My Apocalypse Domain

Chapter 21: Time to Reveal the Tip of the Domain’s Iceberg

Lu Xiaopeng and his classmates felt like they were seeing things.

“What is this? Is it some strangely shaped demonized beast?!”

“Maybe it’s a product of underground science? Has the era of robots arrived?!”

“Can underground science produce such advanced robots? Look at those two iron-skinned monsters! Their movements are so smooth, and there’s no fixed trajectory, and the joints are also very flexible. This is way more advanced than the robots developed before the apocalypse. Even though many new materials have appeared and some technological fields are rapidly advancing, it’s still impossible to produce robots like these… so there can be only one explanation! This should be the ability of some ability user!”

“Ability user!” someone softly cried out.

Ability users were incredibly rare, essentially mythical existences. Some survivors hadn’t even heard about ability users before!

Ability users had special abilities that could come in all sorts of forms, powerful and bizarre.

The existence of these abilities seemed to be meant to break open the coffins of scientists. It seemed like any sort of ability was possible.

They found the idea that this was the work of an ability user rather easy to accept.

…

The twilight was as calm as water.

The vacation villa was undergoing repair. On their way up, Lu Xiaopeng could occasionally see a few survivors working away, but he saw even more of those strange automatons.

Upon being noticed by the survivors here and stating who they were, Lu Xiaopeng and his classmates decided to live here.

The reason was very simple. Here, one could exchange work for food.

In the apocalypse, where food was sorely lacking, it was already good enough to get some return for one’s efforts. And when they learned that they could not only get food for their work, but even some meat if they worked particularly hard, they began to lick their lips, their eyes widening.

The last few days had been very difficult, and they had been forced to ration their food so that they weren’t even able to eat their fill.

Lu Xiaopeng felt that this had to be the reason he hadn’t been able to defeat that Demonized Wolf.

He was intensely looking forward to dinner. He had worked hard for food, not even remembering if he had hauled ten-some or some tens of carts full of stone. He had already made a routine out of it.

In the center of the small square in front of the villa area stood the bust of a Greek woman, as tall as a man and carrying the style and curve unique to Greece.

But Lu Xiaopeng was focused less on the bust and more on the small mountains of stone slabs piled up in front of the idol.

The rather spacious square felt crammed and messy.

Lu Xiaopeng spotted another survivor, an ‘elder’ of the shelter.

He greeted him and asked, “Do you know what all the stone we transported will be used for?”

This survivor, who was pushing a cart full of rubble, shook his head. “I’m not sure either. In any case, so long as you work, you can eat rather well.”

He recognized Lu Xiaopeng as the new Awakened who had come today. After some thought, he said, “Perhaps Chief Tang is planning to build something. Who knows? But Chief Tang definitely has a plan.”

“Maybe he plans to build an earthen wall? That would be pretty good. At least it would make the place feel safer. But an earthen wall won’t be able to stop many demonized beasts. You need a real wall, and I hear that large shelters have real walls and are extremely safe.”

“That’s true.” The survivor emotionally sighed. “But the walls of large shelters need considerable manpower and resources to build, and also all sorts of heavy-duty equipment. There’s no need for small shelters to even think about building walls like that. All we can do is gather resources and set up a simple defense line at most.

“But there’s no need to worry. With Chief Tang and his experts here, ordinary demonized beasts won’t be able to threaten the shelter.”

He was somehow comforting the Awakened Lu Xiaopeng.

“Experts, huh…”

Lu Xiaopeng was rather curious.

He had yet to see Chief Tang, but he had met an iron tower of a man who had given off an intense pressure. Apparently, this man was one of Chief Tang’s closest aides, though there was no telling how strong he was.

But Lu Xiaopeng was still worried about the shelter’s safety.

This place had come under attack from a demon flood, so would it come under another demon flood attack?

Could they be endangered while they were sleeping?

While Chief Tang’s men might be strong, the shelter itself had no defenses or any sort of warning system.

He expressed his concerns, but the survivor laughed. “One night, we were attacked by demonized beasts, but can you guess what happened? An expert dropped from the sky and stomped the demonized beast to death. Even a demonized beast hiding on the side like some hidden assassin was killed by that expert.

“Chief Tang once said that as long you stay in the villa area, he can guarantee your safety. I didn’t believe it once, but I do now. Of course, I also hope that the shelter can set up a defense line that can be used to defend against demonized beasts, but with how few people we have in the shelter, we can only slowly work on it.”

Lu Xiaopeng nodded. This was truly a predicament for the shelter. Right now, all they could hope for was that these stone chunks could be used to build a sturdy earthen wall.

At this time, a shout came from the villa area’s entrance.

Chen Haiping came out from inside with a megaphone. “Everyone, listen up! Everyone is to withdraw past the yellow line! Again, everyone is to withdraw past the yellow line!”

Lu Xiaopeng was taken aback, and when he looked at the ground, he saw that there really was a yellow line on the ground, starting from the small square at the entrance of the villa area and extending to the left and right. It seemed like it was meant to encircle the entire villa area.

What was going on?

…

On the top-floor balcony of the castle, Tang Yu leaned against the railing and allowed the breeze to caress him.

Standing here, he could see the entire villa area in the weak glow of the twilight.

The castle was no longer that two-floor, pocket-sized affair. Now that it had been upgraded to Level 2, it covered a greater area and was now five floors tall, appearing even more magnificent.

Tang Yu cared less about the evolution of the castle and more about the boundaries of the domain.

The Level 2 domain, centered on the castle, covered more than half of the vacation villa and reached all the way into the mountains to the north. Through the domain map, Tang Yu could even see the other side of the mountain, where there were many hostile red dots. Those were probably the demonized beasts in the mountains.

It was much more dangerous in the mountain forests, and it wasn’t just because of the demonized beasts. Creatures from before the apocalypse had been affected by the red mist and evolved into demonized beasts, but a small number had not been demonized. Rather, in the cruel struggle, they had survived and mutated… the mutants.

Besides that, after the apocalypse, plants began to grow like crazy and all sorts of unknown objects began to appear. Tang Yu wouldn’t find it strange if he came upon some strange and dangerous locales, but correspondingly, the more complex and unfathomable the location, the more likely it was to find something good within. The Origin Crystal vein that Wang Tai had discovered was located in this mountain range.

He had sent Roger and Yilian to investigate the mountain forest. They had found that there were many more demonized beasts in the forest than outside, and the terrain was also much more complicated. Mining that Origin Crystal vein would be an arduous task.

“I should focus on the domain’s development first.”

The domain currently had a formidable fighting force that was enough to ensure safety under normal circumstances.

But it was only a few days ago that the demon flood had struck. Tang Yu was worried that this would happen again.

The domain currently had few buildings and more ruins. It was even worse than the worst of the small shelters, let alone the appearance a proper domain should have had.

Tang Yu opened the building menu and rested his eyes on the option ‘Defensive Buildings – Walls’.

“It’s time to reveal the tip of the domain’s iceberg.”