Hiding a House in the Apocalypse - Chapter 199



Only Krnovel

90. Fox Game (3)

“Oh, you were a skeleton?”

Despite repeated explanations, Fox Games would not accept me as Skeleton.

“It’s so different from what I imagined. I imagined someone who was clearly older than me but was forced to wear youthful fashion that didn’t fit their age.”

“······That’s right, Skeleton. Let’s talk freely. We’re on the internet anyway.”

“No. I am more comfortable with formal speech. Since I have spent almost half my life using formal speech, I can’t even speak any words other than formal speech and they just feel awkward. It’s like an unknown language somewhere between a dialect and a foreign language.”

My first impression of Fox Game, which had been known as the real name of our bulletin board, was questionable.

I can’t say it’s very good.

Although we made eye contact occasionally, it was mostly misaligned gazes, a subtle but firm stance as if trying to draw a line, and above all, he seemed uncomfortable with the fact that I had come to see him.

“How did you get here?”

Even if they are internet friends, it would be uncomfortable if someone came without even telling you their location.

I gave a brief explanation.

This happened on the bulletin board and people were curious so I came here.

“Vivabot? Are you the manager?”

Foxgame, which was usually indifferent, seemed somewhat surprised when I told them that I had asked Vivabot for the address and came looking for it.

“Yes. Everyone is worried.”

“I’m worried······.”

Fox Game stared blankly at the rice fields that had turned into a jungle with a bitter smile on his face.

“I guess I wasn’t that great of a person to be worried about.”

“Don’t say that. Foxgame, how popular is you on the Internet? Aren’t you a named person?”

“Named. Haha. That’s ridiculous.”

“Anyway, I would like to ask you to report your survival. In a situation where the number of people is already decreasing, if a named person like Foxgame disappears, the already gloomy atmosphere of the bulletin board will become even worse.”

I was about to leave after saying just this little bit of business.

Because Fox Games is uncomfortable with me being here.

But when I was about to leave, Fox Game caught me.

“Would you like a cup of tea in my bunker?”

What kind of change of heart has occurred?

It’s always welcome to look into other people’s bunkers.

In particular, I felt a sense of pride because I had seen on the Internet that Fox Games was worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

I wonder what the difference is between a person with so much money and this bunker of Park Gyu.

My bunker was built for a sum that would be inconceivable to the average person, but in the world of the rich, it was a paltry sum.

However, I supplemented the lack of funds with hard work and meticulous planning, and created my own hideout that I would not be ashamed of showing anywhere in the world.

Looking at the world’s best bunkers that were posted on the corner bragging about my bunker just before the war, I gained confidence that my bunker was sufficiently competitive on a global scale.

Well, it may not be as good as the billion-won-worth luxury yacht-air-raid shelter that roams the vast ocean or the fortress-air-raid shelter of Chairman Park Chul-joo that once heated up the Internet, but the yacht-air-raid shelter quickly disappeared right after the war, and considering that Chairman Park Chul-joo’s fortress was also destroyed by the playful artillery fire of the Legion Faction, in the end, the final winner is this air-raid shelter of Park Gyu.

So what about this Foxgame bunker?

“This is the entrance.”

“?”

I had an ominous feeling from the beginning.

Wheeeeeeeeing—

I thought for a moment as I saw the giant shutter opening, shaking the axis.

Is that a spaceship?

No, it feels like the base of a giant robot I used to see as a child?

Anyway, something incredible is unfolding before me.

thud-

The shutter opened and an underground passage, probably made of concrete and steel frames, appeared.

The passage was wide enough to fit a large truck.

I have a similar garage, Park Gyu’s, but the exit is usually covered with a tarpaulin, and when I need to use the car, I have to remove the tarpaulin and push the plywood underneath it far away to reveal the entrance to the garage, which is at a 30-degree angle.

The garage entrance itself is a fully automatic shutter operated by hydraulic valves, but it is on a different level from Foxgame’s fully automatic shutter.

“······.”

The shutter side is my complete defeat.

But this hallway.

Why can’t I see the end?

My garage is right below a 20 degree slope, and there are a ton of construction vehicles and cars crammed into it.

“Mr. Skeleton?”

I looked back on the day when Fox Games became frozen.

“No. Let’s go.”

I walked down the hallway following the fox game.

The hallway was a full five meters long.

Anyone who has ever built a bunker knows how extravagant it is to devote five meters of space to what is essentially nothing more than a passageway.

In the midst of a growing sense of defeat, Foxgame took out the remote control and pressed a button.

Wheeeeeeeeing–

What seemed like a dead end wall began to open up.

“Hey, is that a double shutter?!”

“Yes, that’s right. It’s a model that has a certain degree of resistance to nuclear strikes.”

“······.”

Behind the double shutters, several cars were parked neatly.

They are all expensive imported cars.

A foreign buggy made by the same company as mine also caught my eye.

But unlike mine, which is a bare bones car, Foxgame’s buggy car is fully equipped with a communication device called a so-called whirlpool antenna.

“······There are a lot of cars.”

“Oh, because my old hobby was driving.”

Foxgame said with a faint smile, but I’m not sure.

Could this be my victory?

If we were to compare only the pre-war vehicle market value, Foxgame would win by a landslide, but his vehicle collection is not very practical.

What’s the use of Porsche and Lamborghini these days?

My construction vehicle can create a world.

Plus I have a Humvee.

So this time, it’s a complete victory for Skeleton.

Foxgame opened a relatively small iron door behind a row of imported vehicles.

“?”

For a brief moment, I felt a strong sense of confusion.

There was a hallway again.

And there are several doors along that hallway.

The ceiling of the hallway was a whopping 6 meters from the floor and the width was 4 meters.

“······.”

At that moment I realized.

This is not a bunker.

It’s a palace.

My memory is hazy after that.

“This is an indoor cultivation facility. Most vegetables are self-sufficient here.”

“It’s a water purification facility. It sucks water from the bottom of a nearby stream and purifies it. It can easily purify 200 liters of water a day.”

“It’s a safe. It’s practically useless now.”

“This is a closet, but it also doubles as an armory.”

“These are the bedrooms of my subordinates. They are luxurious, right? They are much better than mine. The beds are Hastens. Have you heard of them? They cost 100 million won.”

“This is the gym. Do you like golf? We also have an indoor screen golf facility.”

“This is the server room. Yes. Actually, before the war, I had big dreams. I thought that after the world was somewhat ruined, I would launch an ambitious new game and eat up the entire post-war gaming world.”

“This is the power plant. We use hydrogen fuel cells. It’s still in the prototype stage, but there were no problems. Diesel fuel has a very short storage lifespan······.”

It was only when things had gotten so hectic that I finally came to my senses and was barely able to express my opinion.

“······stop.”

“yes?”

Foxgame looked at me blankly.

“Mr. Skeleton? You don’t look well.”

“I have claustrophobia.”

“Weren’t you living in a bunker?”

“I live in a relatively open place.”

“I see. Could you please take a look at my studio one last time?”

I didn’t feel like it, but I felt like it was a bit late to leave, so I went into Fox Game’s workshop.

His studio was at the end of a long hallway.

Beyond the tightly closed iron door, there was a surprisingly small and cozy bed, and a computer was running with a monitor that illuminated the darkness and made a soft sound.

Unlike the other rooms, it is quite cramped.

To be exact, I would call it a one-room style.

Judging from the bed, this appears to be Foxgame’s bedroom.

At that moment, I felt a presence behind me.

A young couple, probably the woman.

Foxgame showed me his small room without a care and explained it to me in a more lively voice than before.

“I made it by imitating the studio I used to live in during my college days. I liked the old style. It was a time when everything was unclear, when I would eat cup ramen all night and code just because I liked games.”

At least when talking about the past, there seemed to be no falsehood on Foxgame’s face.

“Wait a minute, I’ll get the tea out. Wait here. I have my crew here anyway.”

Inside the restaurant were the young man, woman, and child I had seen earlier.

Just a moment ago, they were at loggerheads with each other, but this time, they smiled and spoke to me first.

After a few greetings, I asked.

“Do you live here with him?”

The young couple nodded.

“Director Choi accepted us. It was really dramatic. I was living on Palenet, uploading crappy games, and then suddenly, someone claiming to be Director Choi made a secret offer to come here.”

“is it so?”

“I was skeptical, but I decided to believe him. He knows the internal workings of the company very well, and he knows everything about how we dated and even got married within the company.”

According to the couple, they came to Foxgame’s house a year ago.

I was lucky.

The winter of the year before last was harsh, but last year’s winter was literally a killing winter.

Even the entire shelter became a battlefield, so the chances of survival were extremely low.

If I had been there, there’s a high chance I wouldn’t have survived.

“I see. So you’re developing games under him now?”

The couple nodded simultaneously.

“Yes. I’ve been doing it for the past year.”

“There were also text-based games in between.”

“Oh, that’s it. The CEO made it for network traffic testing. Anyway, the source code was saved from the company archives 30 years ago, so it’s not really development.”

The couple looked at each other and smiled bitterly.

“But the director was hurt a lot because of that monster park.”

“Because a lot of people died?”

The couple looked at me at the same time.

It’s a face that says you don’t know anything at all.

“no.”

The man hesitated and then opened his mouth.

“There is a bulletin board for game developers on Palenet. There was criticism there. The final comment that came out was that Director Choi’s skills were limited to this.”

“Did he see that too?”

“Director Choi probably frequents that bulletin board too. That’s where he scouted us.”

The woman next to me suddenly joined the conversation.

“He has virtually no talent whatsoever.”

“Is that so?”

“Copying popular foreign games, playing politics within the company, stealing ideas from young people to build up one’s own achievements.”

The woman looked at the man with pitiful eyes.

“My husband has been through this too. It was a long time ago, though.”

It certainly seems that the women still have some lingering resentment towards Fox Games.

“But sometimes when I think about it, I feel sick inside. I got hit really hard. That’s why my husband has panic disorder.”

If men had similar thoughts, Fox Games might have died last year.

At least the man had a strong belief in Fox Games.

“Why would the CEO feel that way? He can’t even say anything about the company’s performance.”

The man showed subtle anger at his wife’s continued dissing.

But the woman’s momentum is formidable.

Instead, he raised his voice loudly with his hands on his hips.

“So you went to China and made a lot of money? You took the project and the whole team with you.”

“Thanks to you, we can live here, right?”

“I don’t know. I wonder what their plan is.”

I tried to change the subject because I thought an argument would break out between the couple if I left it like that, but the heated conversation was interrupted for a moment by the young son looking for his mother.

While the woman was looking after the boy, the man approached me with a wry smile.

“······Honestly, our director has a lot to say and a lot to do with people. But you know.”

He looked up at the high ceiling and smiled broadly.

“A new work will be released soon.”

“Is it a new one?”

“yes.”

I didn’t have high expectations.

I was thinking of something like a mixture of letters, like the previous Monster Park.

While I was half-doubting it, the man took out his cell phone and showed me the screen.

“Don’t tell anyone about this!”

I looked at the screen contained in the cell phone LCD.

“······What is this?”

It wasn’t a jumble of texts, nor was it an old-school classic game.

It was a complete world filled with the gorgeous colors and wonderful effects that were popular just before the war, and a beauty that made you feel like you were entering a world of adventure just by looking at it.

I looked at him and asked.

“You made all of this on your own······?”

The man continued speaking with a smile.

“yes.”

“No, but even so, is it possible for just three people to make something like this?”

“The world is going to end, so we don’t have to worry about copyright, so it’s great that we can freely use assets created by others.”

“Assets?”

“You can think of it as data. You can extract characters, movements, effects, background music, sound effects, and even game concepts, as well as ideas that might be considered during the planning stage. The CEO’s server room has a huge amount of data on how he obtained not only our company’s assets but also those of other companies. From there, we extract the appropriate ones and attach them to the basic framework that the CEO and I created.”

The man glanced at the woman.

“Even though my wife is a twitchy little girl, she’s a talented graphic designer. She really worked hard to modify other people’s assets and make them fit our game. Her workload is probably much more than mine and yours combined.”

As the woman sighed and turned her head, the door opened.

It’s a fox game.

He brought a fairly decent set of teapots and teacups on a tray.

The car he drove was quite tasty.

It was better than what Da-jeong had ridden.

It’s probably because of our technology and the quality of the tea itself, rather than our sincerity.

“It’s a nice car.”

After sipping the tea and giving him a few compliments, I decided to leave.

As the young couple tried to come out to greet them, Fox Game stopped them.

“Why bother when you’re so busy? Since you’re my internet connections, I’ll see you off. Get some rest and then get back to work. There’s not much time left, right?”

So I ended up walking around the luxurious bunker that left such a strong impression on me with Fox Games.

He didn’t say a word in the inner hallway, but when he reached the garage, he closed the door, observed me, and opened his mouth quietly.

“Why are you suddenly saying something like that?”

Foxgame looked back with a frightened face.

“Those people just now.”

I had a bad feeling.

I met his eyes and nodded.

“They took my bunker by force.”

He whispered, looking back with fear in his eyes.

“Why can’t I use the Internet while I’m alive?”