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

A/N: Yay~ We're Golden T1 again! Banzaiii! I crawled and managed to prepare the 3 extra chaps today~lolol

Hope you Enjoy and thanks for your support! Hopefully, we keep the rank until month's end *Prays*

Extra hugs to the lovelies who sent their tickets, and extra extra hugs to the angels who gave them in bulk *sobs* I feel like you give me all your tickets. I love you all!

…

____

Jones, at first, looked at Bart weirdly for acting so buddy-buddy with random people.

It was just that when he turned to look who it was, he froze a bit. "You…"

He remembered him. He led a team of low-level fighters who somehow managed to find their town. Considering they were only at the level of villagers, this was quite a feat.

There were still a number of them during that time, though they slowly lost their numbers.

Despite their low levels, these guys went to the Mercenary Hall for missions practically every day. Even if they were still recovering from previous injuries, they would fight on.

They were relentless.

At the time, he could feel they were desperately chasing after something. Later, he overheard them speaking of going back to their home—to their families—and, with Garan, to his wife.

The desperation in his eyes back then was a far cry from the relaxed atmosphere around him now. He must've found what he was looking for.

His daze was cut off when Bart cordially wrapped his arm around the other man's shoulder and led him straight to Jones.

"This is Garan, one of the Elders here," he said, pausing, and then turning to Garan. "This is Jones, a member of the Swagen Mercenary Team. Remember him? He worked in the Mercenary Hall there.

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"He even tried to scam you quite a bit for some basic information."

"..."

Garan looked at Jones and nodded. "I do remember."

Jones felt very, very, awkward, and for a moment he didn't know what to say. Business is business? No. Nothing personal? Not that, either.

"Who's this?" a new voice sounded from the side and broke his line of thought.

He turned to see the most charming woman he had ever seen. She was holding the most adorable little baby, who was also looking at him curiously. She held Garan's hand and realized this must be the wife. And look, he even had kids.

Jones was overwhelmed with shame.

He really didn't have anything against Garan back then, it was just his habit to take advantage when he could. In this cutthroat world, that was the default attitude.

He looked at Garan again and realized he was also carrying a little one, though that one was literally on his head, completely unbothered by the height, and lounging there as if it was the most natural thing.

The baby looked down on him though and then looked away, uninterested, and seemed far more interested in pulling his father's eyebrows.

Garan—with a straight face—would just raise a finger and flick the baby's small hand away from his face, and the baby boy would behave for a couple of moments before doing whatever again.

"..."

"H-Hello," he said, quite meekly. He could feel his teammates' stares at him. Could they blame him though?!

His sight met Bart's arrogant face and wanted to smother it badly but he schooled his expression as he greeted Garan—this time their positions had been switched.

But then he remembered—he still had something over Bart.

Suddenly a bit of confidence came over him. "Hello there," he said. "My name is Jones and I'm the head clerk in the Twinwave Town Mercenary Hall," he said, as if reintroducing himself—to refresh the slate.

"Due to my position, I have gained quite a bit of friendship to people all over the world—far and wide," he said. "Would you be interested in striking a deal with me?"

"Considering our history…, I can assure you would get some great advantages."

…

While that was ongoing, another mercenary team roamed around the streets of Alterra. These were a couple of members from the Takoda Mercenary Team.

This was the team who escorted Helios and Sahara back then, and they also stayed for several days longer than proper after their job was finished, too.

By the time they left, they managed to get good deals—with Helios' vouching—to distribute in Avel City and its subsidiaries. Of course, considering how popular the items were, the stocks were lacking even if they just sold the items to the City nobles.

Their route to Alterra was only a couple of hours (due to the Mercenary Hall arrays), though the route back could easily take several days even by beast cart.

This allowed them to keep Alterra a trade secret (and still do, for now) with only the mercenary leader and the Lord privy to it. After all, they had to send letters to Ferrol often to let them create convenient missions for them, so the Lord would be privy either way.

Fortunately, the Lord hadn't told other people yet because he was getting ample amounts of the products himself, and this was something they promised as long as he protected their interests.

Anyway, they would travel through the Mercenary Hall of Ferrol Town, and due to the items they carried, they would always travel by foot, renting scores of Beast Cars from Ferrol.

From then, they'd be jumping from Town to Town with their products, sometimes having no choice but to sell some to eager merchants along the way.

Then, when they got back home, people would rush to buy things for them and even start bidding wars. Even if they brought in scores of carriages worth of goods, it was just never enough.

Interestingly, these products also changed a lot of lives. The long-life food saved people, the beauty products saved relationships, and so on. It also slightly impacted the City's economy in a way, and the Lord would enjoy sizeable taxes whenever Enok would return from a trip.

Although prestige increased the most if the name was attached to it, the system still counted anything a territory did to cause a change.

Like this, another bulk of prestige was added to Alterra.