A Settlement (Part 1)

The adventurer, although previously just on this planet with the sole purpose of hunting down beasts for their mana cores, had stumbled across a student who was alone on this planet. Upon finding out that she was stranded, he eventually decided to help her out.

'She asked for me to support her while she would hunt stronger grade beasts, and i did just that. This girl, she must've used all of her energy reserves since she came here. She didn't even consider how long she would be here. She spent all of her energy recklessly.

'And now, she's at risk of dying if she doesn't eat something soon. Mana can only do such much in terms of supporting the human body, it can't be a substitute for food,' he thought to himself. After travelling for a while through the jungle-like planet, he eventually arrived at what could only be described as a living settlement.

There were houses scattered all across, kids playing on the paved roads, markets and other small establishments scattered all over. Nowadays, many people had chosen to seek shelter on the planets that had been discovered from various human expeditions. After a considerable amount of this planet had been explored, and it was safe to say that the planet was habitable for such people, those who wished to live on planet went ahead and did just that

Living on other worlds was quite similar to life on Earth. One would go about their daily activities, however, from time to time, depending on the circumstances, beast hordes would attack the settlement. During times like this, the people would rely on hired help from adventurers to help protect the settlement.

Living on other planets was quite dangerous, but despite this, many had chosen a life away from Earth. There are many reasons for this, one of it being the general cost of living. Even amongst the lowest class of society, there were those who were at least able to afford a fairly decent life in the harsh economy.

And then, there were those who were far below the very bottom of the barrel. They couldn't even afford scrap to live a decent enough life on Earth. Cost of feeding, clothing, shelter, and even education for their children. Most of the people who had chosen to live on other planets, they were simply far too poor to continue living on Earth, and the current government system would not tolerate people who could not keep up with the standards they had set.

Such people would end up in trouble with the authorities for one reason or the other. It could be failure to pay tax, or maybe even something like inability to pay their children's tuition fees. Crimes such as these were punishable by the government by jail time. And, if such an individual were to commit a more serious crime, then a more serious punishment would be delivered.

In essence, social status and influence determined the way the government and other individuals viewed them, and since they were barely managing to survive, there was heavy prejudice towards them.

Even now, on this planet, the living structures that had been constructed were mainly built using locally accessible materials such as wood. Using whatever resources they could get their hands on, these people had managed to create a home for themselves, one where they didn't have to deal with thr harsh demands of the government for living on Earth. Though here they still have fines to pay, but they were the bare minimum when compared to what they were expected to pay for living on their home planet.

This settlement was headed by the man who had guided them all to construct the living sanctuary in the first place, and currently, he was the one that Red Band was heading to upon passing through the barrier of the settlement. The barrier was created using a tracker class ability, and although the ability user wasn't that strong, the barrier still also served as a means of concealment, making it so no one and nothing from the outside of the barrier would even notive that there was a settlement in the first place.

This concealment feature had allowed the people of this village to lived in peace for most of the time they had been living on the planet, but from time to time, the typical beast horde would Strom through the path leading to the settlement, breaking through the barrier and destroying everything that came into their view.

It would be chaos. Almost all the settlement's inhabitants were normal human beings who didn't possess an ability. Amongst them all, the only one who had an ability was the leader of the village. This was part of the reason why they had decided to follow him and give him the title of their leader. They would always obey his orders, doing everything he told them to, the reason for this being the fact that he was the key to their survival, whether they liked it or not.

Their basic needs, he was the one responsible for it. Using his connections from Earth, he would provide them with what they needed. A lot of them wondered why he was doing it in the first place. He was better than them. He could afford to live a much easier life back on Earth, but still, he decided to help them, despite knowing that it would not only stain his reputation, but they were all a major liability to him.

They were grateful, but to some extent, they were also wary of his actions and intentions.

Upon making it to the barrier that separated the settlement from the rest of the planet, all he had to do was press his palm against thr barrier, and a small opening would appear, allowing him entry into the village.

He walked through the paved road, looking at all the children that were happily playing outside. They all had smiles on their faces as they ran around, chasing each other. One of them, a little girl, was laughing freely as she ran through the road. Not paying attention to where she was running to, she ended up bumping into something hard and crashed to the ground. The rough ground scratched against her skin, leaving the area cut and bruised.

She began to cry, causing the other children to turn their heads and see who had made her cry. Meanwhile, Red Band kept on walking towards where the head of the settlement resided in. Since he was regarded as the savior of the people, he lived in the biggest building structure in the settlement, built higher than all the others, towering above everything else in the village.

His living quarters was at the centre of the settlement, fortunately for him, it wasn't something too big that it would take him long to get to. He could have just flown there using his lightning, but he didn't want to scare the inhabitants of the village, he was also scared of accidentally destroying things in the process.

On foot, he was able to run to his desired destination in a matter of minutes, and now, he stood before the largest structure in the settlement. The buildings on this planet weren't built similarly to how regular buildings were constructed back on Earth. Since the area around them was composed of forst and forest vegetation, they had decided to copy thr model that olden days Western kids would implement during their early years of growing up as a means of recreation.

In other words, they had constructed, and also, inhabiting tree houses in the settlement. All pf the buildings had been constructed on trees, leaving little to nothing to be built on the forest floor. The trees on which the buildings had been constructed were reinforced by the tracker class barrier ability as well, making it stronger than it needs to be to support a wooden building and the people that resided within. The logic behind this was simply that they couldn't be too cautious about the way they wanted to go about doing things.

This structure was also built on a large tree. Placibg Kayla's unconscious body over hiw shouldn't, he channelled his mana to his hands, allowing him to have a much stronger grip ob the bark of the tree, thus aiding him to climb the tree with easy. There was no ladder or anything similar to like that on the tree, meaning that ordinary people couldn't get into the treehouse. Only those with abilities could do so.

Plus, the people didn't even have other means of entering the structure themselves, since there was yet another barrier placed right on the door that would stop unwanted visitors for gaining entry into the living space.

'I hope that guy isn't in a bad mood today,' Red Babd thought, climbing the tree.

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I hope you all enjoyed the chapter. If so, then feel free to support this story and make it popular. I am currently struggling with posting consistently, but i will do what i can to keep this story going.