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).
They had been planning on saltpeter for a long time, determining the exact methodology applicable in Xeno to create ice, but that was something that needed a bit of trial and error first. This was one of the first assignments given to her Research Team.
Charcoal was easiest in such a wood-rich place as well, and they only had to process it. This also needed a bit of trial and error due to the differing atmospheric conditions of this place, but it should still be easier than creating saltpeter.
Sulfur was the actual challenge and they had yet to find some. There didn't seem to be a lot of volcanoes in this place (which was usually a plus, except for cases like this), so they'd have to find a place to mine it. At least, they had to find an alternative somehow and somewhere.
She had already long sent a mission for thisbut there was no luck so far.
"You also don't have to limit yourself with gunpowder," Garan said, "I heard of a power source found in cities called Aether Crystals."
This made Althea pause and look at her man. He looked at her curious expression and smiled.
"From what I gathered, they are rare and are used to form teleportation arrays, barriers, and the like. I also heard it was used to destroy half a village infested with monsters before."
This was one of the things he found out during his months of looking for a way home. It was too far and unimportant to him at the time, but now…
"Indeed, if we could harness it, not only would we have another power source, but maybe something like a plasma gun could be made." Her emerald eyes sparkled so much that Garan couldn't help but kiss the eyelids over them.
Althea smiled and accepted the show of affection before continuing her soliloquy. "I also want to develop electricity. So we need energy sources and ways to convert them to energy," she said, "If we could get this crystal, maybe we could use it as well."
Garan nodded, "I'll find a way," he said, "And we should also ask Oslo. He should be from amongst upper tier in a city."
"You could tell?"
"Hmn," he said, patting her head. "What else?"
"Communication. Although I can send messages to everyone, no one else can do this except for announcements—which are also very expensive if used too often. This isn't including Matilda's special skill, of course."
"What about private messaging? We don't have that yet."
In fact, Oslo mentioned something called aether letters before. He promised to bring some back when he went home for a break.
"Transportation is already ongoing but I do want to see some cars. Hopefully sustainable ones…"
And hopefully, the types that could traverse the rough terrains of this world. If they could develop flying ones, then they'd be welcome. It was just that something simple like hot air balloons was risky, as they heard that there were high-level flying monsters that existed, especially around towns and cities.
Hot air balloons… were basically sitting ducks against these monsters. No one would commercialize on this unless they wanted to be ready food for flying monsters.
Putting this issue aside, Althea proceeded to the next item on her list.
"I want to develop glass-making mostly for my greenhouse and experiments," She said, "A lot of the materials have been found. All we have to do now is find the right process." Like what happened with the salt before, she doubted that the processing of glass here would be exactly like in Terran.
She expected to have a lot of trial and error in this—expensive ones. Most raw materials like silica and soda ash were easy because of their location, but limestone was a bit harder to harvest because of the distance.
Limestone had yet to be found after many many days of adventuring, and she had promised 10000 contribution points for the discovery of a good stock.
Of course, until they develop the logistics, the cost of transportation would not be low. Not to mention, generating that amount of heat was no joke, so the research for that had to be done in parallel to save time.
Garan nodded, "When you do, please develop optics and telescopes as well."
There were also other things like glass ballistic shields, glass-ceramic armor, and the like.
Glass could also be used to create solar-powered glass structures, though that needed to wait until they found the correct power sources.
"Got it~" She said, smiling.
Hm. The world was so big, they'd need all the tools they could get.
There were plenty of things to do, but the fact that they were possible and implementable—was a source of hope in and of itself.
It was quite exciting, and she was looking forward to what Altera would look like after all these were implemented!