After Surviving the Apocalypse, I Built a City in Another World - Chapter 1697

Chapter 1697: Gossip among Slaves
Flaret Town, a few hours ago

Some time before dusk, several robed people passed through various alleys one by one. Some moved quickly, but most were slow and shaky.

Interestingly, the leading cloaked person would always look back, even jump above them, using the narrow walls to move quickly. At this time, he had taken down a few people following them, and soon they arrived at their destination safe and sound.

“Oh my goodness…” Maria mumbled as she looked at the new ‘slaves’ that Gian rescued.

They were all wearing cloaks and were invited in. They entered the threshold one by one, shivering either from fear, from the tension, or from the tiredness of the pacing they were subjected to on the way here.

Knowing there were new people, everyone in the house flinched and placed their attention on the newcomers, making them even more scared. After all, their experience so far was that attention like this was never good for them.

Maria sighed when she saw this. “Calm down! Have you forgotten how you were when you first arrived here?”

This made them flinch, and their faces became awkward at the memory.

They were not much better than them, right? No, some were even in worse states.

After all, Gian was just starting at the time, and he didn’t have Maria or anyone to assist him yet. They were basically thrown in, commanded to behave, and were fed for a while until they recovered enough and were expected to take care of themselves.

They were confused for a long time because Gian was too busy making plans or rescuing others to bother explaining anything to them.

At this, the newcomers looked around, blinking, slowly absorbing what she had said. Maria smiled at them. “We were all once like you—and now you’re rescued, safe with fellow Terrans.”

She gently patted the head of the nearest one, which was just above her waist in height.

Maria and the rest of them would always look forward to seeing the new rescues, but this time was particularly heartbreaking.

Some of them were children, siblings, perhaps less than 10 years old.

With the territory growing more and more power and income, they had started to expand operations and were also getting more slaves, probably by attacking Terran territories nearby.

The territory had received a lot of slaves in the past month, and Gian seemed to have taken more in proportion, too.

Because the drug ring had expanded operations, expanding to more and more towns, Gill had also managed to steal a bit more samples.

Of course, his whole ‘topple over carriages’ plan might not work as much anymore. One, people learn, and the enemies implement new standards to protect the carriages. Although most carriages traveling within the territory still didn’t have a grand entourage at the surface, there were actually a lot of mercenaries and guards running parallel, along both sides of the road.

For those heading out, there were massive quantities to meet the market needs outside the territory, and this meant it would be too heavy and would also be heavily guarded.

Fortunately, a lot of backchannels had opened because of the massiveness of everything, and Gian was quick to take advantage of those. While Felipe had definitely taken advantage of the oath system to minimize embezzlement, it was impossible to completely block it.

There was a non-thieving law and some oaths. However, apparently, some of the nobles found a loophole. The most effective one was that people would ‘accidentally’ drop or trash a few batches, and someone was ready to retrieve it. Unless the Lord determined this and made stricter and more specified laws for a massive cost, then this would keep happening.

That said, because embezzlement was illegal and was punishable by death—even if the person only sold a milligram—the embezzlers wouldn’t be able to report it missing at all.

Anyway, these embezzlers were greedy and would take sacks of the product, and a portion of which would always end up with Gian one way or another.

Gian had rescued dozens more people since Alyssa and the rest of them, and it was extremely squeezed. They were poor, but they had to endure.

While Gian went up to rest as the siblings were settled down, the rest of them sighed, continued with their work, or just sighed in general.

One of the best ways to pass the time was, of course, gossiping. While they were making their handicrafts, of course!

They gossiped about their lives back in Terran, their lives after coming here, or some scandals that happened here. For example, in one of the villages, a woman got involved with a man she landed in Xeno with.

But then, some months later, the woman’s husband arrived as a refugee—with his mistress! She was months pregnant and was definitely before the transfer!

They found out that they were far away when the Migration happened because the man was on a ‘business trip’ which was apparently just an excuse to meet up with his mistress!

The woman grabbed both their hair, and the woman’s lover could only be embarrassed to death.

They even gossiped about the slaves from the other house. Nothing malicious, of course, just chatter.

At some point, the newcomers started to integrate with them.

Nothing brings people closer to each other than gossip, indeed!

Then, they heard something unbelievable from the newcomers.

“What? Really?”

“It’s true!” A lad said, looking very confident in the gossip he shared.

The lad’s name was Macha, who was apparently a script writer back in Terran.

That said, because he was a writer, some people doubted his words and wondered if it was all just his imagination.

It could also be his way to integrate better, thinking that he’d be able to fit in more if he had a wild story to tell. He was young and possibly immature. This was very possible.

Still, they couldn’t help but want to listen anyway.

“Tell us about that something you mentioned,” one said, though cynical. “We’re supposed to believe there’s really a town made by Terrans?”