The girl was, indeed, resting in peace.

At this time, the so-called pitiful girl was eating buns in her room.

She was now experimenting with her space and was prepared to spend hours doing so. She felt that if she mastered this, it’d be worth it!

She dreaded living in a world without her barbecue and dim sum!

Kael’s essence stone might’ve triggered her space, but its building block was not based on Kael’s power. Something else was sustaining it—and it was her own power, which until her death had never been fully explored.

She could tell because, if she concentrated deep enough, she could feel the ’building blocks’ that made her space. It was like the entire place was built with some sort of microscopic dimensional threads. She could not see them with just her mind’s eye, but she had to tap with her entire spirit.

She spent a good few hours figuring out how to adjust the mysterious ’threads’, eventually grabbing on to something.

It was difficult to explain, but she could, to a degree, recalibrate each ’thread’. If it were an actual thread, it would be like she could change its softness, tightness, length, and so on, at will.

These variations could theoretically create changes in her space. While it could not increase the size (the associated threads were taut and fixed), the rest was modifiable.

In theory.

It took her a few more hours to put this theory to the test, and it involved a lot of trial-and-error. It was a lot like programming, in a sense, but done in a dimension she did not even know existed.

Even if she succeeded in modifying a ’string’, it would often go back to how it was.

She reduced the size of the area she was modifying until, finally, she managed to fix the changes on a 30 cm by 30 cm by 30 cm area.

In this tiny area, the time should be static.

She tried to make it bigger, but she felt the other threads affected, and she feared that she’d accidentally reduce the size of the space or something.

The space seemed to be looking for energy, but it wasn’t like the space had power outlets; where would she get its energy source?

For now, she could not make the static too big. Further, she realized that it passively consumed energy, regardless of the fact that it was currently empty. Once it ran out of energy, she could tell that this part of the space would return to its default state.

Of course, none of that would matter if there were no change in the first place.

To experiment, she heated a few foods in the communal kitchen and then placed them in the static place.

Please work, please work

She put it aside and would take a look after a few hours.

While waiting, she opened her phone and took out a pen and a piece of stationery she bought to list down what she needed to buy.

She went to Doogle and asked, "What to prepare in an alien apocalypse?’ but got vague answers, so she shifted to just an apocalypse where everything was dead, and nothing could grow.

The first things she needed to buy would be bulk quantities of drinking water, crackers, protein bars, salt, dried fruits, dried vegetables, canned goods, and so on. Since her space (and funds) were limited, she’d had to prioritize what to place. She needed to focus on food that was convenient to prepare and food that had a long shelf life.

For food that was convenient, it would be ready-to-eat, shelf-stable, calorie-dense, and balanced. The ideal was military-grade full meals, emergency ration bars, and so on. Even peanut butter was said to be a good choice. These would last several years.

The rest of the money was to buy things like whole rice and whole wheat. Those needed processing, heat, and water to eat, which could be inconvenient, but their shelf life was longer.

Even military-grade food and canned food, et cetera, probably wouldn’t last ten years at best, and she knew the apocalypse was permanent.

Rice and wheat, if chosen well and stored well, could last 30 years.

As for what she’d eat after that...she’d figure it out later. Humanity survived for 50 years in the past; she believed they’d do well in this timeline.

Speaking of this, she also should buy items for cooking, like portable pots, butane cooking, and so on, but probably only a few pairs, since her priority food wouldn’t need cooking.

Another thing to buy would be vitamins to ensure nutrition. Vitamins should be easy to buy, but the actual medicine might be troublesome (according to the internet).

Medicine was strictly regulated, so she would buy whenever she could, like when she passed pharmacies, but bulk was not possible for her. She could only buy the over-the-counter variety for now, like painkillers, anti-inflammatory drugs, and so on.

She would also buy related things like Band-Aids, gauze, surgical kits, sutures, and the allowed amounts of IV fluids and prescription drugs (prescriptions she could fake, though definitely with some limitations).

She could, perhaps, hire more people to buy what they could in different pharmacies, but she’d probably do that later when she settled down somewhere. Involving too many people too early would open her up to trouble.

She should also get seeds—beloved and lost in time—every variety she could get her hands on. Just that she would only be able to give it a bit of space.

Other people, including those she experienced the apocalypse with, might even call her stupid for wasting precious space on something that wouldn’t grow well anymore, but she wanted to preserve a bit of this anyway.

Considering what she knew about the future, it would be difficult for plants to grow. However, she still felt hopeful that things would be different.

These seeds...represented this hope.

She had a feeling that things might really be different this time.