After Surviving the Apocalypse, I Built a City in Another World

A/N: Another case of ”could’ve been 2 Chapters if I added a few paragraphs”~ The day job is just so busy I couldn’t extend it more, even if it’s just a hundred words or so.

Anyway, on the bright side, as mentioned, this is much cheaper for you guys~ xD

...

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Back in the Pharmacy Department in the Research Center, Hoffen was giving compliments to his favorite apprentice.

”Interesting, so very interesting...”

They were now looking at an extremely interesting set of potions there. There were four, in transparent beakers, and they all had interesting, sublime differences from each other.

These were all originally the same Beast Attracting Potion that they usually produced. However, three of them had been changed using Althea’s [Elemental Integration], creating different effects for each one.

The first one was the control sample, and the ones next to it were the altered ones. She infused the three samples with an element of hers: wood, earth, or water.

It was fascinating how it changed or improved according to the element, and she had a clearer idea of what each of her elements could do. For one, the principle that ’similar things attract’ applied here.

The wood and earth elements could attract the ones in the potion, making its effect more... intimate and difficult to wash out.

The water element could also help spread it out farther, strengthening its effect.

Then, when mixed together without doing anything else, these effects would combine without decreasing, simply because the ’base’ potion was the same!

In theory, this Beast Attracting potion should have an effect several times better than the control sample, and she didn’t even have to do much!

”This is really impressive,” Hoffen said, very sincerely. ”Have we tested it yet?”

She shook her head.

”I only made two bottles of each and gave them to Sir Gregory for testing,” she told him. They were going to a City anyway, and she wanted to see how that would go.

”I wonder how it went...”

...

Ever since she had the skill, Althea had been practicing it nonstop, as she usually was when she was obsessed.

Her only breaks were a bit of time with family and, of course, sleep, which only extended a few more hours than required because of her husband’s needs.

The past couple of weeks, she has been practising it in its intended form—potions.

It was how she found out it worked fastest when applied to existing formulas.

She just had to master the amount and timing to bind the elements—though it was much more potent when it was integrated from the start.

The past week, after the Beast Attracting potions, she also started working on the Beast Repelling potion.

Next up were Healing Potions and Mana Potions, which hadn’t made much progress yet because it was much more difficult to handle.

The former two were one of the easiest because they just depended primarily on different strata of scents. Basically, it was not that integral to the potion if she changed things up.

Health and Mana Potions, in contrast, had actual effects on the body.

When she varied it, the effects were reduced in some way rather than improved, and thus, leading to her stagnancy.

She tried different things: different elements, different combinations, and different timings.

While she had seen some success with the goldleaf elixir, earth core elixir, and the like, she was taking much too long and wasting too many materials every time.

For them to truly become valuable, she had to be able to produce more so that most of her fighters would have it in their spaces.

She wasted quite a few bottles of potions in her experiments. Some ’failed’ products were still usable though, so they were sent to the pharmacy as ’experimental potions’ with some estimates on what they would do.

The citizens could get it for free as ’clinical trial subjects’. However, they were required to tell the Research Team of its exact effects and side effects.

To be safe, she limited the sale to those with the same affinity as the potion. For example, only those with earth elements could take the earth-infused healing potion, and so on. There was still a lot of testing involved and they didn’t know what it’d do if there was an elemental clash.

After tons of wasted potions and raw materials, there was little progress with the latter two cases. At the same time, because her control over the elements had really improved, she believed that it wasn’t exactly a waste of time.

Anyway, she had been stuck in this for days, and it was difficult for others to help simply because their skill sets were completely different from hers.

Even Hoffen, because he was not an Elementalist, could only help so much. As smart as he was, his advice on the subject was limited.

In the end, she decided to put that aside for now.

One had to know the rules first in order to break them. Although she still had a lot to learn about its basics, she was too curious and decided to apply it to other disciplines.

While she was endlessly trying out the skill on her potions, she had begun to wonder how to apply the elemental liquid into a path.

Althea’s bouts of inspiration were relentless and would definitely stop her from sleeping if she didn’t even open up the faucet even by a little bit.

Because her time was limited and there were things that she had to sacrifice. For instance, she hadn’t touched arrays for weeks now. Perhaps, it was time to try again.

She wondered if she could use the skill on the magic tools she could create? Not that there were many... but perhaps this could add variety to it.

So, putting aside the potions angle, which she had been stuck on, she decided to create protection charms.

She had basically mastered this tool with how many she had created the past year. For the next few hours, she concentrated on making the tools while adding specific elements to it.

Before, she just had to create concentrated aether according to the skill she had learned and create patterns on the tool, arrays, which in turn would create the desired effect.

With the new skill, she could embed her specific elements into it. Speaking of this, the aether she had been using as a tool maker was the combination of all five elements.

Speaking of this, it was interesting. To become a toolmaker, one had to be an Elementalist. One only had to be able to control one element to control a line of aether, as if controlling a single strand of a coiled wire.

Similarly, because she could control three ’strands’ it was easier for her to control the whole thing, which made her a more effective toolmaker in the end.

Her eyes sparkled. She wondered what could come out of this...

...

To use only one or two elements in this application was to take certain poles, creating different effects from when it was an entire strand.

One might think it could lessen the effect because she was using a few ’strands’ instead of an entire string, but she discovered it was not necessarily the case.

Rather, if she could ’add’ new specific strands, she could add effects to it. Compared to the potions, she had a much better grasp of toolmaking by virtue of doing the same thing over and over again.

It was one of the few tools she could make, after all, and she made sure there were a lot in circulation—especially among her loved ones.

Another reason why it was easier to understand was that aether in toolmaking was straightforward. Metaphorically, it was a string—it was physical in a sense. In potions, it was chemical.

Understanding and actually applying it was not as straightforward as she’d have hoped, however.

It was actually much more difficult to integrate into solid objects, especially magic tools.

Sigh. Too difficult....

At the same time, it wasn’t hopeless simply because of her proficiency in making this single magic tool.

It was this that made the ’itch’ so difficult to ignore.

So she did not give up, and decided to commit a week to this experiment before moving on. She studied and experimented, and tried several methods, her own control increasing as time passed by.

Fortunately, just before the sixth day ended, she finally captured the ’feel’ and, a few more tries later, she succeeded with something.

[Created! Vine Exploder. A token that will passively absorb wood energy and, with the integration of any vine seed, would explode with vines to protect the owner from any threats. Energy will depend on wood energy absorbed, reusable with new seed.]

Wood was her most proficient element after all, so it wasn’t a surprise that it was her first successful element to integrate.

She smiled, heaving a breath of relief. It always felt good to take a step upwards. She wondered who to give this to for testing...

It was at this time that a knock on the door interrupted her thoughts.

She blinked, wondering who it was, until she heard milky voices on the other side.

A smile immediately graced her tired face, and she immediately stood up to greet them.

As soon as she opened the door, adorable faces with large eyes and reddish chubby cheeks greeted her sight.

”Mwamwaaaa!”

”Mamaaa!”

She giggled and immediately embraced them. She felt they were already a little heavier.

The slight weight shift—even if it just meant they ate a lot today—felt like a nudge on the head. After all, even after promising to spend more time with them, her obsessions would sometimes tend to make her forget.

Well, she once again had to remind herself that her children were growing so fast. Those potions and arrays could wait, even if just for a few days.

Obviously, she had reached her cap and, while she could spend more and more days on it and hope for the best, she had too many things going on in her life to flush time down the drain.

Time was the greatest of treasures; it was best not to waste it.