The mud was able to harden properly thanks to Dawi working beside the campfire.
After all the mud had hardened, Dawi began placing flagstones on top of it.
The flagstones were laid over the heat channel like a roof.
Dawi completely covered the heat channel with flagstones, then began plastering mud over them as well.
After carefully applying the mud several times so that there were no gaps, it finally began to take shape.
Dawi did not forget to make a chimney for the smoke to escape.
The end of the ondol bed, designed larger and longer than an ordinary bed, was attached to the wall of the house, and he made a chimney there so the smoke could get out.
Dawi spread the mud as evenly as possible so that the bed would be as flat as he could make it.
At last, when the mud over the flagstones had hardened too, Dawi laid Bighorn hide on top.
The ondol bed was finally complete.
It was about the width of a large king-size bed, and longer lengthwise because it needed a firebox, heat channel, and chimney.
“At last…!”
Dawi immediately lit a fire in the firebox.
As the smoke escaped through the chimney, heat was transferred to the bed.
Once the bed had warmed up to a certain degree, Dawi lay down on it.
Even with the Bighorn hide spread over it, the floor still felt hard.
But…
“Uwaaah~ This is nice!”
The warmth itself was perfect.
After feeling that heat for a while, Dawi got up from the bed again.
“But… isn’t the bed too big?”
The unfinished house had a wooden wall on one side and a tent on the other.
Dawi’s bed occupied an entire wall of the house.
To begin with, since he was building it alone, the house itself was small.
“Hmm… I’ll have to expand the house.”
And so Dawi began expanding the house to fit the bed.
Of course, he did not forget a stable for Malmari.
Dawi started by redrawing the boundaries of the house.
From a rectangular shape, it now had one side bulging out where the bed was.
Unless he intended to place the firebox and chimney connected to the bed inside the house, it was an unavoidable choice.
He planned to connect the protruding side to the stable so that the stable, too, could receive the warmth of the ondol bed.
Over several days, Dawi began cutting down trees around the lake.
Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!
Every time Dawi struck a tree with his axe, the snow piled on the branches came tumbling down.
The snow fell more and more, and the air grew colder and colder, but Dawi was full of energy.
It was because he could spend warm nights thanks to the ondol bed.
Craack!
A conifer toppled sideways.
Conifers, whose wood was not too hard and were easy to process, and which grew in straight forms, were the best building material.
Knock! Knock!
The house construction continued.
He made the floor of the house with wooden planks cut straight with a saw.
For the walls, he first made a framework out of large logs, then stacked logs layer upon layer.
The gaps were filled with a mixture of mud and straw.
For the roof, he made the slope steep in preparation for heavy snowfall and extended the eaves long.
After covering it with wooden planks, he filled the gaps with mud and straw, then covered that with tree bark.
Where the bed was placed, he put up walls and made a door, separating it into a bedroom.
In the area that would be used like a living room, he made windows by cutting small holes in the front and back.
Since there was no glass, they were windows made to open and close with wooden covers.
The door also had no hinges, so it used a wooden shaft inserted into it to rotate.
Because of that, it made a creaking sound every time it opened or closed.
By the time Dawi had nearly finished building the house, he realized that the air inside was cold.
Only the bedroom with the ondol bed was warm, and when he woke up in the morning, cold air greeted him.
On top of that, without a campfire burning inside the house, it became too dark when the windows were closed.
‘I should’ve gotten something like candles in Snowhill…!’
It was too late for regrets.
In the end, Dawi decided to make a fireplace in the living room to serve both as lighting and insulation.
‘Do I have to break more rock from the cave…?’
He had already smashed it up long ago while making the ondol bed.
Even if he broke the remaining rock, it did not seem like enough stone would come out to build a fireplace.
He knew the back side of the mountain was rocky, but crossing the mountain to carry stones was inefficient too.
‘A way to get stones nearby…’
As he pondered, Dawi thought of his ondol bed.
An ondol bed made of stone and mud. The mud had hardened firmly as it dried.
“Ah…! Bricks!”
Dawi immediately set to making bricks.
First, he made a rectangular frame out of wood, then poured a mixture of mud and straw into it.
But even after a day passed, the mud did not harden.
Because the weather had grown cold, it only froze.
Realizing that he had always kept a campfire nearby when making the ondol bed, Dawi dried the mud-filled frames near the campfire.
Before long, hard unfired bricks were made.
But Dawi knew they would crumble easily if they came into contact with water.
When he first made the roof, he had only filled the gaps between the wooden planks with mud mixture.
Then the melted snow loosened the mud, and the roof collapsed.
After that, he had laid tree bark over the roof like tiles to block the water.
“I’d have to fire these for them to become proper bricks…”
Dawi glanced toward the firebox.
“That’s too small… and the temperature will probably be too low.”
Dawi made a mound with mud mixture and hollowed out the inside to create a temporary kiln.
When he stuffed it full of firewood and lit it, the heat was trapped inside the kiln and blazed fiercely.
Dawi put the unfired bricks inside and fired them.
A few that had not dried properly even burst inside the kiln.
While firing bricks like that, he began building the stable at the same time.
The stable was built connected to the wall that protruded because of the ondol bed.
It was so the stable could also gain a warming effect from the heat coming from the ondol bed.
As with the house, he made a framework out of logs and stacked logs layer upon layer to make the walls.
He left the floor as bare earth, laid wooden planks over the ceiling, then placed tree bark on top of them.
He brought in a large tree stump, hollowed it out, and made a manger and a water bowl.
Once he actually made the stable, it was darker and colder inside than he had expected.
It was warmer than the tent house he had lived in before, but to Dawi, who had already experienced the ondol bed, it was cold.
In the end, Dawi decided to make a fireplace in the stable as well.
After stacking the completed bricks neatly against the rear wall of the house, he cut the roof and raised it higher to make a chimney.
He plastered mud mixture between the bricks and let it harden.
He made a fireplace in the stable in the same way, but to prevent Malmari from going too close to the fire and getting burned, he put a wooden fence around the fireplace.
One wooden wall of the stable, the place where the side of the ondol bed was located, became Malmari’s favorite spot.
By the time the house and stable were properly in shape, the season was deep winter.
.
.
.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
Dawi was hard at work breaking the ice on the frozen lake.
The ice was a full 20 centimeters thick.
“Ugh! Why does the weather just keep getting colder!”
If this were Earth, spring would have come already, but here it was still the middle of winter.
When he finished the house and stable, the lake had already begun freezing long ago, and he had already filled the four sides of the icehouse with ice.
Animals that had struggled to find food during the winter came to Dawi’s ranch countless times, and became Dawi’s hides just like that.
Since they were carnivores like wolves, leopards, and snow leopards, he could not get meat from them.
The Bighorns seemed to leave for somewhere else in winter and return in spring.
Crack!
At last, the ice broke, and the rippling water of the lake appeared.
Dawi hauled up the fish trap from the lake.
“I broke the ice yesterday and put it in, so how did it freeze over again already today…”
Fortunately, a large silver trout had been caught in the trap.
With the Bighorns gone, the fish from this lake became Dawi’s winter food.
The twenty stalks of corn had survived the winter well thanks to being transformed by contact with mana, but the ears they produced had become much smaller.
Dawi sprinkled a little salt on the silver trout and roasted it over the campfire.
Because it left a smell inside the house, he cooked over the campfire outside whenever possible.
“I’m almost out of salt now too…”
The salt pouch was showing its bottom, and the garlic had long since been eaten.
Dawi thought of the corn piled up in the icehouse and the animal hides stacked in the corner of the house.
“I’ll have to go back to Snowhill.”
.
.
.
Winter was very long in Snowhill.
In particular, as the cold air carrying moisture from the North Sea caught on the Allos Mountains, heavy snow fell on Snowhill.
Snow did fall on Dawi’s ranch halfway up the mountain on the other side of the range, but compared to Snowhill, it was practically nothing.
That was why, aside from potatoes that grew underground and were resistant to cold, almost no crops grew properly.
Bilberries were originally fruits strong against cold and snow.
But Snowhill’s hardships were not limited to the winter cold and heavy snow.
As winter deepened, herbivores moved to the warmer other side of the mountain range.
In winter, even Bighorns were difficult to find.
Bighorns were wild cattle so fierce and strong that carnivores only hunted them when they were truly short on food.
But if even those Bighorns were nowhere to be seen, what would the carnivores of the Allos Mountains hunt?
The answer was people.
“Damn it! Block them there! They’re trying to go down to the houses!”
“Yes, sir!”
At the senior knight’s shout, one knight sprang forward and blocked the wolf’s path.
“Grrrrrk!”
The wolf bit into the knight’s leather armor, and the knight drove his sword into the wolf’s scruff.
At that moment, another wolf charged in from the side and bit the knight’s leg.
Crunch!
“Aaaagh!”
The knight cut off the neck of the wolf biting his leg with his sword.
The twelve knights in Snowhill were divided into four groups of three, blocking the animals coming down from the mountains into the territory.
The middle-aged and young men living in the territory helped the knights by holding long spears and stabbing at the wolves from a distance.
They experienced battles like this every year.
There was no war, but there were many battles.
“Aaaagh! Save me!”
In the end, one of the territory residents was bitten by a wolf and dragged away.
The wolves here, larger than those on Earth, had enough strength to bite a person and drag them off.
“Damn it! Someone’s being dragged away over there! What are you doing?!”
“Ghk! We’re in trouble here too…!”
In the end, the senior knight decided to ignore the wolf rushing at him and save the territory resident.
“Haaap!”
Swish! Crack!
The blade thrown by the senior knight embedded itself in the wolf that had been dragging the resident away.
As the price, the senior knight had no choice but to face the wolf’s attack empty-handed.
“Grrrrrk!!”
Whoooooosh—!
A fierce cold wind blew in from the sea.
Heavy snow poured down as if to fill the sky.
Within it, humans and beasts were both desperate to survive the winter.
A black wolf charged toward him, its jaws gaping wide.
The senior knight took his stance to stop it even with his bare hands.
At that moment,
Bang!
The sound of thunder rang out.
“Yelp!”
Thud!
The wolf, its side blown open, collapsed to the ground.
“You are…!”
The knight saw the silhouette of a man through the swirling snow.
Whoooooosh—
A long bearskin coat fluttered in the cold north wind.
A man wearing a cowboy hat on his head and holding a double-barrel shotgun in his hand.
“Dawi Baroque…!”
It was Park Dawi, who had crossed the mountain range in the middle of winter and pushed through a blizzard just to get some garlic and salt.