After Surviving the Apocalypse, I Built a City in Another World novel Chapter 1799

Chapter 1799: The Cold Continues

The Extreme Cold continued on, marking the first week since the temperature dropped.

Characterized by seemingly endless snow, winds, and freezing air draped around the entire world. It was a legitimate ice age that had already killed a few thousand people, particularly in villages with inferior infrastructure and low average levels.

For many low-level villages, they could only afford the lowest-level system buildings. These buildings could not handle the heavy snow that piled up after a week, and many had imploded into themselves.

By this time, many places had also lost their food and had started eating things like snow, tree bark, and soil. For water, they had the snow, at least, but otherwise, many people who did not have a decent roof over their heads or a decent blanket to cover themselves were left at the mercy of nature.

It was difficult for low-level adults to survive, let alone their children and the elderly.

Villages may have much, much, higher fertility rates, but the world seemed to want to balance things out by killing their young and their old with disasters like this one.

However, people had been used to this tragedy. They would feel pain and agony for the losses, but it was just the way things were in this world, and they had learned to accept it.

...

As always, some places were better than others.

For example, it was naturally those closely connected to Alterra, especially those who bought the higher-level houses from the system.

This was especially true for those who bought Alterra’s customised houses, which were their first allies, like Bright, Vismont, and Belluga.

At the time, it felt so expensive to buy the blueprints, but after the design helped them through disaster after disaster, they had long known it was worth it.

The feeling of the floor’s warmth alone made them want to hug their past selves who made the investment!

"Allying with Alterra is truly the best," Micheal said as he lay down on the floor, drinking tea.

His right-hand man and sister were there as well. They were drinking delicious flower tea she planted herself. Bright also had a few greenhouses and vertical farms, improved with the technology Alterrans developed.

They were planning on letting the cold pass by and just staying at home. Unlike towns with a lot of powerhouses, they did not have many who could casually go out, and few people could actually clear the snow around them without causing harm to themselves. The number who could was miniscule so few people bothered clearing snow in Bright Village.

Anyway, their stockpile was more than enough, and Micheal could make announcements and orders remotely.

Their population wasn’t too big since most who reached level 15 (or even above level 10) would move to Alterra, so when they started stockpiling after they received news from Alterra, everyone could safely say they would survive without going out for a few weeks.

Unexpectedly, someone knocked on the door.

They flinched and blinked. Let alone the extremely low temperature, the outside must have several feet of snow by now. Although Juno and the guards (as well as the mercenaries, for a fee) cleared out the snow around the house, the center, and the clinic, everywhere else was difficult to traverse.

The satellites and villages like Belluga, which purchased the customized houses, were basically the same, in sharp contrast with others, who could actually die even while inside their own homes. 𝒻𝑟ℯℯ𝑤𝑒𝑏𝑛𝘰𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝒸𝑜𝘮

The Extreme Cold was characterized by freezing temperatures (and hail) throughout. However, it also fluctuated to simply freezing—with heavy snow— and the deadly cold snap or cold snake.

The ’freezing snake’ was believed to happen randomly, though about once or twice a day. It would be akin to localized cold snaps, which could suddenly freeze anything in its path into ice without warning.

This fortunately happened in small localized areas and moved like a snake, and thus its name. It would also affect only one surface and anything touching it.

Imagine an underground or an invisible ice snake that moved along the ground, freezing anything that touched it.

The bright side was that as long as anyone was well-equipped, reacted fast enough, and had decent awareness, they could avoid it.

Its area of effect was narrow, literally just one or two persons wide, and it was fast, but anyone beyond level 10 should have the instincts to follow its movements.

This was how guards were kept safe during these events, and why they still let guards out in the first place. One was to clear at least one road to the emergency areas (where evacuation centers were also placed), and the other was to rescue.

One would never know when a rescue was needed, or if there was an emergency. Some would argue that since they had clear communication lines, they could just go out as needed, but seconds could easily mean life or death here, especially since they were still a village and their levels made them very susceptible to death by cold.

Keeping the guards active would also be good for them, and people found that their elements could actually improve by training in the cold, as if it were consolidated.

They found this from Alterrans, and everyone concluded that those people were really training-madmen to discover this so early.