After Surviving the Apocalypse, I Built a City in Another World novel Chapter 34

National University Library, Special Section, Fifteen Years Ago

The young Althea looked at the vast array of books in fascination. Because of the advent of technology, there weren’t many of these things anymore, but she liked them very much.

Learning while touching physical paper had always felt a bit sublime to her.

Althea continued to peruse the selection of books, staying in a section for a longer amount of time. In this section, there were plenty of books about flora and fauna. There were tons of illustrations of plants, their parts, and uses.

The young Althea had always loved plants and had her own notebook studying their uses. It was her first time seeing things so detailed.

She learned that even the unassuming useless-looking parts of the plants could be used for the most unexpected thing.

"Amazziinggg…" Little Althea mumbled, big emerald eyes looking at the book, filled with admiration.

"Amazing, right?" The old man smugly said, eating his walnuts.

Althea wasn’t stingy with her compliments. "It’s the most amazing thing I’ve seen so far."

"It’s still more than that. For example," he showed her the leftover case of the walnut he had been eating."

"After processing this…" he then took a bottle of the ink to his table. "Could become this."

"Amazing!"

"Indeed."

The old man laughed and patted her head, leaving some crumbs on her ponytailed head. His old wise eyes looked at his collection. "Plants are amazing things, and you’ll learn whole new worlds from studying them."

____

Xeno Continent, Present

Althea and the rest studied their surroundings, just to be sure.

They decided to check a hundred meters radius, and what she had seen just made Althea itchy to explore.

Upon double checking that there were no more creatures around waiting to maim them, Althea was finally able to leave the two in place.

This surprised Sheila a bit, not because she was scared of being alone (well, a little), but she was mostly taken aback by the fact a pregnant woman’s out adventuring.

"I’m fine, at level 3 I don’t feel pregnant at all." She said, shrugging. "I won’t be ten meters away from you guys."

Anyway, all the plants around were basically unfamiliar, she really didn’t need to go far.

Althea walked by several meters before leaning down, careful with her stomach, and sat on an overgrown root.

Althea, who seemed to have forgotten the dangers, took out her portable laboratory a.k.a. Tori , and focused on the nearest plant.

An interesting thing about space was that although time wasn’t static, the ’space’ was.

That was to say, even if she pulled out the lab underneath so many things, the other things just stayed there, floating.

It was quite fun.

In any case, she watched excitedly as she pulled out plants and their different parts to place on the testing component.

Her beautiful emerald eyes watched in anticipation as the various formulas and elements appeared on the small screen.

Although this was a different world, the building blocks were still the same.

She took something that was probably a type of fruit. In terms of appearance, it looked like a yellow cherry tomato.

Ping! She stared at the screen and, as expected, saw that it had Flavonoids which gave the fruit its color and has antioxidant properties.

She also stared at its chemical composition and concluded that this thing was edible and quite healthy. The amount of ethylene was also high, so it was probably already ripe.

Wiping it with a clean handkerchief she placed it in her mouth and her face scrunched.

Sour!

She decisively ignored this fruit.

Of course, she still took out her notebook, drew and described the plant and made a basic drawing.

At the bottom of the page there was a note: Sucks to eat.

It made even her, a pregnant woman who didn’t mind sour food at the moment, cringe.

She turned her head to an upright plant with a thickened rhizome. Using a stick, she dug around it and found a tuber. It was a weird pinkish color and only the size of a palm.

Seeing the test results, the plant, like the Tuber that she knew, was filled with dioscorin. Although different in appearance from yam, the composition was just about the same.

She wrote down the possible uses, marking those that specially need more testing.

She took a few bunches to the space both for experiment and food.

She took note of four or five more plants, none of which were edible, or were particularly interesting, before her sights ended up on a vine crawling on another tree.

It was a very thick vine the size of a baby’s arm, with purple flowers growing long and swaying with the wind as if seducing her to come to it.

Unable to help herself, Althea took out several leaves and flowers from the plant to check. She smelled and she was reminded of grapes, her favorite fruit.

She almost swallowed it. Almost. Fortunately, she still had the wits not to directly ingest the unknown plant. She stopped herself in time and simply placed it on Tori.

A minute later, rustles of leaves approached her direction. When she opened her eyes, what met her eyes was the worried face of Sheila, with Fufi running around her corpse—er… weak body, in distress. _{ƒreewebηoveℓ.com}