"This way!"
"Hey! You Demacian friends, over here, we need your help!"
"Right, right, quick, clear this section out for the Dauntless Vanguard. They're stronger than anyone else, let them move this stuff!"
"The cavern on the east side needs some people who are agile and strong to head down there for a bit! General Rodman, can your side send anyone over?"
"Send people? Fuck you, what the hell am I supposed to send you? Grand General Swain only sent this many of us from the Raedsel Guard, and we've already all been assigned to help at the southern port. How am I supposed to spare anyone for you?"
Voices rose everywhere. Zaun's streets were chaotic and noisy, and right now you could see Demacians, Ionians, Freljordians, Shurimans, Zaunites, Piltovans, and even some Vastaya here.
People from different lands, different faiths, different cultures, even different races, had all gathered together.
Most of the men were bare-chested, their upper bodies slick with sweat. The women wore sand-resistant clothing and pushed little carts loaded with tools, food, and water as they moved along the special routes the Enforcers had marked out.
And at the port of Zaun, between the two canyon walls, Professor Heimerdinger, the chief designer of this project, was standing on tiptoe atop a steam car.
He wore a pair of specially made little leather boots, a yellow short coat, and a huge pair of wind goggles hanging over his fluffy oversized head. His small hands were tightly clasped together as he watched the work ahead with an anxious expression, shouting in his sharp voice,
"Hey, everyone, don't rush! We can slow down a little, that's perfectly fine! What matters is that we don't make mistakes in the end! More than speed, I want all of you to pay attention to quality!"
"You hear me? Slow down, slow down!"
He was still yelling into a megaphone when a man carrying something heavy passed in front of him. Seeing how roughly the man was moving it, Heimerdinger's eyes widened and he shouted, "My goodness, were you not listening to a word I said? I said slow down! That crate is full of fragile items. What if they break?"
The man getting scolded by Heimerdinger was around two meters tall, broad-backed and heavily built, with muscles even larger than Jayce's. He was effortlessly carrying a crate half a meter wide and one and a half meters long, and now looked at Heimerdinger with an embarrassed expression.
His name was Chris. He was a Demacian, part of the Thirteenth Company of the Dauntless Vanguard, and the Sword-Captain of that company's Seventh Shield.
The Dauntless Vanguard, Demacia's most elite military force and famous all across Valoran, was made up of sixteen companies. Each company was divided into eight shields, with each shield containing eight men, making the entire corps a total of 2,048 soldiers.
Some people might look at that and say, wait, what can a shield of eight people possibly do?
Noxus fought in companies too, and a single company could field one or two hundred men, and even then Noxians still thought that was too few.
But this was the Dauntless Vanguard.
A single shield, eight men, was enough to hold off an entire army.
One example? The Dauntless Vanguard had once held a bridge with only three shields and resisted a Noxian force numbering in the thousands. Not only had they held the bridge, they had even launched several counterattacks during the battle.
And now, a powerhouse like that was standing there awkwardly while Heimerdinger lectured him.
"I understand. Sorry. I'll be more careful," Chris said quietly.
"You'd better be!" Heimerdinger glared at him and continued, "What's in there is extremely valuable! It takes a full week to process those hex crystals!"
Chris felt miserable inside, but all he could do was nod and say he understood.
In all fairness, if you asked him to kill on a battlefield, he would not even blink. But manual labor?
He was a member of the Dauntless Vanguard. A Sword-Captain, no less.
Still, once he thought about the money the Twin Cities were paying, Chris endured it.
Three days of work here was worth a full month of his regular salary. He had his eye on a record player being sold in a music shop in Piltover, and to buy it, he needed to work five days. And he could only get it in Piltover.
So be it. For money, for the record player, Chris chose patience.
Holding the crate carefully as he passed by Heimerdinger, he made sure not to let it jostle even once.
Meanwhile, Heimerdinger had already turned to look somewhere else.
As for why the professor was here, that was simple.
If you asked who the most learned person in the Twin Cities was, there was no question it was Heimerdinger.
As a yordle with a lifespan so long that its end was impossible to see, Heimerdinger had already spent nearly a thousand years on Runeterra.
During that time, he had witnessed the Rune Wars and personally taken part in the founding of the Twin Cities. He was hailed as the father of Piltover. He had not invented science, of course, but saying he had done more than anyone to advance it would not be wrong.
And with the incredible memory that came with that oversized head of his, Heimerdinger was practically a walking library.
His mind was filled with every kind of knowledge: mechanics, architecture, and anything else that could be called knowledge. Heimerdinger pursued all of it with all his strength.
And because of that, the big-brained little professor had been appointed the chief engineer of this sea-reclamation project, using that remarkable mind to come up with the best possible method for the Twin Cities and to oversee Zaun's relocation.
By now, the underground beneath Zaun had already been riddled with holes by the Xer'Sai. The only reason it had not collapsed yet was because the Xer'Sai were extraordinarily good at tunneling.
But as Zaun kept developing, and more buildings and projects were built in the future, problems with soil bearing capacity and erosion would inevitably destroy the balance that existed now.
So moving was indeed an urgent matter.
"Two more hours of work, then it'll be time for afternoon tea. We'll rotate shifts and rest then!"
In the middle of the crowd, Marsen cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted at the workers.
Right now, everyone in both cities was busy.
At the Piltover Council building—
Councilor Kiramman held the sea-reclamation blueprint in her hands and unconsciously swallowed.
"How much is this going to cost?"
She looked at Mel with a trembling voice and asked softly.
Mel looked at Councilor Kiramman with amusement, thought for a moment, and said, "Probably... more than the combined wealth of several of Piltover's great houses?"
"This is already the revised plan after cutting costs as much as possible. Do you know what the professor's first design proposal was? He wanted to build a cofferdam first."
"Wait, what's a cofferdam?" Councilor Kiramman blinked and asked Mel.
Mel explained, "It means dredging the silt out of the sea first, then filling it with stone and sandbags to build a foundation that can withstand the waves. Weather is... unpredictable, after all."
Kiramman did not understand that kind of technical knowledge, but she had a keen instinct for money. The moment she heard that, she immediately realized how terrifying the cost in labor, materials, and funding would be.
No, just how much work would that take?
Councilor Kiramman's expression went blank, which only made Mel smile more. She waved her hand and said with a laugh, "But we don't need to use such a slow and exhausting method anymore."
Mel took the blueprint from her and spread it flat across the table.
Beside her, Hoskall, with his round belly sticking out, also leaned over curiously to study the plans.
"Now, Logan and Goddess Janna are using magic to keep the winds and waves at sea under control, so all we need to do is fill it with sand and build the land."
"Councilor Mel, are you seriously calling that all we need to do?" Hoskall said, his mouth twitching.
Damn it, could that really be called all?
Even that was going to cost a ridiculous amount of money.
This was only possible because it was the Twin Cities. If it were any other city-state, it would have been impossible. No, forget doing it, most of them would never even dare to think of it.
Ask a Demacian. They would not just fail to imagine reclaiming a sea, they would not even think about tunneling through mountains to open roads.
And yet two years ago, Piltover had already laid iron tracks through the mountains for ore transport, started using trains, and opened a tunnel several kilometers long.
Even so, reclaiming a sea still felt absurd.
Land and ocean were things nature made. Were they really something human effort could change?
After thinking it through, Councilor Hoskall decisively concluded that the whole idea was insane.
What kind of normal person decided to fill in part of the sea and create land from scratch? And not just any land, but a landmass stretching across two continents, linking Valoran and Shurima.
"I understand what you mean, Councilor Hoskall. But as things stand, this is not impossible. As for the financial burden, the Twin Cities will bear it together. And in terms of manpower, we now have help from the entire world, don't we?" Mel said to him.
Hoskall froze, then nodded. He had only been complaining. As for opposing it, as a businessman, he understood very well how much profit this would bring the Twin Cities once it succeeded.
If the reclamation succeeded and New Zaun was built, it would only open up even more trade routes. Piltover would profit from it too, since the Twin Cities truly were one now.
"All right, then. Wherever you need us, just say the word," he told Mel.
Off to the side, Old Cake thought for a moment and then asked, "What about the timeline? Did Logan say when it's supposed to be finished?"
"At the current pace, we should only need three months," Mel replied.
"The project has only just begun, and we've already—" Mel was cut off halfway through.
Because the two councilors in front of her were both stunned.
"Three months? It'll only take three months?" Hoskall asked in disbelief.
The work he had been handling over the past few days had nothing to do with the sea reclamation. The project was important, and building New Zaun was the top priority of the Twin Cities, but that did not mean everything else could simply be put on hold.
The Twin Cities were now a major city-state. There was too much to deal with every day. Logan could not possibly drag every councilor away from their duties.
Mel nodded, though a strange look also flashed through her eyes.
If she had not seen it with her own eyes, seen that Shuriman girl wave her hands and draw unbelievable amounts of sand and seabed silt up from the ocean floor, even Mel would not have believed something like this.
After all, what they were filling across was not the sea between Valoran and Ixtal, but Shurima. That was a stretch of sea hundreds of kilometers long. Who would believe a project like that could be finished in only three months?
And yet the truth was exactly that. When magic and technology were combined, the things that became possible could surpass anyone's imagination.
And now, turning our eyes to the ocean between Valoran and Shurima—
At this very moment, a warship over a hundred meters long was moving across the water. On its deck, a girl in short sleeves and trousers was standing under the sun, waving both her hands.
Sweat ran down her cheeks. Her face was flushed, making the freckles on it stand out more clearly. Her brown hair was soaked through, with a little steam still rising from it, and her arms were beginning to ache from overuse.
Taliyah was spending magic in enormous quantities. On the left side of the warship, in the stretch of sea she faced, dozens of enormous dark-brown columns of seawater were rising into the air.
As they churned upward, they dragged huge quantities of quicksand and seabed silt with them. The mass piled up and was carried onto a half-transparent bridge of green-tinged wind, then funneled toward the shore several kilometers away.
It was a truly miraculous sight.
And right then, the shoreline and nearby islets were packed with people. The most eye-catching among them was a group of tall, stern-faced men. They were of similar height, and the tight black uniforms they wore were marked with a blue wing emblem.
The Dauntless Vanguard.
Their expressions were complicated, filled with amazement, resignation, and shock.
Who would have thought that people famous for suppressing magic and fighting mages would one day work side by side with a mage to build something?
"Here comes another one!"
With that shout, the Dauntless Vanguard on the shore quickly cleared a path. Great heaps of mud and sand piled up as they grabbed the steel pipes lying nearby, the other ends of which were connected to the Twin Cities' huge specialized tanks designed to suck up silt.
Bracing themselves with their arms, usually three men held each steel pipe together, acting as supports and carrying it in silence so the machines could draw the silt away.
Some Dauntless Vanguard soldiers also rushed into the muck and quickly picked out the large rocks that had been brought up with it, tossing them aside. Those rocks were useful too. They would be used later in the sea-reclamation work.
"Never thought the Sword-Captain's little sister..."
This work was exhausting and grueling for ordinary people. Each of those metal pipes weighed several hundred pounds. But for the soldiers of the Dauntless Vanguard, it truly was not hard at all.
Forget three men. If the pipes were not so long that they needed three people to keep them balanced, a single soldier could have handled one alone.
What was a weight of a thousand pounds to them?
Back in training, one of their exercises had been dragging massive stone statues dozens of meters tall across distances of several hundred meters. Compared to that, this felt more like a vacation.
So naturally, they started chatting.
"Cut the crap," another Dauntless Vanguard soldier snapped.
"Just pretend we didn't see anything."
"How are we supposed to pretend we didn't see it? Lady Luxanna's light is brighter than the sun," came a quiet mutter.
From where they were, even from several kilometers away, they could see the glow coming from the warship. That dazzling light, brighter than the sun itself, was Lux's doing.
Taliyah truly was a magical genius. Across all of Runeterra, there was no second person with her level of mastery over earth magic.
But even her magic had limits.
And right now, Lux was acting as Taliyah's battery. Whenever Taliyah's magic was nearly exhausted, Lux replenished it for her.
The port was busy. The sea was busy. Outside the city-state, in the forests and mountains of Valoran, people from the Twin Cities were just as busy elsewhere.
Because reclaiming the sea required staggering amounts of sand and stone, and all of those materials had to be brought in from elsewhere.
The same was true inside the cities. Things were hectic there as well.
Councilor Marna of Zaun was especially busy right now. As the softer public face of Zaun's administration, she was currently doing ideological work among the people.
Back when Zaun had been at its worst, even under Piltover's oppression, Zaunites had never abandoned Zaun. And now that life had finally improved, they were being forced to move out and head to some... New Zaun?
Of course some of them objected.
Just like right now, in Zaun's Black Lane, Marna, under the protection of Enforcers led by Vi, was holding a megaphone and trying to persuade people. Most Zaunites were willing to move, because they knew exactly who had made Zaun what it was today, who had given them lives like this.
If Lord Logan said something, they would follow it. Lord Logan would never harm them.
But there were still some stubborn holdouts who believed that leaving Zaun meant abandoning Zaun.
And those people were exactly the ones Marna needed to persuade.
At that moment, Logan stood atop a tall building, watching it all from afar.
A little bluebird was nestled on his shoulder.
"Logan, are you sure this is the right thing to do?"
Janna tilted her head and asked.
As the goddess of Zaun, she had been receiving large amounts of uncertainty from Zaunites lately. Many of them were deeply uneasy about reclaiming the sea and leaving this place behind.
That made sense. The great explosion three hundred years ago still haunted many Zaunites, and as the goddess who had personally lived through that disaster, Janna knew better than anyone what kind of devastation it had brought them.
And now Logan was doing something even more dangerous, even more extreme.
"Right or wrong... I'm not really sure either, Janna," Logan said after thinking for a moment, then shook his head.
Before those letters of protest had landed on his desk, he had naturally believed what he was doing was right.
Reclaiming the sea was inevitable. Zaun needed a new place to develop in the future. Even if the Xer'Sai had not tunneled through the city, it was still time for Zaun to step out of the shadows.
Piltover's western districts had already gone through heavy redevelopment. Many of the tall buildings were gone, replaced by commercial zones and low-rise housing. But Zaun, buried in an underground gorge and sitting almost level with the sea, would never truly be a good place to live.
But it had all happened too fast.
There had not been enough time to really prepare Zaunites mentally before the reforms began, and of course that would spark protests from some people.
To put it bluntly, Zaun was now carrying out a massive reform by force, ignoring part of the population's objections.
Seeing that even Logan was unsure, Janna blinked, but said nothing.
Then Logan spoke again.
"But Janna, this is something we have to do. If not now, then in the future."
Janna looked at him again. Logan drew a deep breath, as though he had finally settled on his answer.
"I heard those voices of opposition. Of course I did. But compared to their protests, what I want more is for the children of Zaun in the future to truly have sunlight, to have wider spaces to move through. Not to go on living in these narrow twin gorges, borrowing sunlight from Piltover."
Logan spoke seriously, as if he were explaining it to Janna, and also to himself.
Yes, he had heard those voices of opposition.
He also knew that what he was doing was far too heavy-handed.
But so what?
Ten years ago, Zaunites still had to live wearing respirators. The Gray could steal their lives at any moment. When the first air purifier appeared in Black Lane, plenty of people still refused to take off their breathing filters. They refused to believe a purifier could cleanse the Gray and give them clean air. But look around now. Was there anyone still living in Zaun with a breathing filter strapped to their face?
Besides, if reform came with no opponents and no resistance, could it even still be called reform?
Times were always changing. Old ideas, old attitudes, old ways of living... being broken apart was inevitable.
And whether those people would still object when the time came—
"I want the seeds of Zaun's future to grow toward the sun," Logan said.
Right and wrong, time would give the answer.
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