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

Holt City

Lessons began as soon as Milo, along with other ’slaves’, received the King’s command. The lessons would be continuous, and they would not stop for a while—even after they were on their assignments.

The head servants were determined that they be ground to the desired shape in order not to cause shame to the royal family.

The lessons, as mentioned, were related to manners, literacy, and also some combat skills.

Literacy was something easy for him, a boy with some education. The challenge was remembering and memorizing, but his willingness to learn and his capacity to learn were impressive to the locals.

For one, unlike most kids his age, he could sit properly, listen well, and wait until the lessons ended.

Even if he was a slave and was given a command (though there were no members of the royal family at this time to do so), normal young slaves would only physically behave, but their attention was limited in the end.

One simply could not command a brain to remember and learn something the person themselves could not.

Anyway, Milo had always been a good student, and he really did not dislike the opportunity to learn the local language.

Manners and etiquette were quite a challenge, though.

This place had some sort of simplified royalty. He didn’t even know there was such a thing.

He had to address the people correctly, especially the high royalty.

Fortunately, this only applied to the direct leading family. The other noble families, he only had to call sir or madam. He didn’t even have to follow their commands unless a royal told him to.

Servants, in general, were also forbidden to be too expressive, to make noise, to laugh out loud, and so on.

It was generally impolite to do so among nobles in a formal setting, and it was absolutely forbidden for a servant to do so.

Servants, even if they weren’t system slaves, weren’t supposed to have an identity.

Their function was to just be there when needed, doing their tasks without bothering their masters, and be available as soon as they asked for.

Still, Milo had been a slave who wanted to be as invisible as possible, so this wasn’t a bad thing for him.

It was the combat skills that were the most challenging to him. Although they were somewhat trained in Voumi Town to maximize their use, it was still a fact that Milo was still cowardly, and his improvement in this aspect was minimal.

Having such a reliable sister and (future) brother-in-law also didn’t help with his independence.

Now... he had no choice.

His lesson was with other young servants, and their training area was located on the outskirts of the inner barracks.

There were two barracks in Holt City. One was inside the palace complex, and the other one outside of it, near the outer walls. That place was for those assigned to guard the walls.

This contained the massive training grounds and accommodation for the vanguards during wars and beast mobs, and was much larger than the one in the palace.

On the other hand, the inner barracks were much more compressed, but everything was higher quality. This was used by the royal guards, directly in charge of protecting the main family. This was where they were.

Milo’s lesson was with about a dozen more children around his age, and this included Allain’s other pages, Ogur and Oran. There were also young pages and knights-to-be of other royals, as well.

The only exemption at this time was those under the so-called genius prince, Aurellian, because they were apparently elsewhere at this time.

”You are your master’s shield. You have to be able to guard them with your lives,” the teacher said.

Although they could not be compelled by oath to sacrifice, they were still taught that the masters’ lives were more important and they should sacrifice their lives if needed.

He wasn’t too aghast, nor did he dare show complaint. He was well studied, and he liked history, and knew that a lot of similar things happened in Terran, too.

Anyway, for this training, they were given just the basic weapons like daggers. Their shield would be their bodies.

”This is your weapon,” he said. ”And you shall have two spares in your space.

Milo looked at the dagger. He was already given an iron weapon.

He remembered back in Voumi, this was a proper Class D to weapon that cost a bit of money. The craftsmanship of those did not compare to this one. Milo didn’t know much about material, but this seemed almost like steel more than the typical iron.

To be fair, iron wasn’t actually such an extremely rare metal. If one knew where to look and knew how to properly harvest and process them, there’d definitely be a lot more circulating in the market.

In some areas, it was actually quite accessible. For instance, in the Western portion of the human territory where Holt was.

The special metals here were combinations of several metals and were especially handled by experts. The simpler creations which was prized in lower territories were something they could easily give away to servants.

”You will be sparring with them,” the teacher said, pointing in a direction, in the direction of Ogur and Oran.

Milo gulped. Although they were his age, they had been trained in this place for much longer. They were intimidating to him.

However, he quickly gathered himself. Back in Voumi, when slaves were asked to spar, they were even using real weapons sometimes. The difference was that his sister and brother Gurnam were there, so he survived.

When he was forced to spar, one of them would often distract the masters, or perhaps find a way to help him out, but now there was no such assistance.

He needed to learn this—to fight properly—if he wanted to get out of this place someday.

As he was now, how could he have the right, and the power, to find them again!?