After Surviving the Apocalypse, I Built a City in Another World

Hoskle Village, a month ago

Inside a dilapidated house with leaking roof and whistling walls, a group of oddly-shaped men and women with unusual appearances gathered in a somber atmosphere.

The sound of an alarm echoed across the village.

A territory war was about to happen within 14 hours. The announcement was followed by another, stating that everyone must prepare either themselves or resources to assist the territory.

”Another war?” Baku asked with a frown, his tiger ears perked up, guarded. His large build was tense, his long tail was upright, his mood turbulent at the imminent danger they’d be facing.

Gochi, who was kneeling beside him, sighed and looked at the person lying on the cot.

In his hand were a couple of leaves known to help with wounds.

It was all they could afford.

As he applied both the leaf and the crushed plants on his friend’s festering wounds, the man flinched and frowned, while the others couldn’t bear to look.

The one on the bed was Kuma, a half-bear orc. He was the oldest and the strongest one of them all. He had brown ears and a massive build. Kuma was still suffering from injury since the last war a few weeks prior, which added to the injuries of the wars before that.

Hoskle village was one of those villages that got attacked at least once a month.

It could be against either humans or orcs but, fortunately, Hoskel had enough background to supply them with professionals to defend the village.

Further, some other allied territories would occasionally send support because Hoskle served as a shield between the human and the orc territory.

This also meant… that a lot of citizens died every month.

No, not just ’a lot’, as the deaths often came in hundreds. It was fortunate the decomposition of corpses outside the walls was fast, otherwise the smell of rotting corpses would stink for miles.

And… several territories often sold people they didn’t like to Hoskle to keep up with the population, so they never ran out… of shields.

Since they were won as spoils in a war ten years ago, this was all they knew what to do: to be shields.

In that war, Hoskle’s enemy was an orc territory. This was a notorious neighbouring orc village that had taken down several human settlements and several nearby territories sent assistance to finally get rid of it.

After a bloody war, the orc territory perished, and the orcs either died or fled deeper into orc region.

They, little half-orcs, were taken in by Hoskle as spoils of war. Less than half managed to be kept in Hoskle, while the others were taken by other territories to sell.

They could still remember the greedy faces of the humans as they looked at them. They had been so scared—it was almost as scary as when they were in the Orc territory, threatened by bullies that they’d eat them someday.

To be honest, they didn’t really feel too sad after becoming slaves in the human territory. Life wasn’t easy in the orc territory, especially for half-bloods.

They had to forage for their own food as soon as they could crawl, they had to endure whatever nature threw at them with bare skin, and… they were never welcome.

Not to mention, because they were only half-orcs, it was impossible for them to get the rare orc-exclusive Skill of True Beast Taming.

Obviously they were created on purpose, but when they were born they were looked at in disgust.

Did the orcs think they’d look exactly like them, just with better brains?

But then again, orcs were known to be stupid—maybe they really thought this way.

In any case, from a young age, he and the others had to witness their mothers slowly lose their wills to live there, only their memories of how it was before keeping them alive.

Their mothers told them of how much better life was in human territory. After all, even if everyone had the aether screen, orcs weren’t very smart to maximize them.

This was when their mothers didn’t look at them in disgust, of course. Except for a few who had kind mothers, everyone else’s treated them like monsters.

Unwelcomed by both parents and both clans, the half-orcs could only find solace in each other and themselves.

They, innocent children, believed that life would not be worse, and they accepted human slavery without question. Since then, they have been willingly helping out on the front line.

By ’helping out’, it meant being the vanguard. They were taught to fight for the territory, using their bodies as shields. After all, they had stronger skins.

This didn’t matter because even in the orc territory, the vanguards have been expected to take in injuries, if not die, for the territory.

After all, territories were their home and protection—it was only right to protect it at whatever cost, even at the expense of their own lives.

The half-orcs didn’t really question this ideology because, unlike their lives in the orc territory, they had enough to eat and a roof above their heads.

This was something most uncivilized orcs could not provide because they couldn’t maximize the Lord token in their hands at all.

Their lives were like this for years, except slowly their numbers dwindled, until one day another war occurred, a very different one from what they were used to.

The original group of half-orcs in Hoskle, after a little over a decade, was now down to just the five of them.

”Well, we just try to survive,” Kuma sighed, as he stood up preparing to go to the battlefield.

He took his wife Nana’s, hand, his large eyes hovering over his wife’s large stomach. ”You take care of yourself and our cubs.”

Nana held back her tears, her long white ears shaking, and the injured Kuma tried very hard to comfort his pregnant wife.

Baku looked at this scene in sadness, closing his eyes so he didn’t have to see anymore. Kuma shouldn’t have had to go to war, he thought, but they never had a choice.

Maomao sighed and plucked her loose feathers, twirling them absentmindedly in her fingers.

Maybe she could blind people with them…

What they didn’t expect was that the enemy in this war—a human territory— was strong, very strong. Although there was a limit on the levels of and quantity of fighters, this seemed to have been maximized by the enemy.

Not too far into the war, the citizens of Hoskle realized this. After all, more and more people died helplessly, and there was no hope of winning at all.

”Aren’t the nearby territories assisting us?” Several people asked, confused at what was happening.

Although many people died in wars, they had never been so… hopelessly crushed.

After all, if the territory fell, another human territory would replace Hoskel as the shield.

”I don’t know,” another human slave cried in despair.

Still, the slaves fought with whatever as they knew escaping meant something even worse than death.

But they couldn’t handle the enemy in the end.

It was a tragic fight, a massacre, and pretty much all of the vanguards perished that day.

They didn’t know it yet but, apparently, the backer of their territory lost against the backer of the enemy… in a bet. The deal was that the loser could not call on any rescue or assistance during the war.

What their lord didn’t expect was that the other party would go all out in the war.

Even those behind the walls were affected. By the time the war entered the territory, the only surviving vanguards continuously fighting were the half-orcs.

It was just that the half-orcs might be much stronger than humans, but there were only a few of them.

Most of them weren’t even fighter orcs. He was a weak fox, Nana was a pregnant rabbit, and Maomao was a little dove who could barely fly.

It didn’t take long for them to succumb.

Kuma sacrificed himself to save them, while Baku was disabled somewhere on the road to escape.

They managed to run for a while, trying to escape with the citizens who didn’t want to become slaves. If a territory fell, it meant a certain amount of people inside would automatically become slaves for the winning territory.

In the case of the slaves, even if they were outside the territory, they wouldn’t be able to escape at all. They would either remain slaves in Hoskle or become slaves of the winning territory.

But… they wanted to run anyway.

It was as if they were hoping for a miracle that would never come.

Gochi carried the two women as he ran, his whole body aching. However, they were easily found by guards of the winning territory and, as slaves, they could not do anything to fight back. They could only get hauled back obediently, following them to their territory.

The winning territory, Sumar Village, made a lot of money by selling them off to different territories.

Nana and Maomao were sold much earlier than he was, since they were women. He was especially worried for Nana, whose due date was very soon.

Gochi sighed.

He wondered where they are now…

…

Present.

”Hey! Focus!!”

Gochi found himself a bit imbalanced as he was pushed back. He was startled when a firewall went ablaze in front of him all of a sudden.

Another guard appeared with an iron sword and attacked the monster that had apparently targetted him, soon taking its life.

Gochi gulped and calmed his heart, shaking his head to gather his wits.

This was not the first time he was saved by them—in stark contrast to being pushed forward as a meat shield.

And he still couldn’t get used to it.