After Surviving the Apocalypse, I Built a City in Another World - Chapter 40

Chapter 40: Directions
[176:54:26]

Inside a damp cave, a beautiful woman stirred from her slumber, her tousled hair cascaded to the stone floor.

Althea woke up from a satisfying sleep, stretching her whole body to shake away the lethargy.

She habitually placed her hand on her stomach. “Good morning, babies.” She said with a gentle smile. She felt light bumps on her palm, as if the children were greeting her in response.

She laughed beautifully, her eyes were warm as she tenderly patted her stomach. Too bad no one could see the beautiful view.

She looked at the area around her and saw that everyone else had already gotten up.

Seeing that she was alone, Althea decided to chat with her children, like she always did before all hell broke lose. She talked about the plans she had for the day, as if they could contribute to her excursions. “My babies, yesterday was a bit haggard right?”

“You must have been shaken a lot, right? Thank you for not trying to get out of mommy’s tummy…”

She could hear the slight echo of her voice within the cave.

“Mommy is determined to build you a good home, so next mommy will definitely find a good place to set up camp, so you must wait until then, okay?”

Her adoptive mother told her that it was good for the development of children for a parent to chat with them as early as the gestation period.

More than making them more receptive of the language after being born, she was aiming for the supposed sense of comfort the act could give the babies.

The world they would be born in was a strange and dangerous place; she wanted them to feel some sort of familiarity beforehand.

Too bad they still couldn’t hear their father’s voice. He had a velvety deep voice the children would’ve loved.

Sigh.

Anyway, she continued to chat with her children for a couple more minutes, looking at her surroundings.

Now that it was daylight without monsters running after them, Althea couldn’t help but appreciate the stone walls that temporarily shielded them.

The cave was cleaner than what she’d expect, probably because there were no bats. There were only some stalactites, molding walls, and a small puddle of water somewhere.

Because of this, the cave was a little humid, but the temperature was not bad, so it wasn’t too uncomfortable.

Eventually, she stood up and walked near the mouth of the cave where everyone was at.

At this time, the sky had already risen and the light seeped through their makeshift vine curtain.

Sheila was preparing food and Fufi dutifully drooling after every movement, tail doing a twirling motion to show his excitement.

She shook her head in amusement and, after checking up on the two, leisurely walked out of the cave.

She was greeted by the beautiful and quaint view of the forest. When there were no monsters, the forest seemed to be very different.

There was a hushed tranquility in the combination of the earthy scent of the soil and sight of the shafts of golden sunlight filtering through the lush foliage.

Very relaxing.

It reminded her of why she often camped out back in Terran.

Of course, it wouldn’t be the same here. After all, here, there were monsters everywhere.

As she appreciated her surroundings, and wondered if she could maintain this peace, and what she had to do. No matter which direction of thought, she knew a territory was the best bet for this.

She reminded herself to prioritize this task. The plants weren’t going anywhere, but her Lord Token had an expiration date.

Before going anywhere, she took the time to study her status.

[STATS:

Name: Althea Witt

Age: 25

Level: 4 (730/10000)

Life: 350/700

Spirit: 320/700 (-5%)

Physical: 105 (-5%)

Agility: 107 (-20%)

Defense: 74

Mana: 500

Physical Potential: B

Mental potential: SS+

Skills:

Active: Elementary Appraisal (D), Perfect Aim (D), Quick Shot (D)

Passive: None

Elemental Affinity: Wood, Water, Earth

Titles: None

Overall rank: S

Current Status: Gestating: two life forms, weakened state ]

She looked at the time and had a rough idea about the daytime and nighttime cycles.

They had 14 hours of daylight and 14 hours at night. She took out her solar chargers to fill the battery and charged her phone and flashlights.

They got lucky last night and had a resting place when it got dark. It wouldn’t necessarily be the case next time.

In any case, a territory should be able to fix this. Obviously, it would be one of those safe zones. However, she did not want to be perfunctory in choosing a location. After all, she had no idea what the token could do and entail.

She must find a good spot as soon as possible.

To save time, she tied the solar panels on her backpack so she could charge while she explored.

After eating breakfast, she told Sheila of her plans to explore. “I’m going to check out the forest a bit. Stay here.”

“What?!” Sheila exclaimed, staring at her big stomach.

Studying plants not too far from them is fine, but exploring so far?

“No, this won’t do. I’m coming with you.”

Althea rolled her eyes. “You’ll only slow me down.”

“…” Then, seeing her decisiveness, Sheila had no choice but to sigh. “Fine, but please take Fufi with you. I’ll stay here, I won’t be in danger.”

Althea nodded and headed outside, with Fufi close by. After studying the terrain, Althea more or less had an idea of her route.

She climbed up the top of the cave to a higher altitude, and then chose the highest tree to climb. She looked up on the group of coniferous trees with snowflake-shaped leaves and held back the urge to study it.

Well, no, she decided to check it out.

[Snow Pine: Source of wood]

Although the description was boring, she had a feeling there should be more to this than obvious.

After taking several handfuls to her space, she resumed her previous activity, willing herself to focus.

With skill, she used the trunk of one tree to climb up the next one, until she got to the highest point, easily 20 meters above the ground.

Fufi was having fun chasing after her on the ground, jumping over the extensive roots and shrubs.

He also took care of mobs, which were mostly level one. Their quantity was small, so although it was a bit troublesome for him, he really could handle them by himself.

It was a group of rat-like critters, but much uglier. They were attracted by Fufi’s careless and noisy passthrough of shrubs.

There were about seven of them, about to attack at the same time.

Afraid Fufi might get injured, Althea decided to help him out a bit. From the tree, she took aim to kill the leader and half of the cronies, and let Fufi deal with the rest.

[Killed Hui Rat (Lv2): +50 experience, +50 copper]

[Killed Hui Rat (Lv1): +30 experience, +30 copper]

[Killed Hui Rat (Lv1): +30 experience, +30 copper]

After dealing with the monsters, she didn’t encounter them anymore after that.

After she expressly told Fufi to learn to move with ‘a bit more stealth damnit’, she resumed traveling from tree to tree.

She was called Little Monkey by her husband when they were children, developed by her love for fruits and leaves.

Fortunately, she had yet to encounter a monster that lived or moved among the trees.

For now, anyway.

Now, with the added physical bonus of leveling up, she could now jump from branch to branch effortlessly even with her big stomach.

Standing on the highest point she could access, she looked at the massive forests that surrounded them, and frowned at what she was seeing.

It was basically trees as far as the horizon and she was a little discouraged.

Should she really just build a territory here?

She really didn’t want to.

She needed to at least find a water source. If there was no lake or river as far as she could see, she should at least look for mountain springs.

After all, in Terran, at least half of the planet’s freshwater came from the mountains.

Taking out her telescope she carefully looked at the horizon. She could only get the small handy ones as the larger ones didn’t fit in her space. However, after perusing a bit she did see a mountain range.

She took out an ancient compass she had in her space. She felt fortunate she passed by that camping shop, it contained all the offline necessities of camping.

The technology had advanced quite a bit, most people didn’t use these anymore, so not every outdoors store sold these antiques.

She remembered the cardinal directions by heart and did some estimates in the distance. A hundred kilometers was a conservative estimate, which would take them about a day or two of trekking.

Now that she had a general direction in mind, she felt a bit more stable. She gestured to finally return to camp (before taking a couple more of the cute snowflake-shaped leaves, of course).

But when she was just about to climb down, her peripheral vision caught sight of something interesting:

Smoke.

She observed for a while and confirmed its mass was consistent.

This meant one thing: There were other survivors nearby.