Althea and Garan went home to bond with their children, waiting for them to fall asleep before attempting to absorb it. They heard that it could take a few days and getting disturbed midway could cause some losses.

It would be like the energy that should’ve been easy to absorb leaked out because the person’s concentration faltered. It would be quite a waste.

The couple went to their hot spring villa by the mountain, though they didn’t forget to leave a video message (via Harold’s phone) for the children.

The hotspring villa was really very good. It was not just a place to relax and bathe, but also to meditate. This was great for normal meditation let alone those with aether crystals!

The couple didn’t delve into training immediately. They allowed themselves a night of relaxation to unwind. It wasn’t just for the work-life balance thing. Rather, mindset was also very important in meditation. They reckoned that maybe it’d be useful for absorbing crystals too.

The couple took two full days to absorb one crystal, which was quite a bit shorter than others. Then again, their physique was just different so it did make sense.

When they asked Naia about it, she said that she also took 2-3 days to absorb one, while her husband and father-in-law would take a day or two longer.

Everyone knew that the crown princess’s elfblood was much more concentrated than the crown prince’s, and the speed of absorbing the crystal seemed to be directly proportional to how much elfblood a person had.

They were curious how quickly the children would absorb one, but that would need to wait a decade or two before they found that out.

As for the levels, it should have more or less the same effect regardless of bloodline. After all, the crystal had uniform amounts of energy. At most, there would be lesser wastage, but the difference shouldn’t be too obvious.

Anyway, Althea jumped to the early level 25, while Garan jumped to the peak of his level, 32.

The higher the level, the more crystals were needed to upgrade. Althea could jump two levels for one now, but the next level up would probably jump one level at most.

They were energetic the morning after, as if they had slept fully even if they hadn’t actually rested for two days. The Golds said this was natural, because they were essentially absorbing life force, which was far superior than whatever a few hours of rest could give them.

Today, they headed to their own scope of work to check the status of everything, as well as see what the projects in line were.

They would also rearrange priority as needed, and this could possibly have been affected by what they had seen outside.

For the Research Center, she retained the current priorities, one of which were the guns. It could be said to mark the next stage of warfare for them, so everyone was patient despite all the failed trials. There were now a few prototypes, but none were good enough or safe enough to release to the public.

At best, there might be versions useful for village-level adversaries, but that was about it. Linlin, Oslo, and the rest of the team involved in its development would only count a prototype as a ’success’ when it could help out Alterrans going against town-level enemies.

Althea also took a few hundred nuclear cores to the Nuclear Research Center for research. It was a separate building under the Research Center and the scientist assigned there wanted to hug her.

Speaking of which, Medusa, while they were gathering cores, expressed that she wanted to rejoin this team. She would leave Dune Town after another month or two.

Sinnan looked sad, but accepted the changes.

This was a good sign. A man who was willing to let the woman they like grow and do what they wanted, supporting them without asking for anything in return, was a keeper.

It would’ve been better if they actually officially got into a relationship though. Rumor says that Samir, Sinnan’s son, was very close to calling Medusa ’mum’.

Another thing to prioritize study was naturally the new mystery metal they had dug up.

Althea wrote down everything she knew about it, including where it was found and how she used it. Later, she found out that all the earth elementalists in the Research Center went outside to do random experiments.

Speaking of experiments, there was one very important thing that had been completed during Althea’s absence.

The cure for the older fire plague victims.

They had long completed the detectors, the vaccine, as well as the cure for those who were afflicted at stage one even before. However, for the longest time, those who had survived and left disabled had to accept their fates.

Now, things have changed.

This was a joint work by the three alchemists. They had all experienced the previous plague, making it two in a lifetime. Back then and at present, they had known people—possibly family or friends—who had been disabled because of the plague.

Most of those people from 40 years ago had already perished, some at their own hands, while some were simply unable to handle the dangers of the world without the protection of aether.

Many of these people, even if they had once been level 30 and had been proud powerhouses, could’ve been rendered useless after a stroke of bad luck.

They could succumb under the hit of a monster twenty levels weaker than they were, they could freeze to death at the beginning of an Extreme Cold disaster, and they could burn to death at the weakest attack of a fire elementalist weaker than they had once been.

This had been a thorn to the old alchemists. How could they not take advantage to heal those wounds permanently?

In Alterra, they were able to work with like-minded, as well as people with similar world views.

Together, they were able to work on something so much bigger than themselves—even bigger than what they could’ve imagined before.

The latest fire plague had been extremely meaningful to them as alchemists and as people, so even if they were given separate tasks, they would always take time to progress the study related to the fire plague cure.

Now...they could, and this was just what Althea needed to get more leverage for the next mission!