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

As for the local elementalists—that was to say, Basset’s homegrown and recruited elementalists—they were handled much more harshly.

It couldn’t be helped: They were really just so annoying.

Elementalist slaves had the fixed task of helping the Basset citizens get inside the territory. Non-slave elementalists, on the other hand, believed that the job was below them, so their main tasks were the same as the other powerhouses: to wreak havoc inside and, if possible, hunt the enemy leaders and/or their families.

Mao, who was part of the Breach Team, and Luis, who was assigned near this area, managed to block a team of 20 with two elementalists among them.

Anyway, they were really arrogant. They said things like ’what could baby elementalists do to them’! Or ’What’s the use of being an elementalist when you just awakened?’

BANG!

Two large boulders of earth as big as a person smacked straight at each other. It forced several people fighting nearby back, leaving a vacuum for the two earth elementalists to fight.

At this time, they were at the park with a lot of soil. Naturally, their fight caused a bit of damage there, including some playground equipment displaced, dug soil, and some uprooted trees.

This irked the Alterrans very much, but what could they do? They could only swear that whoever survived on the enemy team would repair all the damage they had done!

The two earth users had similar stances (and body type). The two of them stood sideways, legs far apart, and their bodies parallel to the direction of the boulders. Their hands were raised in fists, controlling the boulders like magnets.

The earth elementalist Mao was fighting against was an enemy who was several levels above him. Another difference was that this person had been an elementalist for decades, which was the source of his arrogance.

The man was also a few decades older than Mao, so there was that.

However, Mao wasn’t the type to back down. He had an advantage: he was a modern man! And he also learned quite a bit from Miss Althea while he was helping her with some earth skills.

(It was really ironic in retrospect. The Lady went to him for some advice, and he ended up learning more in the process.)

Anyway, using a bit of his brain, he looked at the structure of the earth with his mind’s eye. He didn’t have to go on a molecular level—he did not have that capability nor the brain power required to do that—but just having the basic understanding of its structure was enough.

He looked at where the rocks were, where the top soil was, and so on. As an earth user, his powers was more calibrated towards the compressed materials, especially rocks.

The difference between his ability and the mutated ones like Reno’s was that the latter could transform the softer soil into harder rocks by default, making it much more powerful when used in fights.

Anyway, to be able to overcome the control of another earth user, he had to be able to understand it better. Typical earth users would take hold of an entire boulder without zooming in on exactly what they could control well, Mao had learned that it was inefficient and took a disproportionate amount of mana.

Using his mind’s eye, he zoned in on the most compressed patches of earth, grasping at it, but at the same time making sure he wasn’t going to dismantle the entire boulder by adding pressure on certain spots.

He got a bit distracted when he felt himself being pushed back a bit. His switch in focus caused his control of the boulder to loosen temporarily, and soon the large piece of rock was only a few inches away from him.

Fortunately, he regained control in time and suddenly he could feel the other man’s boulder, too.

With a snap, he stole control of the other man’s earth and—with a burst of mana—he pushed both boulders back, causing the enemy earth user to get thrown smack on the wall, sandwiched by the combined boulders!

Mao heard a soft crack and he could tell that he finally destroyed the enemy’s defense equipment.

To be honest, he was surprised by the amount of force he was able to put there.

Like how water users preferred to have liquid water near them for efficiency, earth users ’stealing’ other earth user’s soil was also effective. The catch was that their control and understanding of the earth must be superior to the other.

”HEH. This BABY elementalist just smacked you!” he said, jumping over to finish the job.

However, how easy could it be?

”GRRR—”

The other person screamed, with the boulders thrown in separate directions.

It would’ve been better and energy-efficient to throw the boulders at the side instead of forward, but the enemy was so annoyed that he consumed a good amount of mana to randomly push the boulders outwards, not caring for who he hit.

One boulder did fly to Alterrans, but they avoided it in time. The other flew to his own allies, who had their backs facing him and were unable to react in time.

That didn’t matter to the earth user, who just glared at Mao. ”HOW DARE YOU!”

He stomped his feet to the ground and made a few more boulders float. ”HOW DARE YOU HURT ME, A GREAT ELEMENTALIST!?”

And he used what should be a skill to make several earth rocks float around him, all flying towards Mao with a vengeance.

Mao cursed and avoided his hits, making sure his own teammates weren’t hit at the same time. This meant he needed to dig a lot of soil too, some used to attack while others used to defend.

If they dragged on their fight, the soil in the park might get messy to the point it’d reach the slab of the bunkers underneath.

These bunkers underneath the parks were the ones they made during the heat wave preparation. Now, during wars, it was used as an evacuation center for people who absolutely could not fight even in groups. For example, the children and the old people.

The main bunker had very, very, strict entry and only those who swore deep oaths and were residents could stay there. However, the rest of the ’liabilities’ weren’t left behind because Alterra had a lot of bunkers and tunnels done during the heat wave.

Still, while the minor bunkers were mostly made of sturdy reinforced concrete construction, they could definitely still be damaged if he prolonged this fight.

However, Mao could not focus entirely because the jerk started attacking Alterrans. The rest of them were fighting off the other enemies, grouped together to handle the trespassers stronger than they were.

A lot of them had their backs on them because of it and this bastard decided to send them sharp rocks!

Mao had no choice but to create an earth wall to cover some people’s backs, feeling extremely irked. The old man took advantage of his distraction and sent a few more rocks straight at his face, causing him to fall back.

The old man grinned. ”Weak,” he said, making Mao want to bury him alive.

”I will so gonna make this earth eat you up, you bastard!”