Hiding a House in the Apocalypse - Chapter 293



Only Krnovel

118. Story (3)

The eco-center was completely isolated from the outside world, with J blocking the only exit with trash, plastic, and fallen debris.

The completely sealed eco-center constituted an independent ecosystem in itself.

When J realized that fact, he felt elated at first, but the elation quickly faded.

I realized the reality.

He too cannot be free from his own independent ecosystem.

So, what this means is that the human entity called J is also part of a closed ecosystem.

Any living organism needs calories to survive.

If the area in which the creature survives is a limited space, the creature’s survival will depend on the amount of heat produced by that area.

If the area produces enough heat, the creature will be able to survive; if not, the creature will inevitably perish.

The area of ​​the eco-center where J is located is 3,546㎡.

It may be too large a space for one person to live in, but the plants in the eco-center do not produce much heat.

Besides, it is the changing of seasons.

So far, the plants have been holding up thanks to Korea’s warm autumn weather, but when temperatures drop, many of the plants in the eco-center will not be able to withstand it and will wither.

This means that the amount of heat produced by the entire area is reduced.

Those reduced calories will have a negative impact on the small insects, arthropods and fish that feed on the plants and their byproducts, as well as the capybara family, and ultimately on their predators.

This is the so-called chain reaction of ecological collapse.

J’s food supply will be sufficient for the time being, but it will not be enough to survive the long winter.

To some extent, we have to rely on the ecosystem.

Whether it’s gathering, hunting, farming, whatever.

The missing calories must be replenished in some way.

There are three species of animals at the top of the food chain.

Nile crocodile, Amazon king otter, and human.

Here, the Nile crocodile and the Amazon king otter must disappear.

Because they are competitors competing for the excellent protein called fish.

Deep in the dark artificial pond, the giant pirarucu, a long-legged squid, is also an important target to hunt before the weather gets cold.

If left alone, it will eat up many of the fish in the pond.

Of course, you could wait for it to die and eat it, but it’s a much more efficient option in terms of total calories to process it before that.

The urgent problem is the fish and meat in the freezer.

Meat and fish that have already been thawed will rot quickly.

This means that precious calories are being wasted.

J decided to pick out the meat in the freezer that he could eat and feed the rest to his rivals in the eco-center.

Nile crocodiles live in the artificial pond in the center of the eco-center.

The Amazon king otter and the pirarucu also shared the same territory.

“I didn’t know then that that decision would bring me a new friend.”

The purpose of throwing rotting meat into the pond was to conserve heat within the eco-center as efficiently as possible.

But not long after he threw the fish away, something black approached him.

This is the Amazon king otter, nicknamed “Wangdali” by visitors.

The little guy, who had been handled by humans since he was a puppy, not only ate the meat thrown by J without any hesitation, but also acted cute.

Only then did J realize that the Amazon King Otter, whom he had thought of as his rival, was not his rival at all.

The guy is more of a human child than an otter.

From the time they were puppies, they were fed with bottles instead of their mother’s milk, and they were cared for by humans until they became semi-adults.

The boy was destined to live and die as a spectacle for spectators until his death, having inherited no hunting or survival skills from his parents.

“Beep- Beep-”

J saw the king otter rolling around with its belly exposed in front of him and thought it was cute, reminding him of his nephew in Seoul.

It was natural for the king otter to follow him to the control room.

Now the important ones are the Nile crocodile and the pirarucu.

First, you have to kill the Nile crocodile.

The species is actively hostile to humans and has a habit of hunting them without hesitation when given the chance.

Given that pirarucu are by no means easy prey, it makes sense to kill the dangerous ones first.

Inside the control room with the king otter, J did image training.

How can I kill that crocodile?

The weapon is something like an iron pipe.

This is not enough.

We need something more lethal and powerful.

Soon J recalled a horrific hunting tool that was often a problem in Korea.

It’s Olmuda.

It is a cruel tool that uses wire to catch prey and tighten its legs, making them tighter the more it moves.

It wasn’t difficult to make and there were plenty of ingredients.

In the past, I volunteered at an animal protection organization and got to see things in person while doing stray dog ​​removal work, which was also a great help.

J created a death trap by feeding rotting fish to the king otter.

The day of the final battle has arrived.

J glared at his competitor crouching in the pond, which was becoming increasingly murky as the filter stopped turning.

Next to him, his friend the king otter was pacing busily, begging for food.

J installed the traps everywhere and made his final gamble.

It’s like throwing yourself out there as bait.

With his club in one hand, he groped his way toward the ambush crocodile.

The crocodile did not react easily.

Each time, J had to close the distance.

It’s a blood-curdling moment.

The instantaneous leaping power and speed of the crocodile, an opportunistic predator, are explosive. The moment J is caught in that leap, he becomes nothing more than a prey that loses in the food chain competition.

“Come. Come. You son of a bitch.”

J continued to lure the crocodile by hitting the ground with his club and getting on its nerves.

Soon the crocodile’s paws twitched.

“!”

J ran away with all his might.

At the same time, a crocodile pounced on him.

Amidst the flying water droplets splashing everywhere, J saw a huge shadow approaching him.

‘Just a little more!’

There was a thud.

It’s a reassuring sound.

The sound of the landing itself is evidence that you have left the crocodile’s jumping range.

But the momentary relief led to a mistake.

J slipped on the slippery floor covered in water.

More terrifying than the mind-numbing shock and the sharp, piercing pain was the silhouette of the killer crocodile lumbering toward me.

“Beep!”

A miracle happened.

The Amazon king otter, who had always been by the side, rushed towards the crocodile.

Living up to its title of king, the Amazon king otter is a huge species reaching 1.8 m in length and possesses both the agility and ferocity characteristic of the mustelidae family.

The king otter confronted the crocodile, tearing at various parts of its body.

During that gap, J was able to get up and run behind the awning.

“Come here!”

J shouted at the otter.

The otter, accustomed to people, quickly stepped back upon hearing J’s voice.

From then on, the hunt was smooth.

The crocodile was caught in the trap, and the more it moved its limbs, the tighter the death trap became.

J glared at the struggling crocodile, waited for it to lose its strength, and then cut off its windpipe with a sharp stake he had sharpened himself.

It was the moment when the greatest threat disappeared.

J expressed his endless gratitude to the otter for saving his life.

From that day on, my cohabitation with the otter began.

There were numerous episodes, but the one I remember the most was the pirarucu hunt.

J succeeded in making a simple net and pulling it up, but when he saw the pirarucu tearing the net with its incredible strength, he made a spear himself and hunted the pirarucu by throwing the spear into the water like the primitive people he imagined tens of thousands of years ago.

The rewards were generous.

I was able to store enough calories to last a few days and enough calories for him to devour.

Of course, the otter was always by J’s side during each of his successes.

The temperature dropped.

The outside thermometer read 12 degrees.

As J predicted, the tropical plants could not withstand the temperatures and died.

A dry brown color spread across the once blue eco-center.

J noticed that the death of the plants was faster and more extensive than expected.

If winter comes like this, this place will become a dead ecosystem.

Fortunately, there seemed to be plenty of food.

Thanks to the quick killing of their competitors, crocodiles and pirarucu, there were still plenty of fish left in the pond.

If you can get the fish out of the pond before the water freezes, it will provide enough calories.

And the harsh winter will also keep the fish from rotting.

Dead plants will serve as firewood.

Winter may be long, but it is not eternal.

The spring sunshine brought life back into the eco-center.

Tropical plants that had turned brown came back to life.

All the fish in the pond disappeared, but J wasn’t worried.

By now the Chinese army would have left here.

The long, long quarantine period is now over.

He broke down the barricade at the entrance he had personally blocked and came out of the eco-center.

How long has it been since I last breathed fresh air?

Next to him, his best friend, the Amazon King Otter, scurried about, scurrying about at his feet.

What should I do with this guy?

While I was thinking, something appeared before my eyes.

He is a person.

J hurriedly went back into the eco-center.

That’s right.

There are people walking around with guns.

I didn’t wear a Chinese military uniform, but I had a bad feeling about it.

Perhaps the long period of living away from people gave him a wild side.

Bang! Bang!

A gunshot rang out.

Gunshots rang out all night long.

That day, J felt the fate that had been given to him.

There should be more.

In this closed, yet different ecosystem.

J’s gaze was always directed at the otter innocently playing beside him.

“······.”

The answer was already decided.

If you can’t leave this eco-center, you’ll have to survive on the resources within it.

J doesn’t have the courage to leave the eco-center.

But he had the courage to kill his friend.

“Beep beep beep!!!!!!!”

One warm afternoon, J killed an otter.

The only way to repay the guy who saved my life was to kill him painlessly, but that wasn’t as easy as I wanted.

The otter, wounded and staggering from the unexpected blow, cried out in pain and screamed at J, bleeding profusely.

The slaughter continued for an hour.

Inside the blood-stained room, J sat down in front of the otter he had killed, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath.

“······Phew.”

This is it.

With this, the total heat inside the eco-center will be maintained at a level sufficient for one human being to survive.

Since the day he killed his friend with his own hands, J’s life has been no different from that of a beast in nature.

They feed, rest, and then feed again.

The only civilized thing they did was to feed the otter meat to the mealworms.

Even he, who had returned to the original state, could not eat it.

One mealworm weighs 0.1 gram.

100g of mealworms have about 530Kcal.

So J lived in perfect isolation, in perfect balance.

After another year, he came out of the eco-center and looked around.

There was no one left there anymore.

Only a few skeletal remains gave a vague hint that this realm had once had several inhabitants.

“······I thought that place was hell.”

J, who returned to the people’s arms, said.

But he quickly revised his opinion.

“No, that was Eden.”

J suddenly disappeared.

No one knew where he went, but people had no difficulty guessing where he went.

He returned to a perfect balance that could be either hell or Eden.

The story doesn’t end there.

“······A group of scavengers went there. They were quite a large group, I heard. They found an eco-complex. Just like J said, there was a tropical house with unbroken windows, barely big enough for one person to fit through. But you know.”

Bang Jae-hyuk looked back at us with a bitter smile.

“There are signs in places like that, right? They tell you what kind of plants and animals live there. But they don’t keep Amazonian king otters, Nile crocodiles, or pirarucu there. People who went to the eco-center before the war also said they didn’t see any of those animals.”

J was not found.

The Amazon king otters, pirarucu, Nile crocodiles and wiggling mealworms that J had talked about were nowhere to be found.

All the scavengers found was a pile of dirty trash, tattered clothes, and a skeletal body entangled in what looked like wire.

The story fell into an eternal labyrinth.

In that there is no one to explain whether J’s experience is real or a metaphor for an event that actually happened.

“They said that when the scavengers left, they felt like someone was watching them. At the time, the plants in the eco-center were growing very well. Maybe J was hiding in the jungle, watching the people who came to find him.”

The reaction to the story was not bad.

Although no one applauded, everyone showed their emotions on their faces.

“What? J lied?”

“Otters are people, right? Crocodiles are people too, right?”

“Well, it could really be an otter. But the signboard updates are surprisingly slow, so animals that aren’t on the signboard are still running around.”

“I think I saw a crocodile.”

Anyway, that’s the end of the long story.

I think it wouldn’t be a bad idea to tell my story that I’ve been putting off for a while.

After clearing his throat, he immediately moved on to the next topic.

“From the wild meat······.”

Hong Da-jeong’s voice burst out almost simultaneously and completely swallowed my words.

“The rain has stopped!”

“?”

As the frozen day passed, the diners in my domain rushed out.

“It’s true. Look! It has to be! The sun has risen!”

“It’s finally over.”

The typhoon has passed.

Without any incident.

“Let’s talk about my older brother next time.”

Only Valentine comforted me with a bitter smile.

But I don’t think it’s something that needs to be comforted.

“······.”

Knock knock

Non-paying newbie: (heard from Skeleton) A mysterious story that happened in the National Ecological Complex.txt

I wrote a story about J on the Red Archive bulletin board.

As expected from an expert in the internet community, it was a carefully written “story” that included eerie yet mysterious BGM and photos of Amazon king otters and Nile crocodiles to aid understanding.

This strange and mysterious story got a good response on the Red Archive bulletin board.

By the way, I wonder if the aftermath of the “story” had some influence on me.

I had a dream after a long time.

The person who appeared in my dream was my mentor, Jang Gi-yeong.