Surviving the Apocalypse with my Multiplier System - Chapter 43

Chapter 43: Imminent Arrival
After returning home from her lessons, Rayne sat down with a plate of fried chicken for lunch, trying to figure out what she wanted to do for the rest of the day.

Recently, one thing had been occupying her thoughts: the possibility of storing a vehicle in her system. It had been a few weeks since she’d started storing objects nonstop, and she felt ready to tackle something as large as a vehicle.

She walked down to her private garage, where her large SUV was parked. She wished she had a smaller sedan to test first, but unfortunately, that wasn’t an option.

“Okay, let me at least kneel in case I pass out from this,” she muttered, crouching down in front of the SUV.

Placing her hand on the vehicle, she closed her eyes and focused. Almost immediately, sharp pain hit, followed by tremors and cold sweat. But Rayne stayed determined, pushing through the mental anguish, focusing all her energy on the task.

Every second felt like an eternity until her mind went blank, and everything turned to black.

A few hours later, Rayne opened her eyes to find herself lying on the concrete floor. She slowly looked up, hoping to see her SUV stored in her system, but it was still there, untouched.

“It looks like I failed,” she thought, pushing herself up. “At least I had the sense to kneel. I would have bruised myself if I’d fallen normally on this concrete.”

Frustration and anger bubbled inside her. After enduring all that pain, she hadn’t been able to store the SUV. However, there was a silver lining—she’d learned something valuable. During the intense focus, she’d felt a familiar, pleasant warmth in her navel. She had felt this sensation before, each time an item was successfully stored, but it had always been so brief that she hadn’t really noticed it.

It was like a small bubble of warmth that burst when the item was stored. This time, she felt it clearly, but the ‘bubble’ never burst. She had been so close.

Rayne’s resolve hardened. She was sure that the SUV’s size was just slightly beyond her capacity, but a normal-sized car should be within reach.

Then, an unexpected thought crossed her mind. “What if I go out in the middle of the night and store random smaller cars?”

She chuckled to herself, feeling mischievous. Part of her was excited. She’d never done anything ‘bad’ before, and while this wasn’t technically a crime since no cars would actually be missing, it still made her feel like a little thief.

Later that night, Rayne dressed in all black and went out to see if she could try her luck at storing a smaller car.

She walked around the parking lot of her building, but there were too many cameras and streetlights, making it impossible to avoid getting caught. After thinking about where she should go, she hopped in her car and drove to the street where all of the car dealerships were.

Many of the car dealerships had large amounts of cars parked in their lots, and most of them weren’t fenced in. She parked her car along the side of the road and walked down the street to look for the dealership with the least amount of security.

Interestingly, Rayne noticed that the dealerships that sold cheaper cars had much tighter security than the luxury dealerships. The ones that sold high-end luxury cars typically had a large showroom with their newest and most expensive cars on display, while the slightly cheaper cars were left outside with only a few security cameras.

Rayne walked up to a dealership that sold foreign luxury cars and took her time observing the locations of all the security cameras. She noticed that there were only four cameras, attached to the light posts in each of the four quadrants of the parking lot.

She carefully calculated their range of detection and noted that the two rows of cars between each quadrant weren’t actually seen by any of the cameras!

Rayne stealthily walked around the perimeter of the parking lot and crouched behind a row of cars to get to the ones outside the cameras’ line of sight. She moved slowly and carefully, even crawling at certain points, until she reached the right spot.

Quickly, she placed her hands on the 2-door sports car and began to focus on storing it. This time, there was a dull pain accompanied by the warm bubble sensation she had been looking for. She continued to focus until the bubble burst, indicating her success!

Rayne worked quickly, placing the car back in its original spot and then continuing to store the next car in line. It only took her three cars to fully master storing vehicles. By the fourth car, she no longer experienced any pain or discomfort.

She went from dealership to dealership, storing a variety of cars, making a mental note of which ones she liked best so she could return in the future to “test drive” them in order to store the keys.

Even the cars that would remain keyless could serve a purpose with their spare parts. She was also sure that hotwiring cars would become commonplace in the future.

Rayne finally made it home as the first rays of light pierced the night sky and quickly went to bed.

—

A few months later.

Rayne woke up and checked the timer on her system screen:

[Countdown to the Apocalypse: 0 years, 1 month, 1 day, 05:08:02]

With only a month left on the timer, Rayne was starting to feel the weight of impending doom. Over the months, she had collected thousands upon thousands of items, from food to fuel, in preparation for the apocalypse.

She didn’t know what the apocalypse would entail, so every item was precious in her eyes. She had finished storing all the books in the library and had built a significant collection of movies, music, and games.

Since the day she stored the cars at the dealership, she had stored her SUV along with other larger vehicles such as Jeeps, SUVs, trucks, campers, trailers, and even boats.

She had also managed to acquire barrels of gasoline, oil, diesel, propane, etc.—fuel would surely become a valuable resource.

She had reached a point where all she could do was wait for the day to arrive.