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

Another week passed by, and the final manual construction projects in Phase 1 were finally completed!

The last ones to be completed were the malls, the clubhouses, and the resorts.

The larger mall serving a larger portion of the population was called the Alterra Mall. On the other hand, the high-end one was called The Bellagio, inspired by Lady Althea’s weapon, which was fabulous in and of itself.

It even had an irregular U-shaped floor plan, and then a strip of beautiful garden inside its curves.

Some of the mercenary branches were still ongoing, but those were private developments, so they didn’t count. They also had different completion times, especially since they had unique designs and injected varying amounts of funds.

Anyway, the malls, clubhouses, and the like were opened at the same time for ceremony’s sake, with different elders handling the ribbon cutting.

A large crowd and dense traffic naturally formed around these areas, ensuring that the newly-opened phase 1 expansion was extremely lively, and each part had people in it.

Fortunately, it was all either public transportation (by broat or by bike) or people going on foot, otherwise the road congestion could be insane.

The main mall would serve the majority of the population, groups of friends and families congregated to see what was inside. Even those who had shops inside were seeing the entire thing for the first time. After all, they only had access to their shops and the hallways there. The rest of the buildings and shops were covered for the most part.

For example, there was Lani, Tacky’s sister, and one of the original Bookstore’s employees. She had just been promoted to manager, and she was assigned to lead this shop!1

She was the one who organized the inventory as well as the designs. Since she had worked in the original bookstore since it had begun, she knew what the customers wanted to see most, what they used, and other things.

Now, she was welcoming their branch’s first customer. The mall had just opened and their shop was at the edge, so they were expecting their first customers to arrive about ten to fifteen minutes after the opening.

However, they actually welcomed three as soon as the doors opened.

It was her brother and his friends, of course.

If she hadn’t begged them to remain low-key, it was estimated they’d have hairbands on their heads, saying something stupid like ’My Sister is the Manager here’ or ’#1 Employee Lani’s Brother’.

They were still quite smug, though.

”My sister! The manager! Hehe!” Tacky said, a large shit-eating grin on his face and hands on his hips, proud as if it were his own accomplishment.

”Congratulations, Lani!” Juan said with a friendly smile, handing her a bouquet that the three of them prepared together. There were plenty of flower shops around, having their own style of flower arrangements.

The flowers could come either from the public gardens (after paying the territory for them) or had deals with the flower farmers, i.e. those who rented out system farms to plant certain flowers.

Regardless of the source, Lani blushed immediately as she saw the gorgeous bouquet. Rather, she was blushing so hard because of who was handing it over.

Baka held back a smirk while Tacky remained completely oblivious. Dude was still basking under his sister’s reflected glory.

Slowly, Lani and Juan descended into their own world. ”Thank you...” she said, looking demure.

Juan nodded with a smile at his friend’s sister.

She was wearing the adorable pink uniform of the bookstore, though, and he wondered if that was the reason she looked particularly cute today.

Soon, more customers entered and her staff immediately went to work mode. Lani, after excusing herself from Juan, also did the same.

”Welcome customers! 30% off on everything as an opening bonus!”

Lani was professional, and the three said their goodbyes after another set of congratulations. ”We’ll pass by again before heading back.”

”Hmn, be sure to buy some things for my commission!” she said, and they laughed, nodding. If they weren’t planning on going around the mall first, they’d have already bought paper bags full of items right now.

The trio then went around the mall after leaving the shop. They heard that a branch of the arcade was on the topmost floor, taking up a large area! The original arcade definitely helped a lot in advertising this area.

Fun, here they come~!

...

Back at the bookstore, more and more customers entered the shops as people flooded into the mall. Most were just looking around and would buy when they found anything attractive, while there were also those who went to the mall—amidst the thick crowd of visitors—to see a particular store.

A group of girls who just entered was the latter.

”Here it is! I told you they’re opening a branch here!” A girl said with a wide smile on her face.

This was Samantha, Gian’s sister, and she was dragging a few friends along. There were also quite a few kids in there.

”Yes! This is such a relief. I moved into the nearby buildings recently. I had been wondering whether I had to travel all the way to the inner city to find a bookstore.”

The outer city was very big, several times larger than the inner circle. Traveling from the edge of the outer city all the way to the inner walls would take tens of minutes by broat car (longer if one was using public transport with other customers) and about an hour on a normal walk.

They were naturally relieved that there was one just a few blocks away from their new home!

They had some specific novels in mind to buy and they were perusing the bookshelves with excited looks on their faces.

One of the girls looked furtively at the others and blushed, leaning forward to whisper. ”Hey, hey, do you think they have some of Hansore’s works here?”

The question made several people blush. ”You!!!”

Hansore was an emerging writer in the industry. They started by writing erotica fanfiction, moving to original content after a bit of practice and building a readerbase.

”No, they’re probably selling somewhere less...er, family friendly.”

”That makes sense. I guess I’ll just order through the previous channels...”

”Shameless!”

”Eh, pretty sure you have a few under the bed.”

”!”

”I saw it. The latest one: Fifty Shades of Black.”

”!!!”

People from Fargo village back then