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

A/N: Thank you for your support, everyone~ New month is here! Love youuuu! Thanks so much for staying xoxoxooxooxo And special hugs to those who sent golden tickets and gifts, voted, and reviewed/commented! Each one adds extra fuel to the inspiration for this story!

It seems like for this month, the current update rate of 1ch/day will be retained. I don’t think I’d be able to do 2ch/day in a while. I’m so sorry, and thank you for understanding!

Shout out to last month’s June 2026’s top GT senders HeroRina, Momma_Mercy, Angelica_Franco_0220, and chi_be~ HUGSS

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The mountain had smooth, towering cliffs, massive vertical walls, and sparse vegetation. In some areas, one could see deep cracks instead of caves.

It really was a Granite mountain. The only difference—as was with everything—was that it had aether integrated into it, which subtly changed its composition to a degree.

The granite here was similarly incredibly hard and resistant to corrosion, perhaps even more so than the granite she knew. This was mostly a good thing, from a resource-hunter’s point of view.

Granite was a very rich resource. It was not only used for building materials, but granite deposits were associated with various other resources.

Rather, since it was such a massive deposit, having a plethora of other resources was pretty much guaranteed.

For example, other than the aforementioned fluorite, it might also have some common minerals like quartz, mica, and garnet.

It might even have some ore deposits of tin, tungsten, copper, lead, zinc, and so on—all of which were useful for Alterra. These were commonly found in massive granite mountains in Terran, so it should have similar compositions here, even if there were some differences.

Such a mountain was a treasure trove. Too bad it was so far away from Alterra. Otherwise, they’d have loved to mine here often.

Maybe they could eventually set up a mining base, but that would probably be something for a far future, at best.

Garan touched the wall and studied it a bit, confirming it was sturdy. He then sat down at the side and summoned some metals. Althea realized that the metal he was conjuring was the permanent kind, so he was creating them cubic inch by cubic inch until he had enough to make the things needed for the climb.

When one of the shapes started to form, Althea realized it was a carabiner. After becoming certain of what he was doing, she went to make ropes.

To create sturdy ropes, she had to find materials with good tensile strength. Vines were an option, and it was certainly the fastest to make. It was just that it might dry out and weaken. Not to mention, it was very vulnerable to fire.

Althea was the type to make things as sustainable as possible, and this meant she wanted them reusable if possible. Vines wouldn’t last long. She’d be lucky if it survived the entire height of this mountain.

In the end, the most realistic option was to use bast fibers, which were extracted from tree bark, which was also how people historically made ropes. It was just a little time-consuming. She also had to find a relatively dense forest, which was at least an hour away from this parched land that had dried due to the rain shadow created by the mountain.

It was here that her wood abilities might be able to expedite the process a little.

She went around and, with her ability, determined which trees would fit her needs. For example, in the forest, there were trees similar to mulberry and jude.

With her vine assistants (Garan started making the belay device at some point), she peeled away the rough outer bark and separated the fibers.

The latter would usually take days, especially as it had to be soaked in a process called retting, but she managed to expedite it with her wood powers.

Further, she accelerated the plant’s growth itself by making it more robust, lengthening the fibers, and so on.

The preparation works lasted another half day or so, and they found a nice rock formation to camp for the night. Interestingly, among the monsters there, another one was pulled out with another array, presumably taken to one of the Training Halls in the world.

"It’s interesting how we encountered it twice in two days when we haven’t seen something like this before," Althea said. This statement included everyone in Alterra. After all, their intelligence team was no joke. If something so anomalous was witnessed near their territory, it would’ve long been passed over to Althea and Garan.

"This kind of thing must happen more often in these areas," Garan said, thinking of some conjectures.

Coincidentally, Althea was the same. They reckoned it might have something to do with the area’s distance from territories. This area was the farthest they had gone from an official territory.

Perhaps it was the system’s way to grab monsters in hard-to-reach areas to balance things out.

They mobilized at dawn the next day. The ropes were sturdy and long, just enough for the two of them. They were not going to be too far away from each other, anyway.

For now, they had to climb this height with improvised rock climbing gear, which was risky, but they were no longer normal humans.

The two took deep breaths as they looked at the endless height of solid rocks in front of them, their heads bent as much as they could so she could see the top or something, but they could only be disappointed.

Clack! Clack!

The couple persevered and climbed up, climbing a few dozen meters, equivalent to the height of a small building, and they had actually covered...not even a fraction.

Hissss!

The couple tensed up as they hung a few tens of meters above the ground. There were a few slithering monsters that emerged from one of the cracks several meters away from them.

Even if their levels were higher than these serpents, the fact that they were near the nests meant that there might be more.

The two rappelled to the ground. Fighting on a vertical surface severely reduced their fighting prowess, so they wanted to fight while on the ground.

Further, the angle created by the walls and the ground reduced the area that they had to cover. This meant they could focus on facing only a few directions, rather than be distracted by the monsters that could appear behind them.

The group of snakes was not small. There were about six of them, all above level 18, and the strongest one was in the level 20s. They seemed to have evolved to slither along the steep slopes as if they were on a vertical surface, and their size was pretty much anaconda-level.

It was in these moments that Althea wished she could control this type of rock wall. Couldn’t she just push rocks and make them fall at a height? Maybe she could even create spikes, suddenly shooting out of the surface and skewering enemies.

Granted, they probably wouldn’t die, nor would they be imbalanced for long, but it would be very convenient anyway. For people at their level, the enemy being distracted for a few seconds was enough to make kill shots.

Since the level of the monsters benefited Althea, Garan didn’t make a move this time. At best, he’d block the way of a few to make the quantity more manageable for Althea.

She never did ask for help, however, and soon she showed off the reason why shortly after that.

Instead of attempting to control granite, she controlled the types she could. She set up obstacles and spikes around her, especially below where she knew the snakes would pass over.

She created traps and so on, all designed to either neutralize them or to injure them greatly. She just had to position herself well so they would be distracted and would only have eyes for her (to eat).

Since capturing the Elyssian stone, her grasp of the earth element—at least to the soil type she already knew to control—had improved so much she could defeat an earth elementalist several levels higher than her in an earth battle.

Anyway, most of the six snakes fell down in this trap, and Althea used this chance to slash at their weak spots. Only one died immediately, but every other snake was injured.

Slash!

Snakes could only slither on the ground. What if the odd shape of the trap made it difficult for them to move? Those few seconds could now cause deaths.

The other snakes avoided the trap or eventually managed to get out, but it allowed Althea to make a breathing room for herself without depending on her husband.

The battle took them hundreds of meters away from their original location. Althea and Garan sighed and were about to head back (their hiking tools were still hanging on that sector) when Althea’s feet paused, and she looked in a direction.

Althea rushed over and ran several hundred meters in the opposite direction. Garan followed without questioning her. It was only when she stopped moving and looked to be in a daze that he finally did.

"I detected the presence of arrays," she said. As an array master, she was naturally more sensitive to these things.

Following the ’scent’ of the arrays led her to an area where a portion of the mountain had already been carved and depressed. There were several lines plumb down, and they looked like they had been there a while.

She studied the ropes and some of the mechanisms found at ground level. Her eyebrows rose when she realized why it felt familiar.

"What is it?" Garan asked.

Althea looked at him and then at the contraption in front of her. "This looks similar to...an elevator."

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