“You do… Is that real?” Such an intense reaction from her told me how hard it really was. Sigh! Humans… We were faced with many adversaries in this apocalypse.

Even securing our food was such a dilemma, even for someone like Hilary.

“It’s true,” I nodded, “but to do it, I’ll need to prepare many things first. But I have the essence used to do it.”

“Tell me… Tell me how you did it!” she even grabbed my arm to know the answer.

“Not now,” I shrugged, letting my arm free from hers, “let’s first scan those people then I’ll bring you with me when I’m doing it.”

“Pretty mysterious, huh?”

“Not like that… It’s just we need to select a fertile place, good enough with secured water supply and strong defences. If we don’t, then we might lose it like what happened here at MIT campus.”

Bringing back MIT made her eyes dim. I got that she was still blaming herself for such loss. And I could only sigh and give her a deep hug again.

“Stop blaming yourself, we make mistakes to learn from and grow up, right?”.

“Uhm,” she said in such a muffled way before I let her go down to do what she had to do.

“Time to go and check over others,” I got done from here and then moved towards the next target; the MIT campus.

I knew we lost a lot there, but I was hoping these kids would have something up their sleeve to solve such problems.

“How are things here?”

Just as I arrived, I saw a bunch of youths working on a few devices. From the look of it, they were trying to repair a few using parts from others.

Good! They were trying at least.

“L… Lord…” few paused and many lowered their heads in respect. I could feel their fear and veneration towards me. Sigh, was I such a scary person or what?

“Tell me, did you manage to repair any?” I didn’t descend off my chariot and just spoke while standing high up there.

“Lord… We are trying to repair many devices, but…” one spoke and seemed to struggle to continue.

“Keep talking,” I demanded in a simple tone that I hoped to not scare that kid with.

“We don’t have the energy to test them yet… So we don’t know if we succeeded or not.”

“I see,” I got the general idea behind his hesitation. He was a scientist sprout. Even if he was still not considered a true scientist in the past world, he was still thinking like one.

Scientists never liked to give definite answers or make promises without testing and retesting. I got where he came from, and could only inwardly sigh.

What I looked for was just such a simple answer, not that much actually. As long as they were trying their best to solve this disaster, it was great.

Even if not all the devices fixed here worked later on, I got the feeling they wouldn’t stop at anything to make them work.

“Do you know what’s the progress in researching the power supply?”

“Lord… We already solved it before… Before we got attacked!”

“Solved it?! For real?!!” I was surprised to hear such great news. Why didn’t anyone tell me about this before?

“But it’s gone… All the work we did is gone!”

I could feel the bitterness in his tone. There was nothing grave for any scientist like losing his work and achievements like this.

“Don’t feel this way,” I had to say a few encouraging words for them, “you did it once, and that means you broke the puzzle and got a formula, right? You did it once, and that means you can do it again.”

“Y… Yes…” he hesitated and even exchanged looks with others around him.

“When are you going to reproduce this energy again?” I was so curious to see what they got in the end.

“We… Are all busy repairing the devices. So…”

I got his meaning. “No problem, just spread my orders. Let a team of your elites be formed and rework on producing the energy again. We have to work shoulder by shoulder with the repair process. After all, it’s like what you just said, we can’t tell if they will work or not without a suitable source of power, right?”

“Indeed,” he nodded while I could see his body shaking.

“Great, keep up the good work and keep me posted about any improvements.”

I had to leave or else that kid and others around might faint out of the blue. I could only sigh. I was too much domineering for many humans, despite the fact that I wasn’t a threat to any of them.

But they got to crack the energy problem so damn fast! Damn! I didn’t even think they’d do it in such short notice!

So, that bastard must have known about what they did and tried to intervene to ruin everything. What was he afraid of? My energy was the first step in a long series of stairs leading to what I wanted.

Even by ruining things here, we could easily rebuild everything from scratch. We were humans, once we broke through some sort of a barrier, we wouldn’t stop.

Or was he planning on killing all the youths from MIT? I frankly couldn’t read through his mind…

My next stop was at Lily’s place. She selected the side just on the other bank of the river.

Just from my place I could see lots of people working to remodel the place. During this time, they dug trenches, holes, and even built artificial hills.

I could also see lots of rows of densely packed tents that must be placed for the soldiers to rest.

From the general look of it, Lily transformed the southern side of the river into such a big military drilling camp. But so far she didn’t start training any, and I doubted from the size of the work here she would anytime soon.

Yet I went directly there and started to slowly fly around, checking things without speaking or asking anything.

I didn’t want to disturb them from their work. As for the one who was going to give me an explanation and answers, she was nowhere to be seen here.

I even failed to spot any familiar faces of my team.

Where did they all go then?