After Surviving the Apocalypse, I Built a City in Another World novel Chapter 359

Later that night, Althea and Garan settled the babies in the crib next to the bed. The two of them looked at the adorable soft pumpkins in the breathing softly without a care in the world.

They admired their children for a while, with Garan wrapping his strong arms around her stomach and placing his chin on her head as they did so. The back of her head naturally rested on his generous shoulder, feeling relaxed and protected.

It was just that Garan’s hands started to move under her night dress…

Althea frowned and turned her head to glare at the man. "The babies are here!"

But he chuckled instead, leaning down and lapping her sensitive ears. "I can keep quiet…" he whispered, "Are you not confident?"

She blushed. "You—"

But she stayed strong. Pushing his lips away from her ears, she looked at him sternly. "No, I need to plan my research building. It’ll be available for use in a few days."

Garan blinked and stared at her, wondering to what degree he needed to flirt to change her mind. However, he saw her emerald eyes looking quite stern despite her blushing cheeks, so he knew that Althea was really planning on finishing her tasks as soon as possible.

As a good husband who respected his wife’s wishes, he didn’t push it.

"Okay," he said with that baritone voice of his, placing a gentle peck on her forehead. "How may I help?"

Althea narrowed her eyes at him suspiciously and Garan just found her adorable. "I may be able to input some ideas," he told her. "Even if I don’t, uttering them out could help you organize your thoughts."

Hm, made sense.

Seeing that her husband wasn’t thinking of perverted stuff anymore, her guard lowered and they moved to the room’s sitting area. Garan couldn’t help but take a few advantages and make her sit flush with him, though fortunately he didn’t do anything else.

"I want to finalize my research team," she said, "What we lack in sheer power—which we will still aim for, of course—and I want to overcome this lack with everything else.

"The fastest way to safely integrate was through the aborigines. Not only are they strong, they are also loyal while they’re associated with the territory," she said, "But this had its limits, especially when we aren’t at Town level yet. In the meantime, other level 3 villages have guards with average levels of 8 to 10."

Garan nodded. "Okay," he said, "What particular items do you wish to see?"

"There’s a lot."

"Such as?"

"Well for one, improved Metallurgy. We also want to do techniques like tempering and quenching. My goal is to create metals like steel or any other stronger metals than just iron."

Garan brightened at this. "Indeed. That would take our military might and the industries to another level."

As everyone knew, even the most impure iron sword here could give more damage than a steel sword from Terran. They could only imagine the damage that could be made by weapons made of aether-infused steel.

Definitely superior.

Just the thought made military man Garan look quite excited—at least as excited as his cold-by-default face could get.

Of course, this also meant the processing might also change, as it could be different from what was done in Terran.

Althea nodded and listed that down. She opened the tablet to search for what to watch out for when making steel and alloys. They didn’t have a lot of Iron to experiment on after all, they had to plan ahead as thoroughly as they could.

One of the main differences to watch out for was the atmosphere in Xeno. Handling aether was one thing, but even the air here was different.

It was likely there would be some modification in the refining and reduction process recorded in her tablet. There would also be differences in the crystal structure of the steel atoms, which could result in enhanced (or subpar) physical properties, in addition to whatever aether itself could change.

They could use wind and water to generate power now as well, and these would be helpful to use in bigger processes like steel production.

As Althea wrote down all she could, Garan thought for a while and wondered what he could suggest. "We will need more for innovations of long-ranged weapons."

Althea nodded. "Gunpowder, according to my tablet anyway, requires three primary components: Saltpeter, charcoal, and sulfur."

The first two were no problem at all and they could even produce them themselves. Saltpeter could be taken from decomposing organic matter—something they had been doing all this time for biogas and fertilizers (and bombs).