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

Altera.

In the Village Center, Mathilda stood in front of the rest of the elders, set to lead a very important meeting.

They had received an order from ’the Village System’ to decide on some very heavy decisions while the rest of the territory recovered and handled the injured and the casualties.

Other than the elders, Oslo, and a few other aborigines were also there to provide some advice.

Mathilda looked at her companions in the elder positions: Althea, Eugene, Ansel, Gru, and the new add-on Rosalind, the Elder of Education.

She had gained a very important skill during her tenure as an officer, and they judged it was high time for her to be promoted. This Skill was called ’Wisdom Amplification’ which can partially clear the minds of the people in the room, temporarily increasing decision-making and learning abilities.

In classrooms, this was a great thing to have, but in meeting places like these where critical decisions were made, such a skill was invaluable.

”We have been called here by the system for various discussions,” Mathilda began, ”But it will primarily be regarding what the territory would want us to do with the two lord tokens.”

There was still so much they didn’t know about this world, and Mathilda could understand Althea’s reluctance to merge recklessly.

The old woman turned to Oslo and the other aborigines, asking them more information about the tokens.The aborigines put together what they knew, filtered the inaccuracies, and presented them to the elders.

They didn’t know that much of course, as knowing too much about things only lords knew—without being one—typically caused suspicion in Xeno.

So, even if they were curious, few aborigines actually tried exploring its functions and nuances.

”As you know, the tokens detaching from the lords during wars is not common knowledge, however, there are still plenty of people—especially lords themselves—who capitalize on this.”

During wars, if it wasn’t the lord himself, then it was a confidante who swore various oaths that would be sent to assassinate the enemy lord, aiming to take the token before the war ended.

”There are many things one could do with a token. One was to sell for a very high price. Becoming a lord, even of a village, would elevate a person’s status in this world. The village could not be moved though, so whoever would win the bid would have to manually travel to the village.

”Another was to merge with the territory. The extent to what merges during such a thing is beyond our knowledge, but we do know that the ’master’ territory had direct control over the new ones, as if it was an extension of it.

”Each territory could merge with a maximum of three territories,” he said. ”There have been cases where a lord had decided to ’throw away’ a territory he no longer needed. If this was during the war, then the token could be detached and then be sold later on. However, this would have a massive cost.”

The information regarding this came from Betty. In one of the territories she got assigned in, the lord was greedy for expansion and had merged the tokens he had (at the high price of hiring mercenaries for assasination works).

But when he encountered a rich village and managed to get ahold of the token, he was forced to separate one of his old ones. He had been so excited with the new village, but whatever he saw on his screen made him backtrack.

In the end, that lord didn’t continue to merge and simply sold the token for a high price. This told Betty that the price of separating an existing merge must’ve been astronomical.

The Alterans were enlightened with the new knowledge, thanking them for their contribution. They blushed, waving their hands, saying they were being too polite—they were Alterans, too, after all.

Mathilda smiled before she continued speaking. ”Now that we will be going into this with informed minds, now we must make the decision: Whether or not to merge our territory.”

”There are various factors to consider here,” Mathilda said, ”And I hope everything is considered. Although tempting, merging recklessly might not be in Altera’s best interest.”

At this, various discussions exploded in the territory. They tacitly ignored Bright Village, for now, and focused on their bigger win: Fargo Village.

”They found limestone there, right? So we can start from there,” Ansel said, chewing on one of the snacks on the table.

Eugene looked at him. Although he wasn’t there, he had heard about the resources that were found there were. During the war, Kimura was dragged through the array to check the metals as well. They thought he needed more courage, and they did get some good findings before they had to go back before the array closed.

”There is also copper, zinc, and lead,” Eugene added. ”Though he did mention there are some slight compositional differences from what we know in Terran.”

”Wow. I heard that they found trace amounts of copper, but it seems there’s a lot more than limestones over there,” Ansel said with raised eyebrows.

Eugene nodded. ”Actually, finding different types of minerals in a single deposit is common. There are plenty of cases where such metals had been found near limestone mines.”

The redhead whistled. ”Wow… we really hit the jackpot,” he said. Although there were still a lot of things to study, this was a major step forward!

Althea was also very pleased with the findings.

This was probably the only war they started themselves, and it really paid off. It was really tempting to start wars, but Althea was no typical power-hungry man so the territory was—thankfully—spared from this type of war-mongering existence.

In the end, after a few more minutes of discussion, the elders decided to merge Altera with the new village.

Only with Fargo Village, anyway.

Before they could move on to the next topic though, Ansel couldn’t help but ask.

”So… do we change its name?”