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

And about a month after the Cold Wave ended, when hundreds of territories witnessed deaths, the plague finally reached Flaret Town.

Flaret Town was the new territory of the Rolan Mercenary Team who got really rich because they had great management, added with the fact that they had massive deals with Alterra, ahead of everyone else.

The new Lord, Rolan, the head of the Rolan Mercenary Team, had lost his entire family to this plague. When he was younger, his sister was afflicted, then this was followed by his mother, and then his father. His sweetheart also perished, but due to the weakness that came after.

In fact, though they were a decade apart in age, Bart was his sweetheart’s young brother, and that boy was orphaned by that plague earlier than he was.

It was how he became a mercenary at all. He had no choice but to fight beasts to live.

So when he heard several people going down with high fevers, he immediately sent people to check. When his people (wearing protective masks) confirmed that the symptoms were similar to the plague, they were quick to isolate the place, building low-level walls around it.

Of course, it wasn’t necessarily a fire plague (or at least they hoped it wasn’t), but they were separating them from the others as a precaution anyway. Besides, regardless of whether it was the Fire Plague or not, a plague was a plague.

Now, some hours later, the Lord looked at his assistants. ”Report.”

The first to speak was Tus, his assistant in handling this territory, and he was a few decades older than he was. Each branch of the mercenary team had a manager; Flaret Town had Tus.

Like him, Tus had also lost family. Specifically, his pregnant wife, to the disease. He had remarried about a decade ago, but he was no longer able to sire a child.

Rolan assigned him to lead the investigation because he had a close experience with it.

”Milord! We have isolated them,” he said, expression pale. ”My hope is that it is not the plague, but all signs so far are pointing to it.”

Rolan heaved a deep, deep breath. ”How are the people inside?” he asked.

”We have provided some basic food and water; our men are completely masked and covered as they distribute it.”

However, the small man seemed flinchy and uncomfortable, wanting to say something but unsure how to say it.

Rolan looked at him. ”What’s wrong?”

”Some nobles...they are asking you to burn them or throw them out, Milord.”

He sneered. ”Fools. They must’ve been busy hiding the previous time if they didn’t know that would make things worse.”

Many people called the disease and the particles carrying them with different names. In Rolan’s hometown, they called them ’demons’.

The demons spread to people, and it also spread to smoke, developing within its ashy warmth. It would not get diluted; the demons would multiply in there instead.

Not to mention, while most mercenaries who gained a certain degree of power had done some things they were not proud of, burning people alive was unthinkable even to him.

”Just follow my instructions. Anyone who causes any chaos in such a sensitive time like this will be punished harshly,” he said. ”For the main instigator, you can be particularly harsh.”

He did not mind setting examples. Any sort of chaos during this time could mean thousands of lives.

Tus looked at him, stable despite their fears. He nodded, calmer as well. ”Yes, Milord!”

Soon, Rolan was left alone in the office. He sighed and looked out.

If it was really as they feared, then hundreds of people had already been affected in his Town. He must isolate entire portions of the town.

This was not easy because the disease was airborne. They had to cover the walls with monster skin and other things, which was costly and difficult to make because there were afflicted who tried heading out.

If he had excess funds, he might’ve chosen higher-level fences, but for now, they could only serve as boundaries. They still had no manually set-up partitions that could block the air being exchanged.

He also had to make sure afflicted people who were still in the incubation stage were set aside as well, though in different places.

Feeding them would also be a problem. Fortunately, most townfolk would survive with a few bites a day or two, and he also developed the farms after becoming the Lord here, buying Alterra’s handbooks, technologies, fertilizers, and modified seeds.

In fact, he still owed the other town a lot of money and had a few years to pay for it, but now he could only pat himself on the back for his foresight.

This...was definitely going to last a while. He just hoped it wouldn’t last ten years like the previous one.

Because there was still no cure discovered even then, the only thing they could do now was to separate the afflicted and the possibly afflicted.

They would wait for the disease to either kill the person or let the person go through it themselves, even though the latter was virtually dead because of their imminent inability to control aether.

Even non-elementalists needed aether after all, otherwise none of their skills would work. Without aether enhancing the body, their physique would be inherently weaker, so fighting against beasts many levels below would’ve become extremely dangerous.

Many times, the survivors would even lose a limb or two. The poison from the demons ate the muscles, causing the person to be unable to do anything anymore, even if they survived.

Prevention of the spread was the priority. If there were leaks, then more and more people would have to be taken in.

He couldn’t help but remember what happened when he was young. How many people died of that...he could not count. It was also how he could be relatively callous and more objective about this.

When people you knew died one by one, and then their corpses would just be thrown in mass graves, the appearance of death tends to change.

Even if they didn’t, the lifelong suffering that happened afterwards could not disappear.

And that horror lasted years, spanning more than a decade. That was an entire generation.

Heart heavy, Rolan covered his face, and he stayed like that for a long time.

Would they really have to live through that again?