The next morning, Nate tossed the gumdrop in his hand a couple of times before grabbing a knife and cutting it in half. With his new core, it probably would have been fine, but he wasn’t willing to take any chances. If this worked, then he would just take the second half of it later.

  It was definitely still a large rush of energy, but it was nowhere near as potent as it had been the day before. Still large, for just half of gumdrop looking thing though.

  It was more than he was expecting, but it was manageable this time. If all the pieces in the vials were like this, then there was no doubt he would be able to upgrade his core again. He had been fairly certain that he would be able to manage it before, especially with the addition of the rainbow orbs. Now he knew that he would be able to accomplish it.

  The day before had been spent with the adults, talking to everyone that they could find. Today, they would be getting to work on rebuilding the city. Kind of anyway. It was more like they would all be working together to move rubble and begin clearing away everything.

  Thankfully, the roads were still mostly clear, so all the trucks and semis that they could find would still be able to cart everything off. There was also the added benefit that came from almost everyone being cultivators. They didn’t need to bring in a lot of heavy machinery. The increased strength they would get as their realms increased made a big difference here.

  There was no need to wait for cranes or other machinery. All they needed to do was pick up whatever they could lift and toss it into the back of the nearest truck. Whatever they couldn’t lift by themselves, they could do together. Enhanced stamina and strength were wonderful things, or at least their wives seemed to think so.

  Nate split off from the rest of the group early on so he could conduct some experiments. With his current core realm of mortal, his strength, while increasing daily, was still within mortal limits. As a result, he was less useful than many of the others in the area. However, he had an idea he wanted to try out, namely storing everything.

  By that point, it had become clear to him that if the wrist computer’s storage function had a size limit; it was something ridiculous. That wasn’t what he was worried about. Instead, it was the method of storing items. In the past, he had always been able to pick up or lift at least a piece of whatever he was storing. He had no idea if that was even a requirement, or if he would be able to store these huge chunks of concrete that were larger than him.

  There was only one way to find out for sure, and that was to experiment. Preferably in an area without prying eyes around.

  So, he went off alone, opened the storage menu, created a new tab titled ‘Rubble’, and began. Over the course of the next hour, he began to learn the specific requirements of his storage ability. Size and weight truly didn’t seem to matter, as at one point, he even stored the crumpled remains of a vehicle. However, it had to be disconnected from the ground, and if he couldn’t lift it, then he had to touch it with the ethereal screen of the wrist computer. He might be the only one who could see or even touch the device, but it could apparently still interact with the real world when it needed to.

  Working mostly alone, with only Aura to keep him company, and warning him when anyone was coming close, he managed to get quite a bit done. Clearing things was easy when all you needed to do was touch it with your wrist. Large sections of house walls and broken buildings went into his storage, and then into the back of various dump trucks when no one was watching.

  The material would be crushed and added to the wall around the city as they rebuilt it. Nothing would be going to waste as they rebuilt and strengthened the wall. They wouldn’t be chasing perfection this time either, instead, they would be doing the job. Then, as they had time, they would be adding extra height and width to the wall.

  Thankfully, it was a process that the compacting crews and engineers had long since perfected.

  All throughout the day, the trucks could be seen running throughout the city carrying their loads to the wall. Alternatively, there were other trucks that were carrying a different sort of cargo. They were loaded down with the bodies of the city’s residents that were recovered throughout the day. Occasionally, a group would find a few people who were still alive, but by and large, if they were near a destroyed section, they had probably been lost as well.

  For the moment, all the bodies were being brought to the graveyard and laid out in a long row. The burial services would be taken care of in a day or two as more of them were recovered.

  The previous excitement everyone had shown at being able to return home and start the rebuild of the city faded away as the day progressed. Many of them became hesitant to touch the larger pieces of concrete and broken walls, afraid of what they might find underneath. These were normal people, cultivators who had decided to forgo the professional hunting path in lieu of pursuing normal jobs. People like Alice the dirt compacter and her husband John, the water technician who worked at the water plant.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  Both had been part of the normal, regular expeditioner group that Nate and his parents had encountered the last time they were out. Regular expeditioners far outnumbered the professional hunters. They always had. Most people simply wanted to live a normal life, and thanks to the required expeditions, they could do so while also enjoying some extra money.

  Only now, they were seeing the downside of their lives, what happened when they all played it safe. It just depended on where they stuck their head in the sand. Some were realistic on the matter, while others disassociated and chose to blame whoever they could.

  It was typical human behavior.

  Nate and Aura rejoined his parents in the afternoon and began working with them and the others.

  “What were you doing all morning by yourself?” His mother asked as they lugged a wall over to a dump truck.

  He tapped his wrist where the healing bracelet was. His parents believed that it was a storage bracelet. “I was experimenting with the various ways I could use this to speed things along.”

  She glanced at her own with a thoughtful look before dismissing it. Her storage bracelet had much lower limits than the one her son possessed.

  “Make sure no one sees you using that,” Niall told him from behind them.

  “I know,” Nate replied confidently. “That’s why I went off alone and had Aura watching out for anyone coming close.”

  “Just be careful,” Nina said, ruffling his hair.

  Back at the Chrighton estate, they learned that George had indeed gone back to work at the guild that day. The building itself was partially destroyed, but with all the injured people being recovered, he really had no choice in the matter. The people were counting on him, and all the people in the guild would be looking to him for leadership.

  In turn, the Chrighton, Travers, Pritchley, and Holmes families, among others, were all working together to establish a semblance of normalcy and control. Outside of the Holmes, the rest of the families were well known and had power and money. Or at least they had prior to all of this happening.

  Plans were being made, talked about, dissected, and then tossed aside as new information continued to come in from all over the city.

  The first day of clearing everything had gone well. There had been a few bumps and bruises in the first few hours as people worked out their frustrations and other issues. After that initial period though, they had all gradually settled down and gotten to work.

  That isn’t to say that they had made a large amount of progress. They hadn’t. There was simply too much that needed to be done. However, with how many people they had working, the area they had managed to clean wasn’t small either.

  They were planning on which parts of the city to repair first. Water and sewage were at the top of the list, as was the beast processing facility. People needed water, food, and a clean environment, after all. Deciding on what to fix after those was a little harder. Arguments could be made for other businesses, such as grocery stores or public services. While the people would undoubtedly want housing to begin being rebuilt at some point. There was also the concern of supplies for each of these projects.

  Certain items could be cannibalized from the remains of other buildings. However, they would eventually run out of viable options by doing that. There was the hope that the other cities would send help and supplies like the cultivators had promised. At this point, none of them were exactly holding out hope that they would follow through on what they had been told.

  While the adults were working through all the problems, Nathan, Angelica, and Lindsay worked on their own items. Together, they reworked lines in their meditation arts and then worked on their energy skills.

  It wasn’t exactly fun, but knowing they were making progress held a certain excitement all its own.

  Before going to bed that night, Nate needed to take another shower to remove all the dirt and dust that had accumulated on him while working in the city. It was also the perfect time to take the other half of the gumdrop.

  This time, without any hesitation, he popped it into his mouth, chewing it slowly as he walked into the shower. The water was still cold as he began cleaning himself. He had used a towel to get the worst of the dirt and grime off his arms and face earlier. But nothing beat a nice shower.

  The energy from the gumdrop sank into being and surged toward his backup core. It was slightly less than what he had gotten from the other half that morning. They had looked to be about the same size, so he was guessing that some of the energy had leaked out of it after he cut it in half. According to his screen, he received one full point of energy less from that piece than what he had gotten in the morning.

  If he ran it by the numbers, that was a pretty hefty loss in the intervening time.

  That morning, he had gotten an increase of eleven points to his backup core. Now he had only gotten ten. If he chose to cut them in the future, he needed to make sure he swallowed the other half as soon as possible. Otherwise, there would be a severe loss in effectiveness.

  The main thing he needed to finish that night was the traps in the new dungeon. It wasn’t going to be finished until Wednesday night, but he still needed to finish everything that night. On Wednesday, he would only have enough time to make a few last-minute changes and corrections before it finished and came into being.

  He had a few ideas written down, however, this time around he was going in mostly blind. It was a situation that he had a feeling he was going to become uncomfortably familiar with. As he began working with dungeons that he had no information on, the only thing he would be able to do initially was the room layout. The traps and everything else would need to wait until after the dungeon had been formed.

  Doing it that way wasn’t quite ideal in his mind, as it would delay things. That said, his current method simply wasn’t going to work for many of the locations. That was the way of things, and he would do what needed to be done.

  Nate opened the menu and began looking through the pre-created traps it had put together for him.

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