Eventually, it was not an engineer, but one of the clerks who came up with their winning plan.

"Uhm, if I might offer a suggestion?

The landing area where the small Arks are currently placed is actually large enough to land one large Ark. If we simply made vertical platforms, we could put everyone within the city walls. Or, make an elevator system, and lower them all underground.

The stone here looks like it should be solid, I think.

If we put the Arks underground, we can build an entire secondary facility right here under Marimgar, similar to the underground bunkers that were tried by the other forces.

The difference will be that we have Marimgar on top of us, so the System will count it as part of our presence, and we won’t be completely trapped underground. Then, we can expand the city both above and below ground, with the park kept as a spaceport.

Or airport? I don’t know what you want to call it.

But if we’re all under the city, it has to count us as being within Marimgar. And if there are some work spaces, as well as a way to the surface, the System should average our living conditions.

That’s an overall improvement, even if the majority are still in the same dorms.

At least they’ll have access to the surface, the shopping, and everything else."

That was a brilliant suggestion, Kalli thought.

It would also keep the Arks safe as an emergency evacuation method if they happened to need it at some point in the future.

"Give me a moment to see what I can do with the System points that I have. If I can open the caverns under the city, then we should be able to move the Arks inside. I just don’t know what it’s going to charge me. If it’s the same as it charges for open warehouse space, I’ll be able to do it."

"Is that part of your class? Building structures for the city of Marimgar?" The Fleet Admiral asked.

"It is. There are a lot of restrictions on what I can do, but the Arks and the city are considered to be at the same stage of advancement, so I can likely make some sort of ridiculous lift that will allow us to move them between levels."

The Fleet Admiral chuckled. "Well, if you can’t make a lift, we can actually move the Arks there with thrusters and antigravity plating. But it would probably be better if there was some sort of lift to lower them into the ground, if that’s even possible.

I mean, look at the size of these things. That’s nearly a quarter of the land outside the Academy, within the city walls. That’s a huge space that will need a lift, and the open caverns below it to park the Arks.

The engineering of such a project is daunting in itself, and the System might be the only way to make it possible."

That was what Kalli was afraid of. The whole plan for the city couldn’t rely on the fact that she was there with System functions to keep it working. She could be the reason it got built, but eventually, they would need the technology to repair it.

Maybe if they did well enough on this trial they would get a heavy material replicator? That would be spectacular.

But highly unlikely, given the sort of things that they were usually getting from the System.

While they got a lot of good stuff, and Kalli could add a wide variety of advanced tools to the buildings that she created, asking for a Material Replicator was way beyond what they were working with. She couldn’t even buy a new power plant to run it, so the chances of getting the replicator were pretty small.

Especially since the Arks didn’t come with them.

Instead, she focused on creating the underground warehouse space, and found that it was actually quite cheap.

Well, compared to what she was expecting.

According to the System, cutting out enough underground space for the Arks, fifty metres below the surface of the city, where they would be safe from nearly anything, plus a tunnel to the surface under the park, one massive door, and an antigravity lift would come to two hundred thousand points.

A hundred thousand of those were the lift large enough for a survival Ark.

It felt ridiculous to be digging out half the city to create a storage warehouse for spacecraft. But it would get everyone inside the city, and give the residents more chances to do productive work that would get them to level 0 and make them contributors to the System Points total that would allow the city to be upgraded even further.

The thought of how many points would eventually be flowing through the Hall of Heroes was enough to give Kalli a headache, and she hadn’t even finalized the placement of the bunker yet, just the points cost.

Then, she had a realization that would change everything.

The Arks could be hooked to shore power.

They had power output that was so far beyond what the city currently generated that it would make the city’s power plant look like a kid’s toy. If they hooked the four large Arks up to the city’s power grid, they could run the entire defence grid off their antimatter generators and even upgrade the wall defences with additional hard mounted pulse cannon bunkers.

The automated lasers were great, but a hero crewed pulse cannon that didn’t take as much of their mana to operate? That would be perfect.

Assuming that she could buy them.

They were energy weapons, so logically she should be able to hook them to the power grid. Only, no matter how hard she searched, there were no options for a permanent emplacement version of the weapon.

The defences jumped from automated laser turrets to anti-air cannons, with everything else being designed to be mobile.

Perhaps she really wasn’t supposed to be bypassing the need for stronger heroes?

That seemed like something that the System would do to her when she just wanted to line the entire wall with heavy weapons. The System’s standard for what was acceptable was definitely biased in favour of the heroes.

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