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

Some time ago, people from the same place as Yuki came knocking at their door. Unlike his initial impression of these people, regardless of whether or not they were elementalists, they were strong.

They did not tell them much, probably because they were slaves, but he asked them, especially, to try and get closer to the Lord.

They didn’t reveal any more, not who they were, not where they were from.

However, they did know that they were among the new civilization, the Terrans, and this was easily confirmed by Yuki asking a few questions.

By any account, this was suspicious, and no one with a sane mind would willingly spy for strangers they had never met before, let alone spy on their volatile lord!

At the same time, if they were new, this meant they had been in this world for over a year! What were they doing, trying to stir things up in a town?

However, they gave them health potions, mana potions, and even a protection charm each! They even gave some funds, so in case of emergencies, they could run away with the money.

”What if I ran away with the money?”

”Then it is our fault for making the wrong choice.”

They also told them that they wouldn’t ask him to do anything more dangerous, only to plant some ideas and lead some of Mafo’s thought processes in certain directions.

He was a host with the gift of gab. He was also a slave who had somehow won himself a pseudo-free life.

He even earned a salary, despite him being a slave. It might look casual now, but that wasn’t straightforward, especially if the Lord was a greedy bastard like Mafo. Normally speaking, Mafo would not pay for anything he could get away with for free.

Yet this man, Eian, had managed to do all that while keeping much of his dignity. He definitely had a gift, and maybe even had a few psychological skills like Mathilda had.

Anyway, this task shouldn’t be too difficult for him.

”What do you have to lose?” the man asked. Since they told him they won’t ask for his life, what else could he lose just by talking?

”On the other hand, if we succeed, we can end this tyranny,” they paused. ”And...you can gain your freedom—both of you—for real, this time.”

”...”

The two of them gulped. It was indeed tempting. Although they lived decently compared to other slaves, they still had the looming threat of any citizen being able to order them around, to do whatever.

It was why Yuki couldn’t get out of the house at all. They were both afraid of what could happen to her the moment she left the house. At least system houses had anti-trespassing functions except when they were in a war.

Investing so much in them, compared to believing in the current regime, didn’t seem like a horrible idea.

When they left, Yuki also told him... even if they would be used, she wanted to hope.

She wanted to hope that things would be better in the end, that their sacrifice would not be in vain.

It was better compared to now, where they were totally under the Lord’s and his cronies’ thumbs, and they didn’t know when they’d die or be tortured.

Things were worse now that the Lord was even more irritable, especially after taking bags after bags of the drug for the past several weeks!

Eventually, Eian...really gained a place next to the Lord.

How he managed to get into the Lord’s inner circle was pretty impressive, as well.

Those people—they didn’t know how they did it—but they made both the Lord and several masters, like Lord Hesso—collapse. They then introduced him to a mysterious doctor who could heal them, and asked him to take credit.

And he did!

Because he was a slave, he could swear that he didn’t know the doctor beforehand, nor did he know that the Lord would collapse, clearing his name.

His entry to the inner circle was in a way that would not endanger him, and help him retain his normal life. If it were others...they probably wouldn’t care.

The doctor’s words were that they were overdosing on the drug and they must cut back, but he said so in a way that would not undermine the men’s ’strength’ because the drugs had become synonymous with it due to its lessened effects for higher-leveled people.

He simply mentioned some toxic buildup, but their strong bodies would be able to digest it if given a few days in between, and it worked.

This temporarily lowered their consumption of the White Happiness. According to the terrans, getting the lord and his cronies muddled was good enough. If they got too addicted, this would make them difficult to predict.

Sadly, the new pink dream variety appeared after that. For some reason, the Lord and they were convinced that there was no side effect like white happiness. As such, they somehow ended up consuming more of this.

But that didn’t matter, the point of all that was to get him in.

His reward was a few gold as well as friendship of sorts with the Lord. He did not jump to making big decisions, but he definitely used his gift of gab to flatter everyone to lower their guard.

Because people loved hearing about themselves, a part of them would increase their reliability simply because people wanted to believe he was always saying the ’truth’.

Anyway, recently, they got word that the ’terran territory’ was making more and more moves lately, and that they should be ready.

Seeing the increasing chaos in the streets of their town, Eian was glad it was happening sooner rather than later.

And now that he was part of the inner circle, he would be swept into the whirlwind of whatever could come next. And, if he wanted to remove the risk to him and his lover, he had to do well.

”I’ll be fine, my love,” he said. ”I will do this well.”