After Surviving the Apocalypse, I Built a City in Another World novel Chapter 111

Aberdeen City, Twenty-one years prior

Garan crossed his arms and watched in beffudlement as his little angel walked around, dragging several ducklings with a rope.

She was adorable, but he also felt a little pity for the ducklings being dragged.

"What…are you doing Althea?" He asked, leaning down so they were in eye level. "Are you sure you’re not hurting them?"

"No, no, Garan." Althea corrected him ’patiently’, looking like a cute little adult. "This rope is used to guide them!"

"You don’t know. They’re so stupid." Her cute eyebrows furrowed and her chubby cheeks puffed as she spoke. "They would jump out to the road if I didn’t do it!"

She then looked at him with all the seriousness she could muster. "I save them, like a hero!"

Garan held back his smile, patting her head. "Yes, yes, ropes saved their lives." He chuckled, "My Althea is amazing."

_____

Guia Village, Present

Garan watched as the lord of the territory gathered information about their imminent enemy with seriousness.

Before Bart left to go back to Twinwave, he told them a bit about the Lord of this village. Garan could still remember that they were a bit surprised to find out that the lord, Barton, was already in his 70s. He looked to be only in his 30s.

After thinking it through, it made sense. People here had an average life span of 100 years. Stronger people of levels higher than 20 can reach 150 years, not to mention level 30.

Goblins’ fecundity was strong, but their lifespans were much worse than humans, with an average lifespan of 40 years. Of course, these were for slaves, free goblins never subject to slavery were estimated to be able to live a decade or two longer. _{freewēbnoveℓ.com}

Of course no matter how long the life span, it didn’t matter if you couldn’t keep your head.

Barton and his assistant listed down Lowell’s advice on how to handle goblin attacks. They discussed it among themselves for a while. There were plenty of arguments between the underlings, most of which was the assignment of the vanguards, to the point of a fight almost breaking out.

But Barton shut them up by assigning which guards and soldiers would be the vanguard. He had a very strong presence and no one dared argue with him at all.

Soon after, the entire territory mobilized everyone for a fee.

Garan and his team also helped. Although they didn’t know how they’d handle the actual goblins, they could at least help reinforce the defense of their side against them.

They did not agree on how humans dealt with goblins, but they definitely wouldn’t betray their humanity for them, either.

Lowell stepped forward to further detail his experiences with goblin wars, looking as if he was disgusted by the idea of Goblins themselves. "These things are the worst bugs you could imagine. They could dig as quickly as they could crawl."

"Once the war starts, they would definitely start digging somewhere inwards. In a short span of time they could create a complex network of tunnels and traps, taking away our advantages in size and skill."

To deal with this, everyone was asked to dig deep ditches, relatively deep about 2 meters in. The rare elementalists did a lot of the work in this and thus gained a lot of money than the others.

Stakes were placed inside these, so the enemy diggers would be stopped at a certain distance from the wall, ideally to be handled before they got too close.

Similarly, deep and sharp stakes were stuck in the ground to serve as underground gates.

They added deeper spikes that would vibrate and warn those above ground if there were suspicious movements underground.

Other than these, there were plenty of other ground traps that goblins, with their limited vertical size and strengths, would have difficulty coping with.

Barton looked satisfied with what was happening to the village and soon excused himself and left the rest to his men.

The Terrans watched as the entire village and visiting mercenary teams mobilize with full-force to defend against the goblins.

Garan and the others felt complicated. The goblins would face a helpless massacre, wouldn’t they?

…

The group felt heavy at the thought of the oncoming massacre.

It wasn’t that they even considered betrayal. After all, they were ultimately on the human side. It was just that no matter where, no matter who, useless killing was something that bogged them down.

They were soldiers. And because of this, they were particularly caring of life, despite being willing to sacrifice one’s own, if needed.

Were they really just going to watch this massacre happen helplessly?

It was here that Garan noticed a soldier hailing their tamed mounts to a different position, held by ropes. The creatures were a little unwilling but had no choice but to follow.

His cerulean eyes fixed on the ropes, and an idea dawned on to him, recalling that short but lovely memory of his Althea and her ducklings.

"Hear my orders:" He said with that baritone voice of his, and his subordinates instinctively straightened their bodies to listen in response.