Rayne was still a bit shaken from the nightmare and decided to go make a cup of herbal tea to help calm herself.
The tea was hot and just after a few sips Rayne felt a bit warmer and relaxed. She pushed the nightmare out of her thoughts, deciding not to dwell on something so horrific. She didn't want to concern herself with something that wasn't real anyway.
She went back to the kitchen to make a quick breakfast. After looking through her ingredients she decided on a simple omelet and a side of toast.
Rayne played some upbeat music from her phone while she cooked. Soon a wonderful aroma spread through the apartment making Rayne do a little happy dance.
After eating breakfast, Rayne was at a loss on what to do. She was currently jobless due to the year-long coma she was in, so she had a lot of free time.
Previously, before her coma, Rayne worked as an architect at a design firm.
She had a very strong portfolio and she was often requested by wealthy people wanting to build their luxury dream home, so she wasn't worried about being unemployed for too long.
She didn't want to jump right back to working full time right after getting her life back in order. She wanted to enjoy as much time as she could so that the year she lost didn't feel like a total waste.
She decided to do some of her long time bucket list items, and first on her list was a self defense class. She had long wanted to take a self defense class for two reasons.
First, it was a good form of exercise, and she felt that a class would be more interesting than just going to a gym to run on the treadmill.
Second, she's read too many news articles where girls were either getting kidnapped or robbed on the streets. She felt that if these classes could help her even just a little bit in a tough situation they were worth it.
Rayne went over to the living room and took out a copy of the TV she barely managed to store.
Thankfully, taking items out of the system was easy, and never caused her pain or fatigue.
But she learned a bit more about how her system worked with this TV experiment. It seems that the larger the item the more mental energy it would take to store, progressively getting easier per item stored--similar to a level up system.
For example, if Rayne were to store another item with a similar size to the TV, it should be easier to store, getting exponentially easier with each item.
She walked over to the couch and pulled out her phone to look for trainers who specialize in self defense. After filtering out the places that were too far away, Rayne was left with only two choices.
The first website had very flashy advertisements. The trainer looked like he was in his late 20's, showing off his big muscles in all of the photos.
All of the promotional videos had young women fawning and swooning over him, making Rayne frown.
The site also had images of his many certificates plastered all over, in between the pictures of his shirtless body.
She wondered how a single trainer was able to teach self defense to hundreds of these swooning females properly.
The second advertisement was a lot simpler, simply a photo of the instructor and a bulleted list of the services he taught. There were no certificates listed nor any flashy photos of the trainers' muscles.
Rayne looked closer at the trainer's photo. He looked to be in his mid 30s and had a good physique. He was wearing an army green t-shirt, and didn't smile in this photo.
Just looking at the photo, Rayne felt like she was looking at someone who's been in their fair share of fights.
The cold glint in his eyes alone told her that he knew what real fights, and difficult situations, looked like.
Making her choice, Rayne dialed the number on the website. A deep masculine voice answered after a few rings.
"Hello?"
Rayne felt a little intimidated but tried to not let it get to her, "Hello, I saw your advertisement for self defense classes and was looking to sign up".
"Hmm, okay. How soon do you want to start?", asked the deep voice on the other end of the phone.
"I can start as early as today I guess", answered Rayne.
"Good. Come today to the address on the website at 2pm. Don't be late".
Rayne then heard a beep and looked at her phone, seeing the 'Call Ended' notification. She shook her head seeing this, figuring the trainer was someone who didn't enjoy talking much.
Looking at the time Rayne saw that she still had a few hours to spend before heading out to her new class. She decided to take the time to find a few more bucket list items to do, while she had the time.
Laying on the couch and thinking, the first thing that came to Rayne's mind was camping! She's always been very interested in camping and even watched a number of solo camping videos on the internet!
The only issue with camping- at least the kind she wanted to do, was that all of the equipment needed was very costly. She couldn't justify spending that amount on items that she would only use a few times a year at most.
Now that she had her heaven defying cheat system, she could go to a camping store and just make copies of any item she needed--for free!!!
Rayne sat up excited at this! She immediately wrote down 'camping' on her notepad, while thinking of the best places to go to get these camping items.
There was a big camping and outdoors superstore in the neighboring city. It wasn't too far away, only about 30-40 minutes by car.
Rayne debated whether or not she wanted to make a trip there now, but she decided against the idea because she didn't want to be pressed on time.
Instead Rayne did some research online about good camping spots in her area.
She found a park that looked very pretty in the pictures that were posted online, along with great camping facilities.
What really drew Rayne to this park was that it was somewhat mountainous, and had scenic trails that lead through a few waterfalls!
Rayne decided on this spot and called up the park to book a campsite.
Luckily, even though it was peak camping season, someone canceled and Rayne managed to get a 3 day 2 night reservation for this upcoming weekend.
She decided that she would take a trip to the camping and outdoor superstore tomorrow to stock up on camping items. She wasn't really sure what she would need outside of the basic tent and sleeping bag.
But she figured she would just try and put as many things as possible into her space, so that she would have what she needed when the time came.
The day went by quickly, and it was already past noon. Rayne wasn't in the mood to cook anything so she just searched her system for something pre made.
She ended up choosing the lamb kebab from the food stall, thinking that it really was delicious!
While she was chewing on the lamb kebab Rayne was scrolling through her 'Clothing' folder on the system screen. She was looking for a suitable outfit for her upcoming self defense class.
What she found was an all black pair of sports leggings and a matching sporty tank top. She also pulled out a pair of white sneakers and a white sports bra.
After changing into her sport attire Rayne grabbed her phone, keys and backpack and walked out. She ordered a taxi and gave the driver the address of the gym that was posted on the website.
As she got closer to the location, Rayne was starting to feel a little nervous. She prayed that she wasn't walking into some scam head first. Everything about the website felt fake and the instructor looked like he could be a criminal.
Rayne took a deep breath while stepping out of the taxi. She looked up at the building where the gym was and she was surprised to see that it looked relatively new or renovated!
The gym was on the second floor of the building across from a ballet studio. The location helped Rayne calm her nerves because she was initially picturing some dark back alley location.
Rayne walked up to the second floor and stood in front of the entry to the gym. The sign was very minimalistic, just black text on a white background that read "Brent's Gym".
She walked in and looked at the space. There was a small washroom on the right side next to another room with a closed door. The rest of the space was just a large hall with different kinds of floor mats, with a few training dummies in the corner. There were large mirrors covering the walls on one side of the hall making the room feel a lot bigger.
Rayne looked at the time and it was 1:45pm, she arrived 15 minutes early. She decided to wait by the entrance, but a few seconds later the closed door opened and two men walked out. One of the men she recognized as Brent, the instructor, by his online photo.
The other man was very big, buff, and somewhat intimidating. Initially she felt that her instructor was very intimidating, however compared to this other man he felt rather normal.