Chapter 291: The 'Awakened' Way Of Life

I let Olivia explain our situation to them and shared what we knew and understood about Anomalies and how they worked with them. Of course, she made sure to share what was safe to share only, keeping the more sensitive information to herself.

For now, we still have not decided if these people will be integrated into our World after all.

We just need them to understand what these Anomalies actually are and the fact that we came from another World.

We did not outright invite them to our World for now but left that possibility open if they should seek it.

On another note, the two other Dukes had introduced themselves as Evul’thi’ror for the woman and Nuul’kore for the other guy.

We decided to just call them Evul and Nuul which was way easier than their full name.

We were gathered in Khar’s sitting room for this and all three of them were looking at us with complicated expressions on their faces after the lengthy explanation we’ve given them.

The ice woman, Evul, fiddled with her hands, “Does this mean… Our world really is doomed?”

Olivia crossed her arms in front of her, “Unfortunately, unless you have the power to completely rid an entire world of these Anomalies… It would be close to impossible. You are already struggling with just a single portal that opened in this area… I do not think you would be able to deal with the other portals that have opened in other locations and you can’t clear them faster than they can spawn.”

Right… Because even if they manage to close this portal that appeared in this region, new ones could still appear to replace it and… Seeing that they were already struggling against one portal, I don’t think they can permanently save their World…

Nuul, the older and plump guy with the wind powers, looked like he was going through a mid-life crisis as he clutched at his head after hearing the new information.

Khar had a rather serious face before he turned to look at us, “Can we… Have some time to discuss this? Just… Just give us a few hours or so?”

Siti crossed her legs, “And what do you expect us to do in the meantime? Just wait around for you?”

“I… I have already arranged for my people to inform the rest of the city about your new status… You are free to walk around the city if you wish…”

Diana looked out of the window at the city below us before letting out a yawn, “Mmmm… Eh… I think I’ll just crash somewhere and take a nap or something instead.”

“Hmm… I think I will join you as well,” Siti hummed before turning to me. “What about you?”

I thought about it for a moment before nodding, “I would like to see the city for myself so I guess I’ll take them up on their offer to walk around the city for a little bit.”

Olivia bowed her head, “We shall follow you, my Lord.”

The two of them went off to the guest rooms to take their naps and I went back to the elevator to head to the ground floor.

I didn’t really have a destination in mind but I thought about just taking a walk around their city to see how they managed to keep this level of luxury despite the state of their World.

Because they clearly managed to make building materials and could even afford luxuries like textiles for their clothes too.

I’m also curious where they were getting their electricity from, whether they had their own source of power generation or they also figured out how to harness Mana Crystals for power. If it was the latter… It might mean there’s a Mana Crystal vein nearby.

Right now, we might know where one of the portals leading out of this World might be but the location of the Gatekeeper maintaining the portal to our World is still somewhere out there and we have no leads to it.

While that mountain could be a possible location for it, it is not a guarantee.

That… Plus the presence of a Commander Class Anomaly is definitely something we need to keep an eye out for.

We stepped into the lobby of the building and I noted that the staff there immediately bowed their heads when they saw us, completely different from how they had been treating us earlier.

Guess he wasn’t kidding when he said that he had already informed everyone else about our status.

One of them came up to me, “M… My lord… Is there somewhere you would like to go? We can escort you there…”

I figured that we might as well take them up on their offer since they will know where all the things are and could guide us to where we want to go.

“I want to see where your city produces its energy to power the city.”

The guy seemed surprised by my request but he did not protest and merely bowed his head again, “I understand… Please follow us.”

He guided us back outside where the sedan the guy had been using for himself was now set aside for me to use.

I also noted that there were two other cars behind which I presumed belonged to the other two Dukes which had been placed here in case Siti or Diana wanted to use them as well.

How thoughtful of them.

I climbed into the back with Olivia who just barely managed to squeeze herself into the back seat while my other Guardians got into the other cars before our convoy set off.

We drove close to the edge of the city near one of the cavern walls and I could hear the soft static hum of electricity being produced through the generators. But when I saw what exactly the production method of said electricity was… I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand.

There were literal wheels with people wearing rags walking inside them, the wheels driving the axle that was connected to a generator that was producing the electricity.

I blinked at the sight, “This… Is how you guys are powering your city?”

The driver at the front gave a curt nod, “It is one of the ways… The slaves turn the wheels which generate the power to light up the city.”

I turned back to look at the driver, “One of the ways? What are the other ways?”

“There’s… Also burning of fuels to heat up the air to drive the generators.”

“Ah… I’m guessing that’s the main source of power?”

“Yes, my Lord.”

I let out a soft sigh of relief, “So what’s the fuel you are using to burn?”

He answered without even batting an eyelid, “We have a few, one of them is burning biomass like burning the bodies of those monsters and also slaves who have lived out their use.”

My breath stopped in my throat as I almost choked on the new information I was given.

“What?”

“Ah, we have an incinerator further down that we would burn biomass as fuel to drive the generators. So any slaves that were close to death or dying… We just toss them in to burn. Sometimes we would also form raiding parties to head outside and search for more biomass to burn and there’s always a few of those slaves running around and hiding in whatever dark corner that they managed to find to form their little colonies.”

I sucked in a breath, “You guys… Go out to hunt for people… As fuel?”

“Well… We don’t go out of our way to do that of course. After all, the plants grow really fast so we mainly use those as biofuel most of the time. But on scavenging runs where we find those slaves hiding in a corner somewhere, there’s no reason not to take them back as manpower and fuel sources after all. The slaves would even get the honour of living inside this city that we built as well so they shouldn’t have anything to complain about.”

I was just completely at a loss of words for what I just heard.

When those survivors told me of how monstrous the so called ‘mutants’ were, I thought they were just power hungry assholes who use their new powers to oppress the others around them.

Turned out… I was completely underestimating what was actually going on here…

But… There’s no doubt that this was a really impressive city despite what they were using to get to this stage.

There was one question I wanted to know though…

“Don’t you guys have this All Taker who would take the bodies of the dead?” I asked.

The driver let out a soft chuckle, “Ah… That’s the old god. If we had to rely on the old gods to save us, we wouldn’t be in this position right now so there’s no reason to follow the past beliefs. We cannot afford to waste any possible resources.”

Huh…

I can’t believe that I’m saying this but… Very ironically, their ruthlessness in dealing with this topic ensured that there were no Anomalies transforming from their dead because their corpses would be incinerated as fuel before they could be changed into monsters.

Meanwhile… The survivors who were trying to be compassionate and moral are actually in the worst positions…

I don’t even know what I should do at this point after knowing so much…

I guess life really doesn’t deal in black and white here… It’s all just a matter of survival.

Guardian Maylene:

Hmm~ Hmm~ What interesting machines they have here! I have to note down everything! I wonder if I ask to allow me to tour the facilities, they would let me take a closer look? How do they reduce the loss of energy between the wheel and the axle for this energy generation to be effective? How does their burning of biomass work? There’s so many questions!