The Genius Construction Worker Who Moved to America - Chapter 34

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 34

The Inverted Colosseum

Elm Street 1,248 had become a clean, level expanse under Kang Jun’s axe. Yet in one corner of the yard, the pond remained exactly as it was.

Kang Jun intended to keep his promise to Sophia to the end—that this pond would never dry.

Upon the cleared ground, members of the Golden Gate Corporation had gathered.
On a long table beside the pond lay a blueprint, concealed beneath a cover.

“Well, is everyone here?”

Kang Jun removed his Safety Helmet and set it on the table as he spoke.

“I hereby call to order the first meeting of the Golden Gate Corporation. The agenda concerns our headquarters building.”

Leo asked in an animated voice.

“Oh, how about a ten-story all-glass building? Visible from anywhere, you know?”

At Leo’s enthusiasm, Max cleared his throat and added his voice.

“Ahem, well, this area’s residential, so there’ll be height restrictions…. A five-story concrete office building would be more appropriate.”

Kang Jun withdrew the cover from the blueprint and delivered a statement that bypassed everyone’s expectations.

“We’re not building our headquarters upward.”

Kang Jun tapped the center of the blueprint with his index finger.

“We’re going to dig downward.”

Sophia pushed her glasses up and leaned her face over the blueprint.

As she studied the geometric lines and perspective drawings, her eyes began to waver.

“No, this is…!”
“Precisely. The ancient Roman Colosseum.”

Kang Jun smiled broadly and brought his hands together, making a gesture suggestive of a round pillar.

“Think of it as the Colosseum—that circular amphitheater—flipped upside down and embedded into the earth.”

Kang Jun continued his explanation.

“Basement Levels 1 through 3 will be office space. And in the very center where the Colosseum’s arena once stood, I’m thinking of building a hot spring bathhouse.”

“Oh, my… God!”

Leo tore at his hair in astonishment. Max, too, stared with mouth agape, his eyes darting between the blueprint and Kang Jun’s face.

Only Dominic was cheering.

Sophia, the first to recover her composure, fired a question.

“Director—or rather, Chairman. This is the middle of a residential zone in Pasadena!”

She pulled up a legal statute on the tablet screen and thrust it toward Kang Jun.

“Regulations are already strict enough. You want to drill a hole underground? The city’s building department won’t issue a permit in a million years. And a hot spring bathhouse on top of that? With a use-change classification and environmental assessment, we’re looking at years—minimum.”

It was a sharp observation, the kind only a perfectionist would make. Leo nodded in agreement.

“She’s right, Mr. Kang. Even with Mayor Scott backing us, there’s no way he can overlook this one.”

Despite the cascade of objections, Kang Jun’s expression remained serene.
He bent silently at the waist and placed his hand against the earthen floor.

[Skill Activated: Earth’s Pulse (Lv.2)]

Whoosh—!

Across Kang Jun’s retina materialized the image of a hot spring water vein churning eighty meters beneath the surface.

The groundwater level had risen due to the influence of the swollen river, and the pressure of the thermal waters had increased accordingly.

Kang Jun brushed the soil from his hands and spoke to Sophia.

“When did I tell you to write ‘hot spring bathhouse’ on the documents?”

“…Excuse me? You just said Colosseum bathhouse—”

“On the surface, it’s not a bathhouse construction at all.”

Kang Jun pointed to the bottom of the blueprint, where the water vein touched the ground.

“Eighty meters beneath this land lies a water vein under tremendous pressure. The torrential rains from the swollen river are accelerating a liquefaction phenomenon underground.”

Kang Jun paused for effect, then delivered the punchline.

“If we don’t relieve that pressure, a massive sinkhole could open up right in the heart of the Old Town District.”

Sophia’s eyes flashed. She’d caught the bait he’d cast in a single breath.

“…Ground stabilization work!”

An exclamation burst from Sophia’s lips. Kang Jun grinned and nodded.

“Exactly. We’re conducting an ‘Underground Pressure Relief and Ground Reinforcement Construction’ project for disaster prevention. The circular Colosseum structure becomes a retaining wall that prevents the surrounding area from collapsing.”

“Unbelievable….”

Leo covered his mouth. It was an audaciously clever maneuver.

Sophia’s fingers began dancing across the tablet screen.

“Director, if we apply the Environmental Assessment Emergency Exemption clause—’emergency measures to protect public life and property’—we should be able to get drilling permits just by proving the sinkhole risk!”

But this time Max raised a practical concern.

“Even if we clear the bureaucracy, there’s still a problem, Director. To bore the main shaft that’ll serve as the central axis down to eighty meters, we’d need an enormous drilling machine….”

Max furrowed his brow and continued.

“Finding an operator to run that equipment is like picking a star from the sky. There are barely any trained workers like that in all of California, you know.”

There was no one to drive it.

It was a desperate situation, but Kang Jun spoke with an unmoved expression.

“You don’t need to worry about that.”

“What? Surely you know an operator?”

“Not exactly… but in any case, leave it to me.”

Max grew heated again at Kang Jun’s vague attitude.

“Director, this isn’t something to take lightly! It’s a completely different league from operating a small excavator! Controlling rotational torque while managing vibration is practically like flying a plane!”

Max threw up his hands, but Kang Jun’s mind remained perfectly calm.

A quest he’d completed not long ago came to mind—smashing the pillars of the house at Elm Street 1,248 with an axe had earned him the quest reward Lay the Foundation of an Empire.
One skill he’d obtained as a bonus then was now presenting itself.

“I understand why you’re concerned, Director. Still, please leave the operation to me.”

Max had no choice but to set aside his doubts in the face of Kang Jun’s firm demeanor.

* * *

Five days passed.
Sophia’s administrative processing was completed swiftly.

Mayor Scott had issued the excavation permit citing the danger of sinkhole formation, but it came with a condition attached.

[If complaints arise, work must cease immediately and the permit will be revoked.]

Given that it was in the middle of a residential district, it was an unavoidable decision for the mayor.

And at last, the day for equipment arrival came.

Several trailers lined up in the alley in front of Elm Street 1,248.
The trailers carried a Vertical Core Drill weighing hundreds of tons, disassembled.

“Well, shall we assemble it now?”

At Kang Jun’s instruction, unloading and assembly began.
Thanks to the Human Protractor skill, the work progressed at an alarming pace.

In just two days, the Vertical Core Drill, towering as high as a ten-story apartment building, was installed in the front yard of Elm Street 1,248.

“Equipment setup is complete, Director! We’ve got the excavation permit from City Hall too. Now we need to get that thing moving….”

Dominic and Max looked at Kang Jun with worried eyes.
Then Kang Jun tightened the chin strap of his Safety Helmet and leaped up into the operator’s cabin.

“Chief…. You’re not actually planning to operate it yourself, are you?”

“Bingo! That’s right. I’ll give it a try.”

At Kang Jun’s casual response, Dominic’s eyes went wide as saucers.

The cabin was exactly as Max had warned—dozens of levers, pressure gauges, and pedals were tangled together like a spider’s web.
An ordinary person couldn’t even start it up.

Kang Jun, unfazed, reached up toward the control stick.

After a deep breath, he mentally invoked the name of a certain skill.

[Skill Activated: Steel Synchronization (Lv.1)]
[From this moment forward, you intuitively comprehend the structure and operating principles of the heavy machinery before you. The instant you grip the control lever, the machine’s manual imprints itself upon your mind.]

Whoooosh—!

Something miraculous was happening.

The engine’s faint vibrations, each pulse through the hydraulic lines—all of it connected directly to Kang Jun’s nervous system.

ROOOAAARRR—!!!

As Kang Jun pulled the lever, thousands of horsepower roared to life.

[Skill Activated: Master’s Blueprint (Lv.1)]
[Skill Activated: Human Protractor]
[Skill Activated: Earth’s Pulse (Lv.2)]

A transparent grid pattern materialized in his vision, extending eighty meters underground, and the pressure of the water vein translated into numerical data.

Kang Jun thrust the main lever forward.

Crrrunch—!

A drill three meters in diameter began piercing through the ground.

The piloting technique—a fusion of the Human Protractor and Steel Synchronization—bordered on the miraculous.

The drill maintained perfect verticality, churning through soil and bedrock alike.
A central axis was being carved out that would serve as the backbone for the inverted Colosseum, drawing off the pressure from the underground water vein.

“How is he… doing that? He said he’d never operated one before. Is he even human?”

Max felt ashamed of his earlier worry about the lack of an operator.

Twenty meters down, forty, sixty…

Piles of earth rode the conveyor belt up to the surface, while Kang Jun’s drill relentlessly bored deeper into the earth.

Soon, seventy meters below ground.

He’d reached the granite bedrock layer that held the water vein in place.

‘Good. Once I break through this bedrock, the pressure releases.’

Kang Jun slowed the drill’s rotation speed and made fine adjustments to the angle, positioning it to carve and extract pieces of stone.

But then—

Hummm—! Hum! Hum!

The pressure gauge on the control panel began to vibrate wildly.

[Warning! Warning!]
[The Earth’s Pulse skill has detected pressure beyond control parameters!]

‘What… what’s happening?’

The geological data projected into Kang Jun’s vision flashed red.

Steam trapped beneath the bedrock surged forward as the drilling created a fissure, pressing in with unimaginable force.

Kang Jun yanked the lever desperately, trying to pull the drill back, but it was already too late.

High-pressure steam at 150 degrees erupted from below, slamming into the drill’s tip with devastating force.

Clang-!!

The earsplitting impact shook the ground itself. Leo and Sophia lost their footing and collapsed.
The vibrations rippling up through the earth sent both of them tumbling.

A desperate message flashed before Kang Jun’s eyes.

[Warning! The Carbide Core Bit of the Vertical Core Drill has been damaged!]

The steel bit of the drill had shattered under the high-pressure steam, splitting clean in two.

But the real crisis lay elsewhere.

‘Damn it… the broken bit is wedging the hole shut!’

What Kang Jun observed through Earth’s Pulse was catastrophic.

Several tons of steel bit fragment had driven itself like a wedge deep into the drilled passage through the bedrock.
It was as though someone had shaken a bottle of soda violently and then corked it shut with steel.

Hiss-sss-sss-!!

The pressure of steam and boiling hot spring water began expanding beneath the steel bit.

[Underground Water Vein pressure is surpassing the critical threshold!]
[If the steel bit is not removed to relieve the pressure, a massive steam explosion will occur within ten minutes, submerging the entire area within a one-kilometer radius!]

“Boss! What’s happening down there! The ground is shaking violently!”

Dominic’s urgent voice crackled through the radio.

An underground vent sealed shut.

Kang Jun gripped the control lever, his teeth clenched.

“Damn it… I have to use that method… Cursed earth, time to rest now.”

Golden Gate Corporation’s desperate battle to quell the raging ground had begun.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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