After resting for ten minutes, the young man and girl began to pack up for the road again.
Aya showed not a hint of displeasure, completely obeying Kenshin, following him without a second thought, not wondering how they would survive in the mountains.
The young man, for his part, promised himself that he would take care of her no matter what and wouldn’t let her go hungry.
An hour and a half later, they reached the foot of the first mountain, but Kenshin didn’t like the area, so they moved a little deeper into the mountains, and about fifteen minutes later they found a large network of caves, and the young man decided this was what they needed.
Leaving Aya outside, he grabbed a pre-prepared torch, lit it, and went inside the cave.
Twenty meters from the entrance, the tunnel split into two passages.
Kenshin decided to check both.
He reached the end of the left tunnel in about two minutes, and the passage split into two again.
Deciding not to take risks and not to go deep into the unexplored caves, Kenshin went back and checked the second tunnel, finding that it ended in a dead end about fifty meters in.
Deciding this place was suitable, he concentrated on the ability about which he had only superficial information.
The young man mentally activated “Sanctuary Creation,” and his consciousness seemed to leave his head.
He saw the surrounding area within a radius of about 150 meters and was shocked.
Although he knew roughly how “Sanctuary Creation” worked, knowing and experiencing were not the same thing.
For the next hour, the young man built “blueprints” in the designated area.
Finishing the “configuration,” he mentally confirmed everything and confirmed the creation of the sanctuary, then collapsed weakly against the nearest wall.
Sweat poured from his face in streams, and his head ached mercilessly.
The dead end before him began to glow with a blue radiance, and this continued for about five minutes, then everything went quiet.
Kenshin, on unsteady legs, approached the “dead end” wall and placed his hand in a small, almost imperceptible recess.
A second later, the wall rumbled and slowly slid aside, ceasing to be a wall and becoming a door.
The door to his new home.
“It worked!
It really worked!” Kenshin thought, and couldn’t hold back a smile.
All his fatigue instantly vanished, and he quickly entered, taking a brief walk through his new “home.” Making sure everything was as he had planned, the young man hurried to the exit, where Aya was waiting for him.
Hearing footsteps coming from the depths of the cave, Aya tensed up, and as soon as Kenshin stepped out into the white light, the fragile blue-eyed brunette threw herself into his arms, kissing him.
“God, Kenshin, thank goodness you’re okay!
I was so worried…” the girl said in a trembling voice, two streaks of tears framing her tender face.
“Shh, it’s okay, I’m fine, see?” he said with a smile, hugging her and pressing her close.
“Where were you?
I was imagining all sorts of things…” Aya said, sobbing, afraid to go back to what she’d been thinking while Kenshin was gone.
“I was building our new home,” he replied with a smile.
“Home?
Building?” Aya asked, not understanding.
“Come on, I’ll show you everything!” Kenshin said cheerfully, pecking her on the lips, then grabbing the bags of belongings.
When they reached the “dead end,” Aya looked at Kenshin distrustfully, not understanding how a damp cave could be called a home, but then Kenshin opened the door, and the girl’s jaw nearly dropped.
The young man pulled the frozen girl by the hand, and they entered.
Inside their new “home,” there was no lighting yet, but Kenshin planned to fix that soon.
The “Sanctuary Creation” ability was only level one, so the resulting “home” wasn’t that spacious or magnificent.
But it wasn’t small either.
The prototype for the “sanctuary” was partly a very prestigious four-room apartment in Kenshin’s mind, but he added some changes of his own and created almost a copy of an apartment from his past world.
The system was quite generous with possibilities for arranging the sanctuary and allowed Kenshin to create parquet flooring, carpets, beautiful concrete walls, lacquered wood, and so on.
In the end, the young man felt as if he had returned to his own world.
The only things reminding him of where he was were his rustic clothes and the homemade torch in his hand, which mercilessly smoked the beautiful ceiling of his new apartment.
The young man was disappointed at first, but then remembered that for the “Patriarch’s” convenience, his sanctuary would self-clean every 2 days and return to its original state, restoring some damaged parts, but if more than 40% of the sanctuary was damaged, it would become unusable and stop restoring its integrity.
Kenshin looked at the “Sanctuary Creation” ability and saw a timer on the right, counting down the time until the ability could be used again, and realized that he wouldn’t be able to remodel this sanctuary or create a new one for at least seven days, and creating two sanctuaries simultaneously was impossible — the old one would immediately become unusable and turn into an unremarkable cave.
Kenshin’s “new home” had four rooms.
One large living room and three bedrooms.
The bathroom and toilet were separate, and there was also a kitchen, plus one large training room the size of a school gymnasium.
It was done in a completely different style.
Thick concrete walls, a thick bare floor, a small tatami mat at the far end of the training room, several makiwara, two heavy bags, and a corner with “iron” that held a barbell with a set of plates and several different dumbbells.
Kenshin didn’t know what a shinobi needed for training, but he figured this equipment would be quite useful for the time being, at least for himself.
The only thing the system wouldn’t let him create was electronics or any other technological items, so Kenshin built a “gas” stove that vaguely resembled the ones from his home world, intending to draw the necessary formation for heating later.
The system created the pipes and the water tank, but it refused to heat the water, and Kenshin would have to figure that out.
The tank that supplied the water filled itself, apparently from a mountain river, and the system filtered it, eliminating the risk of poisoning.
The sewer drain went deep underground.