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

From the South of Alterra and Bright Villages were aborigine villages. While they already received many refugees from the south, it was by no means the majority of them yet.

At this time, a group of hundreds of refugees traveled northwards. They were from various villages along the drying river, meeting somewhere along the way. Although it was slowly recovering, it happened too late and too many territories had fallen.

They fought monster mobs after monster mobs and the leading teams frowned as they noticed something.

”Are the monsters getting weaker?” The de-facto leader, a thirty-year-old Guard by the name of Fossu, said with furrowed eyebrows. He had a large build and dark red hair. He was also a very rare elementalist among villagers.

His teammates fought alongside him, some of whom they met just recently, but the bond of life and death experiences was strong. Together, they took down a level 6 monster with relative ease.

When he said this, they looked at him oddly.

”That is a bad thing?”

Fossu heaved a sigh and manifested earth spikes, stabbing two more monsters so they could easily get handled by the civilians.

”It’s not exactly a good thing,” he corrected, ”It means we’re getting farther from a town.”

As people from fallen villages, they naturally wanted to relocate to towns instead.

Going to another village… what if it just falls again?!

This made everyone look even more worried.

”Do we turn back then?”

The people who had been to a town had all unfortunately perished. Since a few days back, they were dependent on what they had heard about the direction of towns. Buying the map from the others was too expensive—they barely had a few silvers left at the time—but then they lost these people from monster mobs.

”Let’s… check a bit more,” another person said. ”If they survived after so long, the village might not be too bad.”

Fossu thought for a moment before nodded. This made sense, and to be honest they really didn’t have much of a choice.

Sometime during the day, someone from their group paused their steps, pointing in a direction of a tree. ”What is that?”

They turned to look at a piece of wood plank with writing embedded in it. Curiously, they stared at it for a few seconds. Without realizing, they felt the urge to just go nearer and take a look.

A signage?

There were odd symbols, but there were also some familiar ones. Unfortunately, most of them weren’t literate so they couldn’t read it.

Fossu walked forward to take a look. He had reached level 10, and therefore awakened, in his mid-20s.

Although he didn’t get formal schooling, as the only elementalist in his family, he became the pride of the community.

His family pooled in much of their resources to get him to one of those reading schools which only the better-off villagers could afford. They made sure he could get the best resources they could afford.

His family didn’t hesitate to give him this, despite having to be stingy with their own food.

He saw their sacrifice and appreciated it so much, and he worked much, much, harder than others in order not to disappoint them. Despite being in a village, he gained his level—level 14—when he was not even 30 yet.

His family was so proud of him, and they tried pushing him to explore the bigger world—that was to say: Towns.

However, he decided to stay for a bit longer in the village. One, he wanted to strengten himself more. More importantly, he wanted to make sure his family had enough savings.

He gave them all his earnings as the lord’s top guard, hoping it would support them even when he was gone.

After all, he didn’t know where he was going to get hired. What if it was far away? He naturally had to settle his family safely first before heading out.

Later on though, he realized they saved much of it anyway, so they could give him a much-needed allowance. After all, the cost of living in Towns was much higher than their small village.

He sobbed a bit but adamantly refused the money. He simply promised that he would live well when he moved to a Town, and he’d come to visit as often as he could.

In fact, before the Heat Wave, he was about to go to a nearby town to get hired in a Chancery. It was fortunate that he wasn’t. He couldn’t imagine what would happen to his family if he hadn’t been there to protect them.

Although their territory didn’t survive, he had his family—his carpenter dad, his mum, and his 10-year-old little brother—and that was already a happy thing that could still make him smile even during the hottest of weathers.

”It says ’Alterra Village this way’,” he said, impressing the others.

His dad laughed, patting his back. ”As expected of my son!” he yelled, proud as always. His mother and little brother similarly looked smug at his feat.

He scratched his cheek in embarrassment, pushing down a cheeky smile.

He cleared his throat and looked around, donning a serious expression. ”Should we follow?”

”I think so?”

”Maybe it’s a trap? Haven’t you heard about ’those’ villages?” A woman with dark skin and very curly hair mumbled, looking at the de facto leader in concern.

Fossu looked at Fona, his lover. She looked at him with wide eyes filled with worry and fear, already fearing the worst.

Before, it was relatively uncommon for cannibalism to occur, but since the heat wave, the resources became extremely scarce.

There were many villages that had turned to harvesting the next resource available: Humans.

Fona was from one of these villages. Before, when they heard that some villages like Hasa Village began to eat people, they despised them.

However, when the resources had become too scarce and the mobs were becoming too difficult to deal with due to their weaknesses, the hunger and thirst soon got into people’s heads.

They became more open with exploring new… avenues to fill their stomachs.