Chapter 14: Reverse Scale
The location where the human hunter took the picture can be estimated.
It's a wide-open farmland that, before the war broke out, was a place where crops turned golden.
Unlike my land, its designated land category isn't a mountain or forest, but strictly listed as a rice paddy, so digging up the ground and doing construction there is not exactly an easy task.
In fact, having frequently come and gone through that area, I have never seen any signs of construction.
The human hunter must have passed by that spot by chance.
He had previously mentioned that he was around Gwanggyo, and the scenery reflected in the murder verification photos he constantly uploaded implied that he lived in a mountainous terrain with dense forests.
Perhaps this human hunter friend is the type to roam around incessantly?
However, he doesn't seem to use a vehicle or other means of transportation.
Around the tracks left by my four-wheel drive, all I found were prints left by men's sized sneakers.
The footprints headed east, and even those vanished within the wildly overgrown reed forest.
But what is he going east for?
I don't want to know, and there's no way to find out.
The problem is this friend's recent actions.
[ Defender has sent you a friend request. ]
I just learned for the first time that Viva! Apocalypse! has a friend feature.
Why?
Because I've never received a friend request before.
But why this guy, of all people.
Honestly, I dislike this friend.
I sympathize with the fact that it's a world where you inevitably have to kill people, but his actions of killing numerous people and verifying it as if he had been waiting for the war to start were somewhat twisted.
Even now, after unblocking him, that feeling hasn't changed much.
[ Accept ] [ Decline ]
Here are two clear choices.
For some reason, I still haven't pressed the decline button.
1 year and 10 months have passed since the war started.
The outside temperature today is 32 degrees Celsius. It is midsummer.
Whenever this time of year comes, posts habitually go up on the community cursing the viciousness of South Korea's four seasons and Dangun's foresight in choosing this land.
I am not afraid of summer.
Indoor temperature, 24 degrees Celsius.
This is the current temperature of my bunker.
That's right.
The air conditioner is running in my bunker.
On the dining table sits the 'Assassin's Pasta' I made earlier, along with shaved ice topped with condensed milk and canned red beans over finely crushed ice.
If you take a large spoonful of shaved ice and put it into your mouth, which has been appropriately warmed by the pasta,
"Kaaah~."
A brain-freezing pain comes along with a sense of euphoria.
You could call it the joy of summer.
I'm a person with tact, too.
I didn't post a picture of the shaved ice on the community.
If I, who am already hated for no reason, committed even this minor act of deception, the only person left to read my posts would be weirdos like the human hunter!
Although I may be an unpopular user on the message board, it is no exaggeration to say that my quality of life is in the upper tier.
No, you'd have to look at the chaebols who built fortresses to find a guy eating and living as well as me.
The core of my luxury life is, above all, abundant electricity.
The power generation facility itself is different.
While most community users use small gasoline or gas generators, I run a large diesel generator that you would see in a factory.
This generator, which I named 'Skelton Heart', boasts an enormous size that exceeds the size of a standard bunker, and true to its name, it is something that can be called the heart of my hideout.
Its performance is guaranteed.
As long as there is fuel, it generates tremendous power, easily filling up dozens of storage batteries in an instant with power to spare.
The downsides are the installation cost, the noise, and the massive amount of gas emissions.
I covered the installation cost by buying cheap land, and the noise isn't an issue since I settled in an uninhabited neighborhood, but the exhaust gas was a headache that plagued me as much as the groundwater throughout the bunker construction.
I drilled no less than seven ventilation shafts, and after dozens of trials and errors, I was able to establish a duct system.
Even so, when the generator is running, black smoke billows up through the vents.
I tried to reduce the smoke by installing a dust collection facility, but while it might be fine from afar, from a place where my bunker can be observed with the naked eye, you can undoubtedly see the seven pillars of smoke.
Therefore, I usually only run the generator at night. In particular, on days when it rains or the wind blows hard, I intentionally run it to charge the batteries even if I don't necessarily need the electricity.
However, this abundance also requires a condition.
The surroundings must be devoid of people.
The darkness of the night might hide the smoke, but people must not live within the area where the noise and ground vibrations of the generator operating can be felt.
Bang! Bang!
That afternoon, the sniper mother and daughter enthusiastically fired shots from the south.
It felt like more than usual.
Is a battle breaking out?
Soon, the K-Walkie Talkie rang and spat out clumsy Korean along with static.
-Zzzzt! Skelton. Many people heading there.
Since the day the typhoon came, I have been maintaining a loose alliance with the sniper side, evolving from mere distant neighbors.
Neither of us explicitly said let's join hands, but our relationship improved little by little.
Providing information is one of them.
With a bitter smile, I spoke into the radio and asked.
"You guys chased them away, didn't you?"
There was no answer from the radio, but right before the transmission cut off, I faintly heard the daughter's laughter.
What the sniper chased away were refugees.
Refugees, who were once a hot topic in the community, are now rare guests rarely seen recently.
In the year right after the war, many refugees left the harsh life in Seoul for the provinces, but most failed, and rumors about that failure spread.
Furthermore, with the war stabilizing and the government showing hopeful messages and actions, the number of refugees sharply decreased, and they couldn't be seen for the last few months.
But refugees in the current situation?
They headed straight for my territory.
"Ah, fuck."
Annoyance surged up.
With so many places out there, why come to my territory of all places?
Could they be raiders?
Their state of armament isn't all that great.
Most are carrying handmade crossbows, infamously known as 'judge killers', and only a few are holding firearms.
They reached right up to my outer dummy bunkers.
I turned off the air conditioner, took out a gun, loaded the ammunition, and fastened two axes to my belt.
I am neither the sniper mother-daughter duo nor the human hunter.
My strategy is to avoid combat as much as possible and not reveal my location.
I activated all my wiretapping and surveillance equipment to grasp their movements.
"There's nothing here, so why did we come this way?"
"That's what I'm saying. Isn't this area where the nuclear bombing hit?"
"I think that over there was the US military base. Didn't you say we were changing our destination to the US military base?"
Murmuring voices could be heard from the speaker.
The one who answered was a man in his mid-40s wearing a commercially made military uniform.
"Because in this area, the ground here is high and there's a low mound that allows us to survey the surroundings."
The man in the military uniform looked around and added.
"Since the urban area recapture failed, our objective has now changed to recapturing the US military base. That right there is the US military base. However, there's the issue of residual radiation, and raiders might be hiding like earlier, so let's set up a base here and slowly recapture it while observing the surroundings. As you know, the atmosphere around here is ominous, isn't it?"
I only found out that man's name later; he was someone called Lieutenant Colonel Choi.
Judging by his attire and the people around him, he looked more like a reservist than an active-duty soldier.
The people with him were all men, mostly similar in age to Lieutenant Colonel Choi.
They were not trained soldiers.
Most of them were slow in their movements and frequently displayed anxiety.
I wanted to ignore them if possible.
But the moment I saw them pitching tents inside my territory, I clicked my tongue, realizing things had gone terribly wrong.
To make matters worse, one man found a camouflaged dummy bunker.
"What is this? It's a bunker, isn't it?"
The inside is empty.
The only thing inside are the explosives that I can detonate from inside my main bunker.
It was built in a semi-bunker style with a long horizontal slit that serves as both a firing port and an observation window from the inside, ensuring defensibility, but it's not for residential use.
Above all, inside that bunker, a secret passage leading to my main bunker is hidden.
I picked up my gun and stepped out of the bunker.
The reason I revealed myself was that I had concluded they were at least not raiders.
When I appeared, Lieutenant Colonel Choi and the others showed considerable surprise.
"This is private property."
Keeping industrial waste that I could take cover behind at any moment by my side, I spoke to them while maintaining a proper distance.
"Please leave."
The people murmured among themselves.
There were some who showed hostility, but they were a minority, and most felt surprise and fear toward the figure of me holding a gun.
The one who stepped up to deal with me was Lieutenant Colonel Choi.
He looked me up and down, gestured for the people around him to stay put, and took a step forward.
He had a pistol holstered on his belt.
"Hello."
He shouted energetically.
I only gave a slight nod and didn't answer.
"I am Lieutenant Colonel Choi Hyuk-chan from the reserves. We came here to pioneer this area with permission from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport."
"Pioneer?"
He tried to approach me and show me a document.
When I aimed my gun to signal him not to come closer, he put on a bitter smile and shoved the document into his pocket.
"You're still young but you're very guarded. Did you get beaten up a lot in school? Anyway, have you been living here alone all this time?"
"I don't intend to speak with you for long, so make it short."
"Haha. Okay. I'll make it short."
Lieutenant Colonel Choi, who was smiling good-naturedly, suddenly put on a straight face and raised his voice.
"You said this is your land, right? That's all in the past now."
"What do you mean?"
"Ownership has been reset. The registries have been wiped clean. Except for major metropolises, the provinces are now no man's land. The first guy to settle and occupy it is the owner."
The man pulled the document out again and fluttered it.
"And this is the permit."
Only then did I understand.
Why refugees, who hadn't been seen for a while, had reappeared.
A thought crossed my mind for a moment.
That the situation in Seoul might be even more serious than what I had seen.
"Seeing your healthy complexion, you look like one of those doomsday preppers or whatever, but we won't touch your land. Since our goal is over there."
Lieutenant Colonel Choi pointed at the US military base.
"We're going to borrow this area for a bit until we finish cleaning up over there. You'll overlook that much, won't you? Former owner~?"
Lieutenant Colonel Choi touched his pistol.
I pondered for a moment.
Whether to kill them all or put up with them.
The human hunter and his murder verifications unconsciously came to mind, but I quickly erased that thought from my head.
"About two days is fine."
I conditionally permitted it.
I didn't want to cause trouble, and they weren't raiders either.
"Two days? Two days is a bit too short, but well, understood for now."
And so the uneasy cohabitation began.
Everything was unsatisfactory, but the biggest complaint was that I couldn't operate the heart of my territory.
The power in the storage batteries dropped rapidly.
The temperature inside the bunker soared unpleasantly, and candles replaced the electric lights.
The most fatal thing was that the temperature of the underground freezer was rising faster than expected.
A few hours at most.
Within that time, the freezer that had consistently maintained below-freezing temperatures would take on the midsummer heat.
It means my precious food could disappear entirely.
Not being able to access the community was another agony.
"..."
I thought of the human hunter again.
In the darkness, I kept recalling the fact that he had sent me a friend request and that I hadn't declined that request.
Lieutenant Colonel Choi's group didn't approach the surroundings of my territory for the first day, but after a day passed, they started exploring every corner of my territory like curious children.
In particular, they showed great interest in the dummy bunker where I had emerged.
Every time they did, I blocked them holding a gun, but fear is something that easily dilutes.
Even the people who were surprised to see me at first now spoke to me calmly.
"Mister. What do you eat to survive here? Do you have food?"
When the freezer's thermometer was pointing at minus 1 degree Celsius, Lieutenant Colonel Choi sought me out.
"Our situation isn't great, could you spare some leftover food?"
"Food?"
"You must have some, right? You're a doomsday prepper. You must have it piled up inside the bunker, right?"
"Even if I did, why should I give it to you?"
"Because you're Korean. Koreans should help each other."
Lieutenant Colonel Choi looked back at their group and smirked.
"No matter how young you are, you seem to be alone. Are you capable of handling all of us?"
The promised day passed, but Lieutenant Colonel Choi did not keep his promise.
Even two days later, he and his group nonchalantly roamed my territory.
That afternoon, it happened.
Someone knocked on the emergency door of my main bunker.
It's the entrance to the passage leading to the 12 dummy bunkers I built myself.
"Hey. There's a door here?"
They had discovered it.
My main bunker, which is like my very life.
"Push it! Push it!"
"Heave! Ho! Heave! Ho!"
After the nightmare-like clamor passed, a brief silence fell, followed by Lieutenant Colonel Choi's voice ringing out right in front, separated only by the iron door.
"You're in there, right~? Hm~? You're beyond there, right~? With your face all flushed red! Right~!"
Listening to Lieutenant Colonel Choi's mocking provocation, I solidified a single resolution.
"We need to talk."
For the first time, I appeared before them unarmed.
What I held in my hand were cigarettes.
"The sun is strong right now, so you must be hot, but please wait inside that bunker. I will bring out alcohol and food. Have some cigarettes first."
Lieutenant Colonel Choi smirked and spoke in an informal tone.
"You should have acted like that from the start."
He looked at me with lowered eyes and subtly cornered me.
"It seems the bunker you live in is beyond that iron door? I know. I know everything."
He was fully intoxicated with a sense of victory.
He familiarly slung his arm over my shoulder and took a drag of his cigarette so hard his cheeks hollowed.
"I won't take your house. You must have prepared it with difficulty, right? It looks like it just by glancing at it. We're not raiders either. We'll be neighbors once we settle in the US military base anyway. Right? You seem to live alone, but when we bring our families later, I'll introduce you to a good woman. These friends' daughters are all pretty. Idol-level, idols!"
His friend request ended with an explosion.
I picked up a gun and hunted down those who avoided the explosion.
Among them was Lieutenant Colonel Choi.
"H-how could this... How...!"
His death gave me no inspiration or emotion whatsoever.
There is a more important matter.
I hurried to turn on the generator and supplied power.
Cold air returned to the freezer that had been turned off, and pleasantness returned to the bunker that was steeped in the sweltering heat.
Enjoying the fresh cold breeze right in front of the air conditioner, I wore a satisfied smile for the first time in a really long time.
Perhaps because of that.
[ You have accepted Defender's friend request. ]
I accepted the friend request I had been putting off.
The human hunter seemed greatly pleased.
Defender: (Defender Touched) This friend Skelton, acting so prickly and playing hard to get, finally accepted my friend request! Thanks!
"..."
I had forgotten for a moment.
That the human hunter and I are just ordinary people living through the apocalyptic era.
We are not very different.
Both of us have a "reverse scale", and when that reverse scale is touched, we squirm.
It's just that the human hunter's reverse scale is a bit excessively larger than mine.
That is all.
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