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

A/N: New month again! Thank you soo much for always being with us~! Special hugs, as always, to the awesome folk who sent golden tickets, gifts, commented, and reviewed!

Special mention to last month’s (JANUARY 2026) top 3 Golden ticket golden gifters CircleO, Kaladin123, and Magnum932~! HUGS!

Thank you soo much!

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Before the master alchemists entered seclusion to find a cure. Althea asked them if they could release the formulas publicly.

Of course, to still consider the interests of the people who worked hard for the cure, it wouldn’t be entirely for free, and there would be a lot of conditions.

For example, they would carefully choose the territories to release the formulas to, and there would be some lump sum fees.

Their group would be too busy formulating and making the cure or at least a vaccine, and inhibitors and the like—that they already mastered—would take too much time and resources to create on the necessary scale.

They would only be able to handle their own territories, and even that was already proving to be a challenge.

Besides, if the plague spread further, then they would be in trouble as well. It was better to inhibit them early on, and this would allow others to stop it before it spread further to them. Why not make others carry that burden?

After some discussion, they decided to give the formulas to Holt City in the West (as per agreement) and sell them Warrior City in the East.

In the South, they chose Avel City, through the Takoda Mercenary Team, which had already transformed from a mid-to-low level mercenary team in their city, to a sought-after one even before this.

That said, since it was basically giving a monopoly to others in their respective regions, Alterra put forth a condition that they would not make the purchase too prohibitive.

They could profit, yes, but they could only price it a maximum of three times its cost, though that varied per area since raw material availability varied as well.

Otherwise, they could sell to others, too, and that would break their monopoly as well as the prestige spike that it would have given.

Yes. Alterra already saw a bit of a rise in its prestige as early as this time. Fortunately, the prestige requirement for the next upgrade was massive, so Alterra did not have to worry about another surprise.

Still, many cities’ prestige had become stagnant for decades. Doing the same thing over and over, even if it were on a bigger scale, had diminishing returns as well. This was why their prestige had barely moved, especially for the old cities where everything was already established.

The Cities who would distribute these things would naturally receive a small spike of prestige. On top of the potential profit, it would be stupid to break Alterra’s trust, so they would definitely price fairly.

What was the use of prestige for cities? They did not even have a tier to upgrade to anymore.

It was because, according to Zenno, there were actually special buildings that could be activated! And they wouldn’t consume building slots!

An example of this was the Barrier.

Bleulle’s barrier was one kind, but the inferior one, which was triggered at the City level.

This was triggered when a particular high spike of prestige, in a relatively short duration of time, occurred. This happened when the Blu and aether blueprints became popularized, many, many years ago.

Holt City’s Barrier was much, much larger, at least four to five times the area of what Bleulle had. According to Zenno’s old friends, when he was staying there, that required a certain amount of prestige as well, and it seemed like only Holt City achieved it, at least in their half of the world.

As for the money, a portion of the payment would go to Alterra, but the rest would be divided among the researchers. For the formulas that were derived from Zenno’s formulas, a portion of that would go to Holt as well.

For Warrior City, the deal was led by Otto. He apparently knew someone high up over there, so the deal was pretty much guaranteed.

For Holt City...it happened that Cauis was there at the time, so they—including Zenno—approached him.

Of course, certain formulas were given for free according to Zenno’s oath, but formulas like those from Hoffen and Cheman would naturally be charged.

When they approached him, Cauis stared at him in disbelief. ”You were here all this time?”

Cauis was initially not aware that Zenno was here. The old man spent too much time in the research center, and they never really announced his presence outside.

The people from the research center couldn’t say much about the going ins in the Research Center in general (unless it was explicitly allowed to, mostly for hype and marketing purposes), and the existence of two more master alchemists in there was part of it.

There were also guards and sentries all over the Research Center and around it. If anyone stalked or investigated any one of their personnel, then they’d likely be noticed, which was a definite loss.

One did not want to be tagged as ’suspicious individuals’ in Alterra—there were too many benefits lost!

If they were tagged as suspicious individuals, the amount of contribution points required to get some services was much higher! If one was only curious, no one dared to watch the people from the research center anymore.

Outside the inner circle, people just knew the old men as Hoffen’s friend, and Hoffen himself actually didn’t announce he was a grandmaster either. Outside the Research Center, people just knew him as an old alchemist who was teaching their lovely lady a few more things.

Althea and the rest didn’t go around announcing such things, after all, and there were simply too many things happening in Alterra every day that passing news not pushed forward and purposely spread would likely be forgotten.

Zenno, like most alchemists, was usually in seclusion, so people had no idea for a while that he was gone. Even if they did realize he was gone, Holt City was secure enough not to worry about him and let him be.

It was just that now that the Fire Plague had returned, they had indeed been looking for him.