May Peace Grace Us

Chapter 76: Tiredness

With Liza’s group’s help, the whole situation at Aila’s side was improved. The birds were temporarily away and everyone could take this chance to rest for a while. Aila and her group desperately needed to restore their energy as fast as possible in the case of another wave arriving before them again.

“Replenish your energies and supplies with these.” Liza and her group gave the dead tired team a crate of weapons and a few vials of a newer version of enhancers. “We’ll take the fort for a while before we will have to have an exchange with the group that was assigned here.”

“Where did Alexa assign you guys?” Aila asked as she distributed the vials and took a few of the candy-like pills into her mouth. Instantly she felt that her body was filled with energy and.

Travis and his team have been working on this during the course of the whole winter. They discovered different types of energies inside the crystals and they worked hard to distinguish them from one another. When they did, they then isolated the variety of energy to experiment their uses and effects. Thus, making a specialized number of candy-like pills for different purposes.

The one Aila just took was one of the most tame among them. It worked like an energy booster and replenisher. For a supernaturalist, this was enough to make their powers have enough energy for tossing. While for people like Aila who do not have any supernatural abilities, it would be like a very effective coffee in the morning. This was in fact the most proud of invention as well as the favorite of its creators. With not so creativeness they call it ‘energy enhancers’.

As for the other enhancers, they are yet to be released outside the labs for now. But they are basically ready for consumption, but the production cannot keep up with the need. Thus, all experienced personnel are called over to help with settling in a fixed number of them once every three days.

“I’ll be sent to where your father was. Alexa thinks I will be much more helpful there than here.” Liza said as she scrolled at her phone to double check. “According to her monitoring, my plants will be a good help in controlling the situation there.”

“Then you better head there.” Aila said, urging them not to delay. “Worry not about us, Alexa should have assigned someone for us here.”

“Are you sure? Jerome is not yet here.” The man was called away by Travis and the others to help in the production of the enhancers. The fatigue that the combat teams had was immeasurable, so the labs had to step up their production of the energy enhancers. Else they really cannot last so long outside without any sort of boosters to support themselves. If they had more people, they could just rotate their people and a time to rest could be guaranteed somehow in their ranks.

“It’s okay. He already sent me a message of him being on the way.” The level of danger has risen so much that the labs can no longer hold any combat-related personnel. Jerome was indeed rushing over with the share of different versions of enhancers with him as a souvenir from his stay there.

“Then we’ll be leaving at least until Jerome gets here or the reinforcement assigned to this team will arrive.” Liza decided for her group. “Don’t say your father will need our help urgently. He is not that weak to need any rescuing so soon. Auntie will have a thing or two before anything happens to his side. Not to mention, his friends are great at making sure that things do not escalate to the worst.”

Aila had no choice but to acknowledge her words and not say anything else to urge her. Because there are indeed so few moments wherein her father will be in a compromised position. Unlike in his past life where he was presumably an ordinary person, the Stephen of this life has little weaknesses to be mindful of. So, without any strong and life threatening elements other than what they were used to, he really can live long as long as the base and his family are safe.

Jerome arrived faster than their reinforcements. He used his ice to make his arrival faster, making ice bridges over the buildings and shattering them the moment he arrived at his destination. A flashy way to arrive, but has served his purpose quite well.

“Sorry I’m late.” Jerome said as he panted heavily. In his arms was a bag Aila thought was where he placed the enhancers he had promised them. “Did I miss a lot of things?”

“You’ve missed the bunch here.” Liza said as she skillfully snatched the bag in Jerome’s arms. Fishing out one of the vials, she made an amused sound before she threw it gently to Aila. “I’m taking one of these from helping out. What variety was this?”

“Ah, that one is for earth supernaturalists.” Jerome said as he took the vial from the other, he then took his bag again before he took out another vial. “This one's for you. The ones I took out from the labs are power enhancers this time around. It is helpful in strengthening and quickly energizing supernaturalists. Words of advice take only one of these at a time. The energy of each pill is so strong that it is advisable not to take those not of your attribute to not harm yourself. Although there is no data about what would happen from over consumption as well as incompatibility, we don’t want disasters to happen, do we?”

Rolling her eyes, Liza listened to his words while using her words to extort Jerome to give an appropriate one for her team members. Knowing how useful it is to themselves, Liza spares nothing to add benefit to herself and to her team. Although she was more inclined to strengthen herself and her hyenas, she recognized that she cannot neglect and let people under her be weak. So at every opportunity she got what she could.

Jerome wanted to argue, but it was simply impossible to reason with the other. In front of his friends and practically siblings in all but blood, he really cannot go against them on things that do not matter much, especially to the girls of their little clan. So he easily gave them part of what he had. If there is a shortage within his group, he could just make more the next time. Besides, giving them away might be a life-saving talisman for them, so he is more at ease in giving them up,

Satisfied with her spoil, Liza and her cohort left for Stephen’s location.

“So what is the situation?” Jerome asked his team about what happened during his absence.

Billy took the initiative to give a run down while the rest of the team, under the lead of Aila, made sure they were prepared for another attack. Aila made sure the traps were in place, the captured birds were killed thoroughly before asking Jerome to freeze them well, making sure that their weapons were as combat ready as possible, and made sure that they were rested enough after they did all the aforementioned actions.

Aila volunteered to be their look out for their enemies as she urged her team to take shelter. Jerome, not having to attend the last round of assaults, accompanied her as he couldn't otherwise convince Aila to rest along with the rest. He knew that he could not argue with Aila at times like that and recognized that all he could do at the moment was to follow along with her for now.

“You are right.” Jerome suddenly said, as Aila used a binocular to see things in the distance.

“About what?” Aila asked, as she did not know what the guy was all about. There were many things she was right about, so she really couldn't comprehend what he was talking about specifically.

“About the barrier.” Jerome said. “After things calmed down a bit, all of us in the labs decided to postpone all ongoing projects in favor of developing our protective barrier. Although the plan was to make a prototype as fast as possible, this was a priority that has even overtaken the enhancers and anything related to them.”

“That is great to hear.” Aila happily said. “I had told you guys earlier about it, but I guess even if this decision is made earlier, you guys will hardly make any progress with it anyway, after I reflected on myself. After all, the most important material for it to be made possible is yet to appear.”

“What was that?” Jerome curiously asked.

“A spatial crystal core,” Aila coolly replied. “Although we already had some that were already used by Travis and other spatial supernaturalists, those crystals are only the weakest crystals that cannot support the whole project from happening. After that, we need strong spatial power to contain the heat in winter and to cool down the air in summers such as we are currently in. Without at least a level three space attribute crystal to contain the power of the other crystals used, everything is wasted in the end.”

“....a space one, huh?” Jerome thoughtfully said. “That one is a tough one to find. Even if I did find some for use, I doubt Travis would be so willing not to use it for himself. You know that guy was rather obsessed with crystals of the same attribute as him.”

“....Bella will take care of Travis' reluctance when the time comes.” Aila passed the problem to Bella to take care. “As a pretty popular manpower, Bella is estimated to be more tired than anyone else on this base. If there is a way to decrease her burden, she will be more than willing enough to make the decision for Travis. You know between all of us no one can go against her.”

“...well no one is sane enough to argue with her on matters that concern her.” Jerome acknowledged Bella is scarily scary during this period. Although the leader of their clan of hyenas was normally amiable enough to be talked to and reasoned with, currently she was too tired to have conversation without snapping at others. So everyone knew better than to trouble her when she was busy venting her anger at ‘flies’ that kept on going at their base.

On the horizon, another flock of birds is coming into their area again.

“Well, there goes our rest time.” Aila said as she raised her hand to gesture to her team who was resting behind her. “I just forgot how troublesome things can be if you had a place to root in these troubled times.”

“No one can block a flood when they come, Aila.” Jerome patted Aila on the shoulder before he took out his weapon. “Let’s just take care of what comes to us at the moment.”

Sighing deeply, Aila aimed her gun at the upcoming flock and fired.