Chapter 1226: Underground City

Seeing that some of them were planning to run immediately once they saw that her attack failed, s.h.i.+ro sighed deeply and stomped her foot down.

Suddenly, a wall of mana erupted around them, blocking off their exit.

"Did you not hear what I said? I just want to talk. Now, I know what you're thinking. Oh I'm here to kill everyone because I'm evil. But I can a.s.sure you, I am not here to do that." s.h.i.+ro explained.

Waiting for their response, s.h.i.+ro's eyebrow started to twitch since no one was replying to her. It was akin to talking to a brick wall.

"Do any of you have a leader or someone I can talk to? I'm being honest here. I'm not here to fight you." s.h.i.+ro ma.s.saged her eyes as she couldn't be bothered to keep up her act if none of them were going to humour her.

"If you just want to talk, why are you disguising yourself as s.h.i.+ro?" One of them shouted out.

"Pardon?" s.h.i.+ro blinked her eyes in confusion.

"If you were truly here to talk, you wouldn't disguise yourself as her to gain our trust!"

Standing still, s.h.i.+ro was trying to register what she just heard.

"Wait wait wait. So you're telling me, the other me has your trust? As in the one that had to burn down a village?" s.h.i.+ro scratched her head.

'Nimue are you hearing everything right now???'

{I am. Seems like there are more layers to this than we antic.i.p.ated. But there's no denying that s.h.i.+ro. C did indeed burn down a village. Do you think maybe she had her own circ.u.mstances?}

'Maybe. We'll probably get some answers if we talk to them some more.'

"Okay, before we talk about what the other me has done. I want you to believe that one, I am not disguising myself as her. We are basically the same person but from different worlds. Two, I have a group of civilians above ground and I hope that some of them can seek safety here. We came to this location due to a map we found and repaired." s.h.i.+ro explained as they looked at each other hesitantly.

From what they saw earlier, if s.h.i.+ro really wanted to kill them, she could have done so rather easily. There's no need to go out of her way like this.

"Alright, we'll operate the elevators. While we do that, please follow me." A red-haired youth said as s.h.i.+ro nodded her head.

As she was following him, s.h.i.+ro couldn't help but marvel at the underground city that they had created. Even without looking at the code, s.h.i.+ro could tell that the materials used for building the houses were still rather fresh in the grand scheme of things. Ancient cities, even after being restored, would still exhibit signs of age.

Most of the houses in this city/safe house was embedded into the walls with large bridges connecting major buildings together to one another.

While there was no natural light from the surface, s.h.i.+ro could see strange glowing crystals that radiated with a blue glow, blanketing the whole city in a soft blue light.

The 'streets' of the city had warm orange lights that highlighted the road. The contrast of soft blue light above and warm orange glows below reminded her of a city in the night.

"So how did you lot find this place? From what I can tell the only thing natural here is the large cavity in the earth." s.h.i.+ro asked curiously.

"You really aren't her huh?" The youth glanced back as s.h.i.+ro shrugged.

"No, I am not. Though honestly, I'm a little curious about what all of you think of the s.h.i.+ro of this world."

"Where should I start" He muttered while thinking to himself for a little while.

"I don't know the full story since I wasn't born when it all happened. But if you want, I'll tell you what we have been taught. Honestly, the elders can probably give you a better idea of what happened than I can."

"I don't mind. It'll make the journey there interesting." s.h.i.+ro encouraged as he nodded his head.

"So according to the history books, the world wasn't like it was right now. Everyone lived above ground and could wander the lands freely. However, that came to an end when waves of energy started to pulse out from the planet's core. The mana within people started to run rampant as any spells they tried to cast would cancel out or backfire.

"It was unsure how long things lasted but eventually, people started to fuse when they came into contact with one another, creating the monstrosities that roam the lands now. Our ancestors had collaborated to find out what was happening in hopes of discovering a cure

As s.h.i.+ro listened intently to the youth's retelling of history, she could tell that he was skipping out on a lot of detail due to bad memory. But she got a rough understanding of the timeline.

After the pulse of energy turned people into monsters, those that had more mana than others were lucky and managed to survive. They quickly set up a network thanks to a genius mage. She was the tower master of the greatest mage tower and was responsible for a lot of the advancements they made today.

They had discovered that the pulse was to weed out the weak and those who could not stand against the pulse were turned into the 'strong'.

Several leaders of the alliance set out across the world to create as many safe houses as possible so that humanity could survive. Despite what a lot of people said, the safe houses underground worked, and they were free from the pulses that could turn them into monsters.

During this time, they set up relays that helped them transfer supplies between safe houses.

The current safe house was one that was set up by s.h.i.+ro. C. Even though she was technically working for the other side, she had tried her best to save as many as she could and sent them towards this safe house.

She would supply as much as she could while making sure the existence of this safe house was hidden from the enemies.

Recently however, she hasn't been appearing as often as before and that was when the current s.h.i.+ro showed up.

"Hmm I see. Thank you." s.h.i.+ro smiled as the youth nodded.

"I never focused much on history when I was in school so this was about as much as I can remember. Like I said, the elders can give you a better recounting on what had happened. What I told you was just the surface levels of history." He shrugged.

"We've arrived. The elders are inside, they've been expecting you."

Stepping aside, the youth stood by the doors.

Glancing at him briefly, s.h.i.+ro couldn't help but notice a hint of annoyance every time he glanced towards the doors.

'Seems like he dislikes them. Though considering the fact that I didn't see them at all and the elder's building is the furthest from the entrance, they might've done this so they can escape quicker.' s.h.i.+ro thought to herself.

{Eurg, so they're probably annoying old b*stards with one foot in the grave then.} Nimue frowned.

'It's just a guess. Nothing concrete.'

Waving her finger, the doors opened by themselves as s.h.i.+ro stepped into the elder's hall.

The hall itself was majestic and reminded her of the depictions of King Arthurs round table. There were 5 seats elevated on a platform with statues behind each seat.

The first statue was holding onto a sword that was stabbed into the ground with a s.h.i.+eld on their back.

The second was a mage, the third was a rogue with two daggers. The fourth was someone who looked like a healer. They had vials strapped to their waist and the mark of the healer on their jacket.

The last statue was a smiling man with hair like a lion's mane. He had sharp canines and wielded a giant axe on his shoulders.

"Welcome honoured guest. We had been informed of your sudden arrival and the request of having multiple survivors enter our city, is that right?" The elder in the middle asked as s.h.i.+ro nodded. It seemed like he was the head of the five elders.

"Yep. I'm just here to drop some people off before I go look for a comrade of mine. So do you think you can accommodate them?" s.h.i.+ro asked.

She was going to try to keep a good relations.h.i.+p with them for now since she'd rather not make life hard on the survivors if they were going to stay here.

"Resources are stretching thin already. I'm not sure we can accommodate more mouths to feed. Short-term would pose no issue. But long term" The first elder frowned.

"I'm sure we can make do. We have plenty of farmland. With new additions, we'll be able to expand a little more and harvest more crops. It'll take a while to happen but we can push through the time it takes without issue." The third elder tried to persuade.

Before the discussion could get side tracked, the head elder cleared his throat.

"We can discuss the logistics of more survivors later. But let's focus on the topic at hand. What is a woman like you doing in this world? Especially one that came from the other side."