The Greatest Estate Developer English Novel Translation- Web Novel Translations

Hi everyone! The main story of Greatest Estate Developer has officially concluded, but don't worry—Side Stories will be released next week. As promised, I'll also be reposting the earlier chapters starting from Chapter 1, though they won't follow a fixed schedule. Thank you all so much for your amazing support! I hope you'll continue supporting me, especially with my upcoming translation projects. You can also join our Discord here.

“Long, long ago, in a time far, far away—when raw water quality was relatively good, with coliform groups below 1,000 (per 100 mL, MPN), biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) below 2 mg/L, and maximum turbidity below 10 degrees—they adopted the slow sand filtration method.”

“……Wait a moment.”

“Raw water from sources like groundwater, dam water without eutrophication, lake water, and river water without pollution underwent this treatment method aimed at removing small amounts of turbidity and trace organic materials. The slow sand filtration method slowly filters raw water by passing it through a relatively thin sand layer, thereby……”

“Tha……that’s enou……”

“Through this process, trace amounts of ammoniacal nitrogen, manganese, bacteria, and odorous substances are also removed along with the turbidity. When the annual maximum turbidity is below 10 degrees, a sedimentation basin is unnecessary; for 10–30 degrees, a regular sedimentation basin is installed; and for above 30 degrees, a sedimentation basin capable of chemical treatment is installed.”

“……Zzz, pfffuuu.”

Scheherazade’s head snapped backward.

A thunderous snore followed.

A satisfied smile bloomed on Lloyd’s lips.

‘Good.’

Judging by how deeply she’d fallen asleep, she must have burned through a ridiculous amount of energy during the day.

Thanks to Javier, who had been diligently working her to the bone with swordsmanship.

Lloyd turned to Javier, who was standing beside him, and motioned with his hand.

“It’s done. Open your hearing.”

At the gesture, Javier responded by releasing the hearing he’d deliberately sealed off.

“Is it over?”

“Yeah. Disappointed you couldn’t hear the lullaby?”

“No. Not at all.”

Javier shook his head, face stiff.

Lloyd’s smile turned mischievous.

“Not at all? Really? Truly?”

“Yes. Absolutely.”

“Probably not your real feelings. You probably want to hear the lullaby. Don’t you?”

“I do not.”

“Imagine it. Falling asleep completely comfortably. Drifting off with a soft lullaby in your ears. No pain. No worries. Perfect rest. Total relaxation where even the calluses on your soles loosen up. Limp. Warm. Cozy. Floating. Just thinking about it—kyaah. Isn’t it wonderful?”

“……”

“You know what? Your eyes softened just now.”

“……”

“Hey. Don’t suddenly widen your eyes like that.”

“……”

“And now you’re staring at me with those flatfish eyes?”

“……Hoo. Really.”

Javier finally let out a deep sigh.

Annoying.

So annoying it made him want to lose his mind.

If he had his way, he’d give Lloyd a knuckle rap or two.

If he weren’t the young master Javier served, he would have already.

But now wasn’t the time.

They had work to do.

“Do we do the same as yesterday?”

“Yeah.”

Javier folded the irritation away at once.

Calmly, matter-of-factly, he confirmed today’s tasks.

Lloyd nodded.

“There should be spots I marked during the day.”

“Should I keep the tunnel size and gradient the same?”

“Yeah. I marked them as guidelines, just like yesterday. Follow that.”

“Understood.”

Javier rose and picked up his sword.

Just as he had for the past several days.

He threw a sturdy leather vest over a simple shirt.

He also took a mask to protect his nose and mouth from the thick dust.

“Then please rest a bit and come out later.”

“Yeah. You be careful too.”

“Understood.”

Lloyd-nim would close his eyes for a couple of hours, as usual, then come out to the site.

So for Javier, it was simple.

Dig at the designated spot until Lloyd-nim arrived.

Drill the holes exactly where they were supposed to be.

With that thought, Javier left the lodging.

The Qanat excavation.

He headed to the construction site.

As he walked, what he’d experienced in this city came back to him one by one.

‘Has it already been two months?’

Two months since they arrived.

For the first month, he had been stuck in the lodging.

While Lloyd surveyed and designed, Javier’s daily routine had been bickering with Scheherazade and keeping her contained.

At least it wasn’t boring.

If anything, it was decent warm-up and stimulation for pushing his swordsmanship higher.

In the meantime, Lloyd finished surveying the tunnels and designing the Qanat.

The foothills of the western mountain range, far in the distance.

Lloyd said he’d successfully designed a tunnel to connect the 36-kilometer distance—from the intake facility to be built there, all the way to here—along the shortest route.

And from that day—

‘When was the last time I slept properly? A month ago?’

Once the second month began, he barely slept.

The reason was simple.

During the day, he had to spar with Scheherazade and keep her pinned down.

At night, he had to go out to the site and dig nonstop.

So extreme fatigue was inevitable.

Sometimes he even felt dizzy.

And that was despite having a Mana Heart dense enough to surpass ordinary Swordmasters.

Despite supplementing his stamina with the Asrahan Heart Technique.

But Javier didn’t care.

No—he was enjoying it.

Even though there was a simple method to knock Scheherazade out instantly and take a break, he didn’t.

He deliberately met her head-on all day, driving himself harder.

‘Because enduring extreme fatigue itself becomes training, little by little.’

He would no longer be satisfied with being a Swordmaster.

He would raise the Asrahan Heart Technique to an even higher realm.

Ordinary methods wouldn’t work.

Even that level of resolve wasn’t enough.

Javier was realizing that painfully.

If reaching Swordmaster meant surpassing human limits—

Then aiming beyond that meant breaking free from human constraints entirely.

He had to endure every adverse condition.

He had to overcome them.

An untrodden path.

A challenge toward a place no one had ever reached.

For someone pursuing such a transcendent realm, this level of hardship was only natural.

Reaffirming that, Javier arrived at the site.

“He said we should start from inside. Follow me.”

A rebel guarding the site guided him.

Javier entered the long tunnel.

As he walked, he saw traces of Lloyd’s daytime work here and there.

‘So Lloyd-nim is sealing off every remaining passage that won’t be used as a waterway.’

Piles of bricks and cement were stacked throughout.

Most of the originally open passages were firmly blocked.

It was to prevent water from flowing into useless, strange routes once the Qanat was completed.

‘Lloyd-nim must’ve struggled all day too.’

To someone who didn’t know better, those bricks and cement might look simple.

“Oh, they just blocked the passages.”

That’s all they would think.

But Javier was different.

He now understood how difficult waterproofing work really was.

He had participated in countless construction projects by now.

That cement wall that looked so plain.

That brickwork that looked so ordinary.

All of it was effort made solid.

The result of endless calculations, deliberation, and experience.

And the process was the same.

A proper design didn’t guarantee a proper result.

That was why you had to be more careful, more thorough, more invested.

Bangul had to diligently collect the volcanic ash produced by her volcanic eruption.

It had to be mixed properly so the cement wouldn’t crack.

Bricks had to be matched precisely—size, angle, position.

Thickness had to be checked.

Tiny gaps had to be hunted down—any spot where water could leak or moisture could seep in.

Build, apply, and inspect, again and again, with attention to every detail.

‘Where did Lloyd-nim even learn all this?’

He used to be a young master who only knew how to waste money and fool around.

Did he, without anyone knowing—not even his family, not even Javier—learn all of this somewhere?

‘He once made excuses… saying he learned it in a dream at a “magical school.”’

Suddenly, Javier remembered.

Back when Lacona Viscount Rakona tampered with the river water.

Around the time they built the territory’s waterworks to overcome that pollution incident—

Javier had asked Lloyd where he learned it.

Lloyd had answered like it was a joke.

That he dreamed.

That in those dreams, he became a student at a strange university he’d never seen.

That there, he endlessly learned construction-related knowledge.

And thanks to that, he could do these things.

That had been Lloyd’s answer.

‘Maybe that wasn’t a joke.’

Back then, Javier thought it was just Lloyd being flippant.

But now he was starting to wonder if that absurd answer might have been true.

“Here it is.”

The rebel’s voice snapped Javier out of his thoughts.

Javier raised his head.

Without realizing it, he had reached the end of the tunnel.

On the rock wall, he could see semi-transparent markings etched into the stone.

Bluish points and lines—lines and planes—glowing faintly.

Guidelines left by Lloyd.

Beside them was a note Lloyd had attached.

A memo with instructions.

[While you’re digging this, I’m going to sleep soundly. Fighting.]

“……”

Should I go back and hit him once?

Javier’s grip tightened around his sword.

♣

The Qanat construction continued.

The same kind of work repeated day after day.

When the sun set, Javier went to work at the site.

Following the guidelines Lloyd left behind, he dug the tunnel.

Whenever his sword flashed, a precisely controlled Confined Blasting detonated.

In an instant, a long, 20-meter hole appeared.

Width: 60 cm.

Height: 1 meter.

A narrow passage where one person could barely squeeze through.

At a glance, it looked too cramped.

But in reality, it was a tunnel size calculated down to the last detail for stability and efficiency.

‘Of course. If it’s any wider, the risk of collapse spikes.’

If the tunnel widened, the earth pressure applied to it increased.

And the likelihood of the tunnel failing under that load rose accordingly.

That was why.

From the beginning, Lloyd intended to finish this construction as fast as possible.

So he set the waterway passage to the most appropriate size.

The criteria were exactly two.

First, the maximum size the waterway could sustain without support structures—steel supports, shotcrete, rock bolts, and the like.

Second, the minimum space required for personnel to enter later and manage the tunnel after completion.

Lloyd designed around those criteria.

The result was a tunnel 60 cm wide and 1 meter high.

Of course, he ran countless simulations as well.

The probability of collapse, section by section, after decades—after centuries—of water flowing through it.

He experimented again and again, considering different soil qualities and rock compositions in each area.

Thanks to that, Javier suffered plenty.

“Hoo, huff!”

The waterway tunnel was too narrow.

At only 1 meter high, he always had to move while crouched.

At only 60 cm wide, turning his body or handling his sword became difficult.

But the Iron Blooded Knight, striving to surpass the limits of a Swordmaster, accepted every adverse condition as part of training—without a single complaint.

Whoosh—BOOM!

Each time Confined Blasting flashed, the waterway extended.

The extension connected existing tunnels via the shortest path.

Like capillaries knitting together underground.

After Javier dug through the night, Lloyd took over in the morning.

“Lululu. Lalala. It’s a bang!”

“Bangul!”

Fwoooosh—!

Bangul collected volcanic ash through her volcanic eruption.

With the collected ash, Lloyd mixed cement vigorously.

Then he blocked passage after passage with cement and bricks.

To prevent the water from leaking into useless routes.

‘Because if we don’t seal it, it’ll be chaos. If water leaks into strange places and stagnates, it becomes the perfect environment for bacteria to multiply.’

If that happened, all the water in the Qanat would become contaminated.

And then, after all this effort to bring water here, they wouldn’t even be able to use it.

To prevent that disaster, Lloyd tightly sealed every tunnel section that wouldn’t be used as a waterway.

So the Iron Blooded Knight dug.

And the noble young master sealed.

Their work repeated, day and night.

Ten days.

A fortnight.

One month.

Two months.

At last, the waterway extending from near Kandara City reached the vicinity of the intake well at the foothills of the western mountain range.

“Today, we’ll put the final punctuation mark on this long construction.”

On the day they neared completion, Lloyd gathered Javier and all the rebel workers.

He looked around at everyone assembled on the ground above the well—the spot where completion would happen.

“Everyone has worked really hard.”

Emotion rose across the faces of the rebel men, including Termes.

They had all worked together, day and night, caked in dust.

‘If it weren’t for their help, the construction period would’ve been far longer.’

Lloyd felt genuine gratitude toward them.

Could he have sealed all the unnecessary tunnel sections alone?

No.

The rebels carried cement and bricks together.

They hauled out the excavated soil.

And beyond that, they drilled countless vertical shafts—20 meters deep—at 100-meter intervals.

Access passages, so future workers could descend from the surface into the Qanat for management and repairs.

‘They handled all the miscellaneous work.’

Construction isn’t done alone.

Countless workers have to move as one, supporting each other.

Sometimes there are troubles. Sometimes people tally up small gains and losses.

But in the end, everyone has to become one and lift the final shovel together.

That’s a site. That’s construction.

“And since we’re the ones who willingly covered ourselves in dirt and dust together, we should enjoy the final moment together as well.”

“Then do we all dig together at the end of the waterway?”

Termes asked as Lloyd finished.

Lloyd smiled faintly.

“No. That would cause a big problem.”

“Huh? A big problem…?”

“You die.”

“……”

Termes went speechless.

Lloyd’s smile deepened.

“You may or may not know, but between the end of the waterway we’ve dug and the intake well, only about three meters of rock wall remain. But that well is over thirty meters deep from the surface. That means it’s filled with water—and the water pressure is tremendous.”

“So the moment we break through and connect the waterway…”

“Yes. The water pooled in the well will burst through the waterway in one shot, under enormous pressure. And the person who breaks through at the very end…”

Lloyd slid the edge of his hand across his own neck.

“They go poof. Gone.”

It was true.

The pressure released the instant the well and waterway connected was not something a human could withstand.

There was no escaping instant death.

So, in reality, the ancient Middle Eastern workers who built Qanats—

“Then you already have another method?”

“Yes.”

Lloyd nodded.

Of course he did.

“One person can sacrifice themselves.”

That was what they did.

The oldest worker would step forward for the final moment.

Solemnly, calmly, they would strike the last few blows.

They would connect the waterway to the well.

And they would die.

A sacrifice accepted to provide clean water to countless people—descendants who would live because of it.

“But there’s no need for any one of us to actually die.”

Ancient Middle East was ancient Middle East.

Here was here.

There was no reason to sacrifice a living person.

Especially not when there was an existence that could do it without suffering any harm.

“Right?”

Lloyd grinned and looked past the rebels’ shoulders.

The rebel men followed his gaze and turned.

Behind them.

Beyond a rocky slope on the mountainside—

A skeletal soldier peeked its skull out, its neck bent forward.

It raised a bony hand toward them.

And as it had learned from Lloyd at some point, instead of greeting—

It formed a Korean-style finger heart and held it up with a little flourish.

Click-clack!

It was Turtle Neck—the Bone Corps leader—who had come all the way from Frontera Estate, crossing mountains and desert to find Lloyd.

Chapter 195: The Hole Diggers (2)

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