After Surviving the Apocalypse, I Built a City in Another World - Chapter 437

Chapter 437: Mauin Village
While in Altera the citizens were worrying about what to eat for dinner, where to train next, or even what the new products in the supermarket would come out, the status of other villages had very stark differences.

One example was a small village hundreds of kilometers Southeast of Altera.

It was called Mauin Village, after the original lord. Here, there were moldering houses, brackish waters, and an atmosphere seemingly bereft of all good things

It was also a Level 3 village, but looking closely at the people and the territory, it was as if they were poorer than the standard Level 2 village!

Not only were the buildings in poor condition, the people were even worse. Its people had totally different temperaments from that of Altera—the opposite, in fact.

The people here wore ripped clothing and had dirty faces, barely bothering to care for themselves. They lived in unmaintained houses, abodes no different from abandoned property, but they took no effort in changing it.

As if they had no reason to do so.

However, it could be seen that they still didn’t want to die considering how they were now scrambling around the dirt roads and grassy squares in a panic, in an attempt to safeguard one of the few things they had left.

That was: their lives.

This was because, a few moments prior, the too-familiar sound of an alarm—the alarm for war—resounded across the territory.

[Tome Village has attacked your territory. Please prepare for war.]

“It’s them again?!” A man yelled, screaming at no one in particular.

“How many times will they attack us this year?!” Another screamed, disbelieving.

Unkempt women and children sobbed, trying to find a place to hide.

They didn’t want to die, not like their sisters, brothers, and friends—

How long would this last? Older people asked, while the young people, who had known this sort of life all of their existence, simply sobbed, not knowing any better.

It was that damned village again—Tome Village, a village built too close, only a few hours away on a leisure walk, persistently hitting them at their weakest.

The previous lords were said to be friends, helping each other obtain a lord’s token for their own use. This was the ultimate show of brotherhood.

Although obtaining a token a hundred years ago was not as impossible as it was now, it was still not easy. The two Lords could be said to have gone through fire and used up several lifetimes’ worth of luck in order to obtain two.

It was just that, for some reason, they broke away from each other and became enemies. Legend said it was because one got too greedy and regretted sharing the token with the other.

It had been a fair fight until a few years back, one lost this time, and the next month the other one won. Lose some, gain some back. Further, the battles generally happened every few months, leaving both parties some recovery time.

For both parties, this was fair because they saw the other as a source of resources, which naturally had to be given time to recover.

The back and forth lasted for decades until the lords passed on the tokens to their respective children… who wanted to end the battles…

…by attacking to completely destroy the other, which was not an uncommon ideology in Xeno.

At the time, the food provided by nature to their village was nearly unlimited, as the population couldn’t grow too much due to the beast tides and multitude of wars. True wealth had become those obtained through wars.

The attacks soon became monthly and things tipped to one side when Tome allied with another village—a wild tribe, a tribe they heard ate people!

They found out about this when one of the attackers place tokens of their kills along their belts. Some of them were bones! Someone even used human bone to clean his teeth!

What they had done to the captured slaves from their village, they did not want to imagine.

It just got worse and worse for Mauin and somehow, during the past few months, the two villages had been maximizing the wars and attacked twice a month. Their poor village had to face these two villages every lunar cycle.

Because of this, every month, they lost huge amounts of resources, properties, and people.

Every time, the village lost half its current assets, and until now they only had debts and a fraction of the population left.

They also lost many strong men to food and a lot of women to the enemy.

Their food had to be taken deep in the wild every day, in contrast to being able to stock up a bit due to the ample resources within the walls.

Now, it was no longer enough. The resources would always be taken, so everyone had to go outside the safety of the walls to hunt and forage every single day.

It was also because of this new practice—with them being so closely exposed to the outside every single day—they soon came to notice an anomaly:

The regrowth of the plants was getting slower.

A few years back they could at least be full even if they didn’t have the restaurant, now… they struggled for a meal.

Slowly, it was getting harder and harder to gather fresh fruits and vegetables, and going farther from the usual gathering spots was too dangerous.

As for the mobs, the mobs had somehow been manageable because they were relatively weak. Fortunately, their people had been so used to fighting that the occasional mob could be dealt with even in their state.

It was also the only reason they hadn’t been completely destroyed yet.

But not for long. If this went on…

Maoru settled his wife and children in the cellar they dug up. “It’ll be alright,” he said, and his wife sobbed and patted his short hair.

“Daddy…” the little boy, Maumi, wrapped his little arms around his leg. “Scared.”

He patted the boy’s head, a little teary. He felt heartbroken that the child had never learned of a happy childhood. Although his own was hard, he and his wife still experienced some peaceful times, albeit far and few, and their childhood friends were now mostly dead. “Dad will be back.”

“Please be alright,” his wife said, whispering, unable to speak clearly as she held back her tears.

“I will,” he told her, comforting. He kissed his wife’s forehead and patted his son’s head before climbing up, his smile immediately morphing to a dire one.

He went to the square where his guards were gathering, looking uninspired and scared.

The atmosphere was heavy and the momentum was low. This was unsurprising, but this was in no way the correct way to face the most important war they would encounter so far.

If they lost this, then—

Mauru refused to continue with that thought and he looked at his men, waiting for them to arrange themselves. When he saw that they were still busy arranging their own things in a flurry, he finally bellowed.

“You think you have a chance if you’re scared? You would run rather than fight!” He yelled, and a lot of people just looked down in shame.

“They eat people! Don’t you think death by fighting is more honorable than being eaten?!

Maoru yelled at his guards. “Quickly get ready! “WE WILL FIGHT TO THE DEATH!”

“We will win this time!! We will take back what we lost!!”

“Yeah!” the people yelled in response. The crowd showed varying levels of enthusiasm but with consistently high levels of stress and fear.

He sighed and saw the Lord watching them with an unreadable expression. Maoru’s back straightened up immediately and he approached the man, saluting as soon as he was a couple of yards away. “We are ready, my Lord. As ready as we could be…”

“No.”

The lord’s tone was dismissive, but he was silent. Mauru, confused, looked closer at the man—still young, only fifty years old—and realized that he was shaking.

Mauru patiently waited for instructions, because he obviously had something to say.

The man closed his eyes, looking as if in pain. After a while, he finally spoke. “Go. Get away.”

“Milord?” Mauru asked, almost certain he had misheard.

“We wouldn’t be able to win this fight…” the lord said, voice shaky. “They will defeat us this time.”

“My Lord, we can’t give up! Even if there’s a slightest chance—”

“Rather than let everyone die, I’d rather be the Lord who gave you a chance to live.” He said with finality, before walking away with his limp, something he had endured for years.

He was tired. Very tired.

Mauru stared at the Lord’s back, still shocked at the order.

He took a deep, deep, breath to stabilize himself. He turned his head and he looked at the people scurrying around with a complicated expression.

Go away?

Go where?

They lived their whole lives here…, where else would they go?

Where else could be ‘home’?