Page 2917 -- CCLV.

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Chapter Two Hundred Fifty-Five: 'Thy bracing constitution...'
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Hector had been a little disappointed to realize that Lord Abbas wasn't quite so enthused about the idea of a castle around the Forge as he was. He hadn't actually refused to help build it, but it was clear that he had reservations about it.

Yeah, it would be expensive. Like, obscenely so. And yeah, Abbas probably had a point when he said that the tree served as quite good camouflage and that constructing a giant fortress around it might actually draw more attention to it, not less. And okay, sure, he might've also been right when he said that they would never be able to build a castle that was strong enough to hold back an emperor who had set their sights on the Forge.

But they couldn't just leave it out here unprotected, either, right? It was sitting in a fucking tree. One stray lightning bolt, and the whole thing could go up in flames. He had a feeling that the Forge would survive such a blaze, but its camouflage would be gone, at the very least.

The Sunsmith's arguments did get Hector thinking, though. If the entire purpose of the castle was to protect the Forge, then he shouldn't just ignore those points, Hector felt. He should try to incorporate them into the castle's design, somehow.

And Lorent was full of trees, right? The Imara Forest covered nearly fifty percent of its land. And as skeptical as he had previously been regarding the functionality of Riverton, P.J.'s weird architecture, Hector had to admit that he was beginning to see it in a new light now that he was imagining his own sneaky forest castle.

Maybe that had been the core logic behind building their capital here. Despite what a nightmare it must have been to clean up all the leaves and insulate all the buildings with trees growing out of them, the city probably would be pretty difficult to attack, wouldn't it?

Well, unless the enemy used fire, maybe.

Hmm. Come to think of it, he wondered what kind of fire prevention tech the Lorentians had. Maybe he should look into that.