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

When the guards offered the shovels, no one took it at first, which was not surprising. Most just thought of it as an insult instead, and tried to climb up, firing up their side, telling them that if they were so cold, then they should just grab the items the Alterrans had!!

But, really, how could it be so easy to climb a non-scalable 8-meter wall with Level 7 sentries, especially when they were experiencing major ’freezing’ ’shivering’ ’caught a cold’ debuffs?

They lasted for about two hours before someone finally succumbed. It was still a pair of earth elementalist. ”Don’t you dare make us prisoners of war!!”

They yelled, getting bad looks from their allies. However, they were shivering badly and didn’t even have the energy to teach them a lesson.

”Eh. That was the offer when the war was just starting!” Mao said, shamelessly. ”However, calm down bucko, we will reduce the atonement points. If you work hard enough for a few months, you can gain enough to have the right to buy your own freedom.”

While this was not as good as the initial offer, they could only succumb. Besides, many had heard of the conditions here. Even slaves lived humanely.

By the time the war officially ended, they had a few thousand Zabon slaves (many of whom were new slaves due to losing the war) left in Alterra’s side of the array.

The Alterrans took them in and ordered them to make their double-layered oaths before sending them to the dormitories of Prisoners of War.

However, they were treated much more leniently. Because they surrendered early and hadn’t done much (cough, any) damage, the atonement points they had to fill up weren’t too harsh. If they worked hard enough, even the non-elementalists and the weaker ’old’ slaves could easily free themselves in less than a year.

Further, the dormitories of the prisoners were also properly insulated and had a heating system. Combined with their decent levels, most of them shouldn’t die from this cold. If their levels were high, they could even be comfortable.

As for those who went back to Zabon, they didn’t really care for them. There was no damage on their side, and they definitely wouldn’t bother sending anyone out there to retrieve the remaining ’slaves’, at least not in this cold.

That said, after the weather gets better, they would send word there that they could buy their freedom...for 50 gold each. Hehe. If they didn’t have money, they could get that converted to atonement points and work it off instead. Otherwise, they’d have to live as slaves the rest of their lives. Even if they could just hide in their territory, who wanted to have this title?

Anyway, that was something for the future.

...

The cold descended all over the world, catching most people by surprise. Immediately, the temperature dipped to around -30 degrees, and up to -50 at night. In the high altitude mountains, the average was even lower.

Everyone quickly ran back to their homes to hide, covered themselves up as best as they could, and gathered wood and other burnable items to heat themselves up.

Most of them had lived through one or two such disasters before and, while terrified, not entirely clueless. However, even if they knew what to do and what it entailed, if they were too poor and unprepared, what could they do about it?

For the weak and the poor, not much, and many of them could only suffer silently and hope it ended soon, with them still holding on to their lives.

Several days passed like this.

Over the past few days, there had been hundreds victimized by the freezing snake in a region alone, some of them were victims of the same one, especially when they were in groups. Many of them perished outside, unable to be helped.

The unlucky ones were mostly those outside their territories when the cold descended, and some lost their whole group to the cold snap.

Some low-level villagers who hid in tunnels and some who sealed their homes perished from lack of oxygen, while some noticed the danger too late and opened the door while gasping for air, unable to adjust to the freezing temperature that quickly froze their lungs.

Other than the ’freezing snake’, another major terror was the hailstorms, which rained down ice balls as large as a baseball, sometimes even bigger.

They could pour down for hours at a time, and low-level dwellings could find themselves damaged and had to be repaired by the Lords, consuming resources.

For Althea’s case, they managed to stockpile resources like wood and stone well. Besides, the system buildings were quite sturdy, so it was only after several days (the hail came once a day at varying times) that the first damage was found, mostly on the fenestrations.

Even if she were delayed, the citizens could just move to other rooms. Each household generally had someone above level 15 by now, so there was minimal danger even if there was a little breach here and there.

As for the repair cost, Althea didn’t want to charge, but the others encouraged her to just charge it post-disaster. They did not want the citizens to feel lax or entitled. Anyway, she’d just charge them some coppers or a few silver per repair, which was the cost price including the resources.

For many Villages, especially those unaware of the incoming disaster, this was a nightmare. Some of them only bought the cheapest variety of residential homes from the system, and these were relatively vulnerable to the hail, especially after hours of onslaught.

Life was even more difficult if they did not have enough wood and stone as stocks. For those caught outside, this was even more deadly.

Basically, anyone below level 10, if they were caught by the hail outside and were unable to get cover in time, could consider themselves dead. After all, even if it didn’t kill them, they’d probably lose consciousness. Losing consciousness in the extreme cold was a death sentence in and of itself.

In contrast, even with the intense cold crippling nearly every industry, most Alterran citizens (and Guests) were now enjoying their heated floors and insulated roofs, as well as their warm food and beverages.

The contrast...could not be starker.