It was eerily quiet as I moved closer to town. I lived outside of town, so I had to go through the suburbs to get closer to the city. The usual sounds of cars, televisions, or music were all gone. Replaced with the occasional sound of a dog barking or wind chime singing in the wind.

Not many people seemed to have noticed anything was wrong yet. “I bet a lot of people are going to oversleep tomorrow” I thought as I weaved through the streets.

Most of these houses will be empty within a few weeks if we can’t get some semblance of normality back to our lives. Right now, is the calm before the storm. When more people wake up tomorrow and realize that pretty much the whole world has come to a standstill, things will definitely get hectic quickly.

It took me over two hours to get to the edge of town, luckily without incident. It was much livelier here. People were always awake in the city, and I’m sure news got around fast in these close-knit neighborhoods.

I tried to ride towards my first destination while avoiding any altercations. I might have a system now, but that doesn’t make me all-powerful(yet).

After thinking things over during the trip, my first destination was going to be the grocery store. With all electronics ruined, the perishable food would be going bad much quicker than dry goods with a longer shelf life.

I’m not entirely certain, but I get the feeling that I won’t have the ability to create living beings with my skill. This will limit the amount of meat products I have access to, and who can fault me for not wanting to miss out on bacon for as long as possible.

Once I finish up there, I’m going to try and circle over to the bookstore. I had a lot of books in my home, but I’m sure the bookstore will have plenty of new information for me to absorb. The best part is that I can almost guarantee my safety in the bookstore. Not many people are going to head out to get books when they realize they might be in an apocalypse situation.

Once I arrived at the store, I hid across the street in between some buildings. I decided to scout the place out before I went in, just in case there were any dangerous figures present. I climbed up on top of the roof and created a pair of night vision binoculars, costing me close to half of my mana.

Looking out into the parking lot and the surrounding areas, it seems there are several people already looting the area. I took notice of a group of three people seemingly guarding the main entrance with some kind of rifle. It was hard to make out at this distance, but I could tell I was going to need some insurance for this. Better safe than sorry.

I clambered back off the rooftop and opened the door for the library from the alleyway. Hopefully, this would give me enough privacy to avoid anyone noticing what was going on. I pushed my bike through the doorway and proceeded towards the middle of all my shelves. Once the door was closed behind me I set the bike aside and plopped down on the floor.

Now, I’ve got plenty of time in here to think of a plan and prepare my insurance policy. I had time to think while I was traveling to town and I had gotten some ideas that I wanted to try once I was back in the library world.

I didn’t want to pass out anymore from overusing my mana, so I figured I should try breaking down items into more basic parts that I was aware of. Like with a rifle, instead of making the entire thing all at once, each piece could be created with my skill then assembled after the fact. This should allow me to remain more conscious about the amount of mana I’m using at a time.

I visualized the blueprint of the AK-47 rifle blueprints that I was aware of from the internet. I separated the rifle into three parts in my mind and focused on creating the first one. I could feel the mana coming out, but it didn’t seem near as much as I had taken to create items previously. The first set of parts was completed in front of me and I checked my status. It seems I only used about 10 mana to create the first set of pieces, so I queued up the next two sets in my mind and had them start creation.

The whole process still amazed me. All I had to do was visualize an item and put my will into creating it. Once it started, the process kind of looked like a 3D printer going to work on an item, only much faster.

The next two sets of pieces completed and I had used a total of thirty mana to create all the pieces needed to assemble the weaponry.

I didn’t need another weapon right off the bat, but it wouldn’t hurt to have a spare in case anything happened. So, I assembled my weapon while I waited for my mana to refill then visualized creating the AK as a whole.

The process initiated and I could feel the mana draining again. Once it completed, I checked my status to see that I had used forty-five mana to create the item all at once. It seems there must be a mana cost associated with the assembly of items. Sort of like giving someone a model and telling them to put it together, but not providing them any instructions. They might be able to assemble some of the pieces correctly, but without knowledge of the process or instructions to follow, they probably wouldn’t be able to get it completely.

I will need to take this into account when I’m visualizing the creation of items in the future. This should help me create some more complex items without having to spend the mana on creating the item as a whole.

Now that I had a weapon, I was going to need some ammo and spare magazines. It was fairly easy to visualize the creation of 7.62 ammo from my knowledge base. It also seemed that the system would allow me to use my skill in the creation of bulk items instead of individually. This was really handy when I needed to create hundreds of rounds to be prepared.

After getting three hundred rounds created and ten magazines to hold them, I felt like I would need some protection. I was familiar with weaved Kevlar body armor, but I wanted to try creating something I had read about a few times over the past couple of years.

Graphene was becoming a new reality as companies had been researching it and figured out how to bond the carbon into beehive-shaped layers that could provide incredible resistance and strength while being thinner than a hair. This process was extremely difficult for the technology that we had previously, but with the system I should be able to work it out with mana for modifications.

I visualized the information that I had available on graphene production and attempted to layer it on top of each other in my mind. The layers formed together and I weaved them into a fabric-like material. Once this was completed, I pictured the fabric in the shape of a t-shirt and started production. The process started and the shirt was coming into view in front of me. I picked up the shirt and felt the fabric; it was soft to the touch and felt very breathable like exercise clothing.

I decided to continue with the black look of the fabric and initiated the creation of some pants and a hoodie. After letting my mana recover and wearing my new outfit, I had to test it out. I ran through the library world, weaving in and out of bookshelves as I checked on the maneuverability of my new creation. It was so lightweight; you could barely tell you were wearing anything.

I took the hoodie off, laid it on the ground, and created a knife in one hand. I reached over my head, plunging the knife down as hard as I could into the fabric. The knife stabbed towards the hoodie, but when it met with the fabric it didn’t go through at all. I slid the knife across the hoodie and couldn’t find any purchase with it when attempting to slice either.

Now, this might stop the penetration force of anything attempting to get through, but it won’t stop the impact force I could receive from any projectiles.

To try and remedy this, I was going to use some thin plates of regular Kevlar in layers underneath the hoodie and inside the pants. I viewed the Kevlar I was familiar with in my mind and cut the material in half to create a thinner piece of plate armor. These would slide in perfectly to the slots I had created inside the hoodie and pants, while hopefully keeping the weight down and preventing fatigue.

After finishing that process, I decided to create a facemask of full-sized weaved Kevlar and covered it in 10 layers of graphene material. I altered the mask to look like the Guy Fawkes mask that a certain internet collective had used to remain hidden from the world when they published a message.

After finishing the conceptualization, I sat down and planned out my entry into the building. While those guys were guarding the front, I was sure that others had to be inside the building already. I could avoid the initial confrontation by going around the back and attempting to gain access through the warehouse. Hopefully, by going that route, I could avoid them altogether while they scavenged the areas that most people were familiar and comfortable with in the main storefront. There should be plenty of products that I can access from the warehouse and get into the library world without being interrupted.