Three weeks later.
Southern Europe.
Under a clear, cloudless sky, a fleet of battleships and carriers sailed out of northern Italy into the Mediterranean.
The moment the shipgirls hit open water, their spirits lifted at once.
They might claim that building a city inland was fine, but deep down they preferred racing across an endless sea.
At the head of the formation flew the pioneer fleet’s flagship, Richelieu.
Carriers guarded the flanks while cruisers and destroyers held position farther out.
Adam stood on the bridge, gazing at the blue sea and sky.
The fleet pushed south, cutting through the waves, rounded the Balkan Peninsula, and turned north into the Aegean.
At last a new stretch of land appeared on the horizon.
“So that’s Constantinople…” Richelieu studied the distant skyline.
The ruins of a vast city could just be made out.
Three sides faced the sea; to the north lay a broad inlet dozens of kilometers across…
the Golden Horn…
perfect for a naval base.
Beyond that stretched open plains under a mild climate, with more than enough room for early agriculture and industry, and later for airports or even starship landing fields.
Even in ruins the scale of what had once stood here was unmistakable.
“A good place for a capital, don’t you think?” Adam said with a smile.
“We can turn this into a mega-city bigger than the Port and expand from here across the whole world.” The greatest advantage of starting civilization from zero was that the entire planet belonged to them.
A hundred and fifty million square kilometers of land and three hundred sixty million of ocean…
plenty of room to build whatever paradise they imagined.
Once the fleet made landfall the shipgirls dismissed their hulls and rigging, jumped ashore, and began unloading.
Their rigging could expand or shrink at will and store away when not needed, giving each of them the equivalent of a four-dimensional pocket whose capacity matched their tonnage.
Even the smallest destroyer could casually carry several thousand tons of supplies; carriers and battleships measured theirs in the tens of thousands.
Living things, however, refused to go inside…
so no nesting one shipgirl inside another’s rigging.
Shipgirls and Bulins pulled container after container of materials from their storage and dropped them onto the beach with heavy thuds.
Before long the entire shoreline was piled high with raw materials.
Adam watched them work and felt as though they were performing some kind of mustard-seed-to-Mount-Sumeru magic.
“With shipgirls along, we can bring back…
well, acquire…
quite a lot from other worlds in the future,” he muttered, suddenly struck by a rather useful side application of their ability.
… That night in the Golden Horn, inside Richelieu’s bridge, Adam sat with several shipgirls discussing the new city’s construction.
Until permanent buildings were ready, the shipgirls’ own hulls would serve as the best shelters.
“I’ve put together some rough ideas and designs for the new city.” He unrolled several scrolls of blueprints across the table…
sketches he had worked on throughout the voyage.
In his previous life he had been a top civil-engineering student; city design and planning were subjects he knew well.
“Building a city from scratch is a headache, but Azur Lane technology is advanced enough that it shouldn’t take long.
“First step: clear the ruins around the city and the debris in the bay, then level the ground.” Everyone nodded.
“Easy.
The Bulins can handle that quickly, and we can help.” Even on a ruined Earth the planet was littered with building wreckage.
Without modern industrial equipment, simply clearing the junk would have been a nightmare.
“For the next phase I plan four main modules: port, agricultural zone, industrial zone, and residential district.” Adam continued.
“The agricultural zone grows crops…
wheat, rice, whatever thrives here.
The industrial zone handles metal refining and deep processing.
The port becomes the shipgirls’ living area.
The residential district can reserve space for people we recruit from other worlds later… “Once the city expands we can move the farms and factories outward and add research parks, but that’s for the future.” His drawings were professional.
The layout followed a classical grid plan with a central axis as the main thoroughfare, everything neat and orderly.
He had also borrowed advanced ideas from a parallel world, pre-planning the locations of airports, expressways, high-speed rail, and more while the city was still on paper.
He spoke carefully and seriously.
The shipgirls listened with blank expressions.
“Did everyone follow that?” Adam thought he had kept the explanation simple.
“No.
You?” Richelieu looked at Formidable.
“Neither did I.” Formidable looked at Essex.
“I’m a weapon built for naval combat.
Why would I know any of this?” Essex looked at Taihou.
“Ah… the Commander looks so handsome when he’s serious…” Taihou sat to the side, chin in her hands, staring at Adam with hearts in her eyes.
Adam felt something inside him crack.
Of course.
None of them had ever studied civil engineering or urban planning.
Suddenly a Gold Bulin in the room raised her hand.
“Bulin understood!!” “We’re building houses…
and a whole city!” “You can read blueprints?” Adam blinked in surprise and handed the drawings to the little blonde holding a drill.
“Bulin can read them, burin!” “As long as there are materials, Bulin can build anything, burin!!!” The Prototype Bulin looked thrilled.
Adam’s face lit up.
He felt he had finally found a kindred spirit and pulled her into a seat.
“Come on, can you read this construction diagram?” “Bulin doesn’t need construction diagrams.
Just tell Bulin what to build.” “Do you run structural-mechanics analysis when you build?” “Bulin doesn’t know structural mechanics, but everything Bulin builds is tough.
Even a cruiser can’t smash it!!” “…” “Are you an Ork?!” This peculiar retrofit girl had never received formal training in physics or construction science, yet somehow she grasped exactly what Adam meant.
The Bulins possessed their own unique building philosophy and methods, different from Earth’s.
They could construct ships, repair warships, forge weapons, and even raise buildings…
industrial all-rounders of the highest order.
“You’re exactly the kind of talent I need!!!” “Who said Bulins are dumb?
We’re plenty smart, okay?” Adam scooped the Bulin into his arms and ruffled her hair.
He decided then and there to produce more Bulins…
millions if possible.
In a week they could knock out every wonder of the world.
Pyramids, Petra, the Hanging Gardens, a Tree Diagram Designer, a Dyson Sphere, a Sentinel Array, an Aether Phase Engine… From classical antiquity to the space age, he wanted them all.