The response was not entirely bad news, but not good news either.

It seemed like the one who knew most, the Crown Princess, was currently in seclusion, along with her husband.

People could not be forcibly woken from seclusion, otherwise the efforts over the period of time would dissipate. Althea and the others were in a rush, but they couldn’t make an enemy of a City, especially if it was related to the children.

Seclusion was different from their meditation, wherein elementalists would gather more elements to themselves to build their foundations. Seclusion was when a person was absorbing an aether crystal, which would directly improve the physique, mana, and HP pool, and therefore the level.

That said, they heard that Rowan received two crystals from his great-grandparents. Using one, he directly jumped a few levels to level 25.

He had mentioned that he wanted to send one to Alterra, but the source refused, and he could only respect their wishes.

They also found out that aether crystals had diminishing effects as the level went higher, so the next aether crystal wouldn’t even give a fraction of this effect.

Rowan’s first seclusion lasted a week, but fortunately, Silvia and his grandparents were there to hold the fort. For the Crown Princess’ case, it seemed like they had been in seclusion for more than a week now, and it was estimated they would be available within the next few days.

Fortunately, their assistants copied the bit of information they could find in the library and sent it to Alterra in the meantime, as they waited for the couple to emerge.

The letter was long, and it was impressive that they managed to copy so much about the subject within a few hours.

To summarize, the problem was really the excess of aether in bodies that could not handle it yet, much like what happened to her husband back then.

To contain it, use anti-aether tools.

This was something they actually had, albeit only one.

They placed the anti-aether pearl they got from the Basset Town war, and it fortunately did calm the fevers down, though the improvement was not big. They also had to use it alternatively between the two babies, with each one getting an hour at a time.

"The letter also says that the physique of those with awakened elf blood is different. They heal faster, they are more durable, but other than that, they do not know much," Zenno read. "There might be some more information, but those are less accessible to the assistants, so we can only wait.

"They mentioned that the crown princess was faster in absorbing crystals compared to the crown prince, so there is a possibility that we’ll receive more news from her soon."

Althea and the others nodded, though their attention never left the twins.

The babies, although with unusual qualities, still had human blood. Was there some sort of dissonance? When thinking of it this way, Althea wondered if this was some sort of disease that was their fault. If they inherited something bad—

"It’s just genetics, my wife," Garan said, sensing her line of thought. "It is not yours, nor is it mine. We have been born the way we have, and I don’t believe that it is a misfortune."

...

Things calmed down after a while, with the children slightly getting better. They no longer found it difficult to breathe, but their fever was still searing.

It was only then that she noticed the [Alterra Town (Lv2) has won the war against Valov Town (Lv2)] notification.

She blinked and then nodded. She backread the notifications and saw her wins.

It was...disappointing.

Valov, for a territory called one of the ’top’ towns at its tier, only gave a few thousand gold.

She could tell that Balthazar really spent much of their money on this war. Tsk. In the end, it was her money that the bastard spent.

Considering how a good portion of her town was decimated, this was far from enough. Most importantly, the number of casualties was a few thousand, and nearly a thousand of those were fatalities.

That was the most deaths they ever had, more than all the wars and mobs they had experienced combined. Even her children, her babies, got so close to death.

The more she thought about the losses, the more livid she was. She couldn’t imagine the depression her people were feeling, especially those who had lost people.

She shook her head. This was not the time to plan revenge on Valov.

The first priority was rebuilding. At this, she immediately opened her Lord panel and used the resources to repair everything that she had to repair, including the walls, the system buildings, the roads, and the like.

She could guess that there was no street that had a big, dangerous pothole (or even sink holes) on it.

A lot of the gathered resources were part of the items decimated during the fights, so she did not have enough to repair everything. At this, she retained the war price of the resources, buying wood and stone for twice the usual price.

She also sent out letters to confirm other things, and she found out that all the trebuchets had been recovered and could be reused by them. Now, they also had several trebuchets, and they’d park them along the easements as a deterrent.

They could also be used against big mobs or if there was a particularly strong monster that appeared. As a town, an occasional level 30 monster would show up. It was just that those in the late level 20s and the early level 30s would rush over to fight with it. They were not few, so the monster really didn’t stand a chance. Rather, these powerhouses had been hoping to get the last shot so they could gain some experience.

She also received at least a hundred thousand superior forces, most of whom were ’slaves’.

They would definitely maximize their presence to make sure no one would dare attack Alterra again!