After Surviving the Apocalypse, I Built a City in Another World novel Chapter 449

Days passed and Althea entered another activity into her daily habits: Using her Growth skill on a few important plants (Note: Cocoa Tree).

Of course, she still trained, meditated, and the like for several hours every day, she still spent time in the lab and research center and, most importantly, she still spent time with her family.

It was really busy but she couldn’t bring herself to slow down at all. It was the same with her husband, who barely slept as he dealt with the various military affairs of the territory.

Well, not tired enough to forgo intimacy, but fortunately he stopped after a few times a night, letting them have some semblance of rest.

Today though was a little different. She had felt the progress in her farm and she decided to focus her day entirely on it.

She went to the farms with the goal of making good progress with the task, so she brought a lot of mana cookies (which Harold already knew to prepare and had stocks of).

She went back to the experimental cocoa to use her skills again. It didn’t matter if she could only deal with one plant for a long time—she just wanted her chocolate!

[Used! Growth Control (C), -50 Mana!]

[Used! Growth Control (C), -50 Mana!]

She used it over and over until her remaining mana for the day was gone. Every day she did this after everything, and she would hasten its growth by a few hours each time.

It wasn’t much considering the mana and the mana cookies she spent, but she didn’t really feel bad. After all, doing this would let her have her chocolate days earlier so she still thought it was worth it! Oh, and she could also train the skill more.

After caring for her cocoa, she then went to the experimental corn. She had chosen a small plot about 1 square meter in size for this. There were six stalks of corn there, and they would serve as her experiential corn to turn to another strain.

She used the Eye and concentrated, focusing on the plants’ make.

The strain of corn that could make popcorn had a hard, moisture-resistant hull that surrounded its endosperm. It also had a starchy interior. When the heat was applied, the moisture trapped inside would pop, creating the snacks that generations of Terrans loved. This was also the quality she needed to cultivate.

With the Eye, she could determine which plant would have the traits she needed. This would save her at least months of breeding because she didn’t even have to wait for them to grow to determine which subjects she could use.

What’s more, with the Growth skill, she could encourage this sort of mutation. Although it wasn’t able to make stark changes (yet), she could enhance these desired qualities. She would use this skill to the plants with the desired properties, making the experiment much more efficient.

On the contrary, it was much harder than just speeding up the plants’ growth and aging. This was understandable because speeding up growth was simply pushing the development to its natural path.

She was now doing quite the opposite.

And she was having quite some fun.

Anyway, for much of the day, she just sat there with the corn, doing trial and error to the different stalks, seeing which seemed to fit the strain she wanted more.

It got to the point that she no longer had mana cookies left.

Sigh.

She stood up and went back to the house. At this time, there was already food prepared for her.

Harold was in the kitchen, also experimenting with the new plants. So far, he had created two dishes, one of which managed to have an effect (albeit with only 10% success rate)