Reiff carried the pickaxe and walked wearily up the sloping tunnel. He felt that he was almost exhausted.
As a skilled miner, a mere four hours of digging—and that was just digging—was not considered strenuous work for him. But the trouble was the suit of work clothes he was wearing. This weird suit of clothes was thick and heavy, covering him tightly from head to toe, even his eyes, nose and mouth. It's just that the eyes are inlaid with special crystal pieces, and there are special pig-nosed ventilation masks in front of the nose and mouth. Anyway, it is very cumbersome and stuffy.
It was sultry and hot. He had never thought that he could feel sultry and hot in such a day where the ice and snow remained in the shade of the house all day long!
"It's better in winter!" He couldn't help but sigh. "Although the mud was frozen and digging was very difficult, at least you don't have to wear these weird clothes!"
Of course, this is just a sigh, not a complaint. Because Mayor Felix, who is in charge of the excavation work, has repeatedly emphasized that there are dangerous negative energies underground, and only by wearing this suit can we avoid being harmed by them.
"Negative energy is not a knife or a poisonous snake. It will not hurt you immediately, but will only hurt your body slowly." He still remembers what the beautiful female mayor said at that time, "If If you don't wear this kind of protective clothing, you will slowly feel lethargic, tired easily, food intake will decrease, and then you will get sick easily, and it will not be easy to recover after getting sick... Basically, you are almost dead at this point, but If you are very lucky and can survive it, what awaits you will be deeply eroded by negative energy and turn into zombies, skeletons, etc... "
Felix repeated similar words to them at least twenty times, and she even required every excavator to be able to repeat such a passage—it doesn't have to be precise, but the general meaning cannot be wrong.
She even found a group of rats to demonstrate the results of negative energy erosion to the diggers. Seeing those originally healthy mice quickly withering and weakening in the light gray thin negative energy, and finally falling down one by one, while a certain one that was lucky enough to survive became stiff and dull, with a green light like a will-o'-the-wisp glowing in its eyes, all of them The diggers were frightened.
Therefore, even if it is uncomfortable and easy to get tired when working in this suit, they will never dare to take it off.
"Your Majesty, the equipment you gave them is really luxurious!" Felix watched from a distance as the excavators slowly walked out of the tunnel. They stayed in the purification circle for three minutes as required, and then became impatient. He took off his protective clothing and couldn't help but shake his head and said, "These guys probably never dreamed of how expensive the clothes they were wearing..."
Sui Xiong smiled: "It's people-oriented. To revive Huishi Town, we need a lot of manpower, especially skilled workers. And even if the town is revived, it still has to serve people. In my opinion, these diggers are better than those demons." Plastic protective clothing is much more precious.”
"Five hundred gold coins for a protective suit... If we recruit mercenaries with this money, we can at least find ten strong men who know how to use swords, bows and arrows and dare to fight and kill."
"With you and Qiao Xiu in Huishi Town, the force is enough. We can save the money and invest it in more valuable areas." Sui Xiong said with a smile, "Besides, these protective suits are not wasted, they are very durable. , can be used for a long time. With their help, ordinary people can also do it when harvesting special mushrooms in the future. It is much safer and more efficient."
Felix curled his lips and disagreed with Sui Xiong's statement. But she did not object to Sui Xiong's approach. On the contrary, she liked this approach of cherishing human life - except for a very few perverts, almost everyone disliked a generous and benevolent leader.
What's more, Sui Xiong is no longer as simple as "generous and kind". When he returned from this trip, he found that as the tunnel was dug deeper and deeper, the concentration of negative energy in the tunnel was much higher than on the ground. Although this level of negative energy will not cause any immediate harm, and the purification circle after the work is completed can eliminate most of the effects, over time, it will still accumulate to a level that can cause serious illness or even death.
So he immediately informed Felix and asked her to prepare better protective measures for the excavators.
Felix had no objection to this. She originally planned to purchase "magic pattern cloth" woven with magical plant fibers to make protective clothing. She would add the effect of the entry-level spell "energy resistance" to the magic pattern cloth to achieve a protective effect. . But Sui Xiong rejected this idea and asked her to purchase magic tape with built-in primary spell "energy protection" effect, and to make a full-coverage heavy-duty protective suit.
This has greatly increased investment. Based on the current thirty diggers, thirty sets of magic-weave work clothes with the "energy resistance" spell added together only cost less than one thousand five hundred gold coins. If you go through some internal channels, even It can be reduced to 1,200 gold coins; but thirty sets of heavy magic tape protective clothing with the "energy protection" spell attached cost 500 gold coins each, adding up to 15,000 gold coins - this is a friendly price!
The price shocked Felix. As a high-level mage who was accumulating knowledge and power in order to enter the legendary realm, more than a thousand gold coins was not a big sum for her. It was nothing more than a little pain. That's all, but fifteen thousand gold coins... This price is enough to hire a group of top assassins to assassinate a king, but is it used to make protective clothing for a group of laborers
Really, this is such a luxury!
But since Sui Xiong had made a decision, she could only execute it. Fortunately, Sui Xiong did not let her spend too much money after all. He only asked her to buy the raw materials, make the protective clothing and enchant it, all by His Majesty the Jellyfish God himself. Finally, the cost was reduced to two hundred gold coins per protective clothing. The total price is six thousand gold coins.
Looking at this protective suit, Felix's previous worries about "what if others learn our technology" no longer need to be mentioned. I believe that there is absolutely no businessman in the world who would go crazy and invest such a huge sum of money just to do some negative energy essence business.
Energy essence is just a low-end magic material, not worth spending so much money!
"Actually, after careful calculation, this investment is still worthwhile." Sui Xiong said with a smile, "These protective clothing can be used for at least twenty years, while the magic cloth work clothes can only be used for three years at most. In terms of long-term investment, protection The price difference on clothing is actually only about half. Wouldn’t it be very cost-effective to use this price difference to exchange for a group of skilled and reliable workers?”
"And if you think about it, with this kind of strict protection, the workers will be able to stay healthy. They will become a strong support for the revitalization of the town and even the construction of a new society. This is something that no amount of money can buy!"
Felix smiled bitterly and acquiesced to this statement.
Outside the tunnel, Reif had been purified and took off the heavy protective suit. He rinsed the protective clothing under the pipe where clean water flows out according to regulations, and hung it to dry in the designated location.
After doing this, he came to the "rest stop", used a bamboo tube to take a cup of tea made from roasted rye from a large wooden barrel that was supposed to contain ale, and took a deep sip.
The lukewarm tea gurgled down his throat and into his stomach, which made his originally irritable mood much calmer, and his fatigue was also relieved unconsciously.
In fact, he was not very tired in the first place. It was just the muggy heat that gave him the illusion that "I am very tired." Now that he has returned to a more comfortable environment, as this illusion disappears, of course he has recovered.
Ordinarily, under such circumstances, he could have continued working for a while. But the morning's work was over, and the protective clothing needed time to drain, so he could go home safely, have lunch, take a short rest, and prepare for the afternoon's work.
An excavator only needs to work eight hours a day, which is also a rule set by Sui Xiong. Of course, a lot of reasons can be found to explain this, but in the final analysis, the reason still lies in "habit".
For Sui Xiong, whether hazardous work requires proper protection or the eight-hour working day is a natural habit and there is nothing to discuss.
Neither Laif, the excavator who only knew how to work hard, nor Felix, who was in charge of the revitalization of the entire town, could understand Sui Xiong's habits.
Just like "pension security", "sickness and work-related injury security", "holidays", "work meals", and "overtime allowance", this world originally had absolutely no such concepts. It was all because of Sui Xiong's habits that they were in the void. It was promoted inside the mask playground.
However, so far, it has only been promoted in Mask of the Void amusement park.
Even though there are many good gods who greatly admire these systems and even want to try to imitate them, in the end, only the playground can persist.
If other places want to imitate, first of all, it is impossible to invest as much money as Masked Void Amusement Park - there are not many places that can make money every day; secondly, even if there is so much money to invest, there is still a lack of a The social basis for accepting these practices is to understand that every penny invested in welfare is a profit for the investors themselves. Merchants would not be willing to give up such huge profits, and nobles would not be willing to give so many benefits to their subjects. Even for churches with kind gods, they may be able to do this internally, but if they want to promote it, it is still impossible.
Only the city built by Sui Xiong out of thin air can directly use such a set of rules. Other than that, nothing else works!
Even in Huishi Town, Sui Xiong did not directly apply the various guarantees and benefits in the playground, but decided to adopt a step-by-step approach to promote social progress bit by bit.
He remembered a famous saying, "Communism will not fall from the sky." From another perspective, a system that relies directly on the power of gods will definitely not be the progress he wants.
Progress has to come little by little, and for the current Huishi Town, this level is almost enough.
Of course, this won't last forever. When the man-made mineral veins begin to produce output, or the agricultural situation improves, he will definitely further promote social progress, so that the living conditions of the people in Huishi Town will continue to improve, and the town will move in the direction of his ideals.
Thousands of feet tall buildings are rising from the ground, and now they are almost only in the foundation laying stage.