He was unsure what kind of dream this was, but he was determined to make the most of it.

For one, he could move his body completely. Unlike now, where even raising his arm was painful.

Kael looked at the whiteboard and the information written and the printouts pasted on top of it. His blue eyes, usually somber, sparkled with a bit of interest as he stared at the contents.

He raised his hand to touch the markers, but his hand only went through.

Sadly, it seemed like he couldn’t affect anything in any shape or form. It was like he was watching a scene in a detached manner.

But he could recognize that handwriting anywhere.

Naia’s.

Then he realized: This was not a dream.

This thought made his heart clench and palpitate at the same time.

For some reason, she seemed to have gained a parallel space. He wondered if it had something to do with his essence stone. However, his power didn’t grant him a separate space, just control of the current fabric around him.

He already knew the contents of the whiteboard, so he shifted his attention to every other thing in the mysterious ’room’.

He looked at the brands, the shopping bags, and so on, making note of them. He also studied the logos of the packaging in the takeout meals. If he could touch them, he would have checked the bags for receipts.

Still, with his brain, this should be enough to determine her approximate location.

He would find her soon. That was for certain.

...

Naia was currently unaware that someone was peeking in her space.

After checking the progress of her customized RV and motorcycle, she decided to move to another town. This time, she was heading home.

Home... as in her maternal family village.

She wanted to see the last person she considered as family. If they were still the good people in Nadia’s memory, she’d find a way to take them with her.

She never planned on going through the days alone. She had already experienced the deadly loneliness as humanity’s last survivor.

She was never like Kael, who preferred to do everything alone (or just with her), either. For one, her powers were never overbearing enough to solo missions at all, so she was always with Kael or with a team wherever she went.

That said, she needed to choose well. In this case, trustworthiness was prioritized over usefulness.

The first person who came to mind would be the only decent blood relative she had left: Her maternal grandmother.

She smiled, feeling fond in her heart, even if everything she knew of the woman was from Nadia’s memories.

Her current location, Acero Town, was not far away from her mother’s natal village, Tuzi Village. The bus station would stop at the nearest Town, Lotus Town, which was around a hundred kilometers away.

The villages around Lotus Town, according to research, focused more on potatoes, sweet potatoes, and a few other tubers. They also had farms dedicated to rice and the like, but those were mostly consumed locally. The wholesale stores there would likely focus on the tubers, processed or raw.

With the current state of the roads (which was, for now, without random sink holes and gorges), the trip should last just about one hour or so by provincial bus.

To be honest, even until now, she couldn’t help but marvel at the ETAs displayed on her maps whenever she was trying to estimate travel times.

Back in the apocalypse, there was no road intact anymore. They could have been blocked by fallen buildings or by a pileup of cars. They could’ve been damaged by the falling rocks, by the tornadoes, by the earthquakes, or by the aliens (or even the awakeners themselves). There was definitely no stretch of road that had been undamaged.

This ’short’ distance that was only an hour by bus would easily last a day or two in the height of the apocalypse, especially considering the monsters lurking around.

On her way to the bus station, she bought several more duplicates of her favorite snacks, also to share at home. For example, several boxes of her favorite snacks, her favorite juice, her favorite candies, and so on.

She even filled up a small section with different flavor chips. These...she probably wouldn’t share. She hoped they’d last a long time, even if she had to eat a few chips a day!

Boxes of sauces, condiments, pickles, et cetera, were also brought in. Anyway, if her space was not full, she felt uncomfortable indeed.

She also took this chance to buy more medicine that she could buy, along with gauzes, bandaids, first aid kits, and so on.

She included other things like sunblocks, vitamins, pain-relief balms, cooling patches, and even beauty products (though she naturally set a limit on how much space would be allocated to luxuries)

She also bought some gifts for her grandma. She bought snacks, melon seeds, jackets, comfortable shirts, tea, and so on. She placed them in her space, ready to be taken out when she neared her grandma’s house.

She did not sleep during the hours of travel. She took this chance to look out at the scenery while allowing herself to reminisce and also look back on Nadia’s memories.

To be honest, she really felt something unusual about her situation.

Memory was continuous and naturally merged, rather than an information dump. Her memories weren’t observational or in the third-person perspective; They felt first-person and emotionally weighted.

There was no dissonance at all. It was not like remembering someone else’s life, but her own past. Her appearance was also very similar, even if it wasn’t an exact carbon copy.

It was why, when she thought she’d see her hometown again, she genuinely felt excited and warm.

She had a bold thought: Was the life she remembered actually a reincarnation?

She went back like this, so she was already open-minded.

Well, regardless of what it was, she was here now, and this was her present.

And she hoped to actually make a future out of it.