Chris
"So this is it. A city," Austin's voice sounded out from next to me.
Our caravan had crested the grassy hill we stood upon and were given a clear sight of the city in the distance. Or, more accurately, what was left of it.
What met our eye was ruined concrete and rubble. Buildings any taller than a few stories laid on their side or destroyed completely. Any and all glass had long ago shattered.
Buildings of brick held up the best, but even those were scattered and strewn from forces long past. Bricks strewn about from where they once collapsed. It seemed the terraforming had its way with what was once a large city. Indianapolis wasn't the largest city in the world, but it was still a large one.
We had traveled through mostly forest and outskirts to get here and we were coming upon the first large metropolis area and to see it in such a state... it was jarring.
It showed the extent to which the world had changed. No more structures were jutting into the air, claiming the skyline, as any building that dared now lay crumbled upon itself.
Picturing New York made me sigh and shake my head. I had never been to the city and now I would never get to see it as it was. I was in no great rush to do so, but now it wasn't even an option. Let alone any of the famous Cities around the world. The Eiffel Tower probably wasn't standing anymore.
The odd thing about looking upon such destruction was knowing that no one had perished. Usually, such scenes came with a death toll that colored your vision when you looked upon them.
It added a somberness that this was missing. We knew that no one was in the city when it happened and the knowledge that no one had died during the destruction made it feel... lesser almost.
As more carts rolled over the hill, more of us began to stop and stare at what lay ahead. Most felt similar to me when taking in the destruction, but excitement quickly shot through the camp at the sight.
There were people.
"How many people do you think are down there?" I asked.
At the distance we were at, it was difficult for me to make out the details. I could see movement but I couldn't tell anything of greater detail.
"Thousands from what I can see, probably more," Austin said as he glowed for a brief moment, calling on his bloodline to see further.
Even if only half the city survived, that put a few hundred thousand down there. It was hard to imagine that many people lived among the ruins.
"There's an area of new construction on the Western side of the city. Mostly wood but there's a palisade surrounding it." Hal chimed in from my right.
Where Austin had his bloodline to see further, Hal had skills to do the same. The only one among us who couldn't see anything was me.
My eyesight had greatly improved thanks to the points in perception, but it was nowhere near good enough to see in the detail they were, especially for something so far away.
"Do you think it's a pylon?" I asked curiously.
"Without a doubt. There isn't one visible, but there's one down there, I'm sure of it. The borders are too clean to not follow some kind of guide like the area that gets claimed." Hal answered.
"How does it look? Are people struggling? Do they look despondent or ragged?" I questioned.
We were still about an hour away from arriving at the city but I wanted to get as much information as I could. If the people looked like they were struggling then I needed to prepare myself accordingly.
The state of the people spoke to what kind of person took up leadership after arriving back on earth.
Having a base amount of strength and levels to back it up was a given. You had to have that much to even purchase a pylon, not everyone was given the opportunity to buy one at the end of the tutorial, but that didn't say anything of the character of the person leading.
Plus, I knew they made it through at least one wave of monsters when they planted the pylon and claimed the land. Still, that didn't mean much. There was a wide range of possibilities when it came to fighting a wave, as our tutorial could attest.
It had been over a month since our return, they could have built the palisade first and then claimed the land for all I knew. That would have lessened the strength needed to defeat the wave along with other defenses that could have been built.
Hal and Austin both didn't see anything else in the defenses department but that didn't mean they weren't there. They could be hidden or been destroyed during the wave.
The amount of people down there also could have been the reason they defeated the wave. A few thousand could have handled the early levels of pylons with enough ease and there were more than enough down there to do so, even if they were all under leveled.
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All of that ran through my head as we overlooked the city.
"They look fine from what I can tell. Most are working on more buildings but there is a steady line of people leading off into the distance." Austin answered with an accompanying point.
"Which direction are they headed in?"
"Northeast,"
Unrolling the map and holding it out for all of us to see revealed the reason. After hitting more landmarks and getting better at reading the topography, we were able to pinpoint our location with greater accuracy. After leaving the dungeon, it was easy to track where we were on the map as we traveled.
Having that higher degree of accuracy, we were able to locate the dungeon off to the Northeast that they were likely heading off to.
We stood and chatted about a few other things, but it didn't amount to all that much. There was only so much we could decipher from here and we would only know the situation once we got there.
Joining back up and hauling my cart to catch up, we traveled on.
We were a large group of people just shy of 100 strong which made us easily spotted not long after we descended the hill. Scouts who were looking out for monsters easily picked up on our presence.
I took it as a good sign that they didn't seem to be surprised at our appearance. They had probably dealt with refugees over the past month and we were just another group coming into the city.
Nothing out of the usual happened as we approached but one thing did occur as we reached the gate. The gate was manned by a trio of what I assumed were guards.
We were still a bit early into the transition for my mind to immediately think of gate guards rather than bouncers but that was slowly changing.
"One copper per person to enter the gate, and the carts stay outside." The man standing in front of the gate said with the two others backing him up.
For some reason, I hadn't expected there to be a fee to enter the city. In hindsight, that should have been something I expected but I was still caught off guard.
Another thing it brought up was not all of us could enter. If the carts couldn't enter, people would need to stay with them and keep watch. I didn't expect this to be a city of thieves but leaving them in the open was just asking to come back to them gone.
We had already had a run-in with theft and that was within the caravan.
"Hal, do you and Rachel mind staying with the Caravan?" I asked.
Both gave a nod and that problem was dealt with. The next one was forking over the coins for all of us.
The guards didn't feel very strong and I could have just barged in without paying but that wasn't a very good introduction. I wasn't out to act a fool and neither did I want it known I behaved that way.
It was dishonorable.
The only reason I felt that would be justifiable would be if the fee had been outrageously high, but even then we didn't need to get into the city. It was just a nice place to stop for a while and restock.
There was a hope to sleep on actual beds but that didn't seem likely. With the amount of people that milled about compared to the number of permanent structures, there weren't going to be beds for us to sleep in.
I had a thought to pay for the whole caravan but dismissed it. With our time spent at the dungeon, everyone had their own coins to spend. Even Sarah had made a few on the first level of the dungeon and she was the lowest level in the caravan. Plus, it wasn't like they needed to enter the city.
If they wanted to, they could pay for it themselves.
Abigail walked over and paid for most of the family from our grouped funds and the guard actually counted them out. It added to the time it took and was slightly frustrating, but we waited to be waved in before we entered.
Without the cart, the only thing in my possession was my hammer and I expected some kind of restriction as I walked in about it but it never came. Everyone outside of the walls ambled around with some kind of weapon strapped to them which made them common, but a part of me still expected to be told that I couldn't bring them in.
I was glad that didn't happen as that was a bigger issue than paying the coin to enter. I wasn't going to let anyone make me remove my weapon. It wasn't like I needed my hammer, I could easily make another with the practice I had put into making Ice, but it was the principle of the matter.
I wasn't going to let anyone deprive me of my weapon.
Luckily, there were no other restrictions and we were allowed entry into the 'city.'
It was hard not to put mental air quotes around 'city' because it was a far cry from a real one. The houses looked solidly built but they were few in number. Other than those, not a lot of buildings occupied the area.
As densely populated as we predicted the area to be, there weren't a lot of structures to be had. Other than their number being few, the construction looked well in hand.
What had been built looked sturdy and orderly. The placement wasn't haphazard or undirected. Stakes in the ground with different colored ribbons demarked one area from another as people placed materials here and there.
I didn't know what the colors meant, but it was easy to tell that someone had a hand in planning this.
We had seen the logging effort going on as we neared the city and there was a constant stream of logs and other materials entering the city to aid in construction. What surprised me was there weren't any stones traveling about.
The camp had so far been made of logs hewed into planks instead of the stone I somewhat expected. What little there was flowed up from the Earth by dedicated Earth mages.
As we shuffled through the marked-off streets, we got a look at the reason there wasn't stone anywhere else.
As the center of the camp, blocked from view initially, stood a large keep under construction. It looked similar to the ones from our tutorial in size and it seemed to be the inner area of the city.
It wasn't hard to locate where to find the resident lord and the reason there wasn't stone anywhere else.
Our pace slowed as we took in the sights and it was hard not to stare at what was happening around us. We had done this ourselves during the tutorial but it was different seeing it on this level.
Everywhere, people labored on this or that. Saws and hatchets broke logs into planks. Chisels and hammers carved the planks into shape before others hauled them off to where they were needed.
The construction effort was strong and skills flashed abound. The numerous builders raising buildings so fast progress was visible to the naked eye.
If we had been a month later, it seemed like the city would be filled rather than the sparse collection it was now.
"Alright," Abigail's voice pulled me away from watching people work, "We need to find a Merchant around here, get some food and supplies. Maybe check out if they have anything else for sale. I don't expect much but it can't hurt to look."
When the city first came into sight, we had aimed toward it subconsciously. It wasn't until someone asked the question that we realized we didn't have a specific reason to enter it.
We had most of the supplies we needed already in the carts and we had foraged for everything else. Hal and a few other Rangers were good hunters and our food supply was steady so it wasn't like we were low.
Curiosity was what drove most of us but there was also the practical reason. We had no way of knowing what was inside the city without entering ourselves.
There was bound to be something we needed to pick up that was available and if nothing else, it was a learning experience in how people ran cities now that the world changed.
Still, as we walked, it was hard not to feel a sense of familiarity with what I was seeing.
Almost like deja vu.