Era of the transmigrating earth-Chapter 2015: Gradually Sinking into Despair

Du You had been blocking off the Wildgrass Clan, without doing anything else. The head of the Wildgrass Clan always felt that the situation might not be so simple, but no matter how he thought about it, he couldn’t understand what the other party was up to.

The only thing that frustrated him was that the United Empire had built city walls on the ground, separating them, and underground walls as well, preventing them from crossing over. All five cities were completely sealed off, with no possibility of expansion.

Because all around them was the territory of the United Empire, any attempt to attack outward would be seen as an act of war.

Confined to a small area, with outsiders not coming in and insiders unable to go out, that was their current situation.

However, since nothing was happening, they decided to let it go, as no one else seemed to have any objections.

The most crucial point was that even though he wanted to do something now, it was impossible. In his view, such a gentle empire wouldn’t sustain itself for long even if established. Although his ambitions couldn’t be realized now, that might change in the future.

For now, he planned to learn from their experience. Once they collapsed, he would seize the opportunity to capture a large surrounding area. For now, their aim was simply to accumulate strength, nothing more.

And as a result of their example, some cities that were unwilling to join the Du You Empire and didn’t want to lose their rights also appeared.

Du You’s approach was the same as before, directly building walls at the borders to encircle them. This kind of project was large-scale for others, but not for Du You, as he could create a large number of craftsmen seemingly out of thin air. These craftsmen were quite skilled, and it would take at most half a year to build a siege wall.

Of course, that was because Du You lent them some earth attribute mage doppelgangers; otherwise, it wouldn’t have been so quick.

However, what they didn’t expect was that in the places they weren’t paying attention to, problems began to become serious. The first problems appeared in the Wildgrass Clan. Previously, with war, a large number of young adults were always in danger.

But now that there was peace and no more wars, those mercenaries couldn’t get what they wanted through fighting. Other than fighting, they didn’t know what else to do.

Some could endure and find work they could do, while others who couldn’t endure began to think of other ways.

Thus, certain special societal organizations began to form internally, using their force to obtain food or other things.

With no external pressure, internal conflicts gradually started to appear and grew rapidly. The once united civilians began to gradually turn against each other.

To practice military training, the five cities continued to recruit personnel and train them. The number of regular troops instead increased, putting more and more pressure on the clan. Training soldiers required vast sums of money and resources.

In the past, when everyone was fighting and people were dying constantly, no one paid attention to these issues.

But now, the officials managing the clan’s wealth started to get headaches. Initially, he thought he could solve it, but later he realized that they couldn’t continue expanding, and only then submitted the matter to the clan head.

After seeing all this, and after intense discussion, the conclusion was that they could not continue expanding the army.

If it weren’t for this, they wouldn’t have so many young adults with nowhere to go. More and more young adults focused on honing their combat skills, ultimately joining the organizations.

Those being bullied had to strive to train their strength to protect themselves anyway.

Thus, various armed conflicts started to occur frequently. Initially, everyone fought outside the cities, where it was now very safe with no threat of demons or anything else.

Eventually, conflicts began to emerge even within the cities.

Of course, this didn’t affect the upper class; the Wildgrass Clan, always aloof, hadn’t yet realized their foundations had issues. They were still immersed in learning from the United Empire’s experiences.

These kinds of problems could be suppressed. But the population issue couldn’t be suppressed and didn’t garner anyone’s attention. Although the wars ceased, people’s habits remained largely unchanged.

For instance, for the sake of population, everyone was frantically reproducing offspring, something no one could stop.

The result was that with no deaths, the number of children in families increased more and more. At first, it wasn’t noticeable, but after a few years, the population became uncontrollably large.

By that time, everyone had already developed the surrounding wastelands, planting crops. Since the area was large, everyone could hold on.

A few years later, as the population grew, employment became a very serious issue.

By then, the Wildgrass Clan’s upper class was frazzled, having never thought that livelihood issues would be this troublesome.

Eventually, someone suggested finding more jobs and providing more positions. So, they artificially proposed many originally useless projects to absorb these people as workers.

It seemed everything was progressing positively, but nobody realized that the biggest problem wasn’t this; it was the population growing wildly. A group of inexperienced upper-class individuals wouldn’t notice these issues.

In their consciousness, the more population, the better. Didn’t the United Empire also seem like this?

But they overlooked that their space was very limited and was becoming nearly unsustainable for so many people. A new profession that had never before emerged began to quietly appear—beggars.

The number of street beggars increased, initially meeting their survival needs, but later even this was not enough. So, these beggars began to form alliances, with conflicts growing more severe.

Finally, without knowing when, the first bloody conflict appeared. This incident seemed to suddenly open a new door for everyone. Physically eliminating others could grant oneself more resources and space.

Especially since the upper class neither intervened nor paid attention, it became even more so.

To them, a person dying wasn’t something they’d mind—hadn’t enough people died over the years? So, bloody conflicts began to spread, and fear began to grip the hearts of everyone inside the five cities.

People who originally had legitimate jobs found it harder to continue working due to the need for protection or harassment. As the population increased, production levels actually decreased.