The mountain wind was sharp that night, whistling through the pines like some ancient warning. Kane stood on the edge of the gravel road that led down into the valley, hood drawn low, the small tactical pack slung over his shoulder more for appearances than necessity. The real storage—the vast, impossible space where reality bent to his will—was hidden inside the System's inventory. A thought, a touch, and anything could be his.
The plan tonight was simple in theory, but brutal in execution:Step one — hit the mall under cover of darkness.Step two — take everything worth taking without triggering alarms or drawing unwanted eyes.Step three — disappear without leaving a trace.
It was the kind of work Kane had been trained for long before the System came into his life.
He approached the city's outskirts along the treeline, avoiding the main road. The mall squatted in the distance like a slumbering beast—its glass facade gleaming faintly under the moonlight, the empty parking lot stretching wide around it. Security lights painted moving shadows along the asphalt, sweeping in slow arcs.
He crouched in the shadow of a delivery truck parked behind a wholesale warehouse adjacent to the mall. This was his entry point—less traffic, fewer cameras, and most importantly, easy access to the maintenance doors that staff used.
Kane's fingers brushed against the cold steel of the door handle. A soft click—he'd already disabled the alarm in his head using the skills he learned from his grandfather's "military lessons." Truth was, breaking in wasn't the hard part. The hard part was leaving nothing behind.
He slipped inside.
The air inside the mall was heavy with stillness, the kind that pressed against your eardrums and made your heartbeat feel too loud. His boots made no sound on the polished tiles. The cleaning crew was long gone, and the only other living thing inside was a single bored security guard making slow rounds somewhere on the other side of the building.
The first stop: the hardware store.
Racks of tools lined the aisles, gleaming under the dim emergency lighting. Kane's gloved hand hovered for a second, and then he pressed his palm against the first heavy-duty power drill.
[ Item Acquired: Industrial Power Drill x1 ][ Stored in Inventory ]
No weight. No bag to carry. No sound. It was as if the drill had never existed in the physical world at all.
He moved with military rhythm—touch, vanish, move on.Screwdrivers. Hammer sets. Rope. Nails. Batteries. Lighting kits. Small generators. Every piece of starting-level construction or repair equipment vanished into his invisible vault.
He worked aisle by aisle, taking only what was truly useful for the first phase. In the apocalypse, everything would be scavenged eventually, but early preparation wasn't about hoarding random junk—it was about building the foundation. And for Kane, that meant drones, shelters, defenses.
When he was done, the store's shelves looked perfectly untouched—he'd made sure to avoid stripping any one section bare. A half-empty rack was suspicious. A neat, stocked shelf? Overlooked.
His next target was the sporting goods store. Hunting knives, fishing lines, climbing gear—all went into storage with a light tap. He didn't even slow down.
He paused only once, crouching behind a display stand as the faint sound of a radio crackled nearby. The guard was on this floor now. Kane waited in absolute stillness, his breathing steady and controlled, counting the man's steps by sound. Left… right… left… fading away.
He continued without hurry.
The supermarket was the biggest haul. Canned food, dried pasta, rice, salt, sugar, cooking oil—anything that would last without refrigeration. He swept the aisles like a phantom, fingertips grazing labels as if testing for ripeness. Whole shelves emptied into the void without so much as a rustle.
He avoided perishables entirely. Fresh produce would rot long before the apocalypse, and he didn't need wasted space.
When he found the bulk-pack shelves, his pace quickened. Twenty-kilogram rice sacks. Flour. Beans. Oats. Even boxes of sealed bottled water. His invisible storeroom grew heavier with each touch, though Kane himself felt no extra weight.
The military drilled into him one absolute truth:If they can't tell you were there, they can't hunt you.
That meant no broken packaging. No toppled cans. No fingerprints. Gloves stayed on. He replaced shifted items exactly as they had been before his touch. He even used his phone to take reference pictures before emptying certain shelves so he could replicate the exact look afterward.
Once, he caught sight of himself in a dark shopfront reflection—just a hooded silhouette gliding through the mall like smoke. He barely recognized the man in that glass.
He was quieter now than even the old Kane had been. Deadlier, too.
The electronics store was his last stop. He didn't need the flashy TVs or the game consoles. He went straight for the computing hardware—portable generators, rechargeable battery banks, solar panels, cables, and circuit boards. All things that could be retooled into drone cores.
[ Item Acquired: Lithium Battery Pack x5 ][ Item Acquired: Solar Array – Compact x3 ][ Item Acquired: Industrial Circuit Boards x12 ]
Each acquisition was another piece in his coming machine army.
When the last item vanished into the System, Kane paused in the dark, the quiet hum of the air vents the only sound. In his head, the outline of his apocalypse plan was growing sharper.
Basic drones first—recon and rapid extraction units. Then combat frames once the new apocalypse-exclusive elements started appearing. And for that, he needed to be ready with stockpiled materials the moment the world fell apart.
Leaving was just as important as entering. Kane retraced his steps, wiping a smudge off a glass door with the sleeve of his jacket. Outside, the cold air hit him like a slap. The parking lot was still empty, the guard none the wiser.
He moved through the shadowed side streets until the mall was just a dark shape in the distance. The night swallowed him whole.
Back home, Kane stood in the dim light of his study, Reina fast asleep in the next room. He opened the System interface and let his eyes fall to the glowing counter at the top of the screen.
[ Global Collapse Countdown: 48 Days, 3 Hours, 27 Minutes ]
The number seemed to burn in his mind, etching itself into every thought.
Forty-eight days until the world died.Forty-eight days to build his army.Forty-eight days until everything he had ever learned would be tested.
And Kane Wylder was not going to waste a second.