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

A/N: Due to the ultra hectic sched the past two months, my Chapter stockpile has unfortunately caught up *sobs*. This means I need time to consolidate the next events.

Sorry for another 1 chap today! I’d rather publish a few hundred words less than usual than skip days T-T.

I just hope we can minimize plot holes or smthg. Thank you for your understanding, Alterrans~ *bows, hugs, kisses~*

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A human?

What was he doing here? And walking around so freely?

His level was already in the 20s, too. In a village, that level is already considered a proper powerhouse, even higher than many village Lords.

This village, as an orc village, was certainly proving to be the exception in many ways.

After all, the extremist village seemed to hate humans. Wasn’t the fox Lord’s long speech just that?

Anyway, she took this chance to enter through the door, which was kept open by her plants.

The entrance to the underground area was a relatively inconspicuous shed in the back garden. This meant that with a few tricks with her plants, it was not difficult to find things to block it with. The plants were also very soft and quiet. The person who went out had no idea the door did not close.

As she entered, she threw in another low-level colorless sleeping smoke pellet and once again activated her stealth skills, entering before the door closed.

This was in hopes of reducing the threats she could encounter as soon as she entered. After all, she had little idea about what was waiting for her inside.

Fortunately, there was only one orc immediately inside the door. It seemed like he was the only guard there. His level was 18, but fortunately, the sleeping smoke worked.

She took this chance to get a glimpse of what was inside, her brain immediately forming a path.

Basically, there was a little foyer after the shed door. This was followed by a staircase to the underground area. Going down, there was a short hallway that would lead to another door.

She was extra careful in her movements. After all, her sleeping smoke could only reach so far. Speaking of this, she made the orc eat another sleeping pellet, making sure he’d remain asleep for a while.

Interestingly, his current pose indicated he was already lazing around before the smoke spread, so if others found him, they might not immediately suspect there was an intruder.

The other door was a double door. Right outside of it were storage and cabinets for various tools and other things. There were also protective coats in different sizes, indicating that there should be more than one person using this place—whatever it may be.

She slowly opened the door, opening it up just to take a peek. Fortunately, there weren’t any modern locks that would cause her trouble.

What she saw inside wasn’t something she had expected.

A laboratory.

An actual laboratory.

...

It naturally wasn’t like the metallic and white laboratory found in modern Terran. It was more like the typical plain room with polished stone walls and floors. There were several counters, cabinets, several desks, shelves full of crystals (glass), and so on.

There were rows of tables, and in a few of them, there were humans.

As for whether they were alive or not, she’d need to take a closer look.

Althea did recognize one. She vaguely remembered that one of them was an elementalist too because she had seen the person before she posed as a slave.

At the time, he was getting dragged by orcs while asked to use his wind ability to clean up some mess on the way. Althea happened to witness it before they entered the village from the array because she was nearby.

Tamon also mentioned following the elementalist in this area. Now, it seemed like she went to the right place.

So what were they doing here, in this condition? No normal human would set up a clinic in an orc village and no one would send people here for treatment.

At this moment, Althea remembered what the other girls in the tunnel—some of whom were old residents—had mentioned back when she was chatting them up.

The orcs would always take the few elementalists they won, slave or not, and didn’t even care if they were made invalids.

This was not normal.

Elementalists had the ability to self-destruct, after all, especially those who did not become system slaves but were captured regardless.

Since they became disabled already, what were the chances they’d just blow themselves up and damage people and property?

And yet this place consistently decided to do so.

The orcs didn’t seem to have cared for the ’products’ either. Sometimes, they would even disable the person themselves.

If anyone took elementalists to add to the forces, logic would indicate that they’d be at least somewhat careful not to permanently damage the goods.

Sadly, she wasn’t given time to think anymore. The door suddenly opened, revealing the human who went out before had returned.

"WHAT—" he gasped, turning around to call for help. "HEL—glurg glurg—"

He couldn’t speak anymore because a waterball was suddenly drowning him.

This was an aggressive attack. Althea dared to attack because the human was already level 18 and past the village level cap.

She wondered whether to spare him and then interrogate, but it was too troublesome and dangerous to keep him breathing. She was alone in the middle of the enemy territory, and she wouldn’t risk her safety.

In the end, she decided to kill him and placed the corpse in her space.

She had a feeling the experiments here were evil. She had no guilt in killing someone before knowing the whole story.

Anyway, if she needed someone to interrogate and dig more information from, there were others they could target.

She could not be discovered now. Fortunately, there was only this one scientist in the room for now.

She already had a rough idea of where to hide. However, Althea had to plan for various contingencies.

She looked around and, after a while, patted the wall and the floor. Like the rest of the structure, this underground laboratory was made by manual construction. The construction style also allowed her to manipulate parts of it.

She couldn’t damage anything structurally, though, but it was because the underground building wasn’t made too shabily. If it was made badly, even her mid-level earth skills might give it significant damage from the inside.

It was why the manual construction in Alterra was extremely strict and costly, with the plans going through several layers of vetting. They really had to make sure that there would be no loopholes that enemies could take advantage of.

It had to be said that Alterra’s construction and development department had managed to combine the magic of modern construction and the magic of the local materials very well.

It hadn’t been an easy journey, even if they had local architects like Oslo on the team.

They had to study some of the principles from scratch as manual construction wasn’t very popular in Xeno, but the technology had indeed risen leaps and bounds over the past two years.

Even the older manual buildings had been retrofitted.

This way, even if the enemies eventually find the weak points of manual construction, they wouldn’t be able to take advantage—at least in Alterra.

Not to mention, towns and above do use manual construction and have funds for them. This meant that other people could be aware of the various weaknesses.

Anyway, the interior of the building was made fully of stone. Stone was not easy to control even for earth elementalists, unless they had mutated, like in Reno’s case, but they still had the ability for it.

The difference was that for Reno, he could control it like someone lifting a basketball. Other earth users who specialized in soil, on the other hand, would control the same mass with much more effort.

To some, it would feel heavier, to others, it felt like they couldn’t ’grip’ it well.

In a sense, each elementalist was unique.

Fortunately, after her experience in the desert area, she had also become more proficient in controlling the other forms. It’d have limits, but it would be useful enough.

At this time, she had no idea that most earth users would never be able to do something like this, regardless of how much they trained.

An indentation appeared where she wanted it to. She then placed various pellets there, each with a different function.

She realized that this mission alone had eaten a lot of her consumables—this was something she did not expect, considering they were in a village. However, if it were to find out what was going on, then it’d be worth it.

There were several rows and columns of people there. She could feel elementalist energy all over so she could tell most, if not all, of those were elementalists.

There were also two stone tables at the side, separated by a partition. The tables were the kind where even an orc could lie down completely.

Its surface was marred by blood, and the degree of drying and blackness indicated these tables had been used for bloody purposes for a while now.

There were now five elementalists in this room. Where’d they get them?

Then she realized there were holes in some of their chests, like someone had dug something out—

At a thought, her eyes sharpened. She had her suppositions before, but confirming it now still made her heart shake.

These people...have been experimenting!

They were taking people’s elemental cores!

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