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

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In the Gaea Team Villa

At this time, in one of the rooms of the villa, chime-like voices of children resounded.

”Hew, Hew!!” Little Pepper stretched her little arms, asking Meatball to pass the floating ball to her. ”Meabow!! Hew! Hew!”

Meatball was enjoying hugging the floating ball at this time, floating along with it. He pouted, about to ignore his sister, but then his large green eyes saw their parents were right by the door, watching them closely.

Now, Little Meatball’s mind was still simple, even if he was smarter than kids his age. He just remembered that the adults didn’t like it when he and his sister fought.

He had somewhat matured a bit and had learned to cooperate with his sister. He slowly paddled his legs, moving towards his sister, who happily held the ball too.

She wanted to ride it, too, but she just kept sliding down. Unlike Meatball, who could control his weight, Pepper could not do that, so she struggled a lot.

”Wuu...” Pepper mumbled, annoyed, and she kept trying to climb up on the ball, which waddled with her tiny weight.

”Hew...” Little Meatball said, holding the ball in place.

Whether or not Pepper would be able to successfully ride the ball was something only time could tell.

Watching the kids properly share their toys made the adults watching ’sneakily’ by the door smile, hearts warm and expressions swelling with pride and relief.

See? Even if they could get unruly, they knew how to behave well when it mattered.

The two parents remained like this, just watching, as if afraid to miss anything. Whenever they had time to observe them, they would, and this little play area in their house was one of the kids’ favorite places.

The married members of the team had started to build their own households, and even Ansel and Winona had already reserved a villa in the expansions and would move out soon.

This was natural as they would be building their own families. As for those who will remain after the expansion, it would be Harold (who also served as a butler of sorts) as well as the two kids.

Eugene had already moved out to live with Melissa, so what had been his laboratory was already free.

Their house was a condo unit and did not have a lab, but his area in the Research Center was more than enough already. Further, it would be weird to go to the villa just to go to his lab when he didn’t live there anymore, so they just decided to scrap it.

Because of this, the Gaia Villa had started to gain a lot more rooms and was converted to other uses.

The lab was then turned into a sort of private play area, but a huge one, because they also took down another adjacent room and renovated that, too.

When the children grew up, this combined area would still be their play area but with different toys. Maybe someday this could be their study room, or an audiovisual area. It would all depend on where the children’s interests would lie in the future.

For example, when the kids become teenagers, they could put the wall back in, and they could customize each room according to each child’s wishes.

For now, it was just filled with toys and granted large spaces to give the children a shared and ample play area, especially considering their abilities.

The aether ball was a children’s toy, so it was naturally not inherently dangerous. And after some research from the old alchemists and the toolmakers, it was determined it was fine for the two babies as well.

The ball simply takes a bit of energy to last longer, like how they had to power it up with aether to activate it.

Letting them play with the toy could, in fact, assist in controlling their powers. After all, they’d be using aether to keep it working on their own.

That said, this room was full of cushions, all with special effects from the seamstresses, adding extra protection.

There was not a single sharp corner there, either, and there were also little cushioned safety ledges cantilevered under the visible beams, in case Pepper ended up there.

Slowly, but surely, they hoped to learn more and more about the children, while hoping they could still experience childhood as they wanted.

”That...or we simply have to be so strong that it doesn’t matter what the children show outside,” she said, a bit absent-mindedly, but everyone of the adults there had a solemn expression on their faces.

Indeed. It was too hard to control how the children would act, and they certainly shouldn’t be contained in a single place.

With this thought, there was yet another reason to make sure that Alterra grew as strong as possible, and as soon as possible.

...

Fortunately, the kids’ playtime exhausted them a lot, so it wasn’t difficult to put them to bed. After giving them soft smooches on their soft faces, the couple headed to bed themselves.

Before her husband could make a move though, Althea suddenly remembered something she had forgotten. At this, she finally decided to open her new gift from the World Knowledge.

She just had so many things on her mind to have these things on the top of her mind. Her husband sat down next to her, casually wrapping his muscular arms around her stomach, letting her lean on him as she checked it out.

[Opening B-Class Gift Box]

What appeared on her palm was a crystal-like ball with glimmering interiors. It was about the size of her palm, and she quickly used her [Appraisal] skill to check what it was about.

[Aethra Storage (B): Stores Specific Magic of elementalists and other races and allows the user to temporarily use the same magic.]

Oh?