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

While people were having fun, Althea was stuck in the Research Center. She was with her master, and they were tinkering with a lot of potions and materials.

At this time, Hoffen was teaching Althea everything she needed to know to create a Limb Regenerating Potion. This was a request from her. After all, quite a few people needed it.

However, she learned early on that there would be a lot of challenges to make even a single one. As expected for such a good potion, it was definitely not easy.

Some of the basic ingredients, like the base liquor, which was the neutral solvent, were doable. However, there were two materials that were particularly difficult to obtain, even for Hoffen.

If a man of Hoffen's stature said they were a little challenging to get, then it meant it was very much near-impossible for normal folks.

Hoffen did this by doodling on his nice notebook gifted to him by Althea. He had seen her drawings and was very jealous, thinking it was very convenient to. Somehow, he gained this new hobby by the way.

Sad for him, his dexterity was limited to potion making (which was also debatable, considering how many times he almost blew himself up).

"One of these materials are called Elysian, a rather beautiful flower with red and pink petals," he said, doodling what it looked like in his memory. He even got some red and pink color pastels (a new product in the bookstore) to color them up.

Althea looked over and her eyes twitched at the sight. She stared at the group of doodles with bolts of pink and dabs of red on the page, trying to make sense of it.

"It's only a Class B plant… but it's difficult because of where it could be obtained," he said, 'artisitically' adding more blotches of pink and red on the page as if suddenly the image came alive.

Althea tilted her head, thinking it might look better at a different angle. It did not.

Did her master learn abstract art without her knowledge?

"The plant could only be found in the orc territory Southeast, probably more than 10,000 kilometers from Bleuelle City."

That was seriously far. Even by Beast Cart from Bleuelle, that would take one to two weeks of travel, let alone that the area was orc territory, which was famously untraversable by Beast Car due to territorial scents.

By foot, it'd take at least a month if people didn't encounter mobs or take a break, but what were the chances of that?

Traveling via Mercenary Hall wasn't as straightforward as it would seem, either. Obviously, mercenary teams would also have limitations in using the arrays.

First and foremost, assuming that side even had Mercenary Halls, there were no missions directed into the orc territory for obvious reasons.

The two sides did not trust each other, how could they open a way for the other side to enter?

Another, a person could only use the array once every week if their levels were average (and a few if their levels were high), though it was primarily something related to health.

Using the array, they found, was not good for the body. This was understandable because teleportation really caused a lot of strain in the body. The minimum was once a week or two was recommended for weaker individuals, and once every few days after a certain level.

This was the same case with City teleportation arrays, but that was far away from them for now.

The aborigines had to warn them a lot because when the Post Office had become popular, there was an increase in wishy-washiness among Terrans about arrays.

Alterrans became penpals with whoever was in Ferrol, and it was not even limited to business-related deals. Some were really just for the sake of using the Post Office.

They admitted it was to feel the long-distance communication method more than anything else. After that, they began discussing the wonders of the Mercenary Hall, and how amazing one could teleport through it.

So far, very few teams actually created an official mercenary team via the Hall. As for why people hadn't done it yet, even when they visited Ferrol, it was because a certain amount of activity as a mercenary team was required every month.

If a mercenary team failed to do a task of the same rank in more than a month, the mercenary team would lose points. Lose enough and they'd get demoted or even get deleted and had to restart their process.

Not to mention: There was the monthly maintenance fee equivalent to ¼ of the creation/upgrade fees.

Doing missions was one of the things Garan and the others did when they were training in Ferrol. They made sure to do many missions so that even if they neglected it for a few months, they didn't have to worry about it going back to Class E.

Another limitation of Mercenary Hall travel was that each travel actually cost more than the other, refreshing very slowly. If they used it too often, the cost could be too high to be worth the rewards.

It was applicable to per use per team, too, so most Mercenary teams chose their missions well, as well as assigned teams to specific missions to minimize this cost.

There was also the fact that there might not be Level 2 Towns with Mercenary Halls near wherever the mission location was, so they also had to travel on foot, regardless.

If they opened a Mercenary Mission and people near the Orc borders were to take it, it would still take months, if at all, let alone if the mercenaries came from their side.

One could imagine how long it'd take to actually get these ingredients.

Besides, it was really very dangerous, and she wasn't certain it'd be worth the risk. What was the point of having a Limb Regenaration Potion when more limbs would be lost getting its materials?!

And that was just one of the materials.