After Surviving the Apocalypse, I Built a City in Another World - Chapter 843

Chapter 843: The Magic of Math
The Mathematician Team was primarily made to help her calculate the locations of arrays.

Everything had some bearing in maths—even in the natural world. Even if this was a different world, it applied, though a lot of their formulas had to be discovered and studied from scratch.

Since they didn’t have anyone who really understood arrays in the territory, they had to figure it out themselves.

After the Math team signed a nondisclosure agreement and five-year bonds to Alterra, she taught them what she knew of the arrays—which honestly wasn’t much, but it made them cry in gratitude anyway.

Since then, these people stayed in the research center unless they had to train as per territory requirements. They practically lived in the Research Center dorms—which, by the way, was only there in case of urgent all-nighters.

They had to kick them out multiple times, especially during their day-offs.

At the same time, she couldn’t really blame them either. Arrays were really a fascinating subject. It was just that they were studying it from the start, basically, like how the ancients studied math.

They had to go through too many trials and errors, and what was more difficult was that—unlike actual maths—they couldn’t create arrays (yet) so they couldn’t test things out.

Now, they were given much more concrete—and doable— assignments that could be the application of everything they studied thus far. The team naturally jumped at it.

The team was a group of seven people, some of whom were even acclaimed experts back in Terran.

Pesto, the head mathematician, was an old man with thinning hair (of course, thanks to his leveling up, it had grown quite a bit).

There was also Virgo, one of Kimmy’s husbands. Since he moved here, he practically never left the center. A math maniac, that was what he was. They could only imagine the torture of staying in a territory without paperback in Belluga.

He had very thick callouses. They reckoned he must have carved his notes on wood instead.

This team also had Melissa. They realized that she had much more potential in the theories, especially since she wasn’t held down by the ‘known’ theories—something she had limited access to in Terran as a dropout.

When she found out they were attacking the people who killed her brother, she naturally got reinvigorated and worked throughout most of the day. Eugene, even if he didn’t like wars, was fine with this type of overwork even if it was for Melissa’s well-being.

For the next few days, this team, including Althea, focused on these calculations. Of course, unfortunately, there were a lot of assumptions.

For example, while they knew using a certain percentage of comprehensive strength was considered as the war trigger, it was never fully quantified. The variances were too far. How did one truly quantify a person’s individual strength, anyway?

They also got information from the aborigines they used as data, but how accurate could a person’s memory be?

How detailed would they remember these things? None of them were lords who could see the population number at a glance, and even if they were, who would record this data?

The research team therefore had no choice but to play safe for now and use a huge tolerance in their calculations.

In fact, this calculation could easily take months or even years if done manually. However, their research center managed to do it in a fraction of the time.

First off, a few people actually had calculators in their spaces. Some were powerful ones, even, powered by solar.

Many of these people had run out of resources early on because of what they chose to put in their spaces, and they were blessed by luck to have gone far enough to reach Alterra.

Some people just had different priorities.

Another reason for their progress was because, a couple of days back, the Research Center already developed the electrical calculating machines—the ancient computers.

As soon as they got the magnetite from Guia, she had asked Winona and Yona’s teams to prioritize the machine.

Overall, there were many team members and they received a lot of investments from the territory, allowing the progress to be fast-tracked.

She knew that the rules of this world and the arrays weren’t something they could fully study on their own, at least not without taking them years of study, and doing a lot of wasteful trial-and-error.

The subjects were far too complicated. Thus, computers were the way to go.

Even if it was the ancient ones that worked less efficiently than their Terran calculators, it was still a massive step to getting the data they needed.

Speaking of which, when she ordered—via the ‘system’—the priority to shift to what was loosely referred to as ‘computer’, she did get a couple of frowns (i.e. pouts) and minor complaints and whispers—at least for that day.

At the time, they had already produced electricity to light a Youli lightbulb, and people were jumping to apply electricity to their own projects.

Although what went on inside the Research Centers was generally a secret to the outside world, information flowed freely between teams. After all, one team’s invention could assist in another’s so there was no reason to be so hush-hush about everything.

For instance, one team requested machineries and motors. This team was led by Eugene. Electricity could further automate the various factories, leaving the manpower to focus on more subjective and sensitive parts of the production line.

Another team requested the creation of medical devices. This was led by Winona.

These were all valid requests, but the lord got the final say, and she decided to prioritize the old calculators. This was thankfully so because how depressing it would be to take months calculating.

Anyway, they proved that these computers would help with the efficient and fast creation of everything else so everyone accepted the decision eventually (i.e. stop pouting and giving her teary bitter eyes).

Speaking of other developments, glass was also being perfected now. It was just that they couldn’t quite create such thin glass as needed in lightbulbs or even her beakers.

So for now, the experiments settled with youli lightbulbs which were thick and had very low light translucency.

The energy wastage was large in turn, but they’d take what they could get.

Regardless, this initial development of electricity opened up a lot of doors.

It would take months or years to fully integrate it, but it was already a huge step in the right direction. At the very least, there was progress, even if it was one step at a time.