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

A/N: Sorry for the inconsistent time of uploads the past few days! I’ll recover my bearings soon (I hope)! After this, my update times should return to 5am and 10am (if 2ch/day) or 10am (if just one) GMT+8.

Life just hits badly lately *sobs*. Just know that your consistent support, votes, gifts, and comments/reviews are the ones that keep me anchored.

Otherwise, my busy schedule would’ve demanded me to lower my update rates or even skip days T_T. THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT, ALTERRANS! *HUGS*

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They really were experimenting on Orcs!

Damn. How shameless! Isn’t he afraid he’d be pulled apart into different pieces once the orcs found out about this? The audacity was amazing.

Althea’s mind automatically filled in the logical gaps. These were assumptions, but some of it was probably true.

As long as a culture awakened some degree of knowledge, ambition also followed. In most cases, this ambition had to do with the quest for power.

Even in a town apparently dominated by ’simple’ orcs, this remained the truth. It was just that most of these citizens probably couldn’t have guessed that the evil forces had targeted them, and they were their own brethren.

Althea, holding the sound amplifier in her hand, looked at the crowd. "Why don’t you guys take Plai and ask him: What happened to the missing orcs? You guys are so strong, how could so many be missing every year?"

At this, many of those in the mob paused their movements and looked around, possibly for Plai. Not many unilaterally believed Althea’s words, but they did want to hear how Plai would answer.

"Didn’t you notice that when those orcs started disappearing, Plai’s presence grew stronger? Did the Lord start getting sick around that time? You tell me."

She was guessing again, but when she saw the look of realization on some faces, she confirmed that her guesses were correct.

Plai wanted to continue cursing but pursed his lips, afraid of gathering all attention on him all of a sudden when he was still thinking of how to retort properly.

The only reason he hadn’t been questioned by the people surrounding him was because of his innate low sense of presence.

He even activated a skill to make sure he really wouldn’t be found. He went to find a hiding spot, about to ask for help from those in the laboratories.

He took out his aether letter, sending messages back to the main forces of his faction.

[Help! Come up and send every guard to the plaza! There’re troublemakers!]

[I told you Virion from Warrior City is here, and he found out a few things! Help me kill him before he sends out more posts. Someone guard the Post Office, by the way.]

[There are also two other elementalist troublemakers. I don’t recognize them, but they’re strong—one dual elementalist and one triple elementalist!! The cores might be troublesome to tame, but these are great subjects, right? Come get them.]

He sent a few more, all pertinent instructions with enough lure to make them move fast.

He was unaware that nothing was actually getting sent.

How could he know that Althea used an aether letter blocker? How could he know there was even such a thing?

The Aether Letter Blocker was one of the several innovations that Alterra developed, but never publicized. This was one of the cards that was best hidden, and it would remain as such until a better invention appeared.

In any case, if Plai was hoping for reinforcements—who could actually deal with Virion and Garan—to arrive today, he was destined to be disappointed.

...

Plai waited, heart pounding wildly, and was thankful that his skill could also ’mute’ the loud sound of his heartbeat. His frown deepened as he saw the mobs around him calm down a bit, many of them no longer attacking.

Orcs were simple-minded and were prone to enter a mob mentality. When they saw that many were no longer attacking, they also stopped, looking around as if waiting for instructions.

The weasel half-orc seriously wanted to jump in and scream his instructions, but he didn’t dare before reinforcements arrived!

"Where are they?" He couldn’t help but mutter to himself. Fifteen minutes had passed since his letter, and at least a few of them should’ve emerged from below!

"Where are they—gAH!!" Plai screamed as he felt vines wrap around his body. The weasel’s eyes were round as he struggled, but to no avail.

He activated his earth element and tried to ’eat’ his legs to keep him anchored, but it just made things worse for him.

"How...how did you notice me?!" Plai exclaimed. Even those humans ten levels higher than him couldn’t see him if he activated his innate skill, what of this woman?!

Althea didn’t answer him, not bothering to explain how her bloodline allowed her to be more sensitive to aether signatures and any disruption of it.

She simply had to look for places where it was activated. It was a battlefield, so it took a while, but she managed to find him because the aether required by the passive skill was not too intense, but perpetual.

Most of the others had explosions of skills and aether, which differentiated Plai’s skill from the others.

"NO!" he screamed, looking at the crowd. "You’re just standing there? GET SOME HELP!!"

"IT HURTS! LET ME GO!!"

The citizens there looked troubled, unsure of what to do next. In the end, to avoid conflict, Althea didn’t treat Plai too harshly. At least on the surface.

She simply tied him up, not too tightly, but tight enough that he was unable to move.

In fact, it actually looked loose, so people around thought he was overreacting.

How could they know the vines had hidden thorns inside? Althea certainly wouldn’t tell.

Anyway, Garan had already isolated the place, creating ice walls around, blocking streets, and so on. It wasn’t that the orcs couldn’t jump over it, but when they tried, Virion would appear, threatening them with his lasers.

By this time, everyone was injured to some degree. Even if Virion didn’t use extremely destructive attacks, with most of them neutralized, a minor attack skill would be enough to hurt them like hell.

Plai sat on the ground, surrounded by the citizens and Althea. "Where is the laboratory?"

"What laboratory? It doesn’t exist!" Plai said. He figured he had to deny it until the end.

She looked at the half-orc elementalists, also tied up and half-dead. "Where did they put elementalist cores on you?"

Half didn’t have the strength to answer, while those who did slurred their words. "We don’t know!"

"We are unconscious the whole time..."

They were originally members of the guard team, but they were assigned to a mystery group at some point, the kind that required a dozen oaths to enter.

This group was the experimental group, which eventually killed a few half-orcs like them. There were also some orcs from the initial stage of the experiment, though they failed. They had gained some sort of disability, though, and ended up being a labor force within the laboratory.

The half-orcs’ answers were relatively consistent, so she had no choice but to depend on Plai, who looked very stubborn. The weasel half-orc glared at her, giving her a look of anger and defiance, as if telling her that she would die before she figured things out.

It was obvious that there were more powerhouses hidden deeper in the territory. Otherwise, Plai wouldn’t be so desperate to write aether letters as he asked for reinforcement.

At the same time, they caused so much havoc, and yet those people had not yet emerged. This meant that they were hidden really deeply, and it was impractical to look for them manually.

Althea and Garan certainly weren’t willing to spend too much time combing the territory. However, it wasn’t like they could just abandon Virion here, right?

They had inevitably become enemies with the hidden group already; they couldn’t let them develop freely anymore, so they could only take shortcuts.

They could only ask Plai, but he didn’t seem like he’d be talking. Maybe he even had an oath of something.

And there were very few ways to circumvent some oaths, but since Plai was in a high position in this town, it was possible that he didn’t take many (or any) oaths at all.

Even if he did, there might be other ways that took advantage of loopholes or ambiguous questions. For example, using the truth serum.

Althea always had the truth serum in her space. She had been improving on it for a while now, but until now, its efficacy was the same. It was great for interrogating village-level enemies, but a half-orc in town level might be immune to its effects.

After all, their bodies could absorb a lot more things. Not to mention, their brain composition was different from humans. Hence, unless she explored thousands of combinations and tested each one, she might not be able to make an effective dose.

She needed to experiment, but it was the kind of experiment with very gray morals, if not black.

Her emerald eyes passed over Plai.

Didn’t she have a ’deserving’ subject right here?

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