Hiding a House in the Apocalypse - Chapter 67



Only Krnovel

41. Dream

This story is my own imagining of what Rebecca read on the Viva! Apocalypse! USA message board where she works.

Before telling this incredible story, she summoned me into her domain, complaining of a lack of food.

As she handed me the food, she blurted out to me:

“Is there any empty seat there?”

There was no definitive answer.

It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while, but I still haven’t made up my mind.

I was worried about whether I, who was used to living alone, could adapt to living right next door, and it wasn’t easy for me, who had always pursued individual survivalism, to change course to group survivalism.

Instead, he gave her some meat and promised to meet her again.

“Skeleton Juicy- That’s it.”

Su-eun gave Rebecca the canned yellow peaches she had received from Woo Min-hee, but Rebecca ate half of them.

Rebecca said to me as she ate the zodiac.

“Didn’t you say there was an amazing story before?”

She played the guitar she had picked up somewhere like a minstrel.

When I told her to clean up her guitar because her skills were so poor, she immediately threw the guitar down and whispered to Suu to start talking.

“Listen carefully, Skeleton.”

The setting of the story was China.

There seems to be a beautiful lake called Dongting Lake in Hangzhou, China.

On a low hill overlooking the lake, which was lined with villas belonging to China’s wealthiest people, a brilliant inventor went from villa to villa, making a bizarre advertisement.

War is inevitable, there are not many countries left that will accept us Chinese, and even if they do accept us, we will not be satisfied with ourselves, so let’s create a paradise just for ourselves and take refuge there.

The heaven that the inventor spoke of was not a country in the sky where the Jade Emperor resides and is guarded by the Great Star of Heaven, but a virtual world created through coding, programming, and human labor.

Journey to the West and Water Margin, Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Chronicles, countless masterpieces by Jin Yong and Gu Long, Chinese elements yet Japanese, and even American elements they hate, another world measuring 144㎢ in size was created by the bold imagination of an inventor.

The inventor may have been less patriotic than other Chinese, given that there were no hanbok, hat, wraps or pao cai in that world.

In any case, the virtual world was created with such care that it bordered on the inventor’s paranoia that almost all tangible things could interact with each other and move according to their own data and algorithms, just like in reality.

For example, if a user picks a flower on the side of the road, the flower disappears and instead, a changed object called a sprouted seed remains, which regenerates a new flower after 24 hours. However, if a different flower is planted or the seed is destroyed during that regeneration period, a flower will never bloom in that spot.

Such interactions took place across almost the entire 144 square kilometers of virtual world.

The possibilities were endless.

You could farm, you could fish.

You could train your weapons and hunt monsters to level up, use your construction skills to build a castle and become its lord, or have large groups siege the castle.

The beautiful scenery created by combining famous Chinese and world landmarks and Chinese people’s fantasies was the greatest pride of this virtual world.

The inventor boldly named the world he created after a famous dream called The Butterfly Dream.

But the inventor’s real target was not a perfect virtual world.

The virtual world was just a material.

The inventor then looked at the next one.

The true dream of Ho-Jip-Ji-Mong, as he believed, had to be combined with not only the world he had created, but also a bunker that was fully defended and had its own survival facilities.

Without worrying about any external threats, he lives his daily fantasy in a virtual world he created leisurely and comfortably, receiving nutrition from his own survival facility.

Like a summer dream that will never end.

The inventor’s vision was that since reality cannot be changed, we should create a new reality and wait for the storm to pass within it.

The inventor’s grand plan did not work out right away.

The paradise he wanted to create required so much money.

The first inventor’s target customers were ordinary working class people.

The inventor’s plan was to accumulate capital through a monthly flat-rate fee, similar to Viva! Apocalypse!, which was a hot topic around the world at the time, and then, when a crisis occurred, to evacuate people to the Ho-Jip-Ji-Mong Centers set up in each province of China and make them dream forever.

The inventor, Jang So-cheng, tried to create a buzz on Chinese social media by engaging in eccentric behaviors like his role model, Melon Mask, but unlike Melon Mask, he had insufficient wealth and his achievements as a businessman were not very satisfactory.

The inventor was miserably ignored by the general public.

But he was not one to be discouraged by one failure.

The inventor changed course and launched a public relations campaign targeting China’s vaunted 0.1% denial.

But that business didn’t go so smoothly.

Because to them, who lived like the Qing imperial family, pouring billions of dollars into a virtual world that was neither real nor real and living together with undesirable people in a controlled environment seemed like walking into exile.

A VIP taunted the inventor by throwing an ashtray at his face.

“Does it hurt? Does it hurt? Your reaction amuses me. The anger that appears on your distorted face and the way you suppress that anger are things that only a living person can have. Think about it. What fun would it be to take out your anger on a doll for a hundred days?”

The inventor, Zhang Xiaowei, rubbed his bruised eyelids, suppressed his anger and shame, and then came up with a terrifying idea.

The inventor has launched a new investment briefing session.

From there, he came up with a new plan that was different from before.

Instead of the baggy jeans and black T-shirt that mimicked the melon mask of his previous days, the inventor came out in an overly flashy tuxedo and bow tie, and he bowed to the investors in an overly servile manner, a smile on his still-swollen face.

Investors’ response was lukewarm, but the inventor didn’t care.

He spoke of “changes” with an almost shameless expression.

“VIPs who have invested will receive a Murim account in the world of Hojeopjimong. Murim people are literally masters of martial arts and will start off with power and aptitude that are on a different level from ordinary people. What do you do with that martial arts? Yes. You can trample on, kill, and play with the lowly people who have accessed Hojeopjimong for free.”

The inventor added, smoothing his bow tie.

“Yes. NPCs will be filled with friends who logged in for free.”

That day the inventor achieved the greatest achievement of his life.

He raised hundreds of billions of won in investment funds on the spot, and he was so busy dealing with investors who came with bundles of money that he felt like he needed ten bodies.

As Beijing fell, the party collapsed, and the factions that had been divided under the name of the party each took on their own bases and became warlords, the inventor called the VIPs together.

The location happened to be around Dongjeong Lake, where he first carried out his promotional activities.

The inventor, who had already made secret pacts with several warlords, proudly unveiled the gigantic, luxurious bunker he had created.

“When the war starts, here we will dream a dream that will never end.”

Most of the VIPs who gathered on the first day of the gathering responded positively, but some of them even asked the inventor if there was room for the concubines and lovers they would bring along.

The inventor said everything was fine with a smile on his face.

The next thing the inventor did was to create an NPC for the VIP.

He opened free Hojeopjimong experience centers all over the continent.

The facilities were not even good enough to warrant praise.

They placed dozens of virtual machines in underground facilities like opium dens that were rampant across the continent in the late Qing Dynasty and pushed in people that were close to transporting livestock to provide a service called Ho-Jip-Ji-Mong.

The inventor said he was offering Hojopjimong to the general public at a price that was almost free.

“You will experience a world you have never felt before. Come in. This is your new paradise. You can enjoy it almost for free. But there is no such thing as a free lunch in this world.”

People didn’t really care what the inventor meant by a free lunch.

To forget the terrible world, people fell into the world of fantasy dreams like starving people gulping down hot food.

The world of Ho-Jeop-Jimong that was spread out before them was truly a new paradise.

With dozens of endless contents and endless possibilities, including hunting, building houses, raising animals, weaving, painting, playing music, and composing, Hojopjimong had enough charm to become a refuge for people who were losing everything in dark times.

In an instant, Ho-Jip-Ji-Mong became the most dominant online content in China.

Its popularity was so great that there were frequent knife fights over Hojeopjimong tickets, and military organizations disguised as gangs took over Hojeopjimong ticket centers.

As the hardliners in control of the Shanghai area prepared for war with Taiwan, the inventor quietly gathered VIPs at Dongting Lake.

“Now is the time to dream.”

That day, an unheard-of, unseen being called a Murimin appeared in the virtual world called Hojeopjimong.

They possessed such transcendent fighting power that they could even kill a level 100 warrior, the maximum level of the existing Ho-Jip-Jimong, with a single finger.

Suddenly, martial artists appeared and destroyed the houses that ordinary users had invested hundreds of hours to build, killed the users, and destroyed everything they had.

One martial artist built a huge castle in the world of Ho-Jip-Ji-Mong, and in front of his subordinates, he killed the lord who ruled the castle with a single blow, and then beheaded him above the castle gate. Another martial artist showed up in a crowded market place and demanded that all users bow down to him, and killed all the users who did not bow down.

In a sense, those martial artists were no different from monsters.

But with no other entertainment or comfort, ordinary people tried to change their lives in the virtual world by holding their hungry bellies in the shabby and dirty Hojeopjimong access center for the general public.

The appearances were truly diverse.

Some people willingly walked the path of slavery by catering to the whims of the martial artists, others built their own villages in remote places that were not noticed by the martial artists, and others tried to join the ranks of the martial artists late by appealing to their charm and connections in the real world.

A group that wanted to kill martial artists also emerged.

They used all the known game systems and racked their brains, but they came to one conclusion.

It was impossible to kill a martial artist unless the martial artist stayed connected and left the place for a long period of time.

In the virtual world, a martial artist’s stamina is around 2,500, but the damage an ordinary person can inflict is only 1.

No matter what you do, you can’t go beyond 1.

That means you have to hit 2,500 people without getting hit once.

One user calculated that in order to kill a Murim user one-on-one, you would have to beat them for 3 hours and 12 minutes without getting hit even once, and you would barely be able to kill one Murim user.

Of course, the user with that Murim account can be revived at any time if he returns to his seat.

This means that it is virtually impossible.

When it became known that the current system did not allow ordinary users to kill the Murim people by any means, they began to consider third options: hacking or realistic attacks.

But no one knew the location of Ho-Jip-Jimong’s VIP bunker, and before they could do anything with hacking, nukes from the US and its allies blew up major cities.

The surviving general users were abandoned in the monster-controlled zone or disappeared one by one in the hell ruled by looters and warlords.

They died cursing the martial artists until the very end.

However, the destruction of the martial arts people that they had hoped for occurred only after they had disappeared.

The martial artists who lost their toy called general users tried to find new entertainment by wandering around the virtual world created by the inventor in search of new things to play with.

This uneasy alliance continued for about a year.

But that ample content soon ran out.

The martial artists realized that there was no content as good as humans and started fighting among themselves.

It didn’t take long for the fight to become a reality.

Bang! Tata ta tang!

The inside of the bunker turned into a battlefield.

The VIP who brought the security guards took the advantageous position, but the balance was quickly turned when the VIP, who was a former soldier, gathered the survivors and counterattacked.

As the blood-soaked battle continued, the inventor came out of the bunker as if led by fate.

The whole world had turned gray.

A giant monster that he had never seen before but whose identity he knew very well glanced at him and then leisurely walked away somewhere in the gray-white world.

The inventor was holed up in a bunker – the manager’s shelter – inside a bunker that had been built for him.

In it, the inventor accessed the Viva! Apocalypse! English bulletin board created by his role model.

Although the communication equipment was banned by the party, he was protected by the party and had been secretly accessing American bulletin boards even before the war, using the English he had used in his youth and socializing with American users.

xiao837: Could this world be someone’s dream?

He did not ask for communication, empathy, or sympathy, and he repeatedly posted one-sided messages on the enemy’s bulletin board like a bird in the mountains.

So to speak, I started writing consistently.

American bulletin board users found him strange with his Chinese nickname, but, as expected from a place with as many bizarre psychopaths as Korean bulletin boards, they didn’t seem to care much.

How much time has passed since then?

Inside the bunker where everyone had died, the inventor felt that death was not far away and he connected to the world he had created one last time to see the illusions he had created.

An unbelievable sight was unfolding.

The martial artists were lying dead.

The culprit was an ordinary user.

He was holding a wooden club and was repeatedly beating the frozen martial artist with it.

1! 1! 1! 1!

While inflicting only 1 damage.

As the inventor approached, a regular user spoke in voice chat.

“Are you the only one left? You piece of trash.”

It was definitely the voice of a living human being.

It was the voice of an ordinary user who had been reduced to a VIP’s puppet.

The voice was filled with anger.

That unfathomable anger caused him to kill the Avatar, a martial artist who could only be killed after being beaten for 3 hours and 12 minutes.

When the inventor tried to say something, the regular user disappeared from sight.

The inventor, the creator of the world, realized that the ordinary user had pressed to log out of the virtual world, but he, already exhausted and dying, interpreted the phenomenon he had seen completely differently.

What he saw was not an ordinary user, but a monster.

The inventor logged onto the Viva! Apocalypse! English bulletin board and told his story in a calm tone.

At the end, the inventor briefly wrote down what were probably his last impressions.

xiao837: ······And so our dreams were eaten by monsters.

I don’t know what he was thinking, but he uploaded a picture of his own face, but the man in the picture was hidden by dark shadows, and because of the low resolution and low capacity, there was a lot of noise, making it impossible to make a detailed judgment, but at least the skin on his lower body that he revealed was gray-white and hard like an old tree.

“What do you think about Skeleton?”

Suu asked, showing a face that was clearly out of the human category.

“It looks like a monster.”

“right?”

It is said that the first evacuation ship from Incheon set sail with its horn sounding and arrived at Jeju Island.

The Jeju Island government welcomed them warmly and grandly.

For some reason, that news sounded like a dream from a distant world to me.