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

The debate on the morality of experimenting on living things was a perpetual issue. However, Althea believed that societal scum should repay for their sins by helping in its improvement.

Althea had never tried the truth serum against half-orcs before because there was no need to. Her energy and the other researchers’ energies would always go to where it was needed the most, or at least towards projects with the highest rate of return (tangible or not).

They weren’t a warring territory, and they had many ways to squeeze information out, so the Truth Serum was never a priority after the first couple of wars.

There were plenty of things she wanted to try and explore, but she couldn’t put time and energy into them at all.

They took one of the intact buildings there, and she began to do her experiments. They also cleared out the area so the potential screams wouldn’t be too blatant.

Everyone knew the basic residential buildings, even if they were by the system, didn’t have very good insulation.

In Althea’s space, there was a large cabinet filled with materials, solvents, and so on. They were very organized, complete with labels and even expiration dates.

It had to be said that the greatest gift Garan had given to her (other than himself and her children) was the space stones.

For this experiment, she simply had to modify the original formula, adding more of this, less of that, and so on. Half-orcs had stronger absorption, so some things really had to have a higher dosage. Their brains also had different structures and compositions, so she had to consider those too. Having no advanced medical equipment slowed down the progress, so she had to adjust accordingly.

Further, after every experiment, she had to clear the solution out of him too, otherwise each trial would be tainted and the results inaccurate. Normally, there would be a day or two in between each trial, but who had the time for that?

This guy didn’t deserve any gentleness, anyway.

So what she did was to ’clear the workspace’ after every trial, minimizing the effects of the previous ’experiment’ remnants from affecting the current one.

How could Althea do this in such a short time frame? She used her water ability to isolate some of the solution in the blood.

This normally would be very difficult, but Althea already memorized the composition of everything she injected there. If it were unfamiliar things mixed in, then Althea would’ve had a much, much harder time separating them.

Further, not every water user would ever be able to do this. Not only was Althea heavily aware of the composition of the liquid, but it also had to do with her [Elementalist Integration] skill. If she could combine the elements into solutions, it meant she had the potential to take them out and manipulate them, too.

It so happened that this batch of truth serum had some wood elements infused into it, making the solution much easier to control even when they had integrated into the subject’s body already.

After isolating the pertinent solvents and affected blood, she would then bleed the man, manually taking the liquid out. It was a painful shortcut process, but Althea didn’t quite care for the morality of it at this time.

”What...what are you doing to me?! Hurts! Bitch! It hurts!” he gasped, face pale, and all the energy seemed to be seeping out of him. It was like all his defenses had crumbled, and he would say everything that passed through his head.

Althea didn’t answer, silently doing her experiments. To shut him up, she placed a random fabric on his mouth whenever she didn’t need him to speak. It took her a full four hours to test four different formulas, checking the changes in the half-orc’s body.

During this time, Virion had already calmed down the masses, telling them he was from Warrior City—a place admired by many orcs and half-orcs —and he was there to investigate the missing orcs.

This mission alone roused some goodwill, and orcs weren’t exactly the type to question things easily on their own once they started to believe in it.

Virion actually had no idea about the missing orcs, but he was certainly skilled in building on the doubts Althea had raised.

With their help, though they did not order them to comb through, they managed to isolate the place without alerting the rest of the areas.

...

Soon, Plai finally budged. He looked inebriated, and his words had begun to slur, but fortunately, Althea could decipher what he was saying.

First of all, she asked about the location of the lab. Rather, the labs—one for the elementalist experiments and another for the orcs, the latter of which had much stricter security.

Both were located in the central areas, near the Town Center, but on opposite streets. This model was similar to Tarron Village and was probably what had influenced the village.

It was more developed than the lab in the village and even used some uncommon technologies from the get-go. For example, they used some sort of magic tool lock that would only allow certain aether signatures to go through!

This was very advanced and had only been seen in important rooms in cities!

Even if just for this, they’d have to keep Plai very much alive.

The second thing Althea found out about was the strength of the guards there.

There were a dozen ’powerhouses’ sent down years ago, four of which were around level 30s. Two had already been dealt with, meaning there were still two underground. As mentioned, they guarded the orc experiments more as orcs were much more troublesome and difficult to drug.

Apparently, the ’weakening’ drug injected into the humans’ bloodstreams had minimal effects on orcs, making them difficult to slice and study.

The rest were in the mid-level 20s or late level 20s, some of whom were elementalists, which was also quite troublesome.

And finally, the main city that sent them.

It was none other than Warrior City!

And one of the main funders was actually that treacherous uncle!