After Surviving the Apocalypse, I Built a City in Another World-Chapter 1926: Before the War Begins

Back to Althea’s group, all the injured elders and assistants had already been brought into the hospital. However, Harold and the others, as long as they showed signs of manipulation, had to be isolated and even tied up for their own safety.

They were not certain to what extent they could be controlled exactly, even if they had their own assumptions and theories. It wouldn’t hurt to be safe, and it was clear that they’d also hurt themselves as long as they were ’programmed’ to do so.

It injured them to do this to their old comrades, which made them angrier at their perpetrators.

The rest of them studied the area further, with Garan holding on to his wife so he could take her at the instant a threat appeared.

"What if they planted more bombs?" they asked, worried. It wasn’t like they had a bomb detector. Not to their knowledge, anyway.

Ansel and the other non-technicals looked at Althea, Eugene, and the others to correct them, to tell them they did have explosive detectors or that there was a way to find these things safely.

Sadly, all of them shook their heads.

The bomb detectors they knew from Terran worked using chemical detection or x-ray imaging, neither of which was doable to them right now. Whether it was the technology or the material, they did not have it as of this date. Yet.

Not to mention, and probably more importantly, the enemy probably used dwarven bombs, which worked with a totally different principle from the Terran bombs or even their own bombs.

From what they knew, it had a lot to do with arrays on top of the chemical reactions, and Althea had no idea how one could detect specific arrays at all.

If this were any other time, she’d be fired up with curiosity to discover more about this issue. However, her people had been hurt, her children threatened, so she wasn’t in the mood for any of her scholarly pursuits.

For now, Garan and the team were gathering all the pieces and shrapnel they could, as well as documenting the scene of the crime.

So far, they determined that they were definitely unusual explosives. Those bombs were not weak and must be quite expensive for their size. They doubted Valov would waste two easily. Knowing them, if they only had a few, they’d reserve them for the actual war, where damage would be more intense.

They would definitely not miss out on that, so there would likely be more bombs and more weapons.

Althea scoffed. Hassen was really investing in this battle, huh?

...

Hassen City

Hassen City was one of the oldest cities still standing since before the elves perished. Its area was maximized to more than three hundred square kilometers, directly three times larger than its predecessor, the level 3 Town.

This was approximately 10 kilometers radius; if one limited the shape to a circle, and if one stood at the center, they might not see any of the perimeters past the horizon.

The majority of this area was walled by at minimum level 8 outer wall, and the large inner city was protected by the maximum level wall, at level 10.

Further, the City’s occupied lands actually extended a bit beyond this, with some settlements building up outside the walls, and just rebuilt whenever they were destroyed.

This was especially true for the areas heading to some mines outside the territory.

By this time, most of the mines inside the walls had been spent, reused for other things. However, this area was quite rich with black metal, so there were plenty still left to consume. Subsequently, there were also many areas where refugees could come and try to settle, since the living costs in cities were very high.

The kind that could bankrupt a poor family if they stayed for a few days.

At the very least, many tried to live using the sentries as their guards, and Hassen never stopped it, as they were willing meatshields in case of beast mobs and wars. At best, they’d likely run into the walls in emergencies.

While these people could not afford the visitor’s pass every day, they could still afford to stay for a few days if there was an ongoing beast war and so on.

If they were lucky, they could even enter during the days when the administration was hiring, which was once a month. The City would hold interviews and skill tests for miners and metal artisans to hire.

If the person got accepted, then they’d be able to receive a decent salary in hopes that it’d improve their lives even for just a bit.

Hassen was a City known for its handling of black metal, though mostly for the more intricate version of it. They certainly had the largest number of decorative artisans for the material.

Above the ground, there was also a large equipment factory and a processing of black iron. The processing area was as big as a village, so one could imagine the scale of production here.

However, unbeknownst to most, there was also a massive underground area underneath the palace extending to the mountainous side of the territory.

The remaining massive black metal mine was still in use, unlike the rest that had been emptied out and reused. This one was still going deep even after hundreds of years of consumption.

It was also very deep underground. Even if an earth user were to dig from above ground, they’d take a while to reach the top of this tunnel, which was also made from a sturdy rock slab. Even if the earth user reached the layer, they might not have the energy to go through it.

The underground area was massive, nearly as big as a high-level village, and its ceiling height was several stories high.

This place had been built many generations ago, slowly expanded as time went on, particularly as they consumed more of the mine, converting it to a usable area that the public did not know about.

And this was a place that the illustrious City had hidden from the World.