Hiding a House in the Apocalypse - Chapter 218



Only Krnovel

94. Influencer (4)

The will to live is one of the most important variables that a person preparing for destruction must manage.

There aren’t many ways to increase your will to live in a time when everything is in decline.

The only means of increasing the will to live is people.

For example, family or lovers.

However, such a relationship means adding one more person (who may have less survival skills than you), and if a fight breaks out between them, there is a greater risk that it will have a negative impact.

That’s why I avoided increasing the number of people around me at the beginning of the war.

Therefore, rather than increasing the variable called the will to live, I tried to manage my existing will in a way that it would not be broken.

Adequate comfort, an environment free from discomfort, security, and daily enjoyment are essential elements to maintain the will to live.

When these things are lacking and stress builds up, people become crazy or take death lightly.

SKELTON: You know you were poisoned by arsenic? It was your bunker manager’s doing. He must have put a little bit of arsenic in your food every day.

The single man didn’t answer my question for a long time.

After quite some time he answered.

Message from Dolsingman: Isn’t it more of a service?

It seems that the single man’s will was broken a long time ago.

He offered to help him again.

SKELTON: I can help. At least I have the power to take out the caretaker who’s poisoning you.

To this, Dolsingman replied as follows:

Message from Dolsingman: You didn’t read my post carefully, did you?

For a moment, I imagined a scene of a man with bald head and dark discoloration from arsenic poisoning.

Message from Dolsingman: I like that girl. What do you want me to do when you come? Are you going to kill her because I put arsenic in her?

Message from Dolsingman: No, you can kill them? lol

Message from Dolsingman: And you’re not me? You look like a kid. You smell like you’re not educated.

“uh?”

This human.

Was this the kind of guy he was?

I don’t really know his personality because he doesn’t have a history of mixing words, but I don’t remember him being this twisted.

Did he go crazy because he ate arsenic, or was he just crazy to begin with?

I usually enjoy looking at the photo albums of healthy and beautiful women that this friend uploads, but when it comes to something like this, I can’t just ignore it.

Knock knock

SKELTON: Why are you acting so crazy all of a sudden?

Message from Dolsingman: Don’t go overboard. Where did you go to school? Should I do a census? Me? I went to S University, you piece of shit.

SKELTON: Now I understand why you got divorced.

Message from Dolsingman: Can you get married? lol

“······.”

Look at this kid?

*

It’s been a while since I logged out of my skeleton account.

I thought it would never happen, but if you repay kindness with enmity, then there’s nothing I can do.

Well, it’s killing two birds with one stone.

I’ll punish the single man who threw shit at my pure goodwill, and I’ll also eliminate the competitor for my upcoming visual novel, “The Hunter.”

From my long experience on the internet, single men seem to be quite neurotic.

So, I guess they got divorced.

But I am a greater person than the single man thinks.

While the average Viva! Apocalypse! user has one account per person, I still have several spare accounts.

During the armband incident, Vivabot suspended all the dummy accounts created by Valentine, but the lazy woman only suspended the accounts that directly participated in the armband manipulation.

The story is that there are still a few accounts that have not participated in the manipulation and are not yet activated.

I activated one of them.

Knock knock

Nickname: factosman

– Check the Obelisk receipt status and account information.

– Login successful

– Welcome to Viva! Apocalypse!

“······.”

Our Viva! Apocalypse! One of the common methods used by users when they can’t contain their anger and wear a mask is to change their nickname.

I’ve used that one-dimensional method before too.

But our bulletin board is account-based.

This means that no matter what nickname you change, you can check the account information and find all the posts written by that person using just the account number.

In reality, there are several people who have been embarrassed after wearing masks and swinging spears like that.

But capable and sophisticated users wear their masks differently.

It’s like changing the account itself.

Having multiple accounts allows me to have such a transformation like the Eight Colors.

This is equivalent to equipping multiple satellites.

A while ago, I clearly saw that Dolsingman’s visual novel was on the top of the popularity list.

I also enjoyed reading the second article, but the public reaction was lukewarm.

Who wants to see an older person in love?

Even the face of a single man, far from beauty, only produces the effect of making uninterested people automatically press the back button.

Meanwhile, the number of comments is around 5.

There was no one who genuinely liked that writing.

Perhaps I have read his writing with the greatest impression?

It is unmanly to insult and treat in such a way the person who was his ardent reader and could have been his savior.

So, in a sense, what I am going to do is a matter of necessity.

From my brief conversation with the single man, I could tell that he had his own intellectual pride and vanity.

For those friends, the scheme to make him out to be a fraud is more likely to move their hearts than the one-dimensional accusations of Eom Chang-i-sik.

I went to the first post of Dolsingman’s ambitious work, “New Love,” and left a comment.

factosman: Ha… Even though it’s a novel, how realistic is it? Who would believe a story like this, three years and six months after the war, let alone before it?

The start of the attack.

As expected, Dolsingman immediately responded to my post.

Dolsingman: What, I’ve never seen you before. Where are you from?

The only thing that reacts here is the sewer.

My intention is not to upset him.

My goal is to render worthless the story he created with his painstakingly tinkering with AI tools, selecting jazz music, and writing nonsense.

So my other avatar “Factosman” doesn’t say anything anymore.

In that case, the angry rebuttal from the single man will remain as a humiliating echo of the writer’s choleric temper.

Instead, I went to his other post – New Love’s second post – and commented on it with a similar comment.

factosman: Ha…. That’s right…. That’s what men and women in their fifties do… Putting flowers on books and stuff…. You should have written an exchange diary or something? Believe this kind of stuff…. That damn jazz… Your conscience is jazzed…. Ha…

A message arrived a while later.

Message from Dolsingman: Where are you?

Message from Dolsingman: You little shit. I got a bomb? Huh? I got a bomb that’ll blow up your bunker?

“······.”

As expected, single men are no match for me.

He is way below me.

*

Just as Pygmalion carved and carved a marble rock to create an ideal statue that would make even himself fall in love, this Park Gyu also ran the AI ​​image generation tool thousands of times to finally create a woman that his bulletin board friends would love.

“······hmm.”

After a brief moment of admiring my creation with my arms folded, I have now uploaded my new ambitious work, “The Hunter Begins Episode 1.”

Posting on a bulletin board is like throwing a trap.

All that remains is to check the trap as time goes by.

I went outside for a moment to get some air and inspect the facilities.

The broken generator is now running strong, supplying power to my batteries, and the second intake pipe, which began construction last year, is finally gushing out muddy water after a long period of hard work.

If we just work a little harder, we’ll be able to secure enough water to accommodate new people.

It’s a bit contradictory to want to live alone while also preparing for someone, but you never know what will happen in this world.

Because you never know when someone you know or love might come to your bunker.

When I returned to the bunker after working on the water pipe, it was already evening and the sun had set.

As expected, a comment notification is popping up.

I watched “The Hunter Begins Episode 1” with a pounding heart.

mmmmmmmmm: What is this? Did you make this after seeing Dolsingman?

unicorn18 : Women’s tastes are really······.

gijayangban : ?

There are three comments.

There was no friendly content, and even a message containing a warning arrived.

Message from gijayangban: What are you doing, senior?

Message from gijayangban: This lightning. Are you talking about our lightning?

When you go to the battlefield, why are you using the internet instead of taking care of the battlefield properly?

I think I’ll have to take a break from writing for a while.

It’s a mistake to use Lightning’s call sign as is.

Let’s just fix this and upload it again.

But why are the views and recommendations so miserable?

I uploaded it at dawn when it’s not easy to upload articles, so I can’t make excuses about the timing.

I was refreshing the page repeatedly, hoping for views that wouldn’t go up that much.

“······.”

For a brief moment, the corners of his eyes twitched.

Dolsingman: New Love Episode 3

Just uploaded.

This is a hot new article.

You don’t even have any luck. You single man.

It just so happened that it caught my eye as soon as I posted it.

Should we at least check the contents?

Click

The moment I clicked on the text, what appeared before me was neither a long text nor an AI-synthesized image.

A photo of a single man affectionately posing with a young woman was placed right in the center.

The single man tells us.

“Age was nothing. That too was just a prejudice born of short-sightedness. Even the first novel that the woman in the other bunker lent me was like that. There were two women in that novel. A young but still immature woman and a woman who was old enough to embrace the protagonist. The protagonist loved the latter, but the former supported him realistically.”

“So I pretended to be crazy and dashed forward, and that’s how we ended up like this.”

In the next chapter, Dolsingman smiles and speaks to us again.

“Vivarians! Be confident! You can do it too! Before the war, we were called defeatists, but now we are the most attractive men! Look at me! Even a guy like me can do it!”

I don’t think that’s something someone who eats arsenic should be saying.

But the reaction is unusual.

In that short period of time, there were several comments, and they were all positive.

I don’t feel good.

This is a pace that is heading straight to “popular posts” rather than “popular chin-up posts.”

“······.”

What should I do?

This is not the kind of trend that can be stopped by logging out and leaving a single malicious comment.

But something has to be done.

Even if you start a keyboard battle and create a mud puddle, you shouldn’t let this post become popular.

I was thinking that and was about to press the logout button.

“?”

Beyond the photo, something is hanging in the room where the single man and the female manager were sitting side by side when the photo was taken.

It was a piece of white cloth with what appeared to be Chinese characters written in red paint.

I zoomed in on the screen to see the red letters.

-Wanryuguijong (returning to the religion of all religions)

Was that so?

*

I overlooked it for a moment.

That there is a method that is the most traditional and still has not lost its power among the methods of sustaining the will to live.

It’s faith.

Blind faith, whether true or not, gives a person a reason to live.

Just as there are groups of close friends in class, there are also groups of close friends on the bulletin board.

The single man seemed to hang out with older, socially aware people who had good jobs.

I asked users who were close to him about the man called Dolsingman.

tntn_Orthopedics: A single man? He often uploaded sexy pictures and enjoyed making sexual jokes, but he was a very smart person. You can tell by the way he talks. Is this guy smart or not?

Anonymous 424: Contrary to his appearance, he had a cool image. He never revealed or even hinted at his private area. However, he hinted at it with enough objectivity that one could easily imagine what he did before the war.

Even the smartest and most intelligent people lose their judgment when left in dire situations for long periods of time.

The image I have of the user Dolsingman is not much different from the opinions of users who were close to him.

Contrary to his rather light nickname, his movements were cautious and his words were restrained.

The first half of his new love had enough relatability and depth to actually captivate me.

That person has changed.

Dolsingman: New Love Part 4 – On the Path to True Faith

The guy who is dying from arsenic poisoning is a preacher of the cult that is trying to kill him.

Dolsingman: Don’t be afraid. Monsters are not our enemies. They may be our friends, brothers, sisters.

Glorious Viva! Apocalypse! I can’t stand to see an early member make such a fuss.

Sent a message.

SKELTON: You disgusting kid. You’re even falling for a cult and making a mess of things. Do you know how much nonsense you’re talking about? Huh? You graduated from a good university and you believe that kind of stuff?

Message from Dolsingman: Reflection~

SKELTON: Honestly, your writing. I enjoyed reading it. It was interesting. Your bunker style. I liked the keywords you described, such as the distance between women and empathy. But then you suddenly turned the wheel and said, “What? You’re doing some kind of pseudo-advertisement that only ignorant people believe.”

SKELTON: It’s not too late. Do you need help? If you cooperate, I can kill them all by myself.

Message from Dolsingman: So.

SKELTON: ?

Message from Dolsingman: So you liberate my bunker, then what?

SKELTON: What’s next?

A message from Dolsingman: Will happiness come next?

SKELTON: Happiness is······

Message from Dolsingman: The bustling streets every night, the sight of Tehran Boulevard from my office on a rainy day, the line of cars with their taillights on going to work, having a drink with a woman with bare shoulders at a jazz bar, the rare but enjoyable phone call with a classmate whenever I visit.

SKELTON: There’s no such thing in this world anymore.

A message from Dolsingman: Should we continue to live in such a world?

SKELTON: Didn’t you become a doomsday fan because you were convinced that life would never return to how it was before?

Message from Dolsingman: No, I thought it would be back to normal in 2 or 3 years. Not 100%, but maybe half.

SKELTON: You’re out of your mind.

Message from Dolsingman: I enjoyed reading your comments.

A message from Dolsingman: Thank you.

That was our last conversation.

All of Dolsingman’s posts have been deleted.

He never appeared before us again, and no missionary articles were posted on his account.

It was an incident that ended as a mere coincidence, but at least he had some influence over me.

In that it showed me that there are doomsday perspectives that are completely different from mine.

Probably, more friends will disappear.