After Surviving the Apocalypse, I Built a City in Another World - Chapter 70

Chapter 70: Build, Build, Build
Aberdeen City, several months prior

“I have a surprise for you.” Her husband’s low velvety voice graced her ears as his warm hand wrapped around her waist, bringing her to the study table.

“Happy birthday.” He said and she opened her eyes to see a large piece of paper splayed out the table.

She blinked and quickly approached it, seeing it for what it was.

Drawings. Of a villa.

Her beautiful green eyes widened and met his blue ones. She looked at its size, its address, and overall magnitude. She knew that this must’ve cost a fortune.

She wrapped her arms around his neck to give him a smooch on the cheek and he wrapped his arms around her in response.

But before he could dip his head for a more intimate kiss, Althea couldn’t help but want to tease him.

Her lips twitched and she pinched his cheek before he could kiss her, faking a pout. “And there I thought you handed all your paycheck to me…”

Ha blinked and paused, before bursting to a laugh. “I do give you all of my paychecks” He said, “But I keep my bonuses.”

Then he escaped her claws on his face by grabbing them and he dipped down his head to meet her lips, soon changing the angle of his head for more access.

He tasted his wife for a while before (very reluctantly) parting with her. As he did so, he placed their foreheads together to maintain contact. “Otherwise, how could I buy gifts for my beautiful wife?”

She giggled and gently pushed him away so she could take a look at the initial plans.

Garan smiled as he wrapped his arms around her stomach, resting his chiseled chin on her soft hair. Together, they looked and studied the drawings..

“We’ll put your laboratory here.” Garan said, pointing at the plan where the best rooms at the ground floor should be.

He also allocated quite a big chunk of area here. “I will find the best experts in laboratory constructions, so every safety measures would be taken.”

She smiled, touched, and gave him another peck before resuming on studying the plans.

They then planned and improved on his kitchen and gym, as well as her greenhouse and home gardens.

There was also an old school library with hardbound books.

And, of course, there was also the rooms of their future children, their play areas, their study rooms.

It took them hours to finalize and perfect it.

The couple stared at the construction plans, excited about building their own home, which would signify the next phase of their lives.

However, they wouldn’t be moving to this house at all, nor would it even complete its construction.

Because Garan would go missing soon after, not to be heard of again.

_____

[28 Days of Protection Period]

Althea heaved a sigh as unasked for memories came to mind. She shook her head of the thoughts and resumed staring at the lord panel and the map of the territory it showed to her.

First she built the Village Center (Lv1) so she could have a pivot point of activity.

This was basically the center of a territory, so she planned to give it enough prestige, in time.

Not to mention, unlike the wall, every building could only be built as Lv1.

This meant that eventually, she would be upgrading these buildings and she also had to leave enough provision for expansion. As such, she allowed a huge easement of 50 meters at front and back, and 100 meters at the sides.

Even if the upgrade wouldn’t require so much space, she could just add parks and other facilities in these areas.

She placed this setup roughly in the center of the territory. She also built about half a hectare of semi-paved space in front of the Village center to serve as the public square.

She then turned to the infrastructure tab and directly built a road—no, an avenue—from the village center to the Southwest gate.

She planned for future development. Considering the number of Terrans that transferred and the few number of lord tokens based on the requirements, each territory would definitely have thousands, if not tens of thousands, of people in the future.

Construction, even system buildings, could no longer be moved once placed. Would they have to endure the traffic should the population grow by the thousands? She didn’t want to destroy buildings just so she could give way to road widening.

The main road had a 6-lane or 18 meters wide carriageway, each lane about three meters wide with three lanes per direction.

These avenues would be separated by middle islands, and two meters of sidewalk on each of the two sides.

Except for the larger walkways (were there even cars here? She didn’t know, but there should be carriages at least), she also followed modern design and left space every meter for some bonzai.

It was worth noting that for every place she built, the trees and rocks superseded by built buildings automatically turned into resources.

These were full-grown trees and boulders, which had somewhat lightened up her resource problem.

Of course, as someone with a brain, she tried to retain as much greenery as she could.

Returning to the actual buildings, the architectural style she set was a mixture of the rich eastern flare and the sophisticated west.

There were the intricate designs of the eastern cultures, but there were the extra stability associated with the western ones. Quite exciting to look at, in her opinion.

It was such a good thing that she could also customize the system buildings, albeit it was limited to the facade and was more expensive. She had always believed that beauty was needed for the spiritual health, and she wanted everything in her turf to be beautiful, even if it was a bit costly.

The next thing she did was build a group of houses. The distance from the center to the edge was a kilometer and she obviously could not fill this space up.

So, she just built around 10 multi purpose residential-commercial buildings along each side of the main (and only) road, and added the 150sqm house-and-lots on the smaller 6-meter streets behind them.

The houses were varied. She set about 10 houses for a family unit for a selling price of 50 gold.

If they wished to rent, because they had all two floors for themselves, they had to shoulder the whole 200 copper per day.

Although the return for rental was 8 months, it would be very friendly to citizens. For the sake of the people, she could heroically give up (some of) the convenience of fast ROI for the houses.

After all, 300 square meters was huge. How many people of a team could fit and share the costs?

Of course, the best thing was that they still purchased it. The best profit was there. At least in the short term. And she needed a lot of money during the developmental phase of the territory.

The next housing type was the duplexes, where each floor will have different families or teams.

The selling price was set to 30 gold, with the rental of 100 copper per day.

A floor could comfortably accommodate 10 people, so people could share the space. A person would only need to pay 10 copper a day to have a decent roof above his head, and this could be said to still be quite fair.

However, she decided to set a limit that houses could only be rented by residents (temporary or permanent), while visitors could only go to inns (coming soon) or rent a bedspace (owned by the house owners).

In the future, this could be an additional source of income for everyone.

Finally, she set up a dorm type building a few streets away from the main street. She took down most of the side walls and placed 5 modules together. They had shared bathrooms and kitchens.

These bedspaces could be rented at a very friendly price of 1 copper per day. People could stay here indefinitely, though she thought few would because they would witness the others—possibly their roomates—moving out and improving their lives.

Next, she placed the weapons store next to the square.

System and other main shops would also be placed around this area. If she were to someday build important public buildings, it was estimated this would be their location as well.

She watched in satisfaction as the foundation works of the buildings began. All the buildings should be completed by the end of the day.

The magic of it all still amazed her to no end.

As for the farm, she had to move to the area in the northeast of the river and where the main road to the East Gate would be.

It was relatively flat and even if it wasn’t it was not a problem at all. She mused if she placed the farm on the mountains it would produce a terraced field instead.

For now, she had to check her stats to see how much resources she still had.

[TERRITORY STATS

Area: 3,142,000 square meters

Residents: 7 (7 permanent, 0 temporary)

Total Population: 7

Base Resources:

Wood: 120/5000

Stone: 50/3000

Money: 7276 Gold, 91367 Silver, 15287 copper

Reputation: 0

Buildings: Village Center (Lv1), Weaponry Shop (Lv1), Defensive Wall (Lv3)

Bonus Building: Custom Building

Building Slots: 3/5 (+1)]

She still had two building slots left? Clearly she only had space for a farm?

Immediately, the answer dawned on her.

“!!!”

No wonder the custom building could only be used once and was so expensive!

It bought her a precious building slot!