Hiding a House in the Apocalypse - Chapter 157
Only Krnovel
Episode 157
“dead?”
“Isn’t that a failnet too?”
Come to think of it
“The PaleNet kids died in droves. The games made by Fox Games are just a graveyard, and even I, who seemed to have a strong mentality, couldn’t stand it.”
right.
This is reality.
There was a post on the popular thread expressing the miserable state of mind that Fox Games could not possibly operate the game it had posted.
Foxgames: I expected it, and I expected it, so I added the graveyard system, but I’m afraid to log into my own game now. I can’t tell if I’m the operator or the corpse collector. I’m going to think about running Monster Park······.
Gather! Animal Island! – The unreality felt on the Modong Island bulletin board may not have been just the excessive kindness they showed.
Dajeong suggested one possibility on the spot.
“Isn’t it just one psychopath doing all the work by himself?”
The theory she raised is the so-called multi-factor theory.
Multi-tampering is an act of one person using multiple accounts to make it appear as if they are multiple people rather than one. It is said to be a traditional tactic that has been around since the days of PC communication, the predecessor of the Internet.
“Look, they all sound similar. They’re all so dumb that they can’t even look at the animals they see. They all talk like NPCs, including Ismail.”
There is some truth to her words.
If it weren’t for the multi-users, the ranking of the Modong Island bulletin board, where twelve active users post more than one article per minute, cannot be the same as the ranking of the ghost bulletin board.
“As far as I know, Palenet is so full of fabrications and fraud that when calculating user activity, they don’t count it by nickname, but rather by a fixed number per phone or computer number. In fact, there aren’t even any accounts.
“If I just change my nickname, I can play 10 roles.”
“Hmm.”
One person pretending to be several people.
Well, we’ll just have to wait and see.
What’s left is time.
I finally imported a gun while keeping the Modong Island bulletin board on the screen.
Five rifles and two pistols were neatly placed on a blanket.
Crunch!
I arranged the disassembled gun parts neatly on the mat and wiped them one by one with an oiled rag while visually checking the situation on the bulletin board.
One article is being posted every minute, or at the latest every five minutes.
Crunch!
Sequentially reassembling disassembled guns to complete them again was one of the few games I enjoyed during my school days.
I may not be as fast as others, but I have never made a single mistake.
Even if someone shook the mop and the parts scattered and became messy, it was no problem.
You could call it my own puzzle game.
Although my hands are much slower now than they were back then, my careful and perfect combination remains the same even now, a long time after I graduated from school.
Exactly-
As I pulled the trigger of the empty gun, I stared at the monitor, hearing the peculiar, feeble sound.
Mincho Rice Bowl: I want to eat tuna stew
Godegi Warrior: Drawing with a phone is hard
Ginger Cookie: The neighbors are fighting again······
Temple Tteokbokki believer: “Don’t click!”
Loaker: I think the game console tastes good
Ismail: ······.
Rabbit: Where do you catch golden salmon?
Q: The nutrition bar doesn’t taste good!
···
···
There have been quite a few posts.
I lightly wiped my oily hands and moved the mouse to click on the words.
In general, the content of the article was consistent with the title.
Some of them have attached photos, and they are also photos that fit the topic.
For example, in the post about nutrition bars uploaded by RollQham, a picture of a cockroach-colored nutrition bar that was identical to the one I saw before was attached, and in the post about game consoles uploaded by Loaker, a picture of a game console on a blanket was attached.
However, judging from the atmosphere, lighting, and background of the photos each user uploaded, it seemed clear that they were taken in different places.
Each friend’s color and indoor atmosphere is different.
There seemed to be a clear difference that could not be captured by simply adjusting the lighting or changing the camera position.
While the Loaker was filmed in what appears to be a tent, the RollQ was filmed in what appears to be an apartment.
It can’t be the same.
“hmm······.”
By the way, in these times, it’s an apartment
Aren’t they all living in refugee camps?
Anyway, if you just look at the photo, Loaker and Plucham look like different people.
I continued to work on my gun and occasionally observed the bulletin board.
There were times when the scrolling stopped, but usually more than 10 posts were uploaded per hour. When I clicked on each post to check, there were many posts that were omitted, but there were no posts that were written carelessly. They all had content that matched the title.
We are ordinary gamers who enjoy peaceful and warm games.
The problem is that this peacefulness is completely out of place in the current atmosphere that is heading towards catastrophe.
After finishing up some gun maintenance, I tried chatting.
SKELTON: Is everyone okay? This cold spell was no joke.
Maybe it’s because of the strange atmosphere on the bulletin board, but I find myself becoming more cautious without realizing it.
The fact that I didn’t use my trademark horse name is also a sophisticated metaphor for the aversion this skeleton feels. A post came up right after my question.
Mincho rice bowl: I’m craving squid rice bowl~
It’s nonsense.
Since it was uploaded 10 seconds after my post, there is a high possibility that it was uploaded without seeing my post.
As expected, Gingerbread soon responded to my post.
Gingerbread: Skelven! Are you worried about us?
There’s so much chaos on the SKELTON bulletin board, is everyone okay?
Gingerbread Cookie: Want to check?
SKELTON: Okay?
Gingerbread Skeleton Come play at our house!
It was right after I wrote that Gingerbread was coming to my house to play.
A large number of posts were simultaneously thrown onto the bulletin board, reminiscent of a landslide.
Mincho Rice Bowl: Skeleton! Come Play!
Temple Tteokbokki believer: “Skeleton!”
Ismail: ······.
Loaker: Skeleton! Let’s play games together!
Godeki Warrior: Let’s play together like Skeldon!!
Q: Come play with Skellington!
Rabbit: I’ll prepare something delicious and wait for you!
···
···
“······.”
No matter how much I’ve been criticized for being bad at the internet and not having a sense of humor, I’m not so dull that I couldn’t feel the creepiness of the strange phenomenon that just unfolded before my eyes. It’s clearly strange.
This bulletin board.
Gingerbread Cookie: Skeleton? What’s the answer?
Gingerbread asks.
As if encouraging me.
What should I do?
This is just my feeling, but I have a feeling that if I don’t answer this question, that user named Gingercookie will cut me off.
So, it is a kind of ultimatum.
I could just ignore it and leave, but I feel curious.
SKELTON: Do you all live together?
Although I didn’t feel like it, I forced myself to continue the conversation.
Gingerbread Cookie: We live in the same neighborhood!
SKELTON: Where is that?
Gingerbread Cookie: 258 Next to Shelter
258 Shelter?
I don’t know where that is.
Gingerbread Cookie: Are you coming?
SKELTON: When the weather clears up?
Gingerbread Cookie: Can’t you come today?
SKELTON: I’m not feeling well today, I have a cold.
Gingerbread Cookie: It has to be today.
“······.”
It definitely feels salty.
Today, right now.
It’s a common phrase used by people who lure people through the Internet to rob and kill them.
As expected, the moment the smell of murder wafted in the air, my internet friend suddenly contacted me via the communicator.
“Hey. Skeleton.”
It’s a defender.
“Those kids look dangerous just by looking at them.”
Perhaps he was listening to my conversation with Da-jeong and looking at the Modong Island bulletin board.
Although the radio is convenient, there is no such thing as privacy since the original was a squad combat communications device.
“Aren’t they a bunch of murderous bastards?”
If someone else had said the same thing, it would have gone in one ear and out the other.
But when it comes to the words of my internet friend who makes murder his content, I feel a kind of authority.
“Why do you think so?”
“Among the guys who told me to come right now, there aren’t any decent ones.”
“That’s common sense.”
“And Shelter 258? That place has been gone for two years now.”
“okay?”
“We reorganized the shelters after a large number of people died last winter. Rather than operating multiple places unnecessarily, it’s easier to manage them by concentrating them in one place and managing them a little.
As far as I know, all the shelters with over 200 seats were cleared out during the reorganization. The shelters that remain now are probably in the early 100s at best.”
“I know right.”
“I did some research when I was in Justice.”
“I see.”
I have 200% confidence.
The Defender’s words are not over yet.
“Luring people to death on bulletin boards. There are cases like that on our bulletin boards, but it happened so badly on Palenet.”
“I guess so.”
“It’s not just women or pride that are used as tools to lure people. There are also those who use loneliness and anxiety as tools. Like Diesirae.”
“So when you look at those bulletin board guys, they look like murderers?”
“Maybe. But these guys are weird.”
The defender clicked his tongue.
Perhaps even to him, this case seems bizarre.
“I can’t figure it out. If there was someone good at analyzing internet logs, they could at least figure out the identities of those guys who are talking like machines.”
While I was talking to Defender, a post on the bulletin board came to mind.
Gingerbread Cookie: Skelton, are you abandoning us?
Just after Gingerbread said,
Mincho Rice Bowl: Skeleton! Don’t betray me.
Godeki Warrior: We’re friends, Skeleton.
Gingerbread Cookie: Skelden ㅠㅠ
Temple Tteokbokki believer: “Don’t abandon us!”
Loaker: I want to see Skeleton
Ismail: ······.
Rabbiting: Skeleton, Skeleton, Skeleton!
QH: Skeleton, don’t abandon us!
···
···
Another bomb of letters falls onto the screen.
In that strangeness, the only answer I could choose was silence.
Message from Ballantine: You were working on a PC, not a mobile device. It looks like you used only one PC.
Message from Ballantine: So, Ginger Cookie, Roll Q-Ham, Mincho Rice Bowl, Loaker, and Rabbit Ing are all one person. If not, the board ranking wouldn’t be as low as it is now.
The reality of PaleNet these days is that even if only five people are active, it is enough to be in the top 100.
Dajeong’s guess was correct.
They were just one user, not many.
The strangely friendly attitude, bizarre concept, and twisted fairy tale-like appearance were not coincidences, but a play born from one person’s delusion.
But the chat that came up while I was cleaning my gun wasn’t just one person’s.
Those many voices, those superficial but clearly distinct personalities, belonged not to one but to many people.
I told this fact to Valentine.
Message from Ballantine: Oh, I see.
Valentine will soon inform you of the results of the analysis.
Message from Ballantine: This is a macro.
SKELTON: Macro?
Message from Ballantine: It looks like you’ve written two macros. One is active. See.
Valentine posted a post on the Modong Island bulletin board.
ㅇㅇ: Hello everyone
Post written anonymously
Then,
Friday Gamer: Hello? Nice to meet you!
Q-ham? What are you doing? Anyway, it’s nice to meet you!
Ismail: ······.
THE MAN: Oh!! Are you a guy who knows how to have fun?
Temple Tteokbokki believer: “Welcome!”
Mincho Rice Bowl: Newbie? Hi!
Godegi Warrior: There are people coming to this remote bulletin board too… Welcome
Loaker: Wow~ Awesome!
···
···
“This is”
That’s right.
It matches the warm welcome I received when I first appeared.
Except for one thing, the phrase “Named User Skeldon.” Valentine’s explanation continued while I felt goosebumps running down my spine.
A message from Ballantine: The other one is background type, where you listen to the post as music.
SKELTON: Post?
Message from Ballantine: It seems like they copied a post from 2 years ago and just ran it through when no one was around. Look, that guy down there named RollQ is eating a nutrition bar. How long has it been since they last handed out a nutrition bar?
Message from Ballantine: Looking at the logs, I see that a lot of people were active on this board two years ago. Even the broadcast stations and unique numbers are different. A lot of people were accessing from Seoul.
But the person posting on the bulletin board now is a single PC using the old 258 shelter transmission.
Message from Ballantine: I think this has been happening since last year. That is, since the time when they gave up on Seoul. I think everyone who was working here died. It was less cold then than it is now, but it was much worse.
Food, water, and sanitation were all woefully inadequate.
Message from Ballantine: To sum up, the current Modong Island bulletin board is a kind of illusion created by a user named Ginger Cookie.
“······.”
This was the truth of the Modong Island bulletin board, where I had chosen to take refuge for a while.
SKELTON: Gingerbread cookies.
I called the one who called me there.
He didn’t answer my question.
However, the mutterings of the dead that had been repeated two years ago only filled the empty space on the silent bulletin board.
I wish this was the end, but the story is not over yet.
Another truth was hidden beyond the LAN cable.
*
The three Old School Hunters and two Scavengers, led by the National Committee’s freelance Hunter Cheon Yeong-jae, raided the abandoned basement behind the old 258 shelter at the same time that I was hearing the truth about the Modong Island bulletin board from Valentine.
Cheon Yeong-jae, a low-level Awaken, discovered the hideout not through his Awaken ability, but through the tracking technique he learned at school, and told this fact to his colleague who had asked him to do this job.
“They said there was a person lying dead in front of a computer. He looked like he had been dead for a short time, but his condition was so bad that he might as well have been decomposed.”
It was Defender who requested the work from Cheon Yeong-jae.
He told me what happened at that time.
“There were several corpses in the next room. They were all mummified, as if they had not been buried, and were neatly placed in the next room.
The defender clicked his tongue.
“There are signs of cannibalism. They were all eaten by one person. One by one.”
A cannibal who was about to die called me.
The reason is unknown.
Was it trying to eat me, or was it just me singing because I couldn’t overcome my feelings of loneliness?
Maybe it’s both.
Eating and communicating with someone have similar properties in that they fill you up.
One thing is certain, the cannibal gave me a chance to get back on my feet.
SKELTON: (Skeleton, a man in crisis) tells the story of how he was almost eaten by cannibals. horror
“······.”
I finally posted a popular article.
By the way, it is said that the cannibal’s original nickname was Ismail, not Gingerbread.
End
ⓒ Road Warrior #dp8g
(One Two**) -Recommendation 75-
Even if I get caught in a tiger’s den, I’m satisfied if I make it to the popular posts!
(code***) -Recommendation71-
If they had told me they would give me a bulletin board captain’s armband, I would have gone even if I knew it was a trap.
(g8990**) -Recommendation 70-4
The posts on the bulletin board are copied from past posts. But the comments written by Ismail are all “……”
Was Ismail a loner on that board? Or at least he didn’t want to mess around with his main character. How creepy…
(Should I go home***) -Recommendation 63-
Skeleton, who uses such things as a comeback theme so nonchalantly, is the real horror…
(Twitch**) -Recommendation 58-
Information: Ismail appears as a cannibal in the novel Moby Dick.
(Hyung-ah**) -Recommendation 55-
If I were a normal person, I would have been so scared that I would have turned off the internet for a while…
As expected, the indomitable mental professor.
We can’t break off communication with a mere cannibal.
(Tro**) -Recommendation 48-
The reason I told you to come right now was because I was hungry
(Rainen*) -Recommendation 35-
A mere dozen or so people can’t take down a 300 man skeleton.
(Cher*) -Recommendation 28-
Fortunately, the comments were scarier. It was fortunate that it wasn’t a human farm gallery that was comparable to Animal Farm.
(round***) -Recommendation 2-
One bulletin board, it feels like looking into a haunted town.
Thanks to my capable colleagues Valentine and Cheon Young-jae, I was able to find the truth haha
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