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

Quite the peculiar sight would be talked about for a while.

After all, the lord himself seemed to be guiding a couple with a few of his guards following at a distance, just so they wouldn’t bother them. This naturally gathered a lot of surprised stares.

Especially when the levels of the couple were really… low! The male was average level for a Town, but the female seemed to be only above level 10?

However, they had the aura of nobles so they didn’t think too deeply about it. At the very least, anyone handled with such care by their own lord was definitely not a small entity!

They all wondered which town or city they came from to get the lord to show them around like this. Some of the more powerful parties also sent their men to investigate.

Very curious! Who were these newcomers?

…

Jonathan, probably because of his predisposition, had a very open mind and didn’t think his taking another esteemed person around was humbling him.

Instead, he took it as an opportunity to improve his home even more!

This attitude was obvious to the couple, which made them like him more. After all, one could be humble when one was in another person’s territory, but how easy could it be—especially as a native, and a more powerful one at that—to do it on home ground?

This said a lot about his character, and it made the couple more certain that he was one of the best partners among the native population. He was also quite smart and efficient, already applying what he saw in Alterra to his own.

Jonathan and his leading party really maintained the place well compared to the territories, so they rarely had shit on the ground except for maybe the poorer neighborhoods far from the main avenues.

Sadly, Jonathan said he had used up all his building slots so he couldn’t make use of the dormitory design Alterra had.

They had plenty of cleaners, though after going to Alterra they had also decided to build their own public toilets. They had seen how practical it was and although there were costs, it was definitely worth it if done decently.

The initial ones were located only in the high-end areas for now, but it was a start. It was still under construction and Jonathan asked for some advice.

Althea saw that he at least smartly located them in parks, not too close to the built structures so it was far easier to maintain than otherwise.

”I suggest building a manhole where people can easily access the tank below,” she said. ”And also add fragrant flowers and some deodorizing flowers nearby.”

She thought of her studies and suggested some endemic plants with this capability. Jonathan took note of this very seriously, while also impressed at the same time.

It was amazing how a woman—who had only been here a few months—could know more about the local plants than the vast majority of the population.

Next, he showed them some other features of the town that could not be found in Alterra (which was all he could show for, anyway).

For example, he told them about the system buildings that they had. Obviously, the Elders of the village would be interested in the building choices when they became a town, which was inevitable anyway.

Like Villages, Towns also received 2 building slots every tier up. Ferrol, which is a Level 3 Town, had a Mercenary Hall, the Post Office, a Pharmacy, an Auction House, an Enchanter’s Guild, and a Spring of Life.

There were also Custom Buildings, though they functioned purely as commercial buildings—which, at the time, was the necessary building type because they had just started the Ferrol Fair.

They made use of the second one, because—like most villages—they missed using the first one before the option disappeared because they had more urgent needs to survive.

Anyway, Jonathan guided the couple through all these buildings and kindly gave a rough explanation of their functions. The Mercenary Hall—available at Town Level 2—was basically where they could hire mercenaries to, say, guard their territory or something else, like assist in wars or do escorting jobs.

The array here functioned similarly to the Village Center Teleportation array in the sense that the people would be teleported one way for a cost. It had a lot of limitations, however.

For one, there had to be a ’deal’ made first. That was to say, the mercenary team had to bid for a mission and be the one to win it first before they received the right to use the array—which was not cheap in the first place.

Another, Mercenary Hall Arrays were one-way. This meant that after a mission, they’d have to travel back manually. If it was too far, they’d have to find a territory with another Mercenary Hall so they could travel back to their home base or to a nearby one, depending on what missions were available.

One strategy was that the home base would post a mission back home around the time they estimated the team to be done with the job. However, not only did it cost money to post a mission each day, the rules were strict even in posting.

Each successful mission had the accompanying Mercenary Points and, without these rules, they could be abused by sending easy missions to each other. Even if the system didn’t allow anyone to send missions that could be taken by their own members, it was easy to form partnerships with other teams.

The way the System prevented this was—as always—by oath. By posting a mission, one already signed a ’bond of honest reckoning’ which stated that they could only post missions on a strictly as-needed basis. The array might also not work if the System judged that there was no need to.

Further, if a Mercenary Team found some loopholes and abused them, triggering the System, they might even get blacklisted from using the arrays at all. In Ferrol alone, there had been quite a few cases since the Hall was built.

Another difference between Center Arrays was that mercenaries could choose which ’client’ and mission to choose, so they weren’t blindsided to wherever they’d be going—unlike the people hired through the Centers.

The Hall’s disadvantage compared to the Center was that the distance and scope they could choose from depended on the mercenary team’s Class, unlike in Centers where people could be transferred anywhere in the human territory.

For instance, Garan’s Team was a Class D Mercenary Team, and they could travel up to 5000 kilometers away. In Terran, this was a long distance that even spanned many countries.

For instance, the distance between Pariz, Frang and Mosbull, Russio was approximately this distance.

However, in Terran, this was only from Alterra—whenever they’d actually get a Mercenary Hall—to the nearest City to them, which was Bleuelle.

Anyway, there were still a large number of rules about mercenaries that Jonathan did not discuss—for instance, how Mercenary Points worked—and Garan promised to tell her more about it in the future.

For now, there were still a lot of places to go to, so they moved on.

As they walked away from the Hall though, she couldn’t help but look back a bit.

She pursed her lips. She really wanted one…