I used the Universal Farming Tool to shape some wooden boards into a model.
It was a scale model of the Underground Shopping Street project currently underway in Village Five.
While I had conveyed the general concept through words, there was a world of difference between merely describing it and having a physical model to reference.
However, building it proved to be far more tedious than I had anticipated.
I might have made a mistake with the scale.
It was sixty centimeters wide and two meters long.
I really should have made it smaller.
Still, it was far too late to abandon the project now.
Just as I was considering taking my time and working through it slowly, I happened to make eye contact with the Mountain Elves.
Once I enlisted their help, the work began to progress at a blistering pace.
I really should have asked them for help sooner.
That said, we didn't need pitfalls in an Underground Shopping Street.
Nor did we need spears popping out from the walls.
"What's this waterway for?" I asked.
"It's a countermeasure against water attacks," they replied.
No, this was a shopping street, not a fortress.
Still, considering the need for rainwater drainage, a waterway wasn't a terrible idea.
I decided to leave the waterway in the design.
Hm?
Ah, those were the rails.
The minecarts would move along them.
I had already prepared the carts in advance.
There were two types: Flatbed Minecarts, which were essentially boards on wheels, and Box-type Minecarts, which were boxes on wheels.
I demonstrated how they moved along the rails, and the Mountain Elves’ eyes began to sparkle.
However, they seemed to grasp the potential issues as well.
The rails themselves were the problem.
One would have to lay two rails down with perfect precision to match the wheel width.
Then there was the matter of the rails wearing down as the wheels passed over them.
Since the rails for the Underground Shopping Street would be made from wood from the Forest of Death processed by the Universal Farming Tool, durability wouldn't be an issue for us, but implementing such a system elsewhere would be difficult.
"What if we used a single rail instead?" they suggested.
I had considered something like a Monorail—a single, thick rail—but I worried it would get in the way of foot traffic within the shopping street.
Wait a moment.
What if we elevated it like a proper Monorail?
But that would mean securing overhead space, which would require expanding the tunnel further.
As for the structural integrity... yes, there would be problems.
It would also be dangerous if cargo fell from that height.
How about putting it below ground level instead of above?
I had clearly gotten a bit carried away.
The finished model was a four-story structure, sixty centimeters wide, two meters long, and one meter high.
It was a masterpiece.
Moreover, it looked strikingly familiar.
It was a Large Shopping Mall.
The center even featured an open atrium.
The main difference was the first floor.
Four sets of rails were lined up there.
These weren't monorails; they were standard two-rail tracks.
The reason the monorail idea had been scrapped was the issue of power.
When pushing by hand, a monorail system creates too much resistance, making it feel incredibly heavy.
In contrast, standard rails offer very little resistance.
I had experimented with the model, so I was certain of the result.
Consequently, I gave up on the idea of an elevated track and moved the logistics to the first floor.
I simply decided to designate the entire first floor as a dedicated space for minecart movement.
Minecarts would use those four tracks to transport goods to the shops.
The storefronts were located on the sides of the second, third, and fourth floors, with bridges connecting the left and right sides.
I also included a substantial number of staircases for moving between levels.
It was a shame I couldn't implement any Elevators or Escalators.
Now then, as for this model I’d built while caught up in the moment.
I assumed it would probably be rejected, but since I had gone through the trouble of making it, I wanted someone to see it.
I brought it to Village Five and showed it to the people involved in the Underground Shopping Street Plan.
With the exception of Yoko, everyone stood there with their mouths agape, unable to utter a single word.
I wish they would have given me a bit more of a reaction.
It was a little disappointing.
Yoko asked if she could hold onto the model for a while.
I didn't mind, so I left it in her care.
A few days later.
By Yoko's decree, the Underground Shopping Street Plan underwent a massive overhaul.
She claimed that the current plan couldn't possibly produce something that lived up to the model.
Apparently, they were going to build it exactly as I had designed it.
Uh...
The model was just a sample; it was perfectly fine for the real thing to be different.
"Also, make sure you fill in those pitfalls," I added.
I promised to help with the foundational construction.
The moment I said that, I was whisked away to the site.
The location was halfway up the mountain of Village Five.
Specifically, a section that protruded slightly.
A hole had been bored into this protrusion to serve as a tunnel passage.
The tunnel was about a hundred meters long.
Since I had dug it with the Universal Farming Tool, it was perfectly straight.
The tunnel was six meters wide—enough for two carriages to pass each other comfortably.
The plan for the Underground Shopping Street had originally been conceived as a way to utilize this tunnel effectively.
To be precise, it wasn't really an "Underground Shopping Street" so much as a "Tunnel Shopping Street," but since I was the first one to use the former term, the name stuck.
While the root of the plan was tunnel utilization, Yoko saw it as a glimmer of hope for solving Village Five's greatest problem.
That problem was the land shortage.
Because Village Five was situated on a small mountain, the land available for construction was finite.
During the early stages of construction, we had secured enough land for essential facilities and roads, but the construction rush sparked by an unexpected influx of immigrants had made the land scarcity quite obvious.
We were trying to alleviate the shortage by encouraging development at the foothills, but for some reason, the residents insisted on living on the mountain itself, so those efforts weren't very effective.
Furthermore, living at a high elevation had become something of a status symbol.
On top of that, it was difficult to rebuild existing structures in Village Five.
The buildings sat on steep slopes, and everything from the roads to the plots was incredibly narrow.
Renovations and expansions were equally difficult; if a resident was unhappy with their home, their only real option was to move.
Given these circumstances, it had become nearly impossible for new restaurants or shops to open anywhere in Village Five besides the foothills.
The Underground Shopping Street had been planned to resolve that very issue, but...
I wonder if building a Large Shopping Mall is really going to be okay?
Well, expanding the tunnel itself isn't an issue.
I've calculated the spatial dimensions, so it should fit perfectly.
As for ventilation and lighting, those measures had been accounted for since the original tunnel was built.
...I think we can make this work.
If that's the case, I want to look into installing Elevators and Escalators.
Moving between floors is hard work, after all.
The mechanics behind them aren't that complicated; the real issues will be safety and a power source.
I continued the tunnel expansion work while pondering the mechanics of Elevators and Escalators.
By the way.
That wasn't the only model I made.
Since there had been a lot of trial and error, I had built another similar model for experimental purposes.
The level of craftsmanship was higher on the one I took to Village Five, but I think the sense of playfulness was greater in the second one.
Zabuton's Children took quite a liking to that model.
One of Zabuton's Children had claimed each of the spaces intended for the shops.
Watching them navigate the bridges with ease made it look as though they were actually living there.
I also saw Zabuton's Children playing by riding the minecarts—or in the case of this model, the monorail carts.
"You mustn't fight," I cautioned. "Take turns, now."
Beside that model, Older Sister Cat Miel had managed to get her head stuck inside a prototype Box-type Minecart. Unable to free herself, she let out a pathetic meow, begging me for help.