between us. We had both spent too long on the edge of death. Mio notices that I am looking at her for too long and tightens the bandage harder. Pain instantly returns me to reality better than any alarm clock. I smiled crookedly through the pain and quietly said that this terrible burn was definitely worth it just to see her as such a sweet, caring, and truly daring girl. She snorted in displeasure and deliberately tightened the knot on my bandage even harder, forcing me to hiss loudly from the sharp pain. Female revenge for inappropriate jokes knows no boundaries. There is no morning panic left in her eyes. She saw the water barney at the door and my burned hand.

[00:24:01]That was enough to believe not words, but results. After catching my breath a little, I poured the sand I had obtained and the crushed charcoal into a large ceramic flask. Now I had absolutely all the necessary layers to create a real filter. The magnetic trap made from the remnants of the copper wire perfectly completed this primitive engineering assembly. My purification system was ready for its first serious launch in this world. I carefully secured the structure with old leather straps so the vessel would not burst from internal hydraulic pressure. Any slightest leak of unpurified mana could become fatal. I check every strap and seam. If the vessel bursts, poisonous mana will scatter through the room. In this house, mistakes cost breath. I carefully poured the dirty blue sludge from the well into the top compartment of the system. The muddy water slowly passed through all the charcoal and sand layers, cleansing itself of toxic impurities. After a couple of agonizing minutes, the first drop of absolutely transparent water fell from the lower glass tube. It was pure life, free of manor rotat and poisonous chemical sediment. Mio greedily pressed her parched lips to the wooden mug. With my own eyes, I saw the dangerous mana fever. Gradually retreat from her tired and badly drawn face.

[00:25:11]This water was worth more than gold. You cannot drink gold. Gold will not take Mio<unk>'s fever down, and gold will not make the crowd behind the door obey my rules. But our quiet family joy did not last long. Through the wide crack in the thin plank wall, someone's greedy and hungry eye flashed. The local old neighbor had seen the clear water. The rumor that a source of clean life had appeared in my dilapidated house instantly flew down the street. Within minutes, a crowd gathered in front of the shack. At that moment, the translucent game system interface floated up before my eyes again. The glowing symbols mercilessly stated that 89 days remained until the fall of the kingdom. The integrity of this world's base structure had fallen by another tiny but critical fraction. The global system time was melting relentlessly while I dealt with my petty household conflicts. The old man timidly knocked on my door, begging for just one sip for his sick. I granddaughter. In exchange, he offered me an old copper sie, which was an ideal component for my filters. I silently took the useful piece of metal and poured him half a mug of clean water. This was my very first successful commercial exchange. The birth of an entirely new microeconomy in the slums.

[00:26:19]The crowd behind the door began to grumble in dissatisfaction. Dozens of exhausted people demanded the same exchange, offering me rusty nails, broken tools, and even their old torn boots. I ordered everyone to disperse and return only tomorrow with proper construction material. If I showed weakness right now, these frightened people would simply tear my house down to the foundation. But I understood perfectly well that one household filter was critically insufficient. To survive and stop this cursed system timer, I would have to physically cleanse the entire quarter. And to accomplish this Titanic task, I desperately needed strong working hands, fanatical loyalty from the crowd and my own brutal engineering control over the territory.

[00:26:58]My grand reflections were rudely interrupted by a horrible crash from the street. The thin walls of my shack shook violently, and gray rotten dust poured from the wooden ceiling in large flakes.

[00:27:09]Someone incredibly strong and massive had blown my fresh defensive barricade at the entrance apart with a single blow, turning thick planks into pathetic wooden splinters. Barney stood on my threshold, breathing heavily. He was the largest and most dangerous enforcer in Fat Billy's retinue. In his muscular hand, he gripped a heavy Warhammer. He had not come here for copper coins at all. He had come to avenge his boss's humiliation. Take my head and seize forever the priceless secret of clean drinking water. The wooden door shattered into splinters with a crash as if a battering ram had struck it. On the threshold stood Barney Billy's huge bald enforcer clutching a heavy steel hammer in his massive hands. His eyes were bloodshot and his heavy breathing burst from his mouth together. With rage, this giant had come to beat the debt life and secret of clean water out of me in one go. Mio screamed and pressed herself to the wall, covering her stomach with her hands. I pushed her behind my back and activated the inspection skill. An ordinary person would have seen a killing machine, but the system showed a different picture. Barney's right knee glowed red. The joint was twisted and clogged with mana crystals. This brute was not simply limping. Every movement tore his tissues from the inside. I smirked and took a step toward him, looking straight into his ragefilled eyes. Take one more step and your knee will crumble into dust. I threw out in an icy tone. Barney froze his face, twisting with the pain he was so desperately trying to hide. He raised the hammer for a blow, but his right leg treacherously buckled. The giant collapsed onto the floor, dropping his weapon, and groaned heavily while clutching his swollen joint. I did not wait. Grabbing a mug of clean water, I splashed part of it onto his knee. Using it as lubrication for the damaged tissues, Barney growled in surprise.

[00:28:54]Then, I pressed two critical stress points and forcefully pulled his shin toward myself. The crunch of bones echoed through the shack, making Mio flinch in horror. Barney howled so loudly that the remains of the roof shook, but a second later his eyes widened. The joint locked into the ideal position, blocking further destruction.

[00:29:11]I silently handed him the remaining clean water in the mug. The brute greedily drank it to the last drop, feeling the mana fever leave his exhausted body. When Barney stood up, he was standing firmly on both legs for the first time in 5 years. His gaze darted between me and the empty mug, trying to comprehend the miracle that had happened. Billy will kill you if you return. Empty-handed, I said calmly.

[00:29:34]Stay here, be my wall, and I will give you water food and a life without pain.

[00:29:39]The giant silently looked at his heavy hammer, then shifted his gaze to me and slowly nodded. That is how the first official guard appeared in my rotten alley. Mio looks at Barney, then at me, and quickly solves the problem. She places him by the door and tells him not to let anyone in without payment. Barney obeys. Her bold tone made me cough awkwardly, but there was simply no time for embarrassment. The rumor of clean water spread faster than a forest fire in dry weather. By morning, Mio is already holding the Q list. I set out a bucket of water. Barney crosses his arms at the entrance, and she decides who receives a mug first. The rule is simple. One mug for useful metal charcoal or a tool. Mio repeats it louder than I do. The crowd hears not a request, but an order. It hums indignantly, but thirst is stronger than pride. An hour later, Gears pipes and charcoal are lying by the door. For the first time, people are paying with trash for life. Mio marks every family on the board with charcoal. Suddenly, Barney snaps his arm forward and catches a small boy by the scruff of the neck. The 10-year-old was trying to quietly steal a flask while I accepted payment. It was Pip, a local street orphan, trembling from high fever and exhaustion. I told Barney to let him go and personally poured the boy a full mug of the purest water. Drink then you will work it off.

[00:30:55]I threw out watching the little ones swallow the water together with his tears. You know all the ventilation shafts in the district. Now you are my eyes and ears. Pip nodded greedily, wiping his mouth with a dirty sleeve. He immediately delivered the first valuable piece of information. Billy had hired professional cleaners from the elite upper city. That means the ordinary enforcers are finished and it is time to prepare for a serious siege. I ordered Barney to drag all the collected metal inside and lock the door firmly until evening. I worked like a damn man, turning pieces of pipe and old springs into deadly traps. I scattered slippery oil at the entrance and stretched copper trip wires. The shack was turning into a fortress. Mio brings dinner and catches a copper trip wire with the toe of her shoe. I managed to grab her elbow a second before the siren. She arches one eyebrow slightly in absolutely no hurry to pull away. Are you building traps for enemies, engineer, or secretly trying to catch me in your wicked nets? I choked on air and nearly dropped the adjustable wrench onto my foot. Her little laugh removed some of the tension, but the ringing of bells in the street instantly returned me to reality. A procession in white robes was approaching my house, golden bowls in their hands. They were priests of the cult of purity, sellers of holy water, and the capital's main frauds. The chief priest stopped at the threshold, wrinkling his nose in disgust at the smell of street rot. He pointed at me and thunderously accused me of defiling sacred springs. The crowd of local residents parted in fear. No one dared contradict the cult because their water was considered the only gift of the gods in this world. Cursed by everyone, I calmly stepped forward, scanning the golden bowl in the priest's hands with my skill. Inside splashed ordinary water mixed with a mild anesthetic poison. If your water is so holy, let us test it through my filter.

[00:32:42]I loudly proposed. The priest turned pale, but he simply could not refuse in front of hundreds of believers. He poured his liquid into my sand and charcoal apparatus. At the output, the water turned black and a thick sediment of addictive poisonous narcotics settled on the filter. The crowd gasped. Mothers whose children had been breaking out in rashes from temple water screamed in fury. The priest backed away in panic, threatening heavenly punishment, and rushed off. The victory did not last long. Pip jumped down from the roof, gasping from running. Fat Papa had gathered mercenaries with torches, and they were already coming to our alley. I ordered everyone to take cover and stood behind Barney at the barricaded door.

[00:33:20]The night street lit up red from dozens of blazing torches. Billy's mercenaries and drunken cutthroats poured into the narrow alley in front of my house. They advanced as a dense crowd, completely confident in their overwhelming mass, but they did not even suspect that they were standing on a minefield made from the laws of physics. I pulled the first lever and an old pipe under their feet sprayed slippery technical oil. The front ranks collapsed, knocking down those following behind. Then I activated the main valve, releasing overheated steam straight from the overloaded drainage system. The narrow passage turned into a boiling cauldron. The mercenaries dropped their torches and screamed in terror, trying to get out of the suffocating fog, not understanding where the attack was coming from. Barney burst out of the smoke like a vengeful spirit, scattering disoriented enemies with his huge hammer. The brutal siege was completely broken in 3 minutes. When the steam cleared, only a few wounded bandits were groaning on the ground. One of them had badly scalded his arm, and his mother and neighbor from the street was crying over him. I approached them with the last flask of clean water. The crowd held its breath, expecting me to finish off the enemy, but I took out bandages and began carefully washing his burns. The anger on the neighbors faces changed into deep shame. The heretic they had feared only yesterday turned out to be many times more merciful than the priests and more useful than the bandits. The street fully recognized my authority. People no longer looked at Billy as the master of the street. But when I returned to the house to check the filter, everything inside me dropped. The copper mesh had melted and the charcoal had fused into a black, absolutely useless stone. The mana in the district had become so dense that household filters could no longer handle the load. My purification system died, leaving us without a single drop of drinking water. I looked at Mio, who was tiredly wiping sweat from her forehead.

[00:35:08]If I do not reach the abandoned pumping station deep underground, we will all die of thirst in two days. The crowd outside fell silent. The last drop of clean water fell into the bucket, and my homemade filter burst apart with a loud crack. The copper mesh simply melted from the overload of toxic mana. Thirst struck the quarter again. If I did not give people new water by evening, yesterday's defenders would burn my house themselves. We had to descend into the drainage ditch to the ancient main pumping station. Mio tears the hem of an old dress into masks and checks the knots herself. Then she looks me in the eyes and asks me not to play hero because heroes are bad at repairing cradles. My wife sternly whispered in my ear that if I died in the dungeon, she would go down there and kill me a second time. Pregnant women are terrifying. I swallowed nervously and promised to return before sunset. We descended through the hatch. Me, the brute Barney, and the small spy. Pip. The darkness of the underground greeted us with the thick smell of rot and a red glow on the walls. It was unstable mana, ready to explode from a spark. I turned the repair skill to maximum. My vision highlighted safe paths between poisonous puddles. Barney followed, clutching a heavy piece of pipe. Suddenly, a homemade pistol was aimed at us from the darkness. The weapon was held by a mad oneeyed old man. It was Vert, a former network engineer. He horsely ordered us to leave before he fired, but my skill highlighted his gun in bright red. The pressure in his steam cylinder was off the charts. I calmly told the old man that if he pulled the trigger, the valve would rip off and tear out his remaining eye and immediately told him how to loosen the side valve. Vert was stunned, turned the valve, and the pistol hissed out dangerous steam. I silently pulled an old blueprint of the fourth pumping station from my pocket. The old man's eye lit up with a fanatical technical gleam. Verit led us to the pumps. The enormous hall was overgrown with a carpet of slugs. They fed on dirty mana and dissolved flesh down to the bone Barney swallowed hard and gripped his iron. Pipe tighter. We could not hit them. The skill found a resonant pipe under the ceiling. I told Barney to strike it with all his strength. Vert screamed in horror, begging him to stop or the old vault would collapse right onto our heads. The giant's blow shook the underground. A soundwave rolled through the hall. The bodies of the slugs could not withstand that vibration and burst, turning into liquid slime.

[00:37:28]The path to the station's main valve was clear. Vert and I grabbed the rusty wheel. The metal screeched, tearing skin from our palms. The entire system shuddered. Ancient pistons began moving with a roar and water surged into the empty pipes under enormous pressure.

[00:37:43]Meanwhile, panic began on the surface.

[00:37:46]People cried when fountains of crystalclear artisian water burst from the old street stand pipes. No mana, no rot. I had fulfilled my promise. Look closely. In this city, clean water was not kindness anymore. It was money, leverage, and the fastest way to make every powerful man panic. I did not give water away for free. The price was simple, 1 kilogram of scrap metal per day from each family. A storm of construction began in my house. I rebuilt the first floor into a workshop and hired the neighbors as workers.

[00:38:19]People paid with trash for life. My machines produced parts for new filters and pipes, but the forge was catastrophically short on coal. Then I looked at the mountains of Mana from the sewer. Dried with salt, this infection burned three times hotter than coal.

[00:38:33]Yes, the smoke was acurid, but we built tall chimneys. The bastion received its first endless source of energy. At night, Pip brought an important message.

[00:38:42]Fat Billy wanted negotiations. The local crime boss realized that he was losing influence. I went to his mansion alone, but I brought a very interesting surprise with me. Billy met me with guards and demanded that I hand over the station. Instead of words, I placed a flask of overheated rot steam on the table. One action from me and his expensive mansion would instantly fly into the air. The bandit started sweating and changed his tone. We made a deal. Billy began selling my water for a small percentage. Yesterday's master of the district turned into my cowardly but extremely profitable business partner.

[00:39:16]In the morning, Mio meets me in the workshop, not with hugs, but with a wooden ration board. The workers fear her chalk more than Barney's hammer. I wanted to joke about the dirty jacket, but a loud clatter of hooves rang out in the street. A knight from the upper city rode up to my doorstep. His horse was breathing heavily, and his rich armor looked rather dreadful. The repair skill immediately revealed that the steel of his armor was covered in corrosion cracks. The upper city was slowly rotting, too. The knight arrogantly looked over the poor people and loudly demanded that the master of pipes be called. That was what the neighbors had started calling me. I calmly stepped forward, gripping the adjustable wrench.

[00:39:52]The writer dryly stated that I was being summoned immediately to the royal palace naturally without the slightest right to refuse the timer before my eyes updated mercilessly. Exactly 70 days remained until the fall of the kingdom. My district had been saved, but now the system was forcing me to crawl into the very layer of systemic rot. The golden bridge of the upper city looked like a true architectural wonder. Nobles strolled across it in luxurious silks, but my inspection skills showed an entirely different and frightening picture of reality. The bridgeg's loadbearing supports had rotted by 95%.

[00:40:27]The stonework held together solely on the remains of magic, one heavily loaded cart, and all this elite luxury would collapse straight into the abyss. The royal guards contemptuously crossed their spears in front of my nose. My workcloaked of fuel oil and slum sewage.

[00:40:42]I looked like a garbage collector who had accidentally wandered into the abode of great gods. But the knight accompanying me dryly ordered them to lower their weapons. He had a direct order from the king. I was allowed into the palace. Led through marble corridors straight into the glittering hall of the chief architect, the local genius sat behind a redwood desk. He arrogantly threw a blueprint of the new water supply system under my nose. This snob planned to purify the city drains with magical crystals. I looked at his complex runic calculations and nearly laughed out loud. Magic is beautiful, of course, but this office idiot had completely forgotten benal laws of physics and fluid pressure. I calmly pointed with my stained finger at the central distribution node in his diagram. I stated that if they launched the crystals right now, the main fountain on the square would explode in 3 minutes. The architect turned red with rage. He ordered the guards to seize me and throw me into the dungeon for insulting the high arts, but we did not even manage to take a single step. The ground under our feet rumbled dully.

[00:41:40]Beyond the huge window, there came a deafening wet crash, a dirty geyser mixed with chunks of statues shot into the clear. Fava, Sky. The architect's face became whiter than expensive chalk.

[00:41:52]I dryly adjusted the collar of my jacket. I reminded him that hydraulics does not forgive mistakes, even for people with titles. A dead silence hung in the enormous hall. The guards retreated in reverent horror. At that moment, King Allaric himself, slowly stepped out from the shadows of the tall columns. Renji Sto, my old friend from my previous life, was inside this body.

[00:42:14]He looked as though he had not slept for at least a month. With an imperious gesture, he sent the guards and the disgraced architect out of the hall. The doors closed heavily. We were finally alone among peeling golden plaster and cracking ancient frescos. All Alaric smiled bitterly. The crown was on his head, but Vain and the corrupt guilds had long since seized real power. The king was a helpless hostage in his own rotting palace. Any decree of his was blocked by the council. He could not openly help my district without provoking a bloody civil war in the capital. All Alaric silently shoved a heavy leather bag of elite royal tools into my hands. On top of the tools lay a rolled parchment. It was the black mandate granting secret access to the underground. The king told me to repair this cursed city from below. Since he himself could not save it from above, I silently accepted the deal. Now I had become the official shadow foreman of the falling crown. The game had begun. I returned to my familiar damp slums with incredibly valuable loot. Old Vert nearly cried from happiness when he saw real mana machines from the palace. We immediately began installing them in the basement of the house. Starting the new machines released a massive burst of heat. The temperature in our cramped room instantly jumped to an unbearable level. I stood naked to the waist trying to tighten the stubborn main valve. Mio came down with cold water and a list of complaints from the workers. The basement is hot. The pipes are humming, but she calmly forces everyone to drink in order. I froze for a second with the wrench in my hand. Mio snapped her fingers in front of my face and reminded me that a boiler explosion would ruin her entire ration schedule. Barney loudly cleared his throat. Vert pretended to study the bricks I returned to the valve because arguing with Mio in front of the whole crew was more dangerous than steam. We looped the red hot steam through copper pipes. Heat recovery started working. The basement became quieter and Mio immediately demanded a proper laundry room. The workshop roared aggressively from the increased power. The machines spun without stopping. Now we could forge highquality steel without the slightest loss of internal pressure in our boilers. During excavations, Ver dragged a piece of strange rusty iron from the deep sewer levels. My inspection skill immediately issued a system warning. It was not an ordinary piece of rotten pipe at all. It was a surviving logic block from an ancient guardian automaton.

[00:44:30]Magic had long ago erased its original memory, but the metal itself was. Still alive and ready to receive new control commands. I carefully took the jeweler's tools from the king's set and began sorting through the tiny contacts. I did not use pompous spells. I simply reflashed this piece of ancient iron with pure logic. The piece of metal clicked loudly and suddenly released six thin spider-like legs. A blue optical eye blinked on its casing. I had gained my first fully obedient personal mechanical scout. This drone was small, incredibly agile, and completely invisible to the magical radars of the Chancellor's Guilds. The perfect spy for the narrow ventilation shafts of our expanding lower bastion. I immediately sent the metal spider to test the district's old ventilation system. It nimly climbed deep beneath Fat Billy's fortified mansion. The drone's image transmitted directly into my brain. What I saw made my fists clench with anger.

[00:45:25]Billy was hiding enormous stores of fresh grain and dried meat behind a false wall. And this, while our entire district was slowly dying of hunger, I did not open this secret warehouse by force. Instead, we quietly launched a system of hidden sabotage. My little drone began methodically sawing through the fastenings of the ventilation grates. Cheese and dried meat began accidentally falling out of the ventilation straight into the hands of Mios women's committee. Fat Billy could not understand for a long time exactly where his priceless supplies were disappearing from inside a locked room.

[00:45:56]Rumors of water and stable food spread quickly. 50 unemployed and hungry poor people gathered at the massive doors of our workshop. They all wanted to join our ranks for survival. Simply giving them food would have instantly killed our fragile economy. I stepped out to the crowd and divided them into three strict work brigades. No charity, only hard and useful labor. Barney led the perimeter security force brigade. Vert became chief foreman for underground communications. I personally introduced clear peacework pay. Make the daily quota of parts and receive water. Exceed the plan by 20% and receive an extra piece of meat in your ration. Slackers were thrown out into the street the same day. Our lower bastion began working smoothly as one steel mechanism. But the continuous roar of our machines attracted the attention of the purification guild, a pompous capital inspector barged in. He was accompanied by a whole detachment of well-armed personal guards of Chancellor Vain. The official disgustedly waved his official charter. He loudly declared that he was confiscating all our underground production capacity for the state. We face total seizure of the equipment, but I had prepared my hidden Trump card long ago. One forgotten legal loophole stated that in an active quarantine zone, any taxes and confiscations were strictly prohibited. I discreetly pressed a liver under the table. Thick acid steam of concentrated manor rotat poured from the ventilation grates around the inspector.

[00:47:18]I calmly put on a protective mask and politely invited thee guest to conduct a full audit of the plague basement. The official instantly turned pale with animal terror. He convulsively pressed a silk handkerchief to his mouth and shamefully fled to the exit together with his brave guards. Our district de facto received autonomous status. It was too early to celebrate. We urgently needed to strengthen the physical borders of the district before the inspector returned with the chancellor<unk>'s regular army. We decided to build a solid wall out of old boilers and stones, but ordinary mortar would take several long weeks to dry. We had only one night before the punitive detachment arrived. Physics came to the rescue together with Armana generators.

[00:47:58]I sent a controlled electric current directly through the steel reinforcement laid into the wall. The raw mana concrete set in seconds from the shock stimulation. The temperature of the masonry rose sharply. Once cooled, our new barrier became many times harder than any vaunted palace steel by the first rays of the cold. Morning son. Our dilapidated district had finally turned into a sealed grim fortress. The local authority. Billy quickly realized that he had finally lost control of the streets. His most profitable smuggling routes were now blocked tight by our brand new concrete wall. The fat man flew into indescribable rage. He gathered absolutely all his remaining cutthroats and launched a direct assault on the bastion. The bandits brought heavy siege ladders and burning torches with them. They threateningly crowded together in a dense mass directly above the streets. Main storm drain. I stood on the wall and simply nodded to vert.

[00:48:49]The old man turned the mainline valve to maximum with predatory delight. The pressure in the pipes under the bandits feet reached a critical peak. A wave of icy technical water mixed with waste burst out of the ground with the crushing force of a cannon shot. Billy's entire arrogant army was brutally washed into the drainage ditch in a single second. Our former crime boss floundered. Pitifully in the streams of filth forever losing his status as ruler of the bandit slums. Billy did not just lose a street fight. He lost the district. Because once every pipe obeys the guy with the wrench, muscle stops being power. I tiredly leaned against the massive battlements of the bastion wall. My system worked flawlessly. The people inside the perimeter were fed and safe, but relaxing in this cursed world was deadly dangerous. A frightening red system window suddenly floated up before my eyes. Time was flowing away relentlessly. Exactly 60 days remained until the complete fall of the kingdom.

[00:49:46]The temperature collapsed overnight. A magical winter struck the capital so sharply that the ancient pipes of the upper city began bursting with deafening cracks. Aristocrats drowned in icy water while their praised artifacts sparked and went out. The elite heating system simply had not been designed for such cold. It also got colder in the bastion.

[00:50:05]Mio handed extra blankets to the children and gave me a list of houses where old. People would not survive the night without heat. This was a challenge. We had tons of explosive mana rot and a new steam system. All that remained was to connect them into a closed loop. I ordered hot oil sent through the external pipes. A huge fire risk, but within an hour, our entire district had become a warm oasis in the middle of an icy hell. The rumor of heat spread instantly. Crowds of freezing refugees began storming our new concrete walls, but along with them came guests far worse. My repair skill highlighted strange anomalies. Voids moved in the crowd. The chancellor's assassins were using invisibility magic to slip inside.

[00:50:44]Magic hides light, but it does not hide heat. I opened the valves at the gates, releasing a dense curtain of hot steam straight into the roaring crowd. People recoiled in fear, and icy silhouettes appeared clearly in the white fog. The assassins were cold as death, and the steam flowed around them, revealing their outlines. The brute Barney did not ask questions. He simply grabbed empty air where I pointed and broke invisible necks. I love crude physical strength.

[00:51:08]One of the killers managed to bite through a poison ampule, but before dying, he horarssely spat out that tomorrow the royal lift would collapse straight onto our heads. The lift was my friend, the king<unk>s only connection to the army, and a huge weight hanging over my bastion. If it fell, it would flatten us into a pancake. Huh. At night, old Vert and I climbed to a height of 500 m. The wind knocked us off our feet, and our fingers froze to the metal. One wrong move meant death. My skill immediately showed the problem.

[00:51:35]The mechanism's loadbearing supports had been eaten away by artificial acid. The chancellor sabotaged the strength of the node was only three units. We could not use magic. I pulled the steel cables I had forged yesterday from my bag, and we began tightening the dying beams with crude mechanics. I rubbed my hands bloody. But by morning, the lift stood dead firm. It was no longer an ancient magical wonder. Now it was held by my bastion. Steel. Steel became our main trump card. The knights of the upper city realized that magical blades shattered in the frost. They needed real weapons. We began secret trading. I hid high-carbon blades at the bottom of trash baskets. For each batch, the knights paid with pure gold and elite food. This enraged the weaponsmith's guild. They were losing their monopoly and sent a hired arsonist to us. Barney caught him right by our coal warehouse.

[00:52:24]The arsonist turned out to be old master Hans. He spat and shouted that my machines were killing the art of forging a naive fanatic of heavy manual labor. I did not beat him. I simply led him into the workshop and started the steam hammer. Two tons of steel crashed down onto the anvil, perfectly flattening the workpiece. Hence, eyes lit up. He understood that his entire life had been limited by the weakness of a human blow.

[00:52:47]A minute later, he was already swearing loyalty to me. Hans brought terrible news. Chancellor Vain was preparing a magical bombardment of the district purifying flame which burns all living things in seconds. I had to protect a huge territory. I raised all 200 workers. We began pulling pipes onto the roofs of every residential house in the Bastion project. Umbrella ordinary pump pressure would not be enough. I ordered a vacuum created in the reservoirs. The water had to fly out with triple force.

[00:53:15]Mio complained that the district was dug up with trenches. Then she herself stationed girls by the dangerous hatches and made the workers carry boards on schedule. She could knock down my cold pathos better than any emergency alarm.

[00:53:27]One look from her and even Barney place support straighter. During the day, a holy inquisitor appeared at our gates.

[00:53:33]In his hands twitched a golden compass specially tuned to detect illegal mechanisms. The compass needle pointed straight at my main forge. If he entered, we would all be executed.

[00:53:43]Barney tensed preparing to take out a heavy crossbow. I sent a signal to the underground. Drone underground copper coils wrapped around the entire perimeter of the district switched on. A powerful magnetic field emerged. The Inquisitor's compass went insane. The needle began spinning madly, showing that the mechanisms were everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Ordinary magnetic noise. The Inquisitor turned pale, deciding that this cursed place radiated dark magic. He turned around and ran his heels flashing. Science had beaten superstition again. At night, the sky turned blood red. Huge magical balls of fire began falling on the slums.

[00:54:20]Neighboring districts caught fire like dry straw. The flames crept toward our walls. Magical fire greedily fed on oxygen. Ordinary water would not stop it. I struck the main lever of the umbrella. From thousands of nozzles on the roofs burst not a stream of water, but a dense water mist. The fine dispersion instantly displaced all oxygen above the bastion. The fireballs slammed into our dome of mist and simply suffocated, not even managing to touch the roof. Tiles the bastion stood unharmed in the middle of a fiery hell.

[00:54:51]I looked at the burning ruins beyond the wall. Chancellor Vain had wanted to burn us, and in the end, he had only kindly cleared space for our future expansion.

[00:54:59]The siege cut us off from the world, but I had foreseen this. We opened the lower cellars. Whole plantations of thick mushrooms grew on the heat of steam pipes and mana waste. They look disgusting, but my filters turned them into clean protein. I took the first bite in front of the frightened crowd.

[00:55:16]Tastes like rubber, but we will definitely live. The food reserves were enough for half a year. Now the bastion was the only place in the capital where one could avoid starving to death. We became the center of the world's gravity. A detachment in torn cloaks approached our gates. It was Duke Valant inside that body sat. Dichi Kurros, my second friend from my previous life, the ruler of the richest lands, begged to be led inside. The Duke brought terrible news. King Allaric had been arrested.

[00:55:43]Chancellor Vain had seized power and was going to release a deadly rot virus into the city. Without the king, I was simply a criminal. But the Duke handed me the royal seal miraculously saved from the palace. Now I had the official right to power. I stepped onto the wall and raised the seal above my head. From that day on, the bastion was declared an independent territory. I was no longer hiding in the shadow of the law. The system timer flashed before my eyes. 45 days remained until the fall of the kingdom. The integrity of the world had fallen to 60 units. I gave the order to weld the bastion's external airlocks shut. The chancellor had decided to play dirty, which meant we would play by the laws of full hermetic ceiling. Behind the thick steel airlocks of the bastion, true agony began. Chancellor vein released into the capital streets a deadly virus that turned people into mindless chunks of rotting flesh. The infection entered homes through microcracks and old pipes. My skill clearly showed that this was not biology, but broken data of magical code that literally rewrote living cells.

[00:56:44]There was only one way out. I ordered purified highfrequency mana sent through the bastion's pipes. The invisible energy barrier burned the virus away on approach, leaving our quarter absolutely clean. But the price of this protection proved catastrophic. The workshop worked at its limit, devouring the last reserves of waste. We needed an endless source of energy or we would all become mutants. We began a grand drilling operation downward straight toward the ancient heart of Manah. Enormous steel drill bit into the rock while the wild vibration destroyed the structure of the virus within a radius of 100 m around it. At a depth of 2 km, the drill broke through the vault of a forgotten underground prison. From the darkness stepped a three-meter battle, automaton of the ancients raising above us a rusty but incredibly lethal blade. The iron thing considered us intruders. But my gaze saw its essence. Its logic module had simply jammed. I dove straight under the blade strike and broke the necessary contact with my faithful wrench. Sparks sprayed into my face. The automaton froze a centimeter from my neck, blinked its optics, and lowered its weapon. Now, this enormous hole in the floor was guarded by the personal iron sentinel of our bastion. The chancellor noticed our energy breakthrough. 50 elite paladins were sent to storm the bastion. Their armor reflected any arrows, and their magic made them absolutely invulnerable to simple traps, but they forgot the laws of physics. The paladins cooled their overheated bodies through tiny vents on their backs. Barney used a trick to lure the entire steelclad crowd into a narrow stone corridor. I pulled a lever, flooding the floor with slippery used oil, then released a stream of icy coolant from above. The sharp temperature drop did its job. The elite armor cracked like cheap nuts. Among the prisoners was the king<unk>s own sister.

[00:58:31]The arrogant princess looked at me as if I were a filthy tyrant. I had to give her a small tour of our modest underground domain. I showed the princess clean streets and well-fed people. When she grabbed a wrench and tore off a faucet, Mio silently handed her a rag and a bucket. The princess turned red with anger as she washed fuel oil off the floor. 10 minutes later, she was already asking why the palace did not keep water records by quarter. Mio placed her beside the women in the warehouse. In the bastion, titles did not cancel shifts. If you want to eat, count rations, and do not mix up the families. Vain understood that infantry would not take us. The sky above the capital darkened. He dispersed the virus as a toxic gas. I had to take extreme measures and design a giant dome over the entire district. Drones pulled pipes straight to the spires of old towers. We sprayed water mist under enormous pressure, displacing the infected oxygen. An impenetrable shimmering sphere of our salvation covered the bastion. In response, the chancellor released his main weapon. An enormous dragon woven from concentrated rot crashed into our shield with a roar.

[00:59:35]Each blow threatened to crush our fragile houses flat, but it was only a mass of dirty energy. I connected our steel drill directly to the well of clean mana. Overloaded turbines howled, directing a beam of concentrated light straight into the sky. The collision of clean and dirty mana caused a powerful annihilation effect. The dragon crumbled into fine gray dust, leaving the chancellor with nothing. We won the battle, but lost half of our drilling rig. There was no longer any point in sitting on the defensive. I ordered the old underground tunnels leading directly beneath the foundation of the royal castle cleared. We began laying a reliable iron railway there. Vert mounted two steam boilers onto a heavy platform. Hans covered the frame with armor from our workshop. The machine was ugly, noisy, and almost alive. I wanted to call it the mole because it was supposed to gnaw a tunnel under the palace. The workers stubbornly named the armored train Mio. It was too late to argue. Before departure, the lights went out in the bastion. The chancellor struck the main lines and in the workshop, Mio bent over the table and suddenly grabbed my sleeve. Labor had started at the worst possible moment. Of course, this world clearly believed that an engineer without panic did not work fast enough. I threw aside the assault map and told everyone to get out. Mio did not scream. She only squeezed my hand so hard that my joints cracked pitifully. The old drone held a dim light over the table. Vert silently warmed water. Mio<unk>'s women's committee drove everyone unnecessary out of the workshop more effectively than any guard. My skill showed pulse temperature and dangerous mana spikes in the blood. This was not pipe repair.

[01:01:08]here. One mistake cost two lives at once. After an hour, I could no longer feel my fingers. After two, my knees were shaking. Then, in the silence, a child's cry rang out, angry, and alive, our son was born. The bastion rejoiced beyond the walls, but I looked at the blinking timer. The chancellor had gained several hours of advantage. Mop pale and exhausted, poked me in the chest with her fist. She ordered me to go finish the war before the child had time to get used to sirens. I kissed her forehead and went out to the armored train. Vert cursed at the pressure and smiled with his one eye. 10 days remained until the fall of the kingdom.

[01:01:45]Vain had mined the upper city blocked the palace seals and was holding my friend the king in the system corps. The king had the seal. The Duke had the debts, but Kao had the valve keeping the palace alive. Subscribe now because the slums are done begging and the throne is about to feel the pressure. The first breakthrough failed immediately. The front drill hit an invisible seal and half the plating screeched away into shavings. We rolled back 20 m. Hans lost three fingers but demanded a new plate himself. In this city, people had already learned to pay the price. I understood the mistake the seal was not holding the metal. It was holding the direction. That meant we had to strike not harder but crookedly. We turned the rails straight into an old drainage channel. The armored train went sideways scraping the walls and the seal finally cracked. The second blow broke through the palace basement. The marble wall flew apart, and we were met not by knights, but by living pipes stuffed with dirty mana. Vain had not turned into an ordinary monster. He had grown into the castle core and become part of the pumping system. Killing him with a sword would be as intelligent as shooting a water pipe. Magical tentacles struck the train's armor. Each blow ripped off a sheet of steel. Barney held the door while Pip dragged the wounded into the rear car. I was not looking for the enemy's heart, but the power input, and I found it behind the throne, a thick glass pipe running directly to the sewage waters of the lower city. Vain was feeding on our filth. All these years, he had called the slums garbage, and now he was sucking power out of them like a fat tick. I took the radio and ordered Vert to close the mainline valve. That meant leaving the bastion without water at the most dangerous hour. Vert swore so hard that the speaker wheezed, but he turned the wheel. The palace suddenly became quiet.

[01:03:31]Vain's tentacles jerked and began crumbling into sparks. The chancellor realized that his pipe had been cut. He rushed toward the nearest columns, ripping mana out of walls, floors, and people. I jumped toward the central crystal. The adjustable wrench struck the glass instead of a crack. A layer open before my eyes that had not been there before. The world turned out not to be prophecy and not the will of the gods. It was an old game where the fall of the kingdom was launched as scheduled data cleanup. Vain was not the master of the system. He was a garbage pump collecting energy before the map was deleted. A pawn with a crown in his hands. If the core was broken, the city would die. If it was left alone, the system would erase it. There remained a third option. Distribute the energy back through all the pipes. I opened all the old circuits at once. The bastion, the palace, markets, basements, wells, even the rotten alleys became one enormous circuit. Dirty mana struck the city in a wave. The virus began to disintegrate.

[01:04:25]Veins screamed, losing form, and blood ran from my nose. Too many lines, too much pressure. My skill cracked like an overheated gear. My right eye went dark with white pain. I did not pass out only because Mia was screaming through the radio. She promised to personally nail me down if I left our son without a father. The last valve turned Vain's body collapsed into a black puddle. The castle core flared and threw us back with a shockwave. King Allaric collapsed beside me, alive and angry. He still did not know how to rule a country, but he finally understood that a throne without pipes was worth nothing. We got out onto the square through a breach in the wall.

[01:05:03]Nobles shouted about right servants and tents the bastion. Workers silently held water, crossbows, and ration lists. All Alaric went down on one knee before the people of the lower district. He was not giving me the crown. He was acknowledging who had really kept the city from death. I did not take the throne. I ordered the creation of the repair council. A voice is given to the one who can build heelc count supplies or defend the wall. Dai Duke Valant was the first to try objecting. Then Mio placed his debt books in front of him.

[01:05:32]He sat down and very quickly became quieter. His duche was a beautiful bankrupt. Warehouses were pledged. Mines were in debt. Merchants were stealing weight. Now he had to learn finance from zero. We saved the city but not the world. The destroyed palace no longer blocked the harbor. Two days later, Imperial ships appeared on the horizon.

[01:05:52]The fleet did not fire cannonballs. It struck with pure light that melted our guns and left burns on stone. The enemy's magic was too fast. I did not invent a miracle. I ordered all the copper coils removed from the workshops and the towers connected with cables under fire. The workers pulled wires cursed and fell into the mud. Every minute caused blood, but the city was turning into one enormous Faraday cage.

[01:06:15]The next volley of light hit the wall and ran along the copper lines into a deep well. For the first time, the admiral on the flagship stopped smiling.

[01:06:23]Our steam ballista did not answer immediately. Vert forced us to wait for the right pressure. Then the harpoons went into the sea and tore open the flagship side. The empire landed Gollums. The machines moved too smoothly for local magic. In their commands, I heard the familiar rhythm of the interface. Another player contacted me.

[01:06:41]He called himself emperor and offered me the position of chief mechanic of his army. In exchange, he promised to leave the bastion alive. I looked at the walls, the workers, the smoking pipes, and the window where Mia was holding our son. Then I said that his golems had weak knees. The engineering duel lasted all night. He pressed with numbers. I broke hinges, overheated circuits, and jammed control frequencies with the noise of our old pumps. By morning, the shore was littered with iron carcasses.

[01:07:08]The emperor retreated, but before leaving, he activated the deletion protocol. The sky over the sea turned black. The world began to be erased. Not quickly, not beautifully, just in chunks. People watched their fingers become transparent. And for the first time, even the nobles were silent. I remembered an old bug from the game. If you loop the core back into itself at the moment of deletion, the server goes into a safe reboot. The problem was the price. Someone had to stand at the core and hold the circuit manually while the whole world burned with white light. Mio came on her own. She did not ask me to stay. She simply shoved my son into my arms for a minute so I could remember the weight of the reason I had started all this in the first place. I returned the child to her. Took the old wrench and went down to the core. The metal in my palm was warm, worn, and ridiculous for the end of the world. I drove the wrench into the pulsing slit of the core and turned it. The light burned away the city, the sea, the sky, and the last system timer. Then silence came. No mana, no rot, no roaring pipes, only ordinary air and the irritating cry of my son somewhere nearby. I opened my eyes in a room of the bastion. Mio sat by the bed with the baby and looked as if she had already prepared a list of punishments for my latest heroic act.

[01:08:23]Outside the window, the city smelled of bread, coal, and wet stone. The repair skill had disappeared. In its place, a new word burned creation. Now the system did not show breakdowns. It showed the potential of materials. The world no longer needed magic in order to work.

[01:08:39]Two days later, Vert started the first real steam engine. Water, coal, steel, and pressure. No damned souls, and no beautiful prayers. The flywheel jerked, the piston struck, and the winch lifted a three-tonon beam. Barney looked as if the machine had stolen his job. Mio took the organization of the Bastion University upon herself. Children were taught hydraulics, sanitation, accounting, and why a warehouse without records is worse than a monster. Dichi sat over debt books until night. The Duke finally understood gold does not make you rich if every sack of grain already belongs to a creditor. All Alaric remained king, but now every decree of his was checked by the council. He learned to rule not with orders but with supply chains. Water and honest reports. In three months, iron arteries webbed the city. Heat flowed through pipes. Trains carried grain.

[01:09:28]Former nobles bowed to stokers. In winter, Imperial envoys called it technogenic heresy. I showed them a steam cannon that punched through a meter thick wall. Theology immediately became noticeably softer. All once offered me the throne. I looked at the gold and refused. You could not even machine a proper nut out of such soft metal. I hung the old adjustable wrench above the throne. Let every ruler see it first before asking. People for taxes, blood, and silence. Any crown can crack.

[01:09:57]Any palace can rot. But as long as people have hands, tools, and water, the world can always be assembled again.