After Surviving the Apocalypse, I Built a City in Another World novel Chapter 1076

Althea was learning a lot, and Jonathan was learning even more. Despite growing so old and meeting so many other Lords, this was the first time he had such a fruitful discussion with another Lord.

Most Lords were arrogant and overtly confident—especially Lords of Towns.

The Lords of Towns usually inherited their positions too, which was ironic. This was why many Town Lords often lacked the strength and discipline of their predecessors because things were just handed over to them.

"I know a good example. In a town Southwest, there was an arrogant Lord who had everything handed to him. The previous Lord had always kept the token in the Token Guard so when he died of mysterious circumstances, the territory remained standing. His son, who knew where it was located, immediately became the Lord."

"He was so arrogant with the forces, believing them to be his servants. He would send them to missions for low rates, and even arbitrarily change up some taxes.

"Anyway, long story short, those people schemed to replace him—and they did."

This made Althea narrow her eyes. "How were they able to do this even with oaths?"

Jonathan thought for a while before answering. "As a Town, there’d be more and more outside forces trying to enter and grab a piece," he said. "You know how large the stakes are among wars between towns, which was why they were so rare.

"Towns have tens or even hundred times more population and resources than villages do, and their average power levels were also much higher.

"The thing is, everyone—whether they were born in Villages, Towns, and Cities—would start at a low level. However, because it was dangerous to go out of Towns and Cities as low-leveled people, some ’level up farms’ were created so people could pay to kill captured low-level monsters so they could level up."

"Commoners could barely afford such service, but they managed, but the extremely poor people—who could only afford their day-to-day food and shelter—would remain weak, no stronger than villages."

"Improving the strength of thousands of people was too costly and, in their minds, a bit wasteful because people… die," Jonathan said, shaking his head. "When a trained person died during a war or something else, all those resources spent on them would be wasted."

"Some people with foresight do send their younger generation in villages to train, but they were the great minority. Town and Cityfolk simply looked down on villages so much that they cringed at the thought of sending their children there—it was as if it’d corrupt them."

"In my opinion, this is a stupid unnecessary mistake, and what the Golds did for their younger generation was the smartest thing I’ve seen in a long time."

"Point is, because of this imbalance, Towns and Cities preferred to hire mercenaries who were experts in their fields and had also sworn oaths to do their best to fight for whichever territory they served.

"It was expensive to hire from Mercenary Halls every time, but the cost of letting mercenary teams settle or have a base in a territory was just a piece of land they could call their own. This was the common practice."

"However, at the same time, the oaths they took weren’t of undying loyalty—they were always transactional ones.

"The mercenaries would always leave leeway for themselves to separate from a territory—and usually not without taking some profit along the way.

"Betrayal was not uncommon, especially when the forces found the current Lord unable to do their part of the bargain.

"Even in Ferrol, I can only truly trust the Asusa Mercenary team—a team that had signed an oath with my father. You met Hoye and Webb 1before, didn’t you? That’s their team."

She nodded. Hoye and Webb were Bart’s friends and, according to her husband, were instrumental in him finding their place so quickly.

"Oh, and there’s the Terran mercenary team too," he said, smiling. "Anyway, I have about a dozen other mercenary teams based there that I don’t entirely trust—definitely not with my life."

She nodded, taking note of everything.

She then looked at Jonathan. "Thank you for sharing, but… do you think my citizens would be left behind in terms of level?" she asked.

"Do you think we’ll actually ever be dependent on outside forces to defend ourselves?"

"..."

Jonathan’s eyes flickered. He remembered that even the most common of citizens here trained hard. Even the old people could be seen with the youngsters, stabbing at monsters outside the gates.

When asked—while the most common answer was ’because I don’t want to grow old so quickly’—one could feel the consistent and strong motivation was there.

That, along with the superior defense systems and rules at their level, really made Jonathan rethink the current norms.

He sighed, body relaxing into his chair as he took another macaron into his mouth.

"Now that we can talk as lord to lord, I feel like I’m learning so much from you…" Jonathan said. "I feel both ashamed and amazed."

Althea chuckled, sipping her jasmine tea. "I also learn a lot from you."