Hiding a House in the Apocalypse - Chapter 56



Only Krnovel

37. Immortality (2)

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen the sea.

Especially seeing the sea embracing the sunset.

I sat on my camping chair and stared blankly at the red sun setting into the sea, dyeing it in its own colors.

As the ground spiders began to cover the fields, Dragon C appeared, accompanied by a fragrant scent.

“Let’s have a cup of coffee and go.”

Mr. Dragon was a well-prepared doomsday man.

His bunker was not as overwhelming as mine, but it was more spacious and comfortable than any bunker I had ever seen, and it was also well-stocked with food.

The interesting part was the weapons.

Mr. Dragon had a Chinese rifle like me.

“Not long after the war started, there were Chinese corpses washed up on the sea. There were a lot of them. Our submarines really ravaged their fleet. Two of them split in half and sank off the coast. At that time, a few corpses floated in and a few were stolen.”

The most impressive thing was the coffee.

Two and a half years had passed since the war began, and he still had coffee beans.

“Half of my soul is made of alcohol and cigarettes, and the other half is made of coffee.”

It’s not just coffee.

He even had an espresso machine that you would see in a specialty cafe.

I felt a smile naturally appear on my face at the rare luxury and eagerly waited for our barista to give me a drink.

I looked inside his bunker while he roasted the beans.

It’s bleak and desolate.

Although the toilet wasn’t in the center like mine, the cracks and condensation marks on the rough-finished concrete, as well as the mold here and there, clearly showed that building a bunker was no easy task.

Mr. Dragon tried to lighten the gloomy atmosphere of the bunker by pasting familiar webtoon posters, probably his own, here and there, but the piles of empty cigarette packs and bottles of alcohol in the corners evoked a sense of pity along with the creepiness.

Not only the cigarettes, but also the alcohol left a strong impression as it was a strong drink with an alcohol content of over 40 percent.

I’ve already emptied hundreds of bottles of that stuff.

Could that be why his complexion is so bad?

“How are you feeling?”

“Me? Do I look bad?”

“little.”

“I’m taking my medicine. Don’t worry. Anyway, look here. This is my workshop, Dragon-ssi.”

In one corner of the bunker, there were wooden dolls, various manuals and anatomy books, a printer, several lights, auxiliary monitors, and a workbench with a tablet. The numerous writings and storyboards scattered on the desk were professional enough to make one guess that he was a professional writer.

There was also a cute little prop in one corner of the desk.

In a small fishbowl, a fake goldfish the size of a thumb was floating in the water.

The goldfish, made of plastic, moved its stupid-looking face around as if it were alive. It wasn’t because of some great principle, but because its body itself was so light that it reacted to even the slightest vibration in its surroundings.

As I was blankly watching the goldfish floating and moving, Mr. Dragon handed me a cup of coffee.

“oh.”

it’s good.

How long has it been since I had proper coffee?

I opened my eyes wide and stared at the dark liquid in the warm glass.

“There’s more, so drink it without holding back. Honestly, it’s nothing compared to what brought you this long and dangerous journey.”

Mr. Dragon gestured for us to go outside.

The sea had already been dyed in darkness.

Two community users sat side by side, looking out at the pitch-black sea and the stars rising one by one above it.

“······He wasn’t a late bloomer.”

Looking at the stars, Mr. Dragon began to tell a story with a faint smile on his face.

“Rather, he was a hopeless guy who jumped into the world of cartooning before graduating from high school.”

Even when Dragon was young, a weekly comic magazine called Champryu was still going strong in Korea.

It’s hard to understand now, but at the time, there was a perception that paper comics were superior to webtoons, which were just starting to emerge, and were of a higher level.

Mr. Dragon was one of them.

“The thrill of turning the pages. That’s why I liked comics. I thought scrolling didn’t give me that fun.”

My first impression of Dragon-ssi was that he was older than I thought and seemed like a difficult person to get close to.

But he seems to be a heavenly cartoonist.

“So, on every page, the villain exudes an unstoppable force and gives off the image of, ‘Wow, this guy is really strong!’ Then the reader wonders, ‘How on earth do I defeat this guy?’ That impatience, curiosity, and the desire to see the villain get beaten up make them turn the pages!”

When talking about the subject of comics, it seems that I can go back to being a young boy like Eom Chang-i.

“At least with a comic book, I can open and close the world as I please. Webtoons, well, maybe that’s possible. But the world in your hand and the world that isn’t, the world that you can click on, well. There’s something different. I can’t really explain it.”

His life story, which started out a bit haphazardly, flowed like water and met the problems he faced.

“There was a time when I thought I was superior to others because I drew those cartoons. That’s true. My seniors and peers who were my students all thought the same. But talent is something you can’t help. Even if the tools and methods of expression are different, there’s no other area where talent can be seen with your eyes as much as in drawing. I don’t know because I’ve never done music, but you can see it with your eyes in drawing, right?”

Dragon’s gaze traveled across the sea, recalling a man who had humiliated him to the point where his face turned red.

“Whether it’s webtoons or paper comics, someone who can draw well can draw well. Someone like Pilkrum is that kind of person.”

“He’s quite good at drawing. He’s especially good at drawing women.”

“Well, if he had been born in Japan, he might have sold ten million copies.”

“Hmm, is that it?”

“You can tell just by looking at the lines. And those guys draw easily. While I have to think hard and draw lines as if I were coloring the outline, those guys just glance at it and draw quickly and that’s it. But something you draw simply is more complete than something I drew for hours? It’s not just a problem with the drawing. If you just think about the composition and pull it out, the directing naturally comes out well. That’s where the difference comes from. And my hands were slow. The way I worked was just too cumbersome.”

“how?”

“I had to write to come up with something. Even if I drew up a storyboard, I had to draw the storyboard first and then draw the picture storyboard.”

“It’s definitely a hassle.”

Mr. Dragon sighed deeply as he poured the rest of his coffee.

“······It’s a difference in talent.”

There’s really nothing more to add about this.

Because I feel more deeply than anyone else that each person’s ability is bound to differ.

But Dragon C was at least mentally stronger than me.

“But, cartoons aren’t just about pictures. After all, cartoonists are storytellers, too, aren’t they?”

“That’s true.”

“Honestly, I think I’m better than Pilkrum as a storyteller. Besides.”

Bam

Mr. Dragon lightly tapped my arm.

“There are also the best models.”

“My call sign is not Professor, it’s Dandy. DANDY”

“I know. I know. But I’ll keep it a secret. Of course, the personal information of the model who actively participated in the research must be kept secret.”

“How dandy.”

“How about Typhoon?”

“······Typhoon?”

I thought it was pretty cool.

A thousand times more than a dandy.

This is a name that truly shows the sharp sense of a professional writer.

“I’m going to draw a short story about Typhoon, a former guard and active hunter, working in China. I’m going to mix in some realism and psychological descriptions.”

Mr. Dragon clenched his callused right fist.

“I’m going to fight him at his base. I’m going to flatten his nose.”

“Oh.”

“Okay, shut up! Ugh! Ughhhhhh!!!”

Mr. Dragon, who had been showing such strong confidence, suddenly clutched his stomach and cried out in pain.

It looks like quite a bit of pain.

When I see you trembling all the way to your toes.

“······Fuck.”

Dragon-ssi muttered with a face paler than the moon.

“What is it?”

“······No, it’s just a seizure. It’s like a chronic illness.”

The bottles of alcohol that had been piled up in the bunker began to cover my eyes.

Those many soloists.

Perhaps it was the driving force that kept a man who had been forced to live in such a state his entire life, but at the same time, it might have been the fatal disease that was eating him away.

“Isn’t that really bad? Your face really didn’t look good from the start.”

“It’s okay. I can still hold out. I have medicine. I won’t live to be 60, but if I hold out for about 5 years and die, wouldn’t everyone be dead by then?”

“You won’t be able to last even 3 years?”

“I?”

Mr. Dragon showed his resentment.

The misunderstanding was immediately cleared up.

“No. Us.”

“I believe it more since it’s from a former hunter.”

Mr. Dragon looked out at the distant sea, trying to force a smile on his frowning face.

Lights flicker on a small island in the distance.

Is it the Chinese military?

Anyway, the time for parting has come.

Mr. Dragon chewed and swallowed a few pills without water and gave me a thumbs up.

“Thank you, Skeleton. Thanks to you, I can hold a pen again.”

He handed me a crumpled piece of paper.

There was a synopsis of a short story based on me, in which I would be confronting Pilcrum this time, written in scrawled handwriting.

“Palenet Bulgogi. Make sure to watch it!”

He waved at me.

I gave him a thumbs up and answered.

“······My call sign is Dandy.”

“Stop it!”

After a while, Dragon-ssi swallowed the pill and returned to me.

He, who had been complaining of terrible pain, handed me a heavy envelope with a cheerful face as if nothing had happened.

“What is this?”

“This is my little gift. This is my prop shop.”

“A prop shop?”

“A collection of short stories? There are also ideas. Read them when you’re bored. It might not be fun, but it’ll be enough to kill time.”

“This is such a precious thing?”

“That’s a copy.”

“I think a file would be enough.”

“I told you before. I like the feeling of reading a comic by turning the pages with my hands. It’s the same whether you print it out or look at it on a monitor.”

“Oh, thank you.”

“ah.”

Mr. Dragon suddenly let out an exclamation.

He looked back at me with a boyish, mischievous smile.

“I’m sorry, but can we meet later?”

“?”

“If I look at it now, it seems like a spoiler.”

“hmm.”

“Please, Skeleton.”

I can’t refuse a favor from a named user who is older than me.

“My call sign is······.”

“Dandy!”

*

A cartoon was posted on Palenet’s cartoon bulletin board.

Author: DragonC.

The short story tells the story of an old-fashioned hunter operating in China.

Although he has sufficient skills, he always seems to be 2% lacking, so he remains a perennial A-class and shows a pathological obsession with the S-class.

Then one day a crisis came.

A medium-sized monster appeared in an unexpected area, and the escape route was blocked by a necromancer type that had taken control of the rear through teleportation and the zombies it had raised.

Combat has become a matter of life and death, not rank.

My colleagues fell one after another.

Now, there is only one left to fight. He realizes that it will be difficult to avoid death if he continues to fight the horde of zombies that have taken over the road, and he aims for the medium-sized monster blocking the road.

I could hear the mutterings of my surviving comrades.

That hunter, Typhoon, has already far surpassed S-class.

“······hmm.”

It seems to be 2% short of what is called a masterpiece.

Like the main character’s call sign “Typhoon”.

However, the serious and silent protagonist, the complete exclusion of romance, and above all, the realistic research and realistic battle descriptions were enough to create word of mouth among the picky Palenet readers.

Dragon C uploaded his new work “Typhoon” to our bulletin board in high definition version after some time.

The reaction was, unsurprisingly, enthusiastic.

Anonymous848: Wow

keystone: This is the first time I’ve seen a Hunter battle that’s so realistic.

Dies_irae69 : The combat accuracy is no joke.

THE_LAST_MAN : Killing me

Anonymous458: I got stabbed by Philcrum and came out sharpening my sword.

kimcic: As expected, it’s Dragon-ssi. Our Dragon-ssi is the best!

unicorn18 : There are no female characters… This is boring….

gijayangban: The evidence is so realistic. Did you get advice from someone from the old school?

James_Catterer : wow

James_Catterer : Can somebody translate this to English?

“Hey. Skeleton. Did you see the cartoon that Dragon-san just posted?”

Defender contacted me.

I responded to the communication, wondering what the criteria for the Daeseobang and Skeleton were.

“I saw it.”

“100%. There’s definitely a hunter who knows. There are some old ones, but only those who have been in the field know this information.”

At this, I just smiled faintly.

Dragon isn’t the only one who has signed a confidentiality agreement.