After Surviving the Apocalypse, I Built a City in Another World - Chapter 679

Chapter 679: Concrete
While a mosquito was targetting her husband, Althea was very very busy in the Research Center.

At this time, she was in the building materials research center, looking quite satisfied.

Why? Because Concrete was almost finalised!

Fortunately, when they got enough of the ingredients, they could easily experiment on the optimal conditions. They soon zoned in on the ideal formula, at least for the temperature and humidity of Alterra. They also had to consider the atmospheric composition, gravity, and even the soil properties.

Now, they had to test its performance in extreme temperatures.

It happened that Tori had a thermostat so they could do it scientifically. They were experimenting with Bento, a Materials Engineer from the Eden government and his team.

“Gravity is stronger, so we need to make the concrete more robust…” one said, and his assistants—mostly students from different fields of science—adjusted the proportions of sand, gravel, and crushed rocks.

This went on and on for a while.

“Expansion rate is…

“Elasticity…

“Coefficient is acceptable, but I think it could be improved.”

“Maybe if we add rebars…”

“That’s true. What about structural fibers?”

She watched the scientists work on data and came up with a thought. She took out her aether letter, calling her husband.

/Husband, where are you?/

/About to go home now. Why? Where are you?/

/Research Lab. We need you here./ she said, closing it after he answered the affirmative.

They continued with the experiments until the handsome man arrived. The shy scientists froze, their movements getting affected just by his appearance.

They couldn’t get used to his strong presence at all!

Miss Althea also had a great presence, but she was gentle and kind and made people feel relaxed. Her husband though, had suffocating coldness.

Why would Miss Althea even call him here?

As if hearing their thoughts, Althea answered the question, “Didn’t you want to test in cold temperatures?” She asked, pointing at him. “He can simulate the cold. He can also create metal similar to steel.”

Oh.

They looked at her with enlightenment and their attitude toward Garan shifted from one of fear to one of admiration and cooperation.

Anyway, they did similar tests with Sir Garan. Garan manifested a small bar of metal to test after they determined his metal element was very close to steel.

Althea was there to soften everything up (i.e. calm down the atmosphere by softening her husband up) and the scientists fortunately managed to get the data they needed.

They calculated and determined the best compositions, regardless of the extreme weather conditions thrown at them. They had reformulated the admixtures to be able to trap enough air to handle extreme cold, but also used special improved fly ash to handle the extreme heat.

After hours of trial and error, the test results were optimized and the scientists quickly recorded the ration and components.

The system buildings could handle the current situation of Xeno on their own, but their manual constructions needed this study.

Speaking of the system buildings, they studied the materials it was made of (using the broken pieces found in Fargo), and determined that their special durability was due to something else—probably aether-related.

This wasn’t something in their current capability to study, but they confirmed that as long as the material was of this world, then it’d have traces of aether, so just as well.

Further, they tested and their manual construction with the current concrete and were confident it wouldn’t be inferior in strength at all.

Althea also determined that the arrays embedded in system residential buildings were not defensive ones like that of the walls. It was likely only related to its non-scalability, as if it added a spiritual slippery coating on its surface.

Anyway, after a bit more recording and testing, they concluded this round of study was a success.

“With this, we should be able to create up to 4 floors without a problem. If we find reinforcements to increase tensile strength, we can go twice that.”

That was to say, reinforcement as in steel. They also found some fibers, but that was limited to a few floors. Garan had limited energy and making permanent metal was much more energy-consuming than just manifesting it for a while as a weapon, so his metal was out of the question.

For now, they had to find a ready source of iron—an actual mine—and go from there.

The next direction of this lab then was to improve the strength of the reinforced concrete—whether it was by reinforced steel, fibers, or other types of reinforcements. She deemed it worth the tedious manual construction if it was 10 floors and above.

With the advent of concrete, they could now improve infrastructure. She decided to defer on the high-rise building as the customized building was still enough for now. At the very least, it wouldn’t be worth so much time if the end product was only 6 floors, which could be achieved somewhat by the Level 2 Custom Building.

Besides, would she want buildings too tall? In retrospect, the skyscrapers of Terran weren’t particularly attractive, and it was too dense.

However, she’d still want more freedom than custom buildings could make. As with the other custom building, since she set it to be of residential use. This meant that commercial and other uses were limited, so she could use concrete construction there.

As for the concrete construction that would be done for the next phase of infrastructure building, they would mostly be for the horizontal. For instance, they could create an actual path of concrete blocks to go from Alterra to Limestone Valley, in order to better facilitate travel.

Aqueducts and water systems could also be improved and be made more efficient. Cisterns and septic tanks for non-custom buildings like the public buildings and the inevitable manual residential buildings. And they could also make dams. Who knew, maybe they’d be able to harness hydroelectric energy soon.

Even without it though, they still opted to create dams. While miraculously, the weather so far had been tolerable—only a bit of rain, a bit of hotness, a bit of coldness—it didn’t mean it was like that forever. A dam would let them have more control over their part of the river, but only as needed.

She had also hoped they could reinforce the System walls somehow, but the concrete just refused to stick. However, while this was puzzling to most, Althea easily understood the reasons.

Adding it would’ve interfered with the arrangement of the arrays which was extremely sensitive. It could be changed when the surface varied by even a little.

Just as elementalists couldn’t build on the walls to climb up during wars, the defending territory wouldn’t be able to do anything about it either. It was fortunate the whole formation didn’t crumble when a part was destroyed, otherwise, life here would’ve been extremely difficult and expensive.

Perhaps they could find a way for concrete to strengthen Alterra’s defense in some other, still efficient, way. They no longer lacked materials, so they could experiment as they wanted.

Well… there was still much to study, she mused, but at least they were certainly in the right direction.