Chapter 91: Settling Down the New Residents (Part 1)
She decided to switch towns the next day, spending the rest of the day in this crowded place.
For the remainder of the day, Naia only bought the stones but did not open anything up for now. She placed them in her space under the cover of the car. She used a different car this time, a cheap second-hand sedan she bought off.
She stayed in the inn one more time, got cleaned up, had dinner, and relaxed for a while while she pondered.
During this time, she thought about quite a few things. For example, the moral reprehensibility of trapping people there just because they were afraid they would talk.
Anyway, would people believe them even if they did? Should she really just throw them out? She’d ask which country they were from. If it was convenient, she could throw them out on their home ground. Maybe they’d even be thankful to her for trapping them in there.
In the end, she decided to be (mostly) frank with them.
Hiding things, thinking of lies, and so on felt unnecessarily mind-consuming.
She would get their promise of non-disclosure and release them where it was convenient to her, but likely outside her home country just in case. She would tell them about the apocalypse, too, so it would be up to them what they wanted to do with their lives.
If they decided to publicize what they saw, it didn’t matter. Not only would no one believe them, even if there were, she didn’t think she’d be unable to defend herself.
Besides, Kael would protect her.
Even if Kael always ran away whenever she confessed, he never failed to protect her when she needed him.
It was only then that she entered her space and met with the siblings, who almost dropped the food they were eating when she appeared out of nowhere. Well, to be precise, she appeared in the forest area and then emerged into their sight.
"It’s you!" Gal exclaimed, though it took her a beat to recognize her. Naia had been in several disguises before, so they were startled with how she looked now.
"Hello."
"You rescued us..."
It was an uncertain tone. They could’ve easily landed themselves in a worse situation.
"But...where are we? Did you take us here?"
She nodded. "I gained this ability not long ago," she said. "I think it’s related to the upcoming apocalypse."
"The what?"
"Huh?"
"Someone gained prophetic abilities and wrote a book about it," she said, raising her hand, and a book came flying over. This was not the official release yet, just the printed version of the webnovel. For now, it was good enough.
"I can release you if you want, but you’d have to wait until three days for it to be convenient. Don’t worry, I’ll give you enough supplies to last a while. In the meantime, I recommend reading the book thoroughly first."
They nodded, accepting. They were relieved that they could get out soon.
Who would want to be trapped? And in such an odd place?
The reader, Galia, was the one to start reading first. This was the genre she had always been into so even if Naia didn’t ask her to read it, since it was already in her hands, Gal would definitely read it.
"Are we the only ones here?"
In her mind, Naia said: So far, yes.
"I didn’t even know people could come in before you guys," she told them.
"By the way, I granted you access to the gardens and the farms. It’s not big for now, but it will give you more space to move. The forest animals can’t enter there. I reckon you’d find it more comfortable to camp there."
"There’s a garden?"
"You can control that much?"
The two did not dawdle anymore and grabbed the tent and other supplies. Naia was about to tell them she could move everything with a flick of a finger, but didn’t say anything when they had already ran into the direction.
Soon, they saw the small garden area and the farms, which occupied much of the remaining half acre.
"Wow!"
"Are those tomatoes? What vegetables are under here? There are even fruit trees!"
"The way the patches are arranged is adorable. It’s like how my mobile phone farm is, except each plot of land is about a hundred square meters."
Back then, her space wasn’t very big. She could only get bits of everything, which was indeed like one of those farm games with modular plots of land. It also had a separate water generator to supply water to the farms.
There were also tanks of water there, connected to drip systems and sprinkler systems so Naia didn’t have to water them every time and just had to schedule them. This was a common system easily available in town farming stores.
They were delivered when she ordered water tanks. She got the pipes and systems installed in the warehouse before, and then just transferred them into the space.
The siblings gingerly put down the items before they began to explore and admire the place, feeling comforted by the sight of food. They weren’t foragers and were afraid to eat things they did not recognize in the forest. So even when they had been starved for a year as slaves, they only dared to eat the berries and some wild apples and nuts they found in the forest.
As for meat, they could only dream of that. They were city kids and couldn’t even kill a chicken. They wouldn’t be able to hunt for meat. Fortunately, Naia was there to provide pre-prepared raw ingredients
Speaking of access to ingredients, the only places they did not have access to were the new, still-empty hectares in the space (which looked like a blank void right now), as well as the area where the supplies were stored.
The latter was where the whiteboard and other documents were placed. For now, only she would ever have access to that area.
As for what others could see? Interestingly, for other people, what they could see when looking at no-access areas was a dark fog-like wall. It was quite convenient.
It felt like she had control of her own small world.
