A/N: Will resume 2ch/day tomorrow! Sorry, sorry! I just got back from abroad and was unable to prepare more Chapters beforehand T_T.

...

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Back in Tuzi Village, Naia and her cousins were now suffering from Uncle’s endless nagging.

Were their ears bleeding? No, but it certainly felt like it.

Uncle had found out about what happened and entered panic mode. Apparently, some dude in the police station automatically called the parents in case minors were involved.

Though there was Naia as a guardian, it was still usual to contact the emergency contact just in case, particularly to ensure the victim had gotten home safely. Not to mention, Naia was barely an adult herself.

Welfare checks were usually fine, but this time was a big case, so the authorities really had to do all the steps.

One could only imagine how Uncle and Grandma felt when they received the call an hour prior!

They had literally just arrived home then, acting as if nothing had happened. As for the injuries on the twins, they pretended they got into a fight with school bullies, but Naia had already handled it, and everything was fine.

Now, great, they had to suffer this vocal abuse. They also had to coax grandmother, who was uncharacteristically giving them the silent treatment!

Sigh, it’s so hard being so filial!

...

"Grandma, it’s my fault...Houser and his wife got involved with some unsavory characters and I—"

"I’m not blaming you," Grandma gripped her hand. "I’m just...frustrated that you had to go through that at all."

"But, Grandma, in the apocalypse, enemies like that would be the norm," she said, and everyone immediately quieted down.

Uncle, Grandma, and the twins all looked at her with looks of despair.

She wasn’t lying. The power struggles that’d happen without law and when resources were scarce could only be bloody.

"So...I think this experience wasn’t bad," she said. "At least we wouldn’t be so shocked anymore."

...

The next week was set to be...spartan training. For the kids, anyway. Oh, and uncle too.

Even the neighboring kids, Yaya, Mimi, Riri, and the dog Rice, joined in. They saw the teens training and wanted to grow stronger as well, and Naia didn’t stop them.

The children’s training regime would be what the twins’ were doing before, which was just right for their age.

As for grandma, she just made her watch some tai chi exercises on the internet. She was far too old to do anything too physically exhausting.

As for the teens’ schooling, they finally got the official news that they could put their education on hold. The process was expedited by the kidnapping.

After all, they had been kidnapped, so they could use their ’fragile’ psychology as an excuse.

However, Uncle had to promise that the twins would take some diagnostic exams in the summer break, and the teachers were free to make it 10x more difficult!

The training would be a long-term one. The kind wherein they wouldn’t go home for days to weeks, possibly to places without signal. This intimidated the group, but they knew they had to do this.

They had been through two attacks in a month. Being helpless in both made the twins particularly fired up.

As for their supplies, Grandma and Uncle prepared several copies so they could at least eat well even in the wilderness. This included tents, sleeping mats, protein bars, and so on.

These were all things already in her space, but these were grandma’s heart. They all knew that preparing necessities for her children had been a source of happiness for the old woman.

The twins watched enviously as Naia placed the supplies grandma prepared for them. They wanted to go inside the space again, in fact, but Naia prohibited it until the Spartan Training was over.

Reason? Just because.

These kids looked passionate now, but after a few days of hardship, there would definitely be plenty of times they’d want to give up. For children with short attention spans, one reason could only give so much motivation. They needed multiple, and some of those had to be palpable ones.

What could be more palpable than ’space experience’?

The conversation confused uncle a lot until Naia playfully threw him in the space. She was half-tempted to drop him into the aquarium (he had that middle-aged dude smell), but regretfully decided against it.

When Uncle returned to reality, he was in a daze. "Wow..." he said. His children seemed to have remembered their own experience and nodded.

"Are we gonna get superpowers, too?" Hans mumbled wistfully at the side, looking very hopeful as if having an apocalypse wasn’t something to fear.

Most kids had a fantasy of gaining superpowers.

It could be said that when the apocalypse really came, the younger generation was quite resilient. Most of the survivors 50 years later were the first generation youngsters at the time.

There were various factors into this, of course, but those with sane minds after so long were those who experienced the apocalypse at a young age. After all, it was what they had known most (or all) of their lives, so they counted it as normal.

"Well, not everyone would get powers during the apocalypse," she said. "But you can definitely improve your physique...if you survive, that is."

As she said this, she summoned a massive bird that landed on her arms. Naia wasn’t wearing any protection on her arms, but the eagle seemed to know how to land without hurting her.

It was the large eagle she found back in Colden Town. Every day, when she hung out in her space, she would also hang out with some animals there. After all, until recently, she was practically camping in the ’stolen’ forests whenever she slept inside her space.

She bonded with a few animals, including this eagle. She realized that some animals in her space had become a bit smart. How smart, she wasn’t sure. However, she did know that only a small, small percentage were like this.

She thought of capturing more animals when she could. Her space had become large now, so taking in another acre or two of forests, including the animals, was a non-issue.

The energy consumption was there, but it was negligible. Her haul certainly would last her several decades at least, even if she added a zoo.

The eagle cooed and lovingly rubbed its forehead on her cheek. She wondered whether she should name the animals, but there was an increasing number of them. She figured that if there were really smart ones there, he would name them then.

She shifted her hand and the eagle flew up, the twins following it with their eyes.

"The bird will watch out for extreme dangers like strong animals or cliffs," she said. "If it tries to steer you away, listen to it."

"Every day from today, for the next week," she said. "We will go through this forest area."

"You will learn how to traverse them well, avoid poisonous and dangerous things, learn to react to threats, and so on."

The twins and uncle had lived in a village and were quite independent, so she didn’t have to worry about their cooking, washing clothes, and so on. She could go directly to survival training.

"By the end of this training, I hope you can survive in a similar environment on your own, without me!"

...

An hour later, the twins were panting their lungs out as they ran through the forest! Uncle wasn’t any better. Fortunately, he worked in construction, otherwise he’d embarrass himself in front of the kids!

Each and everyone were already filled with bruises, small cuts, and Hans even had bird poop on his head!

This was not the eagle’s work but by another bird—ironically, it was the cute ones. As revenge, he asked Naia to place them in her space, though technically that wasn’t really revenge.

As for why they were in such poor condition after a single hour, it was all because of Naia.

She freaking let a wolf out!

Naia said that she did not have full control of the wolf, but they could be rest assured that its stomach was full and no longer had the bloodlust to actually eat them.

Looking at its size and the sharpness of its teeth, the three still shivered in terror.

Naia asked them to successfully escape the wolf’s paws for an hour. If they managed to do so, she could promise them one pre-prepared full meal from a nice restaurant for dinner.

At this point, since they had just started the challenge, they were more preoccupied with the wolf than the food. The only fortunate thing was that the wolf wasn’t doing its best, for now. It acted more like it was playing with its food.

Running through forests was the most difficult thing! Not only was the ground uneven, they could hit random rocks, shrubs, or branches. They not only breathed their lungs out, their skins also had to be slapped nby random vegetation so frequently!

Hans even had a trace of a branch on his face. It was the kind of mark wherein a leaf was partially embedded on his cheek...

But they couldn’t complain at all because Naia was effortlessly moving parallel to them!

She looked so leisurely, as if she was just doing her morning jog in a park. Her movements were so steady that they wondered if she secretly created a paved road underneath her.

Sometimes she’d even jump from tree to tree, looking very cool and nimble.

The boy’s eyes were sparkling particularly bright.

"Someday, I’ll be a ninja, too!" Hans said with renewed gusto. Sadly—

Bang!

He could only fall flat on his face today.