NOVEL NEXT I Somehow Got Tasked With Managing A Realm – Chapter 48
Rynn gazed at the flowing river in front of him with a mixture of wonder and awe.
"How are we supposed to make a path across this?"
Calling the river massive would be an understatement. The flowing blue water seemed to extend endlessly into the horizon. Rynn almost wishfully dismissed the rumors he heard about the river being too vast to see across, but such a fact was impossible to deny now that it was presented before his eyes.
"Are you sure this is even a river?" a high voice questioned next to him.
Rynn sighed, "This is exactly where the creator of the world told us to go, so it must be one."
The two of them had come across multiple rivers, lakes, and streams during their trek to the temple over six years ago, but nothing even came close to the amount of water in front of them. With most of the soldiers accompanying them being from the plateau, this sentiment was being shared throughout the group.
"It has to be deep, right? Are we not able to just walk across it?"
"From what the creator of the world said, this area should be somewhat shallow... but maybe I should test it?"
"Pfffft~"
Rynn turned toward his childhood friend who was suddenly holding back laughter.
"W-what? Why are you laughing?"
"You were going to try to cross the river? Pfffft-" Ayla's laughing suddenly started again as she pictured the scene, "You are even shorter than I am! Your head will disappear under the water after a few steps!"
"H-hey! I am not short! Oracles just age slowly..."
Rynn deliberately ignored the pitiful gazes of the nearby soldiers.
Ayla was not tall by any means, standing at a mere 5'6, yet Rynn who still had the body of a kid who was just entering puberty was still barely above 5 feet tall.
"Just you wait... I will tower over you one day," the Oracle muttered.
"Pffft~"
"He is the Oracle but he talks like a kid!"
"The kid says he will tower!"
Rynn's brow furred at the teasing of the soldiers who overheard his mumblings.
"How about we have someone tall inspect the river then!?" he shouted, scanning the crowd.
His eyes quickly fell on a certain soldier who was taller than most of the others present.
"You there! Come over here!"
"Huh? Me?"
"Yes, you!"
The man standing at about 6'3 pushed his way to the front of the crowd and stood in front of the Oracle.
"Pffft~"
"Shut up!"
Rynn forced himself to ignore Ayla's re-kindled laughter and ordered the soldier.
"I want you to walk further into the river until it becomes too deep to continue."
The soldier hesitantly nodded and tossed down his belongings before taking his first step onto the river bed.
"It is moving fast," the soldier muttered.
"You will need to deal with it… but turn back if the water starts to make you lose your balance."
After one last nod, the soldier finally stepped into the water and began walking deeper into it. The 1,000-member army watched curiously as the man disappeared slightly more below the blue water with every step he took.
By the time he was fifty feet into the river, the soldier’s neck was fully submerged.
This is not going to work.
"That is enough! You can come back now!"
The man turned back at Rynn's orders and began making his way toward the shore.
"It seems deeper than I thought... definitely enough to keep me underwater," Rynn thought out loud.
"That does not take much water~"
"Shut up!"
Rynn turned his attention back toward the river to distract himself from Ayla's teasing.
I want to know how deep it gets, but it looks like there is nobody tall enough to reach the bottom...
As the Oracle was thinking such thoughts, he approached the soldier who was now squeezing the water out of the hem of his clothing on the riverbed.
“There is no way that the creator of the world would ask us to cross the river if it was impossible to do. Did you notice a way to cross it while you were out there?”
The soldier shook his head, “Nothing really but…”
"But?"
“It felt like the bottom of the river was starting to level off,” he finished.
Rynn turned his gaze back to the scene of seemingly endless water.
“... You hardly made a step into the river. Are you sure it really flattens out?”
“Not at all,” the soldier answered, “Even if I went back out there to check, there is no point. The water would be over my head before it stopped sloping downward.”
Rynn simply sighed.
“You make a good point… and even if it leveled off at the depth you reached, that alone is too deep for most of the others.”
“Especially for you~”
Rynn could feel a vein in his forehead throb at the words from the eavesdropping girl who snuck up behind him.
“I am not even that much shorter than you!”
“Pfffft~” Ayla placed her hand flat on Rynn’s head, “You would need to stand on your spear to reach me.”
“That is not even true! I would only need-”
Rynn suddenly stopped mid-sentence.
“Ayla! That is exactly what I needed!”
“... Are you talking about needing to stand on spears to reach me?”
“Yes! Wait- no!” Rynn groaned at Ayla’s cheeky expression, “I meant that we might be able to cross the river if we walked on the spears!”
“That is impossible."
The kids turned back toward the soaked soldier who had spoken.
“The water is moving too fast. Even if we could somehow attach spears to our feet, it would be impossible to keep balance. The spears would snap if we tried to stand on them, anyway.”
“Right…” Rynn looked back toward the forest, “But what if we used something thicker?”
"Thicker?" Ayla tilted her head.
"The trees. They are tall enough to reach the bottom of the river and thick enough to hold our weight. If we could place a line of them across the river, the soldiers could simply walk across them," Rynn explained.
"You want to make a path using trees?" the soldier checked skeptically, "We would need to use hundreds of them, but we do not even have the tools to fall a single one."
Rynn shrugged, "It should not take too long to make tools."
"... Even if we were to topple one and work together to carry it to the river, we would need to bury some of it to stop the water from pushing it over. We do not have that kind of strength-"
The soldier fell silent as he looked at the smug expression on the kid's face in front of him.
"I can do it. I am an Oracle, after all."
.
..
...
With a plan in place, the Oracle quickly began assigning tasks to the soldiers.
The first few nights passed with him and around one hundred soldiers making tools while the rest spent the time hunting for food and setting up a camp.
Once enough tools, consisting of sharpened stones hafted onto thick branches, were made, the soldiers were split up into small teams to begin chipping away at the base of the nearby cherry trees.
THUD! THUD! THUD!
One by one, the massive cherry trees in the area crashed to the ground where they were subsequently stripped of their branches and split into pieces.
The cherry trees around this area were absolutely massive- some even piercing 70ft into the sky. This meant that one tree could provide multiple platforms on the path across the river.
After the trees were split according to the river's estimated depth, the soldiers would work together to lug the pieces over to the riverbed where the Oracle would then carve a point into one end, carry it across the existing platforms, and slam it into the river.
"That kid is crazy..."
"I guess the stories about the man who shaped the village were true!"
"Who knew someone so small could be so strong?"
The soldiers watched in awe as Rynn swung down his joined fists like a hammer and smashed the trees securely into the river.
Log after log, the Oracle continued his path across the river, and as he walked across those he had previously placed to do so, those who doubted the method were forced to accept its success.
With every placement, Rynn would call back to the shore to give an estimate on how long to make the next log. Sure enough, as was predicted, the river eventually leveled off around 10ft in depth, allowing for the soldiers on shore to have the logs ready ahead of time.
This process was slow even with the soldiers preparing the logs for Rynn to place. The longer the path got, the longer it took the Oracle to walk back to the beginning to grab the next tree.
Although there were some attempts to pass the tree along the logs over to him, it was quickly deemed too dangerous. Each log required the strength of tens of men to carry. With the spacing between the 2ft diameter logs being multiple feet, it was easy for the soldiers focusing on supporting the nearly 2,000lb weight to miss a step and fall into the rushing river.
And so, the Oracle was forced to walk the path alone, but the Oracle was undeterred.
Day by day, the path gradually extended, and though the shoreline on the other side had finally come into view, it was still far out of reach.
Step Step Step.
On one of his many trips to the end of the place a new log, the Oracle heard the sound of small footsteps following behind him.
"What are you doing, Ayla?" Rynn asked with a sigh.
"Aww~ you noticed me already?"
"Yep. You are not very hard to miss."
"What is that supposed to mean!?"
"It means you are very loud," Rynn said flatly.
"Well, you are very grumpy."
"... Why are you following me?"
"You looked so lonely! I thought I should keep you company while you walked," Ayla innocently explained.
"Are you not supposed to be helping the soldiers prepare their food?"
"The camp is flooded with cherries from the trees they are knocking down. They can eat those!"
"... Alright."
The duo descended in silence for a bit as Rynn continued stepping across the logs.
"You finally look like a real Oracle carrying that tree~" Ayla eventually spoke, putting an end to the brief silence.
"Well... I am a real Oracle."
"Yeah, but it never really feels like it! You are usually just making spear tips or talking with Angru or his brother."
"There was just not anything else for me to do there. If the creator of the world gave me a task, I would have done it."
Ayla paused and watched as Rynn carried the log that neared three times his height.
"You have not taken a single break so far... is that why you have been working so hard? Because he finally gave you a task?"
The Oracle nodded.
"When the creator of the world asked me to cross the river, it was the first time he talked to me since we were first told to go to the temple. Honestly, I thought he hated me."
Ayla's foot halted in shock, nearly causing her to slip into the river.
"What!? Why would you think that!?"
"Please be careful," Rynn sighed, "I know I told you before, but the creator of the world was originally supposed to choose Rathok to be his Oracle instead of me."
Ayla nodded, "Yeah, you told me that before, but just because the creator of the world wanted to choose Rathok, that does not mean he needs to hate you."
Rynn let out a deep breath and his step came to a stop.
"Do you remember the day the mountain chickens destroyed our village? The day I became an Oracle?"
"Of course!"
"Well, after you fell from the tree, I could not stop all of the mountain chickens and one ran past me. If it was not for the creator of the world sending a javelin flying, you would be dead," Rynn's voice quivered, "B-but instead of thanking him, I blamed him for not saving Rathok. I pointed my weapon at the one who saved you."
"Rynn... you were just a kid back then-"
"I know, but if I was in his position, I would have taken offense," Rynn sighed, "It is no wonder why he only talked to Angru."
Ayla could only look at the back of the Oracle in pity.
Rynn continued his steps.
"I was waiting for him to speak. I was waiting for him to finally give me a task so that I could repay him for saving you. I was waiting to atone for what I did."
He lifted the massive log vertically after reaching the end of the path.
"Now that he has given me this chance, I will cross a thousand rivers if I have to."
Splash!
The log crashed into the river.
"I will make it up to him... I will save this world that he has created."
