After Surviving the Apocalypse, I Built a City in Another World novel Chapter 1647

Chapter 1647: Warning Alterra

A couple of hours later, Althea heaved a deep breath as she received the message.

It was from a letter from her husband, who had sent her the message as soon as he got the news from Ferrol.

Sigh.

"Mwama??"

At this time, she was bonding with her children (annoying how these announcements always came when she was with her kids—something she could only do for a few hours each day).

She was sitting on the play cot with their toys. They were playing tea house today, with her as a customer. It was just the three of them plus Trunks, Little Meatball’s Elephant toy, and Cotton, Little Pepper’s Snow Fairy bird stuffed toy.

Meatball was actually well-behaved today (he was playing the waiter while Pepper was the tea-maker). Interestingly, this was because he knew that the only adult in the house this time was her. Even Harold was out, doing his weekly check of his restaurant business.

Although he was an energetic baby, he was at least a gentleman who didn’t give headaches to his mother.

His father would be proud. Hopefully, he wouldn’t think of throwing the baby boy in the barracks as soon as he reached 3 years old tonight.

Of course, if there were many adults who could take turns handling him, then meatball could play all he wanted.

"Hav Tea, mama," Meatball said, handing her the toy cup (it was made of wood) filled with random leaves they found outside. He then toddled back to give Trunks and Cotton their orders.

She giggled. "Thank you, my sweet baby," she said, giving him a smooch. Pepper immediately abandoned her station too, so she could receive the payment.

Chu!

Giggles echoed in the living room, and the atmosphere was soft.

Anyway, after a couple of minutes of play, Althea called for a meeting of the Elders because of the letter. She scheduled it to be about an hour or so later, which was the time for Harold to get home and Maya and Horus to get back from school.

"Mwamaa?" The babies asked again, crawling to her legs and climbing up her thighs. She probably entered a reverie again, making her children worried. She smiled and embraced them both into her arms, kissing their soft faces.

"It’s nothing," she told them. "Just some monsters annoying us."

The babies blinked and nodded, and they went back to their seats and continued to play tea with Mr. Trunks and Mrs. Cotton.

Harold arrived around the time she expected him to, and he was with the bigger kids too, apparently encountering them at the gate. With them here, she kissed her babies goodbye to start the emergency meeting about their future visitors.

When she got there, most of the Elders were already there. Only Mathilda, who was in a meeting with Jun, and Gru—who was apparently farming mushrooms in the tunnels when she made an announcement—were not yet there.

The meeting started as soon as they were complete, and along with them was Loki, one of the leads of the Information Team.

"What have we gathered about Valov Town so far?" Mathilda asked him, and he stood in front to tell them everything they had managed to gather from various sources, mostly aborigines from Ferrol, since the last meeting.

Jonathan could also give some basic information as long as they didn’t directly harm Valov—which was most of what he knew, anyway since Valov wasn’t exactly announcing their weaknesses and strategies.

"Valov is a Level 2 Town that was upgraded a few decades ago," he said. "It is located some 2000 kilometers West of us."

"It’s quite far, several days of travel, even by Beast Car."

"We have traced at least 2 previous teams from Valov who went and tried to cause chaos in the Iron Mountains and apparently there seemed to be one lost before that, though we do not have news from that."

That said...Hassen was located in a region abundant with black metal mines. Were those not enough anymore? If they were, were they just so greedy for more that they would go all the way to another region?

That territory hadn’t gone into a war for many years, either. What was it doing by hoarding so much black metal?

"What are the chances they’d make enemies for that one territory?"

"Guia probably comprises a small portion of Hassen’s source, it is more a matter of principle if they decided to attack."

"Hassen’s, perhaps, but not Valov’s." 𝑓𝘳𝘦𝑒𝑤𝑒𝘣𝘯ℴ𝘷𝘦𝓁.𝑐𝑜𝑚

Valov probably only had fewer than a handful of mines in their hands, so the loss was more obvious.

"It has to be noted that Valov went through the trouble of making Ferrol be Guia’s master on paper. They probably wanted to hide the fact that they were getting iron all the way here, too."

"Then...could it be this could be handled amicably?" Gru couldn’t help but dream. After all, there really was no advantage to either territory attacking them at this juncture. "I mean...we can just tell them those mercenaries harmed our property first, and just settle things outside of war.

Everyone paused, thought, but otherwise shook their heads.

Although that’s the ideal situation, it was extremely unlikely. Both Lords, according to their information, were not good people.

There was a very real possibility that Alterra would just enter their radar, and they’d start making annoying moves.

Even if they didn’t actually harm their people, once Alterra caught their attention, it was estimated they’d cause some trouble either way.

So...what next, then?