First was first, I felt stronger. Not much, possibly only one to two times stronger, but at least it was something. It meant that I was at least six, possibly seven times stronger than the average human, this was the point where you could survive most gunshots, only higher caliber stuff could break your skin but it would still hurt like a son of a bitch to get shot. The next was the zombie powers because it was the most straightforward increase. I had increased my core size to about three and halfway to four.

  Rank one was bone manipution, rank two was zombie control, rank three was corpse conversion, and I was halfway to getting corpse explosion. None of those was anything extremely special, but just shifting into zombie form would make my x6 stats go to x9 with intellect being boosted up to x12. At that point, I might be able to survive a sniper round, especially if I were wearing a skull helmet to protect myself.

  I felt stronger, but the biggest benefit I had was from the shackles of never using a core put on my spatial power. It was like working out to the peak of what was possible without cores and then being introduced to the purest energy a core could have. The spatial dimension was now a hub that would allow me to visit the other spatial areas I unlocked. The first was the inventory, then the vehicle storage, next was the power storage, which had the zombie power, the item stasis, and finally was the new storage. I could grow crops and raise animals in separate storage…

  I instinctively knew it was because that was all I could think about over the past few days. I didn’t want my time this time to be spent dealing with hunger, but if I was thinking about fighting, I knew I would have gotten a fighting spatial power. What would a spatial combat power look like? I was curious, but I went back to looking at the new storage area. It could fit one hundred crops, ten fruit trees, and twenty animals, but only ten could be the same type of animal.

  It meant I could store cows and pigs and pull feed from my storage to feed them. It also had everything I needed to automatically collect their produce. As long as I had a bottle, I could drink milk or move my eggs from the animal storage into my inventory or even into my hand. The realm looked different from inside the spatial dimension as well. I could view things on the outside as far as I could pull them into my storage.

  It was tough at first, but the sudden burst of energy gave me an aura that I could pull things into. It meant absorbing bullets would be far easier than it would have been because I could just set my inventory to automatically absorb them and they would keep their kinetic charge, allowing me to fire bullets from anywhere in my aura… Things were starting to ramp up to insane degrees of overpowered now.

  I wanted to try something as well. Could I pull myself into my storage without dying? No… But I could move myself around in the aura I radiated… Which meant I could teleport. I was excited to try it, as soon as I didn’t feel like absolute shit from almost exploding from the energy influx I would. Still, that was crazy, and that was just my space power. The farming storage could also be sped up or slowed down by ten times. My original limit was a 1 to 7 ratio, but that looks to have increased from the core I just absorbed.

  It meant I could store the animals that took the most food and set them to the slowest time to reduce their required intake, or set them to the highest time for them to perhaps have babies. That seemed to be a possibility in this spatial area and definitely would require testing. I could become an animal breeder with time dition, letting me make new animals or grow animals from babies to adults rapidly in the future.

  This was only the beginning. All these spatial areas could grow like my inventory. My inventory went from five cubic feet to seven instantly. I could feel my vehicle storage grow, and soon it would allow me to store a second vehicle. I wanted to try a camper. If I could have a second home away from home and enhance it, it would be worth trying out.

  I went over the changes to my time power now. The basic power was slow-mo, it allowed me to slow down the world, allowing me to think and that was the reason I could think so fast in my spatial dimension. The natural growth of my spatial power was doubled from just gaining the power. Item stasis was more of a combination, but it was definitely heavily reliant on the time power to function. I only gained a single power, the other ones were just improved in strength as I could grow stronger faster. Slow or speed up time even more, but now the combined spatial/time aura could be affected by my speeding up or slowing of time.

  I felt incredible, tired, but far better than I had in a long time. The powers I gained made me feel safer; the changes I would make wouldn’t be meaningless. I would save the people I cared for and make the world safer so the people I cared about didn’t have to feel scared or hungry constantly. I needed to keep going, though; it was still too early to rest.

  I was going to steal another semi-trailer and load it full of stolen cows with my new power. Transporting animals just became far, far easier. It looked like I could store twenty animals, but it was just that only fifty percent could be a single animal. So I could have ten cows, five pigs, or five chickens if I wanted, but chickens weren’t worth storing, though.

  They didn’t take up much space as is, and with a hundred, you’d have more eggs than you knew what to do with. As long as they survived, you could even store them in a house, but doing so with pigs or cows would be much harder. I knew this would make whatever farmer raised them sad, but I knew they wouldn’t get them off the ground. They’d be swept away and die from the flood, so I was technically saving them from that fate.

  Four semi-trailers full of animals were all I could get before I was too tired to continue. I jumped into the back of my bed as I looked at the ducks and goats I gathered. With heavy eyes, I walked into the mansion, ate the cold food Vicky had made for me, and crashed on the couch for now. I didn’t know if she would be pissed if I walked in thinking I could sleep in her bed or if she’d try to fuck me… But I was too tired for either.

  When I woke up, she was watching something on the TV, wearing a sweater with a wide neck exposing a rge amount of her skin. She looked over with her side eye when I sat up before reaching for the coffee on the table and holding the cup with both her hands before taking a sip. “I guess we've got to talk about… What we want from each other.”

  She took another sip as she waited for me to respond. “I’m not sure what I want… I know I want to make the people around me happy. I don’t really even know you outside of partying, this is the longest I’ve gone where either of us wasn’t drunk.” She let out a little chuckle. “Yeah… Well, I want to be happy… Can you make me happy with all the girls you pn on bringing here, or should I try to find happiness with someone else?”

  For some reason, I got angry when she mentioned getting with someone else. Slowly, my view of her had started to shift. I didn’t know what we were to each other right now, but I knew that seeing her with someone else wasn’t something I wanted. “...Yes. I can make everyone happy. No, I have to make everyone happy, otherwise… What’s the point in my being sent back?”