May Peace Grace Us

Chapter 48: Her advantage

On their way to the northern entrance, the walkie-talkie that was hanging on Aila’s waist suddenly sounded.

“Hello? Can anyone hear this? This is Jerome.” The walkie-talkie sounded.

Aila took the walkie-talkie and said, “Yes, I can hear you? What is wrong? This is Aila.”

“Aila?” Aila could hear relief in his voice. After his voice was heard, Bella’s voice came and cut through the device. Asking what is happening.

“I need help over here.” Jerome did not beat around the bush. “There was an unexpected zombie that we encountered here and our team has sustained some damage. Whoever is near us, please get us here.”

“What happened?” Aila frowned as she directed her team to change direction. They also heard what was said and they also had a grim expression. “Send the flares for us to send reinforcements there.”

“I can’t explain it over here,” Jerome said as Aila could hear the sound of the flares being fired in the background. “All I can convey was that we have some injured and I have taken care of the wounds, it should not cause them to be infected and turn to zombies. But we need help with going back to the base. As for the flares, it's inconvenient for me to send them out.”

“Roger,” Aila replied as she asked for their general location. She then relayed to Bella, whose voice rang out in the walkie-talkie moments after Jerome cut the lines. Hearing the series of events, the girl had also proceeded to convey the news to the base as she and her team are now nearing the base after they get their tasks done.

In a while, Stephen's voice rang out from the device in her hand. The man said that he'd head over to help bring the injured back. Though he asked for some patience because he is in the southeast at the moment, for him to arrive northwest it would take a lot of detours to arrive there.

“No need for you to come over dad.” Aila addressed her father. “Just stay at the base as much as possible. Please help in preparing to receive the injured. If possible, drag Travis out wherever he is. We need his power to heal these people."

Stephen agreed after a while, but not without giving them instructions as well as telling them to take care of themselves. If worse comes to worst, he tells them to use the flares to indicate their distress. He and the others will rush over at the fastest speed they can.

When Aila and her team arrived at where Jerome and his team were, the man was wounded in a pile of zombies beneath them. Most of them are those who did not mutate much, but she could spot some variants here and there. There were too many of them and Aila no longer wondered how Jerome and his team got into an accident. Even those with experience to back her up will also get embarrassed facing this, many.

Without any hesitation or care, Aila immediately went to Jerome’s side and examined his injuries. Her team also did the same to the others who were wounded. And so far the injuries are not too serious and can be dealt with by their current level of technology and medicine.

“I solemnly ask you to carry us back, if you don’t mind”, Jerome said cheekily. “I’m so tired from finishing this pile.”

“Well, I mind,” Aila said. “But you are too exhausted now, so I will reluctantly take you back. Just don’t do any funny business.”

Jerome laughed as he heard it, but in just a few moments he collapsed from exhaustion. He had done his best to hold out and Aila could only catch their resident pushover helplessly. No matter how unreliable he is usually, he does know to give assurances whenever he is needed.

“Collect the crystals as many and as fast as you can.” Aila instructed her team as she set Jerome on the ground. “I’ll give you five minutes for the task. Regardless how many you harvest, we’ll leave after the time is up.”

Billy and Henry were fast moving and they managed to get at least half of the crystals with them before they left. Though they did not have enough time to clean them, Aila did not say much about it. They are pressed on time to stay for longer.

Arriving at the northern entrance, Travis was already waiting with Cindy, who took the lead over others with stretchers and the like. They took the three injured people from Aila’s team’s care and rushed them to the makeshift clinic. Travis was working with his ability on the side to make sure they would not be infected.

Travis had awakened his healing power two days ago. He was in the middle of inspecting the animals they reared when he discovered it. There was one sick piglet among the animals they kept, and he healed it when he was caring for it. He was happy and had mixed feelings when it dawned on him that he could heal others.

Happy that he could reduce the casualties among them. Mixed feelings because he really cannot escape the fate of being a healer. In Harry’s words, he is indeed fated to be popular with the injured and sick.

Aila did not follow them and instead dismissed her team. She trusted Travis to do a good job and she wanted to reward him and the others on the patrol later. So she took the crystals and went to a laboratory she had set up for this purpose.

Though she did not go directly to do that without calling someone to form another team to guard the walls. Because of this incident, she thinks there will be fewer people who want to go out. She has to mind that this might have scared most of their people and they needed some more training and encouragement before they could be confident enough to get out. So she just called others to take patrols on the walls. Preferably they are all skilled marksmen.

Facing the small number of people wanting to volunteer, Aila realized she had to make some specific division for this task. Perhaps after the injured are healed they can start this plan. This will also solve the dilemma of having people to take the guarding duty. After all, it's quite a headache to always call the population to form a team over and over again.

Felix, Eugene, Alexa and Harry volunteered this time around. Like most of the prototypes of their divisions, they became heads of their team. Trusting their abilities, she left for her lab and prepared something for the enhancement of everyone’s powers. This is something only she could do at the moment.

Power enhancers are also a way to increase people’s abilities. In the future, scientists will announce that the energy of the crystal found in the zombies is helpful in replenishing the energies of supernaturalists and it could help and upgrade their abilities. It was said that this was a gradual process that needed to be taken in moderation, reasoning that although it is helpful in upgrading their abilities, it is also a dangerous undertaking for them.

The experts specifically said that the zombie crystals had so many impurities that cannot be easily solved by the body. Too much without letting the body clean these impurities, an accumulation of them is harmful to the body and, in the worst case, will kill the supernaturalist. This was a clear warning for those who are greedy for quick success.

Though these impurities are almost solved if the grade of the crystal is high, another danger is present in the form of too much energy. The higher the grade of the crystal, the better the purity of energy inside. And the higher the impurity, the more uncontrollable the energy was when digesting them. Thus, sometimes the backlash towards those who attempt it is so bad that they become cripples.

It was only in a further period of time that a system was created that those incidents became minimal and tame. Repeated study and repeated failures of many has made humanities level up their abilities and power. But the price to pay for this was too big.

Aila does not want her people to blindly use the crystals in their bodies. As the author of this world, she was aware of some unknown truths in this world. She had a bunch of notes for this topic and ultimately disregarded them for various reasons as she was writing them. This includes cleansing the crystal’s impurities as well as calming the energies inside of them.

Thinking back to when she wrote the story, she has an unnamed character discover this method. She wanted to make her a member of her protagonist’s team, but she was schemed and killed before she was able to announce her discovery. Typical dog blood drama with a plastic friend, but unlike most of this drama, what was discovered or studied was not stolen by others. Instead, it was forgotten and left in the dust as no one had the time to find this finding.

Why did Aila write it this way? It was simply due to a certain episode of her life as a Fortin she wrote that. That not all excellent works are recognized by others and even if it was known, it is not necessarily be utilized by others. It was her way of giving tribute to a certain someone, thus remaking a scene that is quite reasonable to the theme she was making.

Placing the crystals in clear water, Aila lit the alcohol lamp first to heat up the flasks she would be using later. As she waited for the water from Albert's ability to heat up to get into the level of heat she wanted, she cleaned a few more crystals she would be utilizing on the side. Although most of them are already clean previously, she wants to clean them again together with those they collected from the corpses Jerome has slayed. She repeatedly cleaned them three times before she was satisfied with the gleam of the crystals. Then she separates them by color and sets aside the transparent crystals away from the colored ones.

She then put them in a container where she put enough water from Albert’s ability to further sterilize them. Checking for the water she had placed on the flasks to boil, Aila picked one of the crystals she had placed on the side. After a few moments, a dark layer can be seen to be being separated from the crystal.

Aila removed the crystal and transferred it to another waiting boiling flask. She repeated the steps until there was no more dark layer that could be seen. Satisfied with the clarity of the crystal, she then prepared a mortar and pestle at the side. Later on she will be crushing the crystals into powders for the next step of her experiment.

The moment the crystals are boiled for at least three more times in three different boiling flasks, they now visibly clear from most impurities. It was a dumb and easy to do way, but people in the apocalypse hardly cared about this step. They themselves are lacking in hygiene, so why would they bother going through this rigorous process at all? Not to mention it is a waste resource because water is limited as well as fuel, so even if someone were to do this, they cannot achieve the best results, because they will be ridiculed and reprimanded for wasting their supplies.

This is exactly what happened to the NPC she has written in her story. Thinking what they were doing was a waste of resources and a waste of time, they were killed and their discovery untapped.

Aila described in her notes that the impurity-free crystals are almost as soft as candy. It was the impurities that gave them the hardness and its renowned reputation of being almost indestructible. Removing this property will reduce them to pure energy in a fragile state.

When the waters once again turned turbid for the last time, Aila took the crystals out before boiling them again for assurance. Collecting the now dirty water, Aila poured it hard onto the nearest nearby plant she had set in the lab for greenery. She did this to experiment with some of the canons to her advantage.

And when she finally finished all the sanitation, Aila then took the warm crystal to the pestle and crushed it into powder. She then placed them in a test tube then poured another water from Albert that was embedded with Travis’ healing ability at her behest. And again she boiled them using her father’s flame that she had kept on burning for this purpose.

This is to stabilize the energy inside and be much smoother to digest. The waters from an ability are universally pure and stable, while the healing power is a good stabilizer. She could use some mutant plant materials for these factors, but none of them are available at the moment, so she has to make do with this. Though a fire from a supernaturalist is a must to liquify the crystals for easier compounding.

Ordinary fire will consume too many resources to burn, while a fire from a supernaturalist is much more cost-efficient to use. The only great downside was that it could easily break her apparatuses. Fortunately, she has been specially ordered to be more durable than normal. Thankfully, one of her cousins is a manufacturer of laboratory equipment that she could forward her requests to. Though there were problems here and there, Aila got the best she could be provided, given the level of technology and materials at hand.

When the waters boiled, the color of the waters was slowly influenced by the crystal. The one Aila just used as a transparent one, it has turned the waters so clear that it cannot be any more purer. In just a while, the crystal dissolved and became a liquid state, glowing gently under the minimal light her laboratory provides.