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

Later that day, Alterra received a report of the war. The Elders gathered together to analyze it together, and it was Mathilda who led it as she read the very lengthy letter.

"They won…, but they lost 109 people…" she told them, voice heavy, and everyone else couldn't speak for a while either.

Considering Limestone Valley went against a few villages, this was actually a very small number—at least in the standard of aborigines, who'd have been happy with losses a few times of that.

However, the Terrans, who grew up in a time of peace and human rights, naturally held a different standard.

"Give their bereaved the promised support," she said. The bereaved would receive a lot of contribution points and whatever property was in the deceased's name, including whatever they had in the bank.

A while back, the Alterran bank expanded to the Limestone Valley. Like in Alterra, the money that wasn't automatically collected by the system was circulated through the bank.

Their Bank was, however, located next to the Warehouse where a few sentries were placed. The vault was also located underground, reinforced by several layers of concrete and reinforcing bars. This was also an improvement placed in Alterra, and they were pretty much as durable as the Bunkers.

Iron Mountain, on the other hand, did not have one. There were still predominantly aborigines in Iron Mountains so there was little use for banks.

As for the people who relocated there, they had received their loans in Alterra (with signed oaths of course) and they would have to pay it off according to the agreed terms by going personally to Alterra.

"What about the damage to property?"

"They could be repaired by he territory," she said. Althea did see that she could do so from the Lord Panel. She just needed to pay some money and the required resources and it'd be good as new.

System walls never failed to amaze her. Until now, she had only figured out one other array there, which was the non-scalable array. It basically served to use the normal force and push anything scaling back, prohibiting anything to remain in contact with it.

She had been ruminating for the uses and while she did have some theories, their effectivity remained to be seen.

She also didn't learn the array well enough to be able to create it on its own, so she couldn't place it on manual constructions or anything—at least not yet.

After letting them absorb the news so far, Mathilda continued to read the letter. Reading the next paragraph, her eyebrows rose. "Vanessa seems to be missing."

"Oh?"

The first thought that came to everyone's minds was, frankly, desertion.

Although her level was high, she wasn't invincible. She had been protected a lot and that, in turn, became her weakness.

"There's no news as of yet, but understandably the father and son are distraught."

"Do they have clues?"

"It was very chaotic at the time, and there're no CCTVs," "However, considering Vanessa's level at 19…"

"If she was kidnapped, it was likely a hidden aborigine level 20 or above," Ansel said. "No, considering how clean it was, then probably a lot higher than that."

As long as that person was in the territory when the war started, then he'd have no problem taking Vanessa, especially if the kidnapping was planned.

This was assuming she was kidnapped of course, though they wouldn't put it past her to have just run away and hid. At the same time, she'd probably stay out of sight for a couple of days in order not to appear like a deserter. No one really worried much and they'd know which one happened after a few days.

Moving on, Mathilda read the next issues that were raised.

"We will be receiving 82 Terrans slaves—who were all quite well trained, apparently—from Voumi Town," she said. "They are Terrans from Juno Village, Diana Village, and a few others.

"However, rather than keeping them, they were sold to Voumi Town who then trained them and 'lent' them to the territories,"

"According to the survivors, there are at least a thousand surviving ones still in Voumi."

"In any case, they had killed a few people there so they could not stay. Furthermore, Victor was not confident they could handle their force with minimal damage if a Voumi citizen appeared."

The room was quiet as everyone thought of the implications of this. Terran slaves were no problem, but if they were still owned by another territory then it was a different issue altogether.

"That's a bit risky, isn't it?" Ansel asked, very concerned. Who'd want trained elementalists behind them?

They turned to look at Althea, the Lord. In the end, something like this had to be her decision.

In the end, she heaved a deep breath. "We'll just assign them where they cannot be accessed easily. Perhaps grant them their own section to work and minimize interactions until we figure something out."

Residents had to be within a certain distance from slaves to be able to control them. The distance and the ranking would depend on the type of residency as well as the person's level, though the exact value was still too variable for them to calculate anything.

So, unless the Lord of Voumi Town himself came by, then the slaves would not be controlled so easily if they were placed well.

In the end, after a long group discussion, they decided to place them in the mines.

Although this didn't seem like a good job, it actually had good living conditions—as long as they weren't prisoners of war, anyway. Not to mention, their working hours were not different from everybody else.

There was also that Gurnam. He was very admirable, though it also brought up how people could pretend to be slaves. Fortunately, Alterra invested in getting everyone to do oaths, which was a happy side effect of them 'freeing' the slaves even when they were not freed by the system.

"That said… I do wonder what we will do about the thousands left in Voumi."

Silence

The 'slaves' naturally did not request anything from them—nor were they in the position to. However, it was still a thought that landed in most people's heads, and it felt like a heavy burden was passed on to them.

Would they just ignore them?

Could they?

This was the downside of having some ability and influence. If one had a conscience, it was not as easy to turn away from things like this.

Did they have a hero complex? Perhaps, but what they did know was that less than 1% of their original population survived the Migration.

Worse, after a year, that number would've been cut by a whole lot. It was natural for them to want to 'preserve' as many brethren as they could.

Still, the Elders looked at each other at this. They already had one confirmed hostile town, they'd rather not get another.

For Voumi Town, the less aggressive the deals were, the better. It was also apparently a Level 1 Town, so there'd be some problems with that.

They decided to first send a Post to Voumi Town, asking for the Terrans in his hands, and they were willing to make fair deals for both parties.

As for Basset, a war with them was inevitable.

With that, they moved on to the next topic, which was led by Garan, focusing on what they'd do in the two weeks they had left.

This time, their next moves would not be limited in Alterra.