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

As for the other ones in the tunnel, they had quickly run back as fast as they could, not caring who they stepped on in the stampede.

They were lucky that the tunnel descended a little, so the water stopped following them at some point after gaining a bit of elevation. However, no one dared be complacent and they ran as fast as they could towards the exit.

”Go back! Run!” They yelled to the confused people who were just entering. They literally had to push people which almost caused a few brawls, except the perpetrators looked genuinely scared and they wondered what they saw underneath.

The water had, in fact, long stopped being a threat, but they still ran as if their lives depended on it.

When they got up to safety, they were barely breathing from exhaustion.

Baltimore, who had been losing his patience, was on the verge of skewering these losers. ”What’s going on?!”

”Milord!” One of the men said, gasping. ”Water! Took goblins! Gone!”

”What?”

Ero lifted the man by the neck. ”Speak clearly!”

The man shook and forced the words out of his mouth. ”They’re gone!” He cried. ”Water suddenly appeared, strong water took all of the goblins!” he cried. ”I thought we were gonna die!”

A sharp spike of earth passed by his neck and everyone looked down to avoid the sight, shaking, afraid the next subject of venting would be them.

Baltimore looked at the hundreds of slaves they had, and then to the damned level 5 walls a hundred meters away.

His patience was growing thin.

Baltimore was very angry.

He had wanted to go with minimal losses as direct confrontation would do. Human resources, even slaves, were resources he spent money on.

But he had no choice anymore.

For the first time in probably a decade, he’d even be joining so closely as well.

Alterra will pay for this humiliation!

”Move forward,” he ordered, and a line of terrified slaves started approaching the walls. None of those long-ranged projectiles were used anymore and Baltimore narrowed his eyes.

”They don’t have any more of that.” He said, and even if they did, there shouldn’t be too many anymore. ”Separate. Do not make yourselves easy target by forming clusters.”

He looked at the shivering slaves. ”Go, do whatever it takes—destroy those walls.”

Sobbing for their hopeless lives, the slaves could only run towards the walls, targeted by sentries.

However, as they entered the scope of the sentries, they noticed that the sentries weren’t hitting most, and only injuring the others!

”What?”

”What’s going on?”

What they didn’t know—and would not understand—was that Althea and the others really felt for slaves.

Even if the cost was high, she applied really detailed the programming of sentries, though with a lot of semantics help from Mathilda, Jun, and even IT professionals like Mao.

She didn’t want slaves to lose their lives uselessly, so she programmed the sentries to choose well.

There was now a rule that, as long as the strength of the slave didn’t pose a threat based on their levels, they wouldn’t be attacked. Her walls were level 5. Even monsters level 20 would barely be able to damage it, let alone human slaves with cheap weapons (if any at all).

And if they were, they would only be injured, except if the slave truly had malice.

Anyway, the sentries somehow knew when an enemy was hostile. She didn’t have the resources or time to explore why or how it was like this, but for now, it was to her advantage—even if it cost a lot to implement.

After all, someday, they could be encountering Terran slaves.

What if there were family and friends in there? They could’ve been reunited, but how heartbreaking would it be to find out they were killed by their own sentries instead?

Not to mention, slaves weren’t counted as population. There were even cases where they had no effect on the results of war. For instance, if they were weak.

This was something that was completely unfathomable to the aborigines and it left them completely confused for a while.

”Did their sentries break?” one asked, hopeful. The others watched a bit more and saw that their section of the wall was now lined up with slaves clawing for it, yet none of them were attacked at all!

Some guards laughed, assuming that the sentries were really somewhat ’broken’, and they ran straight to the walls.

Whoosh!

A large sentry arrow immediately attacked a guard, and after the cool down, the sentry shot at another guard a few meters away—this one skewering two in one shot.

There was also a slave or two who got injured by the shot, but otherwise, it did not target them specifically.

”What?!”

”Does it work or does it not?!”

”What’s going on?!”

Baltimore, like the others, was also quite confused. However, his brain was faster than others. He was also a lord himself, so he had an idea about setting specific rules for sentries.

Alterra… set up a rule not to attack slaves!

So… idiotic? Why would people spend so much for such a modification?

Like a snake, he already determined the next step and took advantage of this ’useless’ rule.

”Go forward,” he said, grabbing a random slave who happened to be standing nearby. He handed him over to one of his guards, who flinched in confusion.

”Grab a slave, use them as shields,” he said, and the others’ eyes widened in enlightenment.

However, they were still reluctant to be the first ones to try. What if it didn’t work? The slaves were so weak, that the arrows could go through them.

Baltimore’s eyes darkened and they flinched, immediately moving forward. They knew they’d definitely get killed if they continued to be frozen!

And, unexpectedly, it really worked! While holding a slave in the direction of the sentry, they really weren’t targeted anymore!

They had often used meatshields, but it had ironically never been so effective!