After Surviving the Apocalypse, I Built a City in Another World - Chapter 43

Chapter 43: Hostile
Aberdeen City, 3 years prior

The sound of clashing blades echoed around the home dojo, and the scene of a couple fencing unfolded.

Their footwork was precise, and movements calculated. From a spectator’s point of view, it was almost like they were dancing.

The woman thrusted her weapon, and the man used his blade to deflect it. With a swift unpredictable movement, he changed the blade’s direction, pointing at the woman’s neck.

“Tsk,” she mumbled, stance softened as she drew down her weapon.

“Good parry.” He said, his cerulean eyes looking deeply at the frowning woman in front of him. “Is there something bothering you?”

“Hmm…” she mumbled, lips pursed. However, instead of answering immediately, she lifted up her foil.

Garan’s lips twitched with a smile and stepped back, similarly raising his blade.

The story was definitely irksome, seeing that his fiancée wanted to stab someone just thinking about it.

“There was this woman at work…” she mumbled. Althea had just started working, to gather experience before delving to business herself and work on her pet projects. “I refused to let her get credit for my work.”

“She wanted me to give way and let her use my work because she was older.”

She lunged forward, with quick and aggressive thrusts, while Garan had quick reactions, skillfully deflecting her strikes.

He did a circular parry, followed by evasion techniques.

“I refused and she made a scene. Something about young people being so disrespectful.” She said, increasing her pace, which Garan deflected in turn.

The clashing of their blades harmonizing with their dialogue, the two continued on with the current dynamic for several minutes. A flurry of attacking and defensive moves followed, and it ended up with a point on her stomach.

She pouted and huffed in the end. Although it may look dissatisfied, Garan knew that this indicated that she was now in a more relaxed state after ‘ranting’.

“Just stick to what is fair and reasonable, and that is enough.” Garan said, approaching her.

He then took out a clean handkerchief and wiped the sweat dripping down her forehead.

“Fencing is about precision and control. Much like the dilemmas we face, don’t we?”

____

Present.

Althea cleanly killed the remaining rats, making it look so effortless that those who were watching started questioning whether the monsters were actually so weak.

After all, a pregnant woman killed them so easily. Have they been running for their lives in vain?

Althea could naturally see these questioning looks and answered their unspoken inquiries.

“If you are brave enough, you can indeed deal with these weaklings. But…” She paused, “If you cannot even gather the courage, then you better end your life and save yourself some suffering.”

It was harsh and naturally a lot of people frowned, very much against her tone.

Fortunately, there were some who were ashamed and inspired to change instead.

Except, these people were the minority.

Whatever they thought didn’t matter to Althea, and no one would dare speak against her at this time.

So when she asked them to clean up the corpses and start harvesting their own bamboo, no one dared to complain.

It was Harold who first went to her with two bamboos. She took out a machete from her space and cleanly shaped the bamboo into a spear.

Seeing Harold unharmed from asking a favor from this pregnant god of death, the people started to hand over their bamboo to her for processing.

As for why Althea didn’t let them just do it on their own, it was because she would rather not hand over her machete. Who knew if they’d return it easily?

Not to mention, she was not planning on raising this ungrateful group of people. The fact that she was helping them defend themselves was human enough.

She reckoned that if her husband wasn’t a righteous soldier, maybe she’d have ignored them altogether.

As she created weapons for them, most of the people talked to her ingratiatingly, trying to make a good impression.

Or, more accurately, trying to latch on to her.

She turned a blind eye to this and instead took advantage to find out about their situation. After a while of inquiry, she found the conversations to be quite fruitful.

For instance, the people here came from several cities, some hundreds of kilometers away–someone was even from Z City.

Althea wondered how people were distributed and grouped together.

However, this was a good thing. The chances of her meeting her brother would increase.

As for her husband, wherever he was, she had a strange intuition that they too would meet eventually.

“Here.” She handed the bamboo weapon to the person, who was gently bumped aside by the next in line.

The next person was a young man—Ronald, or Ron, for short he said—who stared at her obsessively.

While a bit annoying, he didn’t have any malicious intent so she ignored this all-too-familiar type of stare.

He sat down next to her and watched her work, chattering about his potential. He proudly told her his C potential, because almost everyone else only had D-level potential.

From their group of people, he knew only three people had C potential, and one of them had already died.

Obviously, he wanted her to see his value.

Althea raised her beautiful eyebrows and gave Sheila a sideways glance.

Hey, who’d have thought Sheila’s Class-B was actually way above average?

…

Then, after a few more weapons, finally came the woman who led the accusations.

Sheila, who was watching closely and prepared to help Althea when asked, scoffed at the newcomer’s face. “You’re quite thick-skinned.”

Althea’s lips twitched, but she took the bamboo anyway. Anyway, as long as she didn’t attempt to kill her, she wouldn’t take the initiative to ‘take care’ of the other party.

The woman blushed in shame but just glared at her and to Althea as if they owed her a million.

Althea stopped what she was doing, the sound of bamboo dropping startled everyone nearby. “I changed my mind. I’m too lazy to deal with this.”

She stood up and started walking away.

“You! How could you do this?!” The woman screeched so loudly that it made the hairs on her body rise.

Althea rubbed her temples.”I don’t seem to have offended you? Who are you anyway?”

“Who?” The woman seemed incredibly offended that she didn’t recognize her. “You—”

Althea sighed and just walked towards her party. The woman couldn’t take it and she tried to grab her arm. Althea moved to the side and let her fall on the ground.

The woman raised her dust-covered head—her teeth gap dripping with soil—looking incredibly unsightly, both in appearance and expression.

She glared at her filled with malice, raising her arm to point. “She! She has a lot of supplies!”

As if afraid people won’t believe her. “It’s true! I saw her going from house to house massacring the zombies!”

It was at this moment that Althea finally realized who she was, making her eyebrows rise in surprise.

It was one of the women next door, the one that kept screaming and gathering zombies to her house. She actually survived.

She looked so disgruntled and different from her peacock persona that Althea really didn’t recognize her.

“You!! I saw you jumping around from house to house! If you had come to mine I—” I wouldn’t have had to push my mother!

It wasn’t that she didn’t notice Althea’s technique of covering herself with zombie innards. It was just that she never mustered the courage to follow her lead.

“I indeed have a lot of supplies.” Althea just cut off her useless rant. “So what?”

“We haven’t eaten for a day!”

“So?”

“As a human being, isn’t it just right to share your supplies?” She asked with a dignified tone.

She looked at a few others and they, especially the few men she had been flirting with, who then nodded in agreement.

“Those rats are edible. Cook them yourselves.”

“What?” The girl paled as she looked at the corpses.

“You expect me to cook for you, too?” Althea sneered. “Are you my mom? Although you look old enough to be my mom, she’s not so ugly.”

“Youuu!!”

Her screech hurt her ears and she took out her katana and pointed it on her neck, getting her so frightened that she lost her footing.

“I will say this only once.” She said, directing it to everyone. “I have no obligation to feed and protect you. I’m not a public servant and even if I am, I don’t have the obligation to feed you or use my own body to protect you.

“Are you not ashamed to ask this from a pregnant woman? What are you, trash?”

She paused, deep eyes looking at everyone and making them shiver. “Anyone who tries to use moral kidnapping on me again, I will cut off his head.”

This must be the longest sentence she had uttered since she teleported here.

After a moment of silence, the people staggeringly moved toward the corpses to clean them up. Sheila took two, called Harold to also take two, and no one dared complain.

Harold cleaned up the corpse and Sheila familiarly set up their portable stove. Maya went to help Sheila with the vegetables and Fufi, as always, watched while drooling.

Althea watched as people handled their food and looked at their surroundings, walking around the vicinity to check for monsters.

Will monsters come after their food again?

But this time, she had a faint expectation.