Hiding a House in the Apocalypse - Chapter 365



Only Krnovel

Episode 371 150. Interview (2)

According to Emgu, the sudden visit was his specialty.

“Surprise” is your identity.

Anyway, Emgu is one of the pure-blooded Oldbee users who started the bulletin board around the same time as me.

Even though his personality is a bit sloppy, his opinions as a Vivarian are worth listening to.

Of course, I don’t like surprises, so I asked him how he found out where I live.

Having my personal information discovered is not something I like as a cautious and careful person.

“What is it? What is it? I can see it all from above.”

It was a foolish question and a wise answer.

“······It’s different from when the Palenet kids came in. Even though they look similar, the fundamentals are different.”

Emgu grumbled as he made his own liquor provided by the government – surprisingly, the taste was not much different from that of soju before the war.

“Don’t you feel it? That we have become trash.”

As expected, I don’t drink a single drop of the alcohol Emgu gives me and just stare at him.

If someone saw me, they might say I have no social skills.

But isn’t it a personal choice?

It’s not that I can’t drink, and I like the atmosphere of drinking parties, but I didn’t like the situation where I got drunk.

So, I’m looking at the paper cup of soju that Emgu generously offered me as if it were a cow or a chicken.

This would be advantageous for expressing a more cool-headed opinion.

“What’s different? Isn’t it the same situation?”

I don’t think there’s much difference between PaleNet and the present.

Ultimately, it is just a minor upgrade that turns Palenet into a necropolis, as many users from outside have entered the bulletin board.

But, that guy Emgu has a sharp edge.

“Ha. This kid. He really only knows one thing and not two.”

“?”

Emgu chuckled as he poured the glass of soju he had given me back into his mouth.

“At that time, the kids who came in from Palenet were the best.”

“what?”

“No, think about it. From their perspective, the main base is Palenet, and our bulletin board is like a colony where they come to play. There must be named people there too, right?”

“I guess so?”

“If the named person wants to play in a place with a lot of people, why would he change his base and come here?”

“!”

Oops.

I misjudged.

I am the one who makes the best decisions on the battlefield, but the world of the Internet is truly profound.

So what you see isn’t everything?

“Now that Palenet is gone, all the old Palenet named kids have moved here. You know what happened with Jeremy Irons, right?”

“That guy doesn’t even care.”

“They’re not ordinary guys. They’re guys who just eat and surf the internet.”

“Don’t we usually do that too?”

“Those kids have 10 years of basic experience. They’re kids who have put their entire lives into the internet.”

“······.”

Was it because of the difference in experience that I was pushed by Jeremy Irons?

Emgu, whose face was already red from intoxication, looked around while pouring another glass of soju into his mouth.

“Oh, and. This is. It’s a secret.”

Emgu suddenly turned his face towards me with a flushed face.

For a moment I hesitated to pull out my axe, but then I realized that his destination was right next to my ear, so I held on with superhuman patience.

“It’s called Melon Mask······.”

“melon······?”

“They’re giving accounts to the Necropolis kids soon.”

“What?!”

I suddenly stood up.

The loud noise that made the entire building resonate for a moment was a bonus.

Someone was sticking their face out the window, but they avoided observation by sticking close to the wall with Emgu.

“······Is that true?”

After the situation calmed down, I asked Emgu.

Despite his pale face, Emgu nodded with a cold seriousness.

“I sent a message to the named user.”

“?”

“What’s that? What’s that look on your face? Didn’t you get it? I thought everyone got it. Didn’t you check the Fox code?”

“Foxcode?”

“You didn’t get an invitation?”

When I made a face of incomprehension, Emgu suddenly looked at me with a hazy expression and let out a sigh that smelled like soju.

“I didn’t get an invitation······.”

“what?”

“Original bulletin board user meeting. I invited all the original users who have been on the bulletin board since long ago, except for anonymous users with more than four characters. The influx of Necropolis is good, but because there are too many of them, our presence has become weak, so we ended up creating a separate bulletin board.”

“······How many people are there?”

“92 people.”

“······.”

Is everyone else there but me?

Well, it’s interesting that the number of bulletin board users, which was at a thousand right after the war, has decreased to 10%, but does that mean I’m not included in that 10%?

“A person who has lost everything······.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“How else can you understand this situation?”

“I guess I forgot. I’ll tell Dongtan Mom later.”

“To Dongtan Mom?”

“He’s the room leader.”

“Didn’t that kid become the ghost of a shipwreck?”

“Don’t say bad words in moderation.”

Without realizing it, I picked up the glass of soju that I had been holding onto and drank it in one gulp.

“Phew.”

It’s not a good habit to rely on alcohol, but I feel like it cools my head down a little bit.

After a brief moment of calming down, Emgu opened his mouth again.

“Anyway, this won’t do. If Melon Mask spreads the account, we’ll be buried. This means we’ll be a shiny water rocket at the beginning.”

I know what you’re trying to say.

If Melon Mask unlocks the dog and cow accounts, it means that Necropolis users can shed the “dead” label and stand on equal footing with us.

We’ll have to find out why that evil Yankee, who has a stronger obsession with our bulletin board than anyone else, made that choice, but first, we have to survive.

“If we cover the process of seeing what Kang Han-min is doing right now, I’m sure. This will be a warning to those bastards who are spamming popular articles with their shitty comments.”

“Fucking······?”

“Didn’t you know? Jeremy Irons and all the Necropolis internet idiots you know are fucking up popular posts with fake names.”

“okay?”

I never thought about it.

Unlike in the past when I could surf the internet all day in a bunker, these days I have work to do and therefore have limited internet time.

So I only read the popular posts that I found interesting, but I had no idea that such a serious problem was occurring while I was neglecting it.

But even if something like that were to happen, wouldn’t it be an overreaction to go to Kang Han-min’s side to report on it?

“But why Kang Han-min all of a sudden?”

Emgu chuckled at my question.

“There’s a guy who provided information to Foxcode.”

“who?”

“Mr. Reporter.”

“Mr. Reporter······?”

When I asked with an expression of indifference, Emgu put his chin on my shoulder and his hand and spoke confidently.

“With the journalist’s information power, your fighting power, and my ability to take action, what in the world can’t you do?”

“······.”

Mr. Reporter. When you hear that Woo Min-hee was involved, everything becomes clear.

That guy Woo Min-hee.

It seems like Kang Han-min doesn’t know what he’s doing, so he ends up asking us for help.

To be honest, I’m also curious about Kang Han-min’s current situation.

It’s also painful to spend time not knowing when the guy will come back.

If I could find out Kang Han-min’s intentions at this point, I would at least be able to put my uneasy mind at ease.

If you can increase your internet reputation at the same time, it would kill two birds with one stone.

That guy Mgu.

It seems like he thinks he’ll be able to enjoy all the fruits of this interview, so it wouldn’t be a bad idea to show him the bitter taste of the Internet.

He thought about it and said while looking at Emgu.

“good.”

*

Mgoo.

I may be being joking, but objectively speaking, Emgu is no ordinary person.

Living in the ruins of a long-time Hope, where there were no humans, for three long years, he developed agility and wildness far beyond that of ordinary people.

You could say it’s something similar to a gibbon mutation.

“Wait a minute. I’ll check.”

Whenever there was something ominous ahead, Emgu would climb up the wall like a monkey and check for danger from a high place.

“······.”

In my life, I have never seen anyone who can climb walls better than Kim Da-ram.

The reason why Kim Da-ram is good at climbing walls is because of his natural sense of balance, as well as his strength that is comparable to a man’s and his weight that is comparable to a woman’s, while Emgu climbs walls with the aforementioned agility and nimbleness of a gibbon.

As far as I can remember, the Emgu I met during my time at the Jonnaean Jeongmo was a person with a rather menial job, to put it politely.

I asked since I had nothing to say until the intermediate destination.

“What did you do for a living before the war?”

“me?”

“uh.”

“I went to work.”

“What company?”

“factory.”

“aha.”

“He was the factory manager.”

“Shit.”

Emgu stretched and looked up at the sky.

“For guys like us, no matter what we do, isn’t it better to have a war than not to have a war?”

“······Well. That’s true.”

When I unintentionally hit the janggu, Emgu snickered.

“I mean, if there had been no war, we would have been really screwed.”

“okay?”

Is it because we definitely have similar thoughts and tastes?

The subject of the story is intriguing.

When I have to spend time alone with a female junior in a place like Shanghai, I don’t know what to say, so I just look at the clock and wait for time to pass, but this guy, Emgu, has a fatal flaw that I personally don’t like, but he always brings up stories that tickle my ears.

“How many times have you done this?”

Among us Oldbee users, the word “commit” is synonymous with how much one bet before the war.

“I quit my job and used my retirement pay and the money I inherited from my parents to build a bunker. Well, I found a better apartment than the bunker so I moved there, but at the time, it was the best I could do.”

“You don’t have to pay your debt?”

“Why do you owe me a debt?”

“Why are you asking me? It’s money I don’t have to pay back if war breaks out.”

“?”

“If war doesn’t break out, life will be ruined anyway, right?”

Emgu looked at me with a face that said he couldn’t understand me.

An expression that seems to suggest that they have a different way of thinking.

“Wow······. I knew he was a weird guy because he was always like that······.”

“No, did I say something wrong?”

“No matter how ruined the world is, have a human heart. Skeleton.”

Emgu took the lead.

“Over there!”

There is an abandoned wharf on the banks of the Han River.

In the past, it was used for various water sports such as jet skiing and yachting, but of course, it was abandoned as soon as the war broke out.

However, it appears that this abandoned wharf has recently been put into use again.

Emgu said to the K-Walkie-Talkie.

“Secure, secure. Sierra one one.”

As soon as the communication ended, a soldier with a gun appeared from an abandoned shack.

Emgu waved at them.

“What is this?”

“I told you. I have a guide.”

“I didn’t know the guide was a soldier.”

“That’s right. The reporter said he was an acquaintance. Well, I guess it’s better if it’s good, right?”

Friend. I guess so.

It’s something Woo Min-hee planned.

The soldiers at the dock silently took out a military motorboat hidden in the dock and waved it over to us.

“I’ll take you to the island.”

Suddenly I ended up going on a boat ride.

“Wow. This is no joke! This is thrilling!”

As soon as we got on the boat, Emgu was busy taking videos and filming, but I was more worried.

He approached the soldier standing there, holding the machine gun mounted on the boat, and asked him.

“Hey. Is this okay? It looks dangerous, not even before the war.”

When a malicious person shoots from the riverbank, all we can do is pray that the bullet misses.

“it’s okay.”

The soldier answered.

Judging from the clean uniform he is wearing without any modified military equipment, he appears to be from the government army rather than the legion faction, and he seems to have been on Woo Min-hee’s side.

“If someone shoots you, just lie down.”

“yes?”

“The bow is surprisingly high, so it’s hard to get a good view when you lie down. It’s not like there are many people shooting guns these days.”

The soldier smiled bitterly.

“As you know, Seoul was a dead city after the retreat to Incheon. There were a few survivors here and there, but how could less than a thousand people living in this big city be noticeable?”

The soldier thought that there was no problem.

Indeed, we crossed the great river in silence, its banks filled with ruins.

There are three main floors.

One is the countless abandoned and scrapped vehicles on the riverside roads on both sides of the Strait, once synonymous with traffic congestion.

Above them, the houses and apartments along the Han River, symbols of wealth, stand abandoned and gloomy, and above them, the equally ownerless skyscrapers, dyed in a gloomy gray, are discouraging to our hearts.

I spoke to the soldier to change the subject.

“What about Ganghwado?”

The soldier answered.

“well.”

Soon he smiled bitterly.

“······It doesn’t seem like a very good place to live.”

We passed the broken bridges and the people living on them, entered the sea, and soon arrived at the island.

“We will wait here.”

They took us to the northern shore of Ganghwa Island.

The bleak appearance of the broken Ganghwa Bridge can be seen in the distance.

Clank-

I took up my gun and looked around with Emgu.

White mountains and land with nothing on them.

There were no signs of life, but an unknown murderous aura was still seeping through the entire island.

“So, what do we do now?”

There must be some plan.

For someone as far removed from combat as Emgu, let alone Woo Min-hee, to come here, he must have a lot of confidence.

Indeed, Emgu had a plan.

“Just wait. Our friend is just a little further away.”

“friend?”

“okay.”

Emgu took the lead.

In an era where guns are the norm, I can’t help but laugh at the sight of him walking around freely with only a pistol strapped to his waist, but everyone has their own style.

It wouldn’t be MGU’s style to advance forward with guns in hand and a fierce look of vigilance like a professional soldier.

After about ten minutes of strange marching, we arrived in front of an old factory.

[Rock blasting]

Like other places, it was covered in snow, but in the wide open space in front of the factory, there were traces of tents and campsites where many people had passed through in the past.

Certainly, this is one of the easiest places for people to settle down around here.

I asked Emgu, feeling as if the scenery was familiar to me.

“Are you here?”

Emgu nodded and knocked on the factory door.

Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud.

Five times.

and.

thud.

yet again.

It was probably a pre-agreed signal.

Squeak-

A tiny, ripping sound of metal meshing reached my ears.

It’s not inside the factory, it’s behind it.

and.

“who are you?”

Suddenly, a child’s voice echoed cautiously from behind.

Clank-

He aimed his gun and looked behind him.

“Who are you?”

The child is bait.

There’s another guy.

Behind the snow-covered shrubs over there.

“I’ll give you 3 seconds.”

“for a moment!”

Emgu blocked my way.

He looked back and shouted.

“Keystone! It’s me! It’s me. M-gu!”

“Keystone······?”

That guy who is always negative.

Are you still alive?

In the cold silence, a man limped out of the forest.

“uh?”

What came to mind at that moment was not something like Keystone.

Actor and director.

This is the word that came to mind.

“It’s Keystone.”

Emgu smiled and approached the man.

“Does this look familiar?”

Yes, that’s right.

This gloomy man, with greying hair and still retaining traces of his handsome looks from his prime, was once South Korea’s most famous actor and director.

“Skeleton······?”

Keystone looked at me with a gaze as negative as my Internet image.