"What's wrong?" Garan asked, crawling down to kiss her bare shoulder. He placed several kisses to various parts of her shoulders and neck, and his wife buried her soft hands in his hair.
"Someone declared war on Iron Valley," she said, making Garan pause a little. He lifted his body a bit and placed a chaste kiss on her forehead before he sat up, knowing they had a job to do.
They really weren't surprised in the end. After all, Guia Village was a very rich village—and everyone knew this. They thrived on this reputation.
Alterra earned a lot of resources from winning alone.
Unlike the poor Fargo Village that gave her a few hundred gold for taking over, Guia gave her a few thousand just for winning it, let alone taking over its warehouse.
What Althea didn't know yet was that she was very lucky because of her timing. If the war had been a few days later, she'd have gotten even less than what she got from Fargo.
This was because, if Guia attacked a little later, then they'd have given much of their resources to a certain city—as it always did—and then give a small portion of the remaining to Ferrol, which was its 'master' town, at least on paper.
Of course, this was something that they'd find out much, much, later. For now, they had to prepare for the war at hand.
The couple sat up to get dressed, with Althea turning off the sound blocker (which they used to avoid disturbing the babies) and prepared for a very early start for the day.
They didn't sound the alarm in Alterra, simply because the war was far away to another territory. From where they were, only Althea could really do anything that could affect the other territory.
She witheld the announcement in Iron Mountains as well, opting to do what she could first. Anyway, they'd need their rest for what was to come.
The enemies that could attack it were naturally strong enough to think it could win over Guia without its Lord, and they didn't want them too prepared so Garan and Althea decided not to do anything with it until they received the attack notice.
They considered upgrading a lot in favor of hoping the enemy would be intimidated, but that would just delay the fight until the enemy felt they were ready enough. When would that be? When they were stronger? During the heat wave?
Now that the announcement was sent, Althea immediately sat up and opened her panel, and began with the upgrades.
Anyway, she got thousands of gold from Guia, which she'd use to improve the whole thing. She would wake up the citizens in a couple of hours, which was plenty of time for the war that'd happen in the middle of the day.
"It's interesting how they chose to fight in the middle of the day. Did they really not feel the heat?" She mumbled as she pretty much drained out Guia's money for its upgrade.
Hey, this was fun. It was like splurging, but with other people's money.
If the person who was supposed to receive the money was to know about her splurge, they might just pop a few veins.
But that was a story for later.
Anyway, she amusedly clicked and ordered and splurged—ah, so fun—in the middle of the night.
The citizens would be quite surprised when they woke up.
The people of Iron Mountains were woken up by the announcement that they would be attacked in six hours!
"Jerk! He announced when we only have a few hours left to prepare!"
"At least they warned, I heard some territories don't bother!"
"But still, our lord isn't a level 30 elementalist anymore!"
The people in the house were silent, and some had indeed begun to pack up again.
They stayed because, despite having a much weaker administrative team, the entries and fees had become much more affordable. But what were savings when you were a slave?!
It was just that when they went out of the house—was it just them or was it becoming a little warm—the territory had changed a lot. Gill and the others had also moved around to see the changes.
"Are we in the same place?"
They also saw a lot of people just gaping around them in a daze.
There were a lot of changes, and it could be said that Alterra really spent a lot of money into the improvements.
Of course, Xeno wasn't some infrastructure game where Althea could just move buildings around. Althea had to retain most of the village.
Fortunately, there were plenty of abandoned buildings because they were either occupied by Baltimore's men, dead people, or people who had left as soon as they realized that Guia had fallen.
This gave some flexibility to Althea, giving her the choice to demolish them.
In those places, she either took it down for some manual construction later on (she really wished she could at least place her custom buildings there, but alas), or turned them into parks, also to be planted with trees later after the war.
She might also add some underground construction underneath a few of them in the future.
The streetscape was also changed. The current 6-meter wide streets added a 2-person mountable sidewalk on each side, with provision for trees or shrubs.
They could not add trees and islands without planting them manually, but the holes provided were big enough to plant young trees later on. If she blocked the Beast Carts at the peripheries (there were rarely some in villages, anyway), then the road should be wide enough for now.
In the future, there would be more dorms and buildings, leaving more and more open spaces to play with, and making the place seem a lot airier. Silvia reckoned that after the war and the heat wave, they would probably have a few more improvements.
The most notable changes were, of course, the walls.
Many citizens ran to see and touch it in shock.
"It's really a Level 5 wall?!" one yelled and then they looked up to see sentries within eye range of each other!
When did such big change occur?!