After Surviving the Apocalypse, I Built a City in Another World - Chapter 87

Chapter 87: Realization
“The people from your home—if they survived, that is— are most likely already here.”

If this was true…

Garan and the rest couldn’t help but recall what they experienced when they first arrived.

Being surrounded strong monsters they couldn’t do anything about—monsters they could only run from—affected their psyche quite early on.

The dangers and horrors they had to go through broke a lot of tough soldiers. How many people had died and how many people lost a part of themselves, they could no longer quantify.

And these were all soldiers who had undergone strict trainings and had seen a lot of blood.

None of them could imagine what their families had to suffer if they really were transferred here.

Garan’s blood turned cold just thinking of those damned monsters chasing his wife.

Strong fire blazed inside of him and he wanted to jump outside and kill all those damned monsters that could threaten her safety.

“That is all I could tell you.” The old man said, pulling them all out of their daze, and he just stayed seated in place.

Garan heaved a sigh, forcing himself to calm, and looked at him with deep eyes. “You know more.” He said, a statement. “What do you need?”

“Buy me.”

“What?”

“Let me join your group.” The old man repeated, his eyes unlike the lifeless ones he adorned while mopping the floor.

His eyes were absolutely determined.

…

An hour later, they brought the old man back to their dwelling with a sigh.

They lost 50 gold, just like that.

Garan massaged his temple as they walked back to their cramped living room.

The man did not sit down, as always, by habit, as a normal slave did.

Garan did not ask him to be casual either. He simply raised his hand and gestured for the older man to speak. “Continue.”

The man nodded and unconsciously patted his empty sleeve. “My name is Gaudi. My planet is—was—called Nova. It was water planet consisting of 90% water, back when it still existed.”

This made Garan and his team pause, and they realized the previous transfer apparently had involved him on a deeper level than they expected.

It also explained, to some degree, his odd body structure. Garan mused he must have very strong lungs to be around water his whole life.

“Before everything, our planet was already facing extinction-level catastrophes for a decade until only a fraction of the population was left.”

He could still remember the events like it was yesterday.

He was still a young lad at the time, but the terror and hopelessness he experienced was ingrained in his bones.

There were various natural disasters that happened every single day, not one day was missed.

Sometimes, it was tremors that destroyed mountains. Sometimes, it was volcano eruptions that spewed poisonous ashes everywhere. It could also be tsunamis that destroyed everything in its path.

Every day, humans kept being reminded of how small they were in the grand scheme of things.

“After a few years, things even got worse—as I mention, we later found out to be the space distortions—and we lost half of the remaining population within a course of a week.”

“Then, we all got these sounds inside our heads, each and every one of us. It informed us of an imminent transfer to a ‘new world’.”

He remembered how people celebrated this news. Anything was better compared to the perilous world they lived in.

“A few hours later, we found ourselves here, being mobbed by a new set of monsters.”

“Our people lived predominantly in waters, with our planet made of islands that slowly sank down as the catastrophes happened.” He said, “We were already inferior in strength and we were taken to a deeper disadvantage due to the terrain.”

“About half of the survivors died in a single day, and it was still in the so-called ‘Protection Period’.”

This captured the soldiers’ apt attention. “Protection Period?”

Gaudi nodded. “Every transfer there is a protection period, and will be open to the rest of the world after this time.”

“That was when the real tragedy started.”

He closed his eyes, sighing deeply, body shaking a little at the memories, surprisingly still so vivid in his mind.

“Not only were the monsters suddenly so much stronger, but we were faced with a new unexpected enemy: Humans.

“I remembered the first aborigine we encountered.

“We somehow knew the language spoken, as if a translator was installed in our heads.” He said, and the others nodded. They, too, had a similar ‘skill’ of immediately understanding spoken language.

“We were apprehensive, of course, but more hopeful.” Gaudi continued, “In our world where nature itself was the enemy, there was barely any serious infighting. To survive, everyone had to unite.

“In our naive, foolish, minds… people with similar appearances were allies…”

He shook his head, as if remembering their silly appearances. “Very soon, we understood this was not the case. Many times, people were even harsher enemies than monsters.”

“We quickly found out how lowly they thought of us ‘weaklings’, and they made sure to let us feel our shortcomings.

“They also blamed us for the beast tide that attacked the surrounding territories because of our appearance.”

Gaudi had begun to sob at this point, hand covering his eyes, but the rest could see the possible parallelism of his history to theirs.

“The people of my planet did not last a year. Thousands of territories perished months after the protection period ended.”

“Now, we are either dead or slaves. For twenty years I have not heard of an exception.”

“The irony was our existence had been so small that probably a few territories nearby where we appeared had an impression of us.”

“I was one of the last survivors and I had gathered some information before our territory fell.

“I’ve heard that, including the one from a hundred years ago, a lot of the low level existences here were descendants from us foreigners, at least had the blood of them.”

That was to say, newcomers would not live a good life, even if they did they’d have gone through hell to get there, and even their descendants were no exeption.

This was seen for a hundred years, and it was unlikely to change… unless the newcomers grew strong enough very, very, quickly.

Garan felt complicated. He hoped she was here, avoiding the supposed catastrophe in Terran, but at the same time he didn’t want her to face all of these.

But it did not take long for Garan to get himself together and clear his mind.

He didn’t have to make things so complicated.

As long as they were together, no matter what, he’d just have to protect her.