After Surviving the Apocalypse, I Built a City in Another World novel Chapter 395

Hoskle Village, a month ago

Inside a dilapidated house with leaking roof and whistling walls, a group of oddly-shaped men and women with unusual appearances gathered in a somber atmosphere.

The sound of an alarm echoed across the village.

A territory war was about to happen within 14 hours. The announcement was followed by another, stating that everyone must prepare either themselves or resources to assist the territory.

"Another war?" Baku asked with a frown, his tiger ears perked up, guarded. His large build was tense, his long tail was upright, his mood turbulent at the imminent danger they’d be facing.

Gochi, who was kneeling beside him, sighed and looked at the person lying on the cot.

In his hand were a couple of leaves known to help with wounds.

It was all they could afford.

As he applied both the leaf and the crushed plants on his friend’s festering wounds, the man flinched and frowned, while the others couldn’t bear to look.

The one on the bed was Kuma, a half-bear orc. He was the oldest and the strongest one of them all. He had brown ears and a massive build. Kuma was still suffering from injury since the last war a few weeks prior, which added to the injuries of the wars before that.

Hoskle village was one of those villages that got attacked at least once a month.

It could be against either humans or orcs but, fortunately, Hoskel had enough background to supply them with professionals to defend the village.

Further, some other allied territories would occasionally send support because Hoskle served as a shield between the human and the orc territory.

This also meant… that a lot of citizens died every month.

No, not just ’a lot’, as the deaths often came in hundreds. It was fortunate the decomposition of corpses outside the walls was fast, otherwise the smell of rotting corpses would stink for miles.

And… several territories often sold people they didn’t like to Hoskle to keep up with the population, so they never ran out… of shields.

Since they were won as spoils in a war ten years ago, this was all they knew what to do: to be shields.

In that war, Hoskle’s enemy was an orc territory. This was a notorious neighbouring orc village that had taken down several human settlements and several nearby territories sent assistance to finally get rid of it.

After a bloody war, the orc territory perished, and the orcs either died or fled deeper into orc region.

They, little half-orcs, were taken in by Hoskle as spoils of war. Less than half managed to be kept in Hoskle, while the others were taken by other territories to sell.

They could still remember the greedy faces of the humans as they looked at them. They had been so scared—it was almost as scary as when they were in the Orc territory, threatened by bullies that they’d eat them someday.

To be honest, they didn’t really feel too sad after becoming slaves in the human territory. Life wasn’t easy in the orc territory, especially for half-bloods.

They had to forage for their own food as soon as they could crawl, they had to endure whatever nature threw at them with bare skin, and… they were never welcome.

Not to mention, because they were only half-orcs, it was impossible for them to get the rare orc-exclusive Skill of True Beast Taming.

Obviously they were created on purpose, but when they were born they were looked at in disgust.

Did the orcs think they’d look exactly like them, just with better brains?

But then again, orcs were known to be stupid—maybe they really thought this way.

In any case, from a young age, he and the others had to witness their mothers slowly lose their wills to live there, only their memories of how it was before keeping them alive.

Their mothers told them of how much better life was in human territory. After all, even if everyone had the aether screen, orcs weren’t very smart to maximize them.

This was when their mothers didn’t look at them in disgust, of course. Except for a few who had kind mothers, everyone else’s treated them like monsters.

Unwelcomed by both parents and both clans, the half-orcs could only find solace in each other and themselves.

They, innocent children, believed that life would not be worse, and they accepted human slavery without question. Since then, they have been willingly helping out on the front line.

By ’helping out’, it meant being the vanguard. They were taught to fight for the territory, using their bodies as shields. After all, they had stronger skins.

This didn’t matter because even in the orc territory, the vanguards have been expected to take in injuries, if not die, for the territory.

After all, territories were their home and protection—it was only right to protect it at whatever cost, even at the expense of their own lives.

The half-orcs didn’t really question this ideology because, unlike their lives in the orc territory, they had enough to eat and a roof above their heads.

This was something most uncivilized orcs could not provide because they couldn’t maximize the Lord token in their hands at all.

Their lives were like this for years, except slowly their numbers dwindled, until one day another war occurred, a very different one from what they were used to.

The original group of half-orcs in Hoskle, after a little over a decade, was now down to just the five of them.