Chapter 6

Hannah’s storage space seemed different from others she had heard about.

It was small, only about one-sixth of an acre.

She could grow crops on that land.

People could enter it too, but there was a limit to how long they could stay each day.

The limit applied to Hannah and every other living creature.

She could grow crops in the storage space, but the time limit made it impossible to raise animals there.

A countdown bar appeared inside the space.

When it reached zero, the space expelled every living creature inside.

Hannah discovered this on the first day after her rebirth.

At first, she could stay inside for only half an hour a day.

But the next day, she put some jewelry her parents left her into the space.

Every piece of gold jewelry vanished!

Then she discovered that the space had improved.

It reached Level 1.

She gained another half hour inside each day, bringing the daily limit to one hour.

Fortunately, unused time carried over. If she did not use it all today, she could add it to tomorrow’s allowance and keep saving it.

It worked a little like unused mobile data that rolled over to the next month.

But unlike mobile data, time in the space could accumulate indefinitely.

Today was Hannah’s third day back, and she had two hours saved up.

The area where she could grow crops was small, but the space came with another advantage.

At a thought, a dark purple box appeared beside Hannah.

It was small, only a little larger than her palm.

The box looked wooden, though Hannah could not tell what it was actually made of.

She opened it and found a small stack of papers at the bottom.

More precisely, they were talismans.

The box held four talismans: one storage talisman and three teleportation talismans.

There were originally five, but Hannah already used one.

She found the box inside her storage space on the first day after her rebirth.

When she opened the box floating before her and touched the talismans at the bottom, the top one vanished beneath her fingertips.

Only then did knowledge appear in Hannah’s mind: the talisman that vanished was a power transfer talisman.

It transferred some of its power to her.

The original owner of Hannah’s main storage space left it behind.

But after so many years, little of that power remained.

Hannah received only one percent of its original power.

Even that was enough.

It made her physically stronger and taught her how to use and make talismans.

So far, she could only create storage talismans.

The original owner must have made the storage talisman in the box.

Unlike Hannah’s main storage space, this talisman held a separate space for supplies—more than 70 million cubic feet of it!

Time stood still inside the talisman, keeping the supplies fresh.

However, the talisman would stop working in about a year and a half.

Before it expired, Hannah would need to move those supplies into new storage talismans. There were no spares in the box, so she would have to make them herself.

She still had a year and a half to do that, so she was not worried yet.

The three teleportation talismans in the box would stop working in eight months.

That was only one month after the apocalypse began.

Hannah sighed when she saw that the talismans had only eight months left. If they lasted longer, they could save her life after the apocalypse.

What frustrated her most was that she tried again and again to make a teleportation talisman, but never succeeded.

The ones she made looked right, yet none of them worked.

The repeated failures drove Hannah up the wall.

Still, having three was better than nothing.

Even if she did not use them to escape danger, she could use them to take supplies without paying!

They would not go to waste.

She needed to use all three before they expired in eight months.

As the name suggested, a teleportation talisman could take her instantly to a place she chose.

Each one lasted ten hours.

Once she activated a talisman, it would return her to her starting point ten hours later.

She could not return early.

A teleportation talisman would send Hannah to her chosen destination, but she would have to spend ten hours there before it brought her back.

She planned to use the three talismans to get money quickly.

For safety, she would wait until she had more than ten hours saved in her storage space. In the meantime, she could keep preparing for the apocalypse.

Hannah made her plans for the next day, then went to bed.

She lay down, closed her eyes, and practiced the technique she inherited, circulating its power through her body.

Maybe the problem lay with her talent, or maybe it was the world itself.

Either way, Hannah doubted a hundred years of training at this pace would give her as much power as that inherited one percent.

Still, even a tiny gain was worth having.

If she grew a little stronger, perhaps she could create storage talismans with more room inside.

So, whenever she had time, she practiced the technique again and again.

Hannah was still unused to it, and the results were small.

After a few rounds of practice, she fell asleep.

By six-thirty the next morning, Hannah ran about five miles through a nearby park and returned home.

The apocalypse was drawing closer.

She wanted to stockpile vast amounts of supplies, but without the strength to protect them, she might suffer even more than she did in her previous life.

If she wanted a better life this time, she needed to learn to protect herself.

In her previous life, countless brushes with death taught Hannah a few rough ways to fight.

But those skills were nowhere near enough!

She signed up for several classes in shooting, karate, and kickboxing.

The classes would start the day after tomorrow.

Hannah did not intend to rely on those classes alone.

Since her rebirth, she also ran several miles every morning.

In her previous life, she could not even run two miles.

Now she completed five without stopping and still felt she could go farther.

The power transfer talisman must have made the difference.

After a shower, Hannah helped herself to breakfast from her storage space.

She ate, then drove to a breakfast shop outside her apartment complex.

The shop’s breakfast sets were delicious.

The portions were generous

The prices were fair too.

When hunger made her stomach cramp in her previous life, she dreamed about the food from this shop.

"Is my order packed?"

Hannah stepped inside and called to the woman behind the counter, who looked to be in her fifties.

"All ready. It’s over there."

The woman was making breakfast for other customers.

She smiled at Hannah and pointed to three insulated boxes on the table to her right.

Hannah ordered a month’s worth of breakfasts from the shop.

Each order included a hearty bowl of soup and two filled breakfast rolls.

She collected fifty orders a day.

When Hannah arrived, the owner helped carry the three boxes to her car.

She was a valuable customer, after all.

After loading the boxes into her trunk, he took out three identical empty ones.

He would use those for tomorrow morning’s order.

Hannah made plenty of boxes like them.

They were simple to put together.

She picked up used foam boxes at a produce stand, washed them, and added a layer of foil insulation.

They were cheap and worked well.