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

Terrans were relieved and touched that they could still see people with good hearts, unconditionally helping other people.

If Terrans were like this, imagine how the aborigines would see it. They definitely did not have an easy time absorbing such practice. Most people would not bother at all, after all.

Of course, there were tens of thousands of people in the associated territories, so there were naturally some bad apples who took advantage of this feature.

There were cases where some family members—some of whom were distant and hadn’t talked to the deceased for years—found out about Alterra’s beneficiary system and tried to take advantage.

For instance, some, after doing what they could to travel to Alterra, tried to take away the money and points of a dead person.

Some even harassed the official bereaved, especially when the person wasn’t blood related to the dead.

Lines like ”I am his cousin, you are just someone he met a month ago! Give me the money!” or ”Who cares if I haven’t seen him in ten years!? I am his MOTHER!!” and so on were commonly said amongst these people.

There were even heavy allegations like: It was the beneficiary who got their ’precious family member’ killed so they could get the money.

Alterra sent various warnings of harassment to these people, and some served a few days’ sentence in the manual prison, depending on the severity of the crime. If they even made up and spread lies to affect the person’s reputation, they would even have an additional libel case.

Other than these things, Alterra also included some news about other territories.

For example, the article also included news about Limestone Valley’s war two weeks prior. Newspapers were still a costly thing, so an edition was only published once every two or three weeks, so this was the first time they were publishing about the other war.

The highlights in this one were how Terrans were treated in the aborigine territories, highlighting the fact that they were considered as nothing more than tools that could breathe.

They emphasized this in order to discourage potential betrayers, particularly among Terrans who would side with aborigine territories.

The article also included some experiences of the slaves, with some accounts from Sarah and Gurnam, albeit their names were censored out just in case.

It also highlighted Alterra’s course of action, which included sending a letter of request to Voumi Town, asking to sell the slaves back for a fair price. However, as of this time, there was no response.

In any case, Alterra was doing its best for the deal to be as amicable as possible. They didn’t want to go through another Town-level war, and not one with a lot of their Terran slaves in the front line.

Unexpectedly, shortly after delivering the newspaper, they received a letter from Rowan when the bird returned!1

Apparently, Rowan’s hometown was actually Voumi Town!

In the letter, he indicated some basic information about himself. This was really the first time they knew so much about him.

Rowan did not have parents (his mother died giving birth to him) and he grew up with his grandmother, who was currently staying in a house he was renting.

Before being sent to the Chancery, he had paid for more than a year’s worth of rent, and it was about time for him to go back to Voumi to check on her and take her to Alterra. This was why he was about to ask for a month off, anyway.

The only reason he couldn’t get her earlier because he was not confident he’d be able to keep the target off his grandmother when he returned prematurely, but now he could, especially if he could get some assistance from Alterra.

He said that his career as a guard there was actually quite decent. He was still young, and his level was acceptable despite not having much of a background.

His potential was acknowledged by many fighters, though in the territory he was targeted a lot because of it. He was also ostracized due to the fact that he refused to play along with a lot of their bullying practices.

Although the average level in Towns was much higher than in villages, it was still a fact that the majority of people only started leveling up past level 10 when they were around twelve years old and above.

This was why, among the youth, while there was obviously a gap between kids from Villages and kids from Towns, it wouldn’t be as far as how it would be compared to when they get older.

Anyway, in terms of potential, Rowan counted as one of the best. However, things could not be smooth for him. As mentioned, he was ostracized despite his abilities. The last straw happened not long before he was summoned to Alterra.

He had gotten into a fight with the lord’s precious nephew.

He upstaged the man and defeated him in a public spar of his own doing, and Rowan was framed for something and was sent to the chancery to ’serve’ others and learn.

They ordered that he could only be assigned only to villages and he was to serve for a year, no doubt in an attempt to put a cap on his development, to allow the nephew to catch up with him.

It was estimated that when he returned and those people found out, they’d challenge him to a rematch.

When he saw the newspaper, he said it gave him the idea of checking on the slaves as well, and perhaps following up on the status of the potential deal.

The Elders were naturally tempted, but there were plenty of worries and considerations for this.

Interestingly, a separate letter from the Iron Mountains also arrived with Rowan’s letter. It was from Silvia, who volunteered to come with Rowan to start diplomacy talks as well. 1

She didn’t have to say it, but everyone knew Rowan’s diplomacy skills were… something to improve on.

Silvia also seemed to have thought about the issues they were worried about. For example, she said that they would be sure to study Voumi’s situation first before revealing themselves.

After all, if Voumi was just completely hostile, then they’d just be putting themselves into the Lion’s mouth the moment they made direct contact.

At this time, the staff in Iron Mountains was more or less complete. Silvia had trained two capable assistants in the administration aspect, the aborigine Gio and Shannon, a Terran woman taking up political science before the world was destroyed.

Shannon had been one of the tortured girls during Fargo’s reign in Limestone Valley, and because she wasn’t very strong and Alterra’s job market was saturated, she chose to join the immigrants to Iron Mountains instead.

There, they found out about her expertise and she was immediately hired to assist Silvia.

The two, one aborigine and one Terran, would complement each other with their differing backgrounds. Even with their occasional differing point of view, they had developed their cooperation through the past months—something Silva herself had honed and appreciated.

It had been a few months since then, and Silvia judged they were ready to take over Iron Mountains even when she was gone.

Both letters ended with something similar.

”Please,” they asked the Elders. ”Let me contribute this way, as well.”

Rowan was one of the first NPCs

Silvia was introduced as one of Mathilda’s right hand people next to Jun (the lawyer). She had been assigned to Iron Mountains back then along with Rowan, who she is dating