The vision of Gehrman's New Workshop was a lot more grandiose and complex than anything he had ever considered in Yharnam.
Now he had resources, power, and perhaps most importantly, he had the naive dreams of a child.
There were many things he wanted to build that would simply seem impractical or too costly to anyone else. But Gehrman was in a unique position where he had the privilege to be impractical.
For that reason, the New Workshop would not consist of one building, but instead be a complex that fulfilled all the things he would ever need.
Apartments, schools, training facilities, and of course, actual workshops where his creations would be made.
The first thing he needed to do though was build a foundation.
For this, he would rely on a mix of his own Aspects brute force and the science he had been learning the past few months.
The manual labor that would have taken years to finish was able to be completed in seven days and seven nights thanks to the power of an Awakened and an Ascended along with a shit ton of things arriving by helicopter from the Government.
One of the biggest and most jarring things was a giant Spell Tech generator. These were the things that powered city blocks in NSCQ. They relied on Soul Shards as a source of clean energy and converted it into electricity that powered all appliances in the area.
A single Ascended Soul Shard could power a city block for years. And since Gehrman had a great number of these, it was no issue to spare one to bring light to his new home.
After this arrived, one last big machine was dropped in the area that would help Gehrman do the work of tens of thousands of men. It was a container over 15 meters in diameter and just under 10 in depth.
It was similar to a large, above-ground pool with the only difference was it was empty.
But it wouldn't be for long.
As Gehrman left to take care of the nearest Gate crisis, Caster begrudgingly, set the thing up to their new Spell Tech generator.
The container thrummed to life, and an unseen change occurred.
It got warm.
The sides and floor of the container radiated heat, not unlike a pan over a burning flame. This thing reached temperatures so hot that it would burn a mundane person.
Caster looked at it with a befuddled gaze before turning around and continuing cutting stone.
This stone would eventually be formed into the cobblestone floor of the entire area. And Gehrman required them to be cut into small blocks. It was incredibly mundane and boring work. So much so that Caster was frankly quite insulted. But in reality, it just gave him something to do. His real job was to make sure nobody came close to the area and try to steal anything.
Though Gherman was confident in the goodwill of the people here, he was under no illusions what people might do if they recognized a Soul Shard. That would get them a ridiculous amount of money, and possibly a ticket out of this hell. There would undoubtedly be an army of people rushing for it if not for Caster's intimidating presence.
After two hours of nothing, an especially horrifying spectacle arrived.
It was Gehrman, having slaughtered every creature at a tier 3 Gate. Hundreds of Awakened creatures and a dozen or so Fallen had all been drained of blood. That blood was now following Gehrman in the sky in the form of a giant sphere.
Both he and the sphere of blood moved at ridiculous speeds above the clouds, eventually falling towards the heated container.
The giant accumulation of Nightmare Creature blood and the red-winged Ascended was viewed by multiple Outskirt people, and it was such a horrible sight that even those who had previously considered distracting the Awakened to steal the shard immediately abandoned all such notions.
The reason for this spectacle was not just to inspire fear, but to cheat one of the drawbacks of Gehrman's Aspect.
His control over blood was limited to the amount of "heat" in the blood. This was a way to limit the ability, making it so it could only be controlled for a few minutes before falling apart.
Though Gehrman's control had advanced a great deal, and he was able to manipulate molecules to a degree to warm the blood and increase the amount of time he had, he could not do it on a large scale.
For this reason, he had a heated tub brought over. The container would constantly warm the blood, essentially keeping it ready for control for an extended period of time. Gehrman would have to return it to the tub every once and a while, but he would no longer have to go searching for it, or pull this stunt again for every Gate crisis he handled.
As he let the blood warm and retain its heat, more shipments arrived.
They were more mundane things such as trash containers. Though there was very little rubble left in the area, a cloud of dust clung heavy to the surroundings. This would interfer with any construction, so Gehrman used the blood on a large scale. Creating a giant broom that cut slightly into the ground.
The blood mingled slightly with the dust, catching it and ensuring what was left behind was spotless.
Then, with some difficulty, he allowed the dust to fall into the garbage containers, allowing it to slide loose from the giant blood conglomeration before returning the red sphere to its container.
What followed was more mundane architecture, carried out on an impossible scale.
A lot of the "parts" that went into these larger machines were developed here in the Outskirts, but assembly was handled where it was "safe". The city folk didn't trust the people Outskirts not to steal the larger and more expensive devices and implant them in their own homes.
Now that the area was uniformly flattened and cleaned, all he needed to do was prepare a few layers of various compounds.
Compounds like vapor barriers (which was a thick, tan liquid) could be spread out en masse and left to dry for a while. The result would be a layer of matter that would keep any water or liquid from interfering with the land. This included the water that rose from the ground.
Many areas in the Outskirts were prone to flooding and falling apart. This resulted in many buildings collapsing under weak foundations.
The preparations for strong foundations was especially important since the flooring he had chosen was cobblestone.
It was a whimsical and nostalgic way of making the New Workshop resemble Yharnam, but it was by no means done purely out of a naive wish.
The individual stones would be packed together far closer than they were in Yharnam, and the fact that it came from the Dream Realm and held mystical properties made it unreasonably durable by mundane standards. He wasn't lying when he told that kid that it was the easiest and most efficient resource to use.
Still, the gaps could still lead to problems with flooding. Gehrman installed an expensive draining system that was mainly imported from more advanced Government facilities.
This was done mostly before he laid down the Vapor barriers and other compounds, and then it was connected after they were added.
As they waited for the mundane barriers to dry, Gehrman spread out blood in the form of a roof to protect the drying barrier from any dust in the air that could interfere with this process. The roof-barrier was thin and close to the ground, but it took a lot of blood.
After realizing this, Gehrman hurriedly brought in another heated tub and brought in another large blood conglomeration from a different Gate crisis. This would allow him to switch out the barrier with warm blood every once and a while.
Despite being very prepared and mapping out a timeline, Gehrman still found himself adapting to things on the fly. However, this was a fundamental practice in construction. Things would often go wrong and new variables had to be considered and accommodated. Like most involved in the industry, Gehrman had developed a mindset of calm and practical adaptability.
He had years of experience dealing with life and death battles with beasts, Gehrman's ability to handle such stress was superhuman at this point, so the adjustment was quite easy.
While he was solely focused on this, Caster had created a large raised platform from the stone that allowed him to keep getting the cobblestone prepared.
By the time the foundation was ready, the hundreds of thousands of stones prepared by Caster and his Echo were ready.
Extending the large amounts of blood, Gehrman created thousands of tendrils that placed the stones and pressed it together.
At that time Gehrman recognized that cobblestone was not truly an apt description of this floor. As though the stones were separate pieces pressed together, the uniformness of the blocks allowed for a surface as smooth as pavement.
With the blood tendrils working at a pace beyond human, the stones were laid in a few hours. Just like that, the entire Block of the Outskirts had received a foundation on the same level as the ground in NSCQ.
Though the area around the Block had been largely vacated, the few who did see it quickly spread the word.
There was another Awakened in 9280…or rather, an Ascended.
It was so unbelievable that many came to see for themselves, but as more and more people returned shaking after laying eyes on the area it was quietly accepted as reality.
In two days the foundation had been laid. More stone would be needed for the additional structures, but Gehrman was hesitant to do so. Making all buildings out of stone was not something he wished to do, for the simple fact that though the buildings would be incredibly sturdy, it would take a lot of effort to make them comfortable and livable.
He wanted to have air conditioning in every building as well as its own ventilation, doing that within stone was not impossible for him, but it would be tedious.
Alternatively, he could use the materials that were used in modern mundane construction. Layers of insulation and more adaptable synthetic material could be made to have more than enough durability for his purposes.
So on the third day he received many more shipments. Much of this work would not require Caster's help, so the first shipment was a "pod" for Caster to sleep in. This would allow his body to stay refreshed even in the Dream Realm.
So while Gehrman was building in the Waking World, the Awakened would be out hunting on his own.
He had told Caster to only stick to creatures he could handle easily and to absorb every Soul Shard he came across.
Though it was harder to saturate his core now that he was an Awakened, he was obtaining a truly staggering number of Awakened and Fallen shards. It would not take long for him to reach maximum strength.
For Gehrman, the real benefit of Caster's hunting was the corpses he would procure. Many of the materials in this Workshop would be fashioned out of Nightmare Creature corpses. After all, Trick Weapons would be useless unless they were made from dead horrors of the Dream Realm.
So not only did he need a surplus of raw resources to help his new students practice with, he also needed to fashion his own tools out of even stronger Nightmare Creatures.
Unfortunately, Ki Song had taken the rest of the Transcendent corpses with her and slaughtered any strong creatures she came across as a part of the payment for giving Gehrman the citadel.
But Gehrman could get his own corpses.
During the night, Gehrman would spend time creating buildings out of the new materials. At the moment, he was only building three.
One was an apartment complex that would house the numerous new Yharnam Hunters he hoped to enlist. It was quite large, about eight stories tall and wide enough to house thousands of people. There were no amenities yet, and it probably wouldn't be until after the seven day period that he could start adding beds and such.
What he was focusing on at the moment was adding the bare bones of the place. The ventilation and air conditioning were only the first few things, a place to make and store food and drink.
Gehrman set up his [Lustful Vial] to create water, as well as his favorite fruit drinks by itself, hanging it upside down and providing Essence from afar. It filled multiple large barrels that would be enough for thousands of people.
As for the food, this was the purpose of the second building he was working on.
Naturally, the second place he built was a place to grow food.
The vast majority of food in the Outskirts were synthetic food that provided nutrients through the replication of the enzymes and protiens. It was mostly in the form of a tasteless past called Synth-Paste. While this was efficent…it angered Gehrman to no end! This world had fantastic foods that hadn't existed in Yharnam, he would be a fool not to fill his new home with as many of these as possible.
Much of the meat would be imported, but it wouldn't be hard to grow his own fruit and vegetables. It was easy to create a space that provided the perfect area of growth for these grown goods even in the Outskirts.
Since he had a near limitless amount of energy thanks to Spell Tech, all it took to create such an area was installation. Naturally, he could continue to do this on a large scale thanks to his Aspect.
This greenhouse was also several stories tall, and it was even wider than the apartment building. Of course, this would change at a later date. There would be dozens of apartment complexes that would be built in order to fit the demand of the number of people that joined him.
During the fifth day he had brought in two Government Awakened whose Aspect allowed them to not only help the new crops find purchase in the artificial soil, sun, and water, but also have a few of them experience expedited growth.
Thanks to their service, Gehrman acquired his own stockpile of food. This would cover the period of time needed for the other crops to grow naturally.
With their help, (and Caster's during the day) they were able to get three floors of crops growing, each producing enough to feed a hundred people per month. Of course, the imported meats would supplement this, ultimately, the food was also enough to feed a thousand people.
The third building was much smaller, and Gehrman had not added too much to it. Only spending two hours soon after the cobblestone was finished to add an area to place Caster's sleeping pod.
This would eventually become Gehrman's own house…and Caster's as well. He figured that it would be best to provide a special place for the young man. After all, there was a limit to what his pride could take. And Gherman recognized that his value was greater than anyone else's at the moment. He definitely deserved his own place.
Later, Gehrman would allow Caster to make any modification he wanted, but for now he simply got a room for his pod.
Gehrman added a place for his own room as well. He didn't sleep much at all anymore, but it would be nice to have a place of his own. He added a desk that he could sit and do research at…and only then did he realize that he needed to build his own network tower in order to make sure that he could easily access the internet.
Many smaller towers existed in the Outskirts. There were plenty of police stations, libraries, and other such public facilities that were added to make the place not a total abyss of despair.
Each of these towers connected to a number of satellites. However, ever since the Spell descended, many satellites had been destroyed.
It was unclear what kind of monstrosities had existed outside earth's atmosphere. But Gehrman knew that at least a few Gates had appeared there, and the resulting creatures were not something that any human could handle. He wasn't sure that even Ki Song could clear out the upper atmosphere from horrors.
So now, the satellites existed closer to the ground.
Before, any place on Earth could access instant internet access. But now it was not nearly as uniform.
Gehrman would have to install his own tower to suit his needs and desires.
The more he built the more he realized that he needed more things. He realized that he had forgotten a number of facilities or amenities that mundane humans needed.
The expenses were also absurd. Though Gehrman responded to a few Gate crises over the past few days, they were only enough to cover some of his projects. What he really needed was a few 4th tier Gates to appear so he could get more Transcendent Soul Shards to sell.
Fortunately, despite the great number of things he ordered, the value of Transcendent Soul Shards were so valuable that he had not yet fallen into debt.
The entire week he did not eat or sleep. Spending an exorbitant amount of time building the framework for his New Workshop.
"...At this point, it isn't even a Workshop, it's just a city."
Gherman lamented to the empty sky. After a few minutes of dully looking at the grey clouds he shrugged his shoulders.
"Whatever. There isn't enough time to worry about that," he sighed deeply. "I have to figure out plumbing. Gods, what a chore."