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

12/29/25: Happy bday to me~ lalala~

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Within the following few weeks of peace (with the satellites continuing with their war rotations), a lot of major experiments and studies had finally borne fruit.

One, Sinnan finally completed his treatment!

He was already set to return to Dune Town to help out his father again. It so happened that there was a caravan that would be heading back within the next few days, so he’d be traveling with them.

”I can’t believe we’d be apart again...” His mother said as she embraced her son. They were celebrating his healing in one of the private rooms in the Premier restaurant along with Medussa and the other doctors.

They naturally reported the news to her husband, the Lord of Dune Town, and then received a long letter to all of them. It started with a happy then and then ended with the massive message of getting Sinnan back home as soon as possible.

”I will visit often. Father would as well,” he said. Rather, in his letter, his father demanded that he head back so it could be his turn for a ’sick leave’.

’Sick leave’ was a term they learned in Alterra and had somehow passed through caravans and letters. Even their father was using it now.

Anyway, he had indeed stayed here for long enough. As comfortable as he was, it wasn’t home in the end.

Rather, he learned so much here and...he wanted his home and his people to experience the same comforts. Sending goods, seeds, and items there was helpful, but it naturally couldn’t be compared to when the infrastructure itself, the Town’s foundation, was improved.

As the next Lord, he naturally wanted to help them. During his term as Lord, he wanted to elevate his home much further than it had been, especially now that they had new resources and connections to achieve it.

That said, he couldn’t help but look at Medussa beside him. He had a gentle smile on his face as he leaned down, making the woman’s eyebrows rise, and she looked at him weirdly.

”You’re interested in the Undead, right? My place has a lot of them,” he said, and the entire table paused when they realized where this conversation was going.

”Would you like to come with me?”

Medussa blinked. She happened to have received her own small portable laboratory from Lady Althea a while back. It was naturally not as compact or as complex as the Lady’s (since they lacked a lot of the necessary metals), but it was still small enough to fit in the space, making them very convenient.

She named it Labi.

Anyway, now that she had Labi, in theory, she could study more things even outside the laboratories. This included studying the Undead in their ’home ground’.

Thinking of this, her dull eyes sparkled, and she nodded. ”Yes.”

...

Another innovation that succeeded was the Aether Letter Interceptor!

Kalfene was beyond himself, even crying, when he had successfully created a unique tool. He received a new item too—a Class C defense equipment~

The process was long and arduous, but it happened—and that in and of itself was a miracle. It was all thanks to Alterrans’ help and guidance, as well as how they encouraged his growth.

From one successful attempt every three to five days, with the help of Alterran researchers, his productivity increased to one aether letter every day or two as early as a few weeks after he moved in.

His quota per month wasn’t high either, only 10, and this gave him quite a bit of extra time to experiment with other things.

Technically speaking, the letters beyond the quota were his own property, and he could choose what to do with them, whether to give them away, to keep, or to sell, provided he was using his own materials or that he paid for them.

It was just that, except for many doing one or two extra letters, he used the remaining time to study the arrays Lady Althea sent him to study in his own time.

He memorized each line and tried to do it over and over until he could draw it in his sleep. According to Lady Althea, being able to recreate the arrays by himself—regardless of whether he could actually activate them— could help him with his practice.

But... it was not easy, and his aether and elements would always disperse after some lines. For the next several weeks, he had to do this over and over with barely any sleep.

Until just today, he succeeded!

He only realized then that Lady Althea must’ve formulated an array that had a different effect! It was amazing, and he had no idea how she could do this when there were no array masters here.

He then got the notification that he created a new tool and received a new item!

After all these years, he had no idea he could gain another tool, so this could be said to be an accomplishment in the latter half of his life!

He was also able to modify it so that it would only block specific signals.

That said, he had to change something in existing letters as well. The Alterrans would call it a ’signature’ and he, someone who handled aether letters and aether blockers, could arrange it as he needed. In theory.

When it gets perfected, then the Aether Blocker (in theory) would be able to block every correspondence within a hundred-meter radius except for those with ’signatures’ that it recognized!

He still had a lot of work regarding this, since he had yet to actually master the art of signature making. For a long lecture day, his ’teachers’ taught him about it. First of all, what ’signature’ meant in this context, and the possible ways they could make them (though which one would work and not interfere with the arrays was up for experimentation).

They had to be very careful, after all, otherwise they’d block their own signals.

Not to mention, as of now, it’d take him several days to make a single one, so it probably wouldn’t be used any time soon.

But... progress!