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

Thanks to the show of force in Ferrol, Valov apparently took a step back, and Alterra was once again left alone and at peace. For now.

Well, this was at least on the surface. From what they knew, from the few spies they had there (who had to send posts to various other territories, ideally those not known to be associated with Alterra), there was definitely some stuff brewing.

In fact, some city nobles, especially from Hassen, were seen there too. Who knew what they were talking about? Definitely nothing good.

This definitely set alarms in the military, but since they were not exactly certain what the other side was preparing, all they could do was prepare as best as they could, as usual, and watch out for spies.

Another month peacefully passed by. During this time, a few more things were discovered.

At this time, in the Research Center’s Testing area, a group of young scholars surrounded a shiny prototype of a magic tool.

At its center was Menzon, the toolmaker behind it.

”This is it. The improved Celeste Mirror,” he said, stepping back and wrapping himself around a blanket with some defensive capabilities.

”Yes, yes, may this one succeed for sure!”

”Ye, yes, yes! We’ll be right behind you, ma friend.”

”...”

Today, they were testing the new Celeste Mirror with the changes according to Lady Althea’s instructions. They wanted to create one that spread out any attacks to a larger area, hopefully without dividing the force value.

This had been a very difficult assignment.

For one, the change from concave to convex alone took time. It was like modifying things piece by piece, and a single wrong move could invalidate the entire circuit.

Someone (or two) lost a lot of hair from it.

Fortunately, one of the privately-owned pharmaceutical companies sold hair growth potions! It wasn’t so magical as hair would grow in a day, but a stubble of healthy hair could appear within a few days of use.

There were naturally a lot of experts who did not want to work ’for the government’. They admired the Research Center and believed in the prestige of working in it, but having control over what they wanted to research and the like still hit different.

Althea wasn’t the type of leader who specifically wanted monopolies in her territory, even if the advantaged were herself. Further, she would not suppress anyone as long as they were honestly doing their business.

They were all her taxpayers, right?

Of course, companies like these (as it was with every other business), there would require certifications, tests, random checks, and other things required.

These were renewed annually, and failing to do so could incur penalties—or worse, demerits, which were the opposite of contribution points.

This would be overseen by departments under Mathilda. Not all technical employees went to the Research Center, where the hiring was quite stringent and had innovation expectations. Fortunately for them, there were plenty of job opportunities for science-based jobs!

Anyway, back to the magic tool—

After a while and a lot of teamwork, the team of researchers passed the ’per sector’ hurdle. Next, the challenge was the energy that passed through them.

They had to consider the power consumption after the attack connected, so the combined forces of the reflected, fragmented attack were less than the force given by what the tool received.

What they did was to use a version of the ’anti-scaling’ rune isolated before. Basically, it would remove the ’friction’ loss, allowing the entire force to be reflected. The integration of this rune took another week or so, making sure it didn’t interfere with the mirror’s ’aether circuit’.

This made it easier to create a better amplifying effect as well, though it naturally wasn’t much. For now, they’d be happy if each of the fragmented attacks could be at least as powerful as 90% of the initial singular attack!

The group excitedly tested the new improvement.

A fire user threw a fireball and then hid behind a shield along with the others. They watched as the fireball hit the mirror, dispersed into smaller embers, and spread out, hitting all the dummies (the non-human ones)!

Judging by the damage, the individual fireballs—which were divided into six equal attacks— managed to retain more than 80% of the initiator’s source!

Not bad! Not bad at all!

”Success!”

They wrapped their arms around Menzon’s shoulders in happiness. Menzon’s eyes were already bright from success, and now it was feeling a little warm.

The others didn’t seem to have noticed this. If they did, they pretended not to see.

”Another group goal achieved!”

”Time to celebrate!”

...

At this time, there was another Alterran who had awakened as a Toolmaker. His name was Limbo, one of the refugees from the Extreme Heat, and he received the inheritance to create a Memory Stone!

Limbo, the earth user member of Thor’s party from Rows Village back then. He was actually an architect by profession, but when he found out there were arrays in the buildings, he ended up being more fascinated with those.

He was working for the Design and Construction department back then, but his productivity dipped because he was so preoccupied with the details.

A while back, Oslo used his network to get him into the Array team instead (bless you, sun god, he said with his mind back then).

The memory stone wasn’t unique. In fact, at least a dozen toolmakers from all over the world could create it. However, the actual application was not easy and a bit time-consuming. Either way, tools were intrinsically expensive.

The memory stone was the tool that Garan had gifted to Althea before, one that recorded the image of the children. Up until now, the memory stone was snug in the more organized portions of Althea’s space, and she’d look at it often when she was stuck in her lab and missed her cute children.

That said, with their phones charged, it didn’t seem like the device would have any use. However, how many people actually had phones? Few Terrans still had theirs, and only a fraction of that was functional. Most had either lost them along the way or they simply weren’t with them during the transfer.

The aborigines certainly didn’t have phones, and not to mention, it was really convenient if one treated them as picture frames with moving images instead. Some people just wanted to take a look at specific images, over and over.

It might seem excessively sentimental, but Alterrans could afford it!