After Surviving the Apocalypse, I Built a City in Another World
Chapter 1437: Kids and Maturity (Part 2)

Chapter 1437: Kids and Maturity (Part 2)

Reaching twelve years of age was a major milestone in a child’s life, whether they were Terran or aborigine. Twelve years old was the age in which most children had entered puberty, or the developmental stage.

In Xeno, this meant their bodies would also be able to handle more aether. For elementalists, this meant even more. This was why Alterra’s military department started a new program to train these children well in a well-balanced environment.

At twelve years old, children would be taken part in the age group wherein they’d be battling lower-level monsters and finally begin leveling up more.

It was not to say they hadn’t been levelling up, of course. After all, a lot of them had been fighting even before they entered Alterra. However, their levels would be limited to about level 5 or 6 before that.

If they went past that, according to the Golds, there was a tendency for the child to fall ill often. If they leveled up too quickly, it could even lead to death.

There had been many cases where nobles wanted their children to be the most powerful among their peers, so what better way to do this than to start them early? Sadly, they became case studies for what not to do.

Further, due to the slowness of news propagation, a lot of children had perished before their parents even found out about this information. It was just tragic, and this was something happening even at present.

Anyway, in Alterra—as was the case with many territories nowadays—twelve was the age the kids could start pushing for the level above 5, and eventually to level 10, though it’d take a while.

One of the advantages they saw of starting early was that the foundation would be much more solid. As such, they added a few more units in the battle classes for the high school class, and also added a few for those above 12 years old.

The Barracks set different programs of training for each youth age group. Although not everyone would become guards in the end, the trend in Alterra was that everyone would lend their force one way or another. Basically, everyone must be able to defend themselves!

Those in the high school level would be called Young Sentinels, and they would already be joining actual guards in clearing the vicinity. Most of their school time would be dedicated to battling outside. Along with these lessons were some basic life skills and survival skills, and the like.

The younger ones, aged 12 through 16, would be called the Little Valors. They would still have a lot of classes in school and take normal classes. Their training would also be limited in the barracks area, where they would lock in weaker monsters for training.

Since the upgrade, there was a huge unwalled area outside the main walls that could be built on. They made corrals there to contain weaker monsters for training.

Rian, Rasso’s son, was in this tier. Neither boy had awakened a fighting profession yet, but they had classes familiarizing them with each weapon.

When the Little Valors reached the high school level, they would then choose one or two weapons they preferred to take more advanced classes on.

After all, the best choice was made if one understood all of the choices. They wanted to give that privilege to their younger generation.

At this time, the young ones were lining up to deal with the level 1 through 3 monsters. This would be the first time they’d be dealing with monsters again on their own, at least outside of their first encounters in the wild.

Although there were a lot of stronger monsters in regions around Towns, monster fecundity lowered as they grew stronger, like how it was for humans.

So when the territory was attacked by mobs, there were also a lot of them in the weaker stratum, which was just enough to train the weaker ones as long as the stronger ones wouldn’t become problems.

The monster corralles were level 2 walls, too, so they were quite sturdy. To calm the monsters down, they simply had to throw carcasses of their kind in and they’d be sated for a while. It also worked better if they threw in carcasses of slightly stronger monsters.

While Alterrans would take most of the monsters as loot, there was still a lot of ’wastage’ and these corrals ended up becoming trash bins where they could throw these things in.

At the same time, the monsters wouldn’t stay alive for long anyway, so the turnover was relatively efficient.

The Trainor today was Sammy. The monsters today were the Gnomos, the green giant rats with short tails that were pretty common in their area.

"Okay, kids! This is it! I’m sure you missed going against monsters after so long, yeah?"

Quite a few shook their heads.

Sammy’s lips twitched, pointing at the collection of weapons at the side. They were all Class D weapons made with iron. This was the time the kids would choose their weapons of choice, at least for the day.

Rian’s weapon of choice was the spear.

There was also Sheldon, Sheila’s 13-year-old brother, in that class, though he was very meek and often ran away from the monsters. He was a bit of work, but they didn’t give up on him.

He definitely wasn’t guard material, though. There were just people who were not fit for this kind of life.

No one bullied or looked down on him because of this, of course. Unlike other places, strength wasn’t the only gauge of value in Alterra. There were plenty of people who were respected because they excelled in other fields.

In fact, there were quite a few stories in the streets wherein an aborigine who had been looked down on by his peers developed a talent elsewhere, turning his life around.

In Alterra, just the prospect of all these options encouraged the atmosphere of respect among its citizens, which was actually quite a fascinating thing to observe.

Still, as per the rules, everyone must go through this. At the very least, they wanted to train the children’s grit and responses—just so they could save their own lives as needed.