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

The alchemists used their own skills to study the current auras the babies were emitting. When the old men’s eyebrows furrowed, everyone immediately felt nervous.

”I understand why you’re so concerned now, apprentice...” Hoffen said, and the other two nodded. Althea and the others’ hearts dropped.

”The unknown is scary, and I have never seen anything like it at all,” he said. ”However, it is not guaranteed to be a bad thing—we simply do not know anything about it.”

There was no one who spoke, just observed the babies who were lively and healthy.

Cheman said. ”However, while small uses like this seem okay...I recommend avoiding overuse as much as you can. It seems like completely not using it is impossible now, especially with children who could not control it.

”Perhaps just limit the use and then feed them healthy food. I observed that the fruits and crops from the farms are very good.”

It was here that Zenno finally spoke. He might not be able to divulge some things prematurely, as it was not his secret to tell, but he could give some hints.

”They seem able to gather aether fast enough to sustain their current use,” he told them. ”All you have to do is make sure they won’t overexert. That is to say: to use it continuously for an extended period of time.

”From what I see, they’re only using it casually and intermittently, which is fine.

”Please don’t put them in situations where they would feel threatened and feel like they had to give everything. They’re babies, I doubt it’d happen.”

”And...when they can, perhaps in a year or two, you may want to start training them with low-level monsters.”

”What?”

”You might not know this, but when monsters perish, they also emit energy that would disperse to the world. A part of it would attach to the person who killed them, which is what EXP is.”

”To balance things out for them, they might have to start killing monsters at an early age, which I assume would be in a few years.”

”...they’re two years old.”

The old man shrugged. ”It is what it is.”

...

Later that night, Althea told Garan about what happened. He came home late, having no idea that such a big thing happened.

It was already after dinner, and the masters had already left by then, so he could only catch up on recent events based on what Althea told him.

They had already put the babies to bed, and they lay in the bed, hugging each other for extra warmth.

”I wonder if there’s a way to keep them from bursting,” she mumbled. ”What would bursting even look like if those were the powers?”

For now, it seemed like they could no longer stop the children from using their abilities at all. What they needed to do was to safeguard them from situations where they’d overexert, and this meant high-stress situations.

Would they really have to be forced to keep the babies in the house? Would that even help? Perhaps it could make things even worse, considering how free-spirited the twins were.

Would the infamous rebellious stage start as early as the toddler stage? They cringed at the thought.

”For now, we can only make sure they are safe and never threatened,” Garan said, gently patting the curve of her back. ”That includes threatening their freedom.”

It was easier said than done, however.

Sigh. Being a parent was really stressful.

”I wonder if we can really get clues from the dwarves? And those runes...would that be helpful?”

The man’s eyebrows furrowed, suddenly remembering a detail of an old dream that had been eluding him.

”Runes...” he mumbled. ”Have I seen one? I seem to have...” he said, narrowing his eyes at the ceiling, trying to recall.

There was still an odd fog in his memory that he couldn’t quite pass through. It reminded him a lot of the fog that had once separated him from his family, the one he could not go through, no matter how hard he tried.

Althea blinked. ”Have you? It’s unlikely, though...”

”Well, if we encounter dwarves, we’d be sure to cut them good deals this time.”

It might be too risky to kidnap dwarves, but they’d definitely be sure to put their best foot forward.

...

The next day, two pieces of unrelated news entered their ears.

One, Boop, the pupper who became a giant, was slowly getting smaller. It was only by a few inches (they monitored his size every day), but the change was very real.

He was also getting weak and quite ill.

At the news, the veterinarians and animal experts came to check (a lot of people were very worried). Many trudged through the cold, wearing a dozen layers of clothing, just to check on the giant puppy hiding in the bunker.

They determined it was mostly just strain and overexhaustion. That said, they advised to be careful about the consumption of that potion. So far, there seemed to be no advantage, only side effects that they might not know yet.

It was not a banned potion, of course. There was a reason its study was started in the first place, and it truly did have a lot of potential. Hence, some more resources were given to Gus and Penelope to handle this instead, but clinical trials would be on hold until the side effects were under control.

Another news was that the temperature was 1 degree higher than the previous day!

Now, this was practically nothing, but considering the trend in the days before had always been consistently increasing, even if it wasn’t much.

The groups were starting to feel hopeful, though they didn’t make announcements yet in case they were getting ahead of themselves.

They observed for a few more days, and the trend was the same.

After the 5th day, they finally made an announcement to the rest of their allies, subsidiaries, and satellites—the Cold Wave was finally ending!!

...and also to prepare for what could happen afterwards.