No Time

Chapter 86: I'm Back

The Shui family may have put me off their minds.

The readers may have forgotten me.

The author dared to forget about me for many months.

I was considered dead by many.

But I was still alive.

After my last appearance, I went back to Greece with my mother.

My mother had changed from being a good office worker but meek to a bold and firm representative in the company she worked in.

She had changed so much that I was surprised at first. I had guessed it was due to her finally being fed up with my father's antics and deciding to stand up for herself.

It turned out to be wrong though.

The Peridot was a stone that was either formed around volcanoes or from asteroids. The ones from asteroids had a small chance of granting you spatial abilities. And rarest was the power to regress, basically to go back in time.

My mother had a peridot pendant passed from my grandmother. She had always thought it was an emerald pendant, but after hearing about the properties of peridots after a long time during the apocalypse, she realized that her spatial powers were from her "emerald" pendant that was actually peridot.

And when she died, she returned to the time when I was shipped off to China.

In her past life, she didn't know what happened to me, but now that she had an inkling, after interrogating my father, she found me.

I was chilling and living in China with the Shui siblings.

She kept her strength when she returned back to her office days.

When she came to pick me up, she didn't tell me all this. My mother only told me these things when we came back to Greece.

This made me suspect that Shui Yu, that monster-like kid, also came back in time. Why else would he train his siblings and be so powerful? My mother couldn't compare to his strength and he had so many properties and money.

Or if he really didn't regress back, then he surely is some evil genius, some underworld boss. His sister was an assassin and his brother was a hacker. Only the eldest, Shui Jing, was normal.

...Sigh, I wonder how Shui Jing's doing.

Shui Yu certainly was the most astoundingly beautiful person I've ever seen.

But Shui Jing really was better. He looked more handsome, masculine, he was strong, but his attitude was really naive and responsible to a fault.

I was surprised when I saw him on tv one day. He had become a superstar.

His concerts were really expensive and I used up almost all my saved up allowance for several months to attend one.

I got a good seat but there were too many people jumping up and down. But seeing his face again was a great moment.

He had become taller, and although he was lean, he had muscles and wasn't skinny. His face was just a mature version of his younger self and still looked handsome. No, much more handsome than before. And his smile still looked pure and still shook my heart.

That was about 5+ years ago.

I had no doubt that he was still alive. Shui Yu would keep him alive at the very least.

I dislike, more like hate, him, but I had to admit that kid cared for his family members. I was childish and immature back then, still kind of am, but he was really like an adult. If I see him now, I'll probably forgive him, and admit that I was a stupid kid. But back then, I really was scared and hated him.

And now, I had come back to China to look for Shui Jing.

My abilities were powerful.

I gained 3 abilities from Red Phase. Electricity, water, and space.

I touched electricity from a taser, just plain water, and peridot from space.

My mother only had one power before and wasn't lucky enough to get a second one this time either. She still chose her pendant and gained her spatial ability.

Her spatial ability was to transport a viewable distance away and replacing something else. So say there was a small rock a few meters away, as long as she could see it, she would replace it and the rock would be placed where she was.

My mother used this ability in her last life to quickly grab up food and supplies, as well as jump on top of opponents and replace herself with a car or another heavy object.

She wasn't strong but she made do and lived fairly well compared to others. It was only when she encountered a mutant zombie whose ability was speed that she died.

This life, she earned money to have a storage place and a safe environment.

It was good that this would be available to us when the apocalypse struck, but the thing was, I didn't enjoy this.

My mother had changed.

She wasn't considerate, she wanted me to go over my limits and succeed. I could accept it as strict, but she seemed to want me to be grateful.

I'm pretty sure I lived well in her last life. I could live well this life too.

People change, and the apocalypse is something that changed everyone. But my mother went from a meek yes lady to an irritable lady with high standards.

I don't think she loves me anymore. She just sees me as a variable that she should take care of to erase her past life's guilt.

So, even though our life after the apocalypse was peaceful and we were viewed as saviors who built a community of non-infected people, I ran away.

Unlike my mother's spatial ability, mine was storage. It was a blank space that I could store things, non-living things, in. I stuffed as many supplies as I could and wore protective clothing.

I didn't go by sea. There were too many sea monsters and I didn't know how to sail.

But I knew how to drive.

So after driving for 7 days straight, with barely any rest, eating in the car, and only stopping to go answer calls of nature or fight zombies blocking the way, I arrived to China.

I still had the Language chip in my head so I understood every word on signs and such. 

I headed to the base nearest to the city I used to reside in, but no luck.

There was a person that did know of the Shui siblings though.

It was a person who claimed they knew Shui Jing as a schoolmate.

"They invited people to their base. I mean, everyone went there. But my dad thought that the military and government would do better, so we stayed. We don't know where that base is, but it should exist. Or maybe it collapsed by now? Hahaha!"

Crazy.

But I found this clue at the very least.

After visiting different bases and getting information while pretending to be a stranded tourist who got separated from a nomadic group, I narrowed down on specific spots.

There were more than 30 spots.

'Sigh, this is going to take me forever.'

That's what I thought.

But unexpectedly, I was lucky.

I found a suspicious place on my 6th spot.

Using binoculars, you could see a round near-invisible orb surrounded by dead trees.

I say near-invisible because you can only see it when sunlight hits the right spot.

Climbing the mountain was an arduous task.

It was too hot, unbearable. I surrounded myself with water to keep cool, but in just several hours, they all evaporated.

Trudging on with mere willpower and water bottles, I arrived at a point where I could see the invisible barrier if I shined a flashlight on it. It was still far away though.

It was huge.

A dome this large... It should be a base, right?

It took all day to climb up, now it was turning colder as night struck.

I layered on shirts, jackets, and parkas to stay warm.

Once again, I trudged on with pure will power and the help of hot packs.

Finally, after 30 minutes, the barrier was right in front of me.

Behind the invisible barrier were walls set high up.

'Now, how do I get in?' I thought while shivering.

I'll worry about that tomorrow.

First, get out the camping supplies.

My warm tent, my warm sleeping bag, my hot water boiler, and more hot packs.

Sigh, this was the life.

I sipped hot cocoa slowly to not burn my tongue and got out my phone to read some saved up webnovels.

Drowsily, my eyelids began to flutter and close up...

Then-

"Hands up! Who are you?!"

A group of people in black uniforms with guns and all that stood in front of me.

...FBI? SWAT team? What was this???