NOVEL NEXT Chapter 133: Upgrade
Silas smirked. Suddenly, he leaned toward Ivy's cheeks and gave a quick peck, "Sleep now. I won't try anything funny."
Ivy was dumbfounded. She heavily suspected that she was about to be scammed… however, the person in front of her was Silas. He will never deceive her.
'You are overthinking! Even in the last life, he never dared to scold you… So how can he bear to scheme against you?' Ivy thought and closed her eyes in contentment.
Meanwhile, Silas stared at Ivy with a glint in his eyes before he slowly fell asleep too.
For the next few days, Ivy hired a few superhumans and used their help to fasten up the building process. With a team of 20 psychics, 30 earth superhumans, and several other abilities, the work began.
The Earth's superhumans moved first. With her guidance, they reshaped the ground, digging wide trenches across the land for the main pipelines.
Their powers made the work fast; trenches that would have taken weeks were carved in a single day.
The soil was packed and flattened into sturdy channels, ready for the steel pipes Ivy had bought.
Then the psychics took over. Using telekinesis, they lifted the heavy steel pipes and tanks as if they weighed nothing.
Under Alexa's sharp instructions, they laid the pipes into the trenches, connected them with strong seals, and positioned the blue tanks at higher ground to act as reservoirs.
"Raise the main tank another two meters," Alexa ordered, pointing upward. "Gravity will help the water flow without needing too many pumps."
The psychics obeyed, hoisting the tank onto a reinforced platform of stone shaped by the earth superhumans.
Next came the waste system. Alexa and her team designed it to run parallel to the water pipes but deeper underground to avoid contamination.
The earth users carved sloped tunnels, ensuring dirty water would flow naturally into sealed collection chambers.
The psychics positioned the connector boxes and fitted large valves to control the flow. Ivy herself filled the first tank with clean water from her storage. The moment the pipes carried the liquid forward and clear water gushed out of a test outlet.
Within five days, the basic framework of the water and waste management system was complete. What should have taken months of backbreaking labor was finished in less than a week.
The tanks stood tall, gleaming under the sun, pipes ran in organized lines beneath the earth, and waste channels were secured and sealed.
Ivy walked the grounds, checking every joint, every valve, every tank. Her eyes gleamed with satisfaction.
"This will hold," she murmured to herself. "Even if the world falls apart outside, this place will survive."
Taking a deep breath, Ivy focused on the next task and which was to level the land before she placed various 1-bedroom apartments.
The alignment wasn't correct, and Ivy had to redo her work again and again before she was able to get the correct alignment.
After thinking for a long while, she decided to build only 10 apartments for now. She tried to stack them, but realized that all of them were quite unstable.
She even thought of hiring superhumans to build houses, but soon she realized that it would take a long time.
At the same time, she realized a problem she hadn't thought of before. The place looked too barren. There was no tree, no shops, no agricultural area, etc.
For this reason, Ivy decided to upgrade her temporal storage. The only problem was that, other than the 10,000 KB, she would need 1,000 space crystals and 1,000 psychic crystals.
Finding psychic crystal wasn't a problem, but finding 1000 crystals was indeed a problem. Ivy had upgraded the storage, and now she was waiting for the temporal storage to react.
Sure enough, by the end of the day, Ivy was finally able to enter the temporal storage. Compared to the previous time and the usually cold atmosphere, the temperature was much warmer this time. The space had expanded significantly.
There was no other significant change, and Ivy decided to explore the shopping interface first. To her disappointment, though, it had remained unchanged.
Even the multiplication of the food items was still stuck at 50 times. Ivy focused on the last aspect and ordered,
"Build a 2-bedroom apartment."
[Would you like to build a two-bedroom apartment for 2KB?]
"Yes," Ivy replied, her heart was pounding, and she was wondering if she would finally have the fruit for her hard work.
[Commencing the order… An error occurred. Insufficient Level.]
Ivy was frustrated, yet she refused to back out and thought for a long while before ordering,
"One-bedroom apartment with additional facilities."
[Would you like to build a one-bedroom apartment for 1KB?]
"Yes."
[Commencing the order…Construction finished.]
Ivy waited as the glowing light in the temporal storage slowly faded. When it cleared, a new building stood in front of her.
Compared to the plain wooden house from before, this one already looked better. The walls were still wood, but they had been polished smooth, and the roof had a darker, stronger finish.
Her heart beat faster as she pushed the door open.
When she went inside, she noticed right away that there was more than one room. Instead of the single space she was used to, the building was divided into different areas.
There were separate sections that made it clear this was not a small home anymore.
The rooms were wider, the hallways were longer, and the whole place gave off the feeling that it was meant for more than just simple living.
The only significant change was a smaller room that looked like a storage room.
Ivy sighed and realized the pattern that she hadn't focused on earlier. The Temporal Storage seemed to have a pattern for leveling up.
The first time she had upgraded her temporal storage, it didn't have any increase other than space expansion.
The second time she upgraded her temporal storage increased the number of multiplication and also allowed her to build a one-bedroom apartment.