Stagnant Water of Apocalypse
chapter-4

As soon as I opened my eyes, a barrage of pain assaulted my body.

“Oh, my god.” With such a groan, I forced my body to get up. Fortunately, unlike usual, I don’t have to make any preparations to open the store today.

I opened the window and tasted the soon to be gone peace. In 30 days, it would turn into a giant big mess of chaos.

When I looked at my reflection in the mirror, I noticed that I had lost a lot of fat on my cheek. And my stomach also looks like it has lost a lot of fat. Although the reason it looks so bloated to begin with was because I drink a lot of water. I look pretty athletic now.

After enjoying my slight transformation, I turned my computer on and checked what I had to do. First, I need to order solar and diesel generators. It was pretty cheap when I ordered it from a Chinese shopping site. But just in case, I also bought one each from a Korean shopping mall.

It didn’t have to be a powerful generator though. At the very least, I only need them to be able to charge a laptop and smartphone.

“I need to buy a tablet, too.” It would be good to have various means to watch the video I had downloaded as desktop was out of the equation since it consumes a lot of power. Though, it could be easily fixed if I build a full-fledged safe-zone. However, for the current me, it would be too grand of a goal. Afterall, if monsters like Owlbear from yesterday appear again, I would have no choice but to abandon everything and run right away just like yesterday.

With that in mind, I searched through the videos list for the one in which I explained to the audience about owlbear. The video started to play with a double click from my mouse.

-I Love Gimbap: As you know, this guy is an owlbear. He’s a very violent monster. Just like its name implies, this guy has a bear’s body but his head is that of an owl. As you can see, there’s also a long claw at the end of its wings. And because this guy likes red trout very much, he is mainly active around a valley.

– Poor Guy: Red trout… sounds delicious. I want it too… I only had ramyun today.– A Dog That Barks When It Sees A Fool: Woof!

– Rice Soup: No, stop sponsoring him. Please use your money to buy rice soup. Please, Poor Guy-nim!

I don’t know if it was Rice Soup-nim’s concept or what. But whenever someone sponsored me, he always relates everything to Rice Soup which was amazing and funny.

For example,

– Poor Guy sponsored 5,000 won!

– Poor Guy: it’s 1000 dolls day today!

– Rice Soup: 5 won per piece, right? You’ll only need 1400 won to eat a rice soup.

– Neighborhood Lunatic: It’s Gimbap’s fault, anyway.

– A Dog That Barks When It Sees Injustice: Woof!

– I Love Gimbap: Wait, everyone. What did I do?

Mm-hmm. I am getting emotional while watching the video. I really had a lot of fun with the viewers back then.

Every single one of them created their own unique way to make fun of me. The Poor Guy was always poor. Meanwhile, Rice Soup would convert all kinds of currency into gukbap (rice soup) while the bastard Barking Dog changed its nickname in real time following what’s happening and made people laugh.

“Huuhh.” It’s a video from a year ago. It will be hard for these people to survive when the apocalypse starts. Well, those who watched my show diligently would be able to beat zombies to some extent. Maybe… They’re working hard to find my trace by now.

Then should I help them?

“No, no no, there’s no guarantee that the information won’t leak.”

I shook my head. I have to look as normal as possible. No one should know the extent of knowledge I possess.

“Let’s just do what I need to do.” That was the best thing I could do right now.

I proceed to organize the patterns of the owlbear by listening to my voice in the video.

– I Love Gimbap: The presence of an owlbear means the monster’s ecosystem has stabilized. In other words, there are many sub-monsters around. Oh, man.

– A Dog That Barks At The Sight Of A Bug: Woof!

– Neighborhood Lunatic: Pooh-booh-booh-booh-booh-booh.

Damn it! Sub-monsters include zombies, ghouls, bone creepers, goblins, kobolds, trolls, and werewolves. Just by simply thinking about it, my head already hurts.

I should be fine if I fight against the other monsters, but if the werewolf appears, I would be in big trouble. Afterall, werewolf was a monster with monstrous strength and agility. It could easily outrun and shred anything to bits and pieces.

“What I can deal with right now…” only a couple of goblins or kobolds.

Even if I couldn’t win against monsters like owlbear, I must have the means to fight them. I couldn’t just trust my legs and run away because if it was able to track my presence, I was certain that it would be faster than me.

“From what I remembered… its weakness lay on its eyes.” As it was a monster which had both traits of owl and bear, it was only natural that it had something like night vision. That means, if I could get a strong light in its eyes, I could buy several seconds for myself. That kind of window was more than enough to run away.

My mind suddenly remembered the game I often played with other stagnant water to alleviate our boredom in Survival life. It was a game where each of us threw a flash can made of glowing stones into the owlbear’s eyes. Thinking about it now, it’s a completely crazy thing to do just for the sake of alleviating boredom.

I closed the curtains and turned on the flashlight I took from my storage room. However, the light it radiates was weak. Forget about blinding it temporarily, if I shone this flashlight towards the owlbear, I would only make it angrier.

I will need a better flashlight. With that in mind, I searched for a tactical light on the Internet. In just a matter of minutes, I found a perfect product for my purpose. It was a tactical light with a power of 2,000 lumens complete with a strobe function which would certainly confuse the owlbear. The only downside was, as it used a lot of power to operate, its lifespan was quite short. At most 1-2 years. But for me, that was okay because in 1 or 2 years I was certain that I could beat any monster without any problem.

“With this on top of a laptop and smartphone, solar panels won’t be enough.” However, as diesel generator was noisy, I couldn’t use it as a regular power source. If I turn it on at the wrong time, all monsters in my camp’s vicinity would surely flock towards my camp.

Wishing I had one more quiet charging solution, I found a manual generator after searching through the internet.

“20 watts with 5 volts and 12 volts should be fine.” With that much power, at least charging a smartphone and laptop wouldn’t be a problem.

I carefully compared their specifications before picking up a few which I liked.

Then, a thought came to my mind. If the situation in the forest stabilized more in the future, wouldn’t it be possible for me to safely connect towards the valley and build a hydropower generator?

“There’s many people who make it by themselves these days.” Some people with a strong experimental mind had shared their work process on MeTube. When I watched their videos, all I could feel was admiration.

My pioneering spirit flared up and the thoughts of what I would be able to do once the forest was cleared up and I could use the valley filled my head.

By the way, I just realized… If l want to watch all the videos at a later date, I would need a lot of hard disks to store it.

Let’s add harddisks to my shopping list then.

“For now, let’s order this first.” I said as I confirmed my purchase of solar generators, diesel generators, and some manual generators.

“While at it, let’s order some weapons too…” I clicked on Steel rod, spear blade, mace, and shield. They were all ordered from a foreign weapon store. The more weapons I had in my arsenal, the better. Afterall, monsters were diverse and there were various ways to fight against them.

I had to be well prepared in advance so I could overwhelm them in every situation, just like how I hunted the old goblin yesterday.

However, the first and the most important thing to do was to build a safe zone. If I could choose, I’d like to have a cave as my safe zone…

Growl-

Ah yeah, I passed out in bed last night, didn’t I?

Let’s eat first…

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.

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Even though I make a living through a snack bar, sometimes I get sick of the smell of oil. Whenever that happens, I would always go to a nearby diner. Compared to their low price tag, the portion of every food in this diner was large. On top of it, the food was also quite delicious.

While I was watching the TV after placing my kimchi stew order, I saw the lady from the beauty salon next to my snack bar enter the diner. She wore an oversized T-shirt and shorts, showing off her long and white legs.

Judging by her appearances alone, a brunch in a fancy café would be a better fit for her rather than this gaudy diner. I know that it’s nothing but prejudice, but her atmosphere was just that fancy.

After looking around the store for a moment, the lady saw me and walked straight towards me.

I fixed my eyes on the TV thinking she wasn’t going to me but a water purifier behind me, however, I was wrong.

“Can I sit here?” She leaned her upper body halfway towards the chair across me and asked me.

“Yes?” There are a lot of empty seats, but why here? Though, I still nodded my head as it wasn’t a big deal.

She quickly sat down and whispered to me. “I come here often. Their kimchi stew is delicious.”

Ah.. She must be a regular customer in this store too. As expected, people shouldn’t judge other people by their appearances alone.

“Well, I’ll have doenjang stew today.” She said. “Owner 1 doenjang stew please.”

(T/N But you said their Kimchi stew is delicious… Ah btw, Doenjang is bean paste.)

“Okay! Please wait a minute.” The owner turned his head at her as he heard her order.

After some time, a large tray came out, it was my food. Trying to not mind her company, I took the cutlery and awkwardly started to eat.

Then suddenly, she held her chin up and said. “Ahjussi, you don’t know my name, don’t you?”

“But I’ve heard people call you, boss, before.”

“My name is Mikyung. Jeong Mikyung.”

“Oh, I see. Do you know my name?” I said, imitating her tone from before.

“Of course, I do. Kids call you often. Seongho Ahjussi! Like that.”

Well, it’s a little bit embarrassing, but I am pretty popular with kids. The reason was, even when they only ordered one serving, I always added a little bit extra on their portion. Though, thanks to that, the store almost became a children’s playground.

Then, Mi-kyung asked me with a serious look. “Ahjussi, by any chance, do you happen to know about the topic that has been pretty famous on the Internet these days?”

“Which one?” I eyed her.

Looking at my reaction, Mikyung quickly took out her phone and showed me a popular video on MeTube.

Even though I also like MeTube quite a lot, I don’t really watch videos from the popular videos list because I felt like the popular videos list was some kind of playground for the cool kids. I couldn’t relate whatsoever with all the vents and comments under the video which seemed as if the commenter was doing something great even though they didn’t.

“Here, this is the most popular video these days. It’s a superpowers.” The exaggerated thumbnail and provocative phrases caught my eye.

“Superpower? In this modern world?” I could feel my face distort as I said it.

“That’s not it. These days, a lot of strange things happen, you know? Do you happen to know about status window? People said they could see it.” She said innocently.

“Status window?” When I blinked, she began to tell me all the details she knew. Levels, points, stats… Well, it was all things I knew. I felt a little guilty pretending I don’t know about it, but I can’t help it.

“Isn’t it just a lie? They probably just made it to joke around.”

“No Ahjussi, you see, there are too many people who said it was true to be a mere joke. There are hundreds of people who said they have status windows and superpowers. The community I visit frequently is going crazy right now.”

“Hundreds of people should be on the news, then. But where are they?”

“Oh, there you go.”

The announcer on the TV suddenly reported it as if she had been waiting for me.

– A thief had broken into a convenience store in Sejong City. The thief had committed the crime using an extraordinary method. Let’s take a look at the CCTV footage now.

What was caught on CCTV was a surprising scene where a bundle of cash disappeared from the cash register.

Customers around me who were watching the news simultaneously pointed their fingers to the TV.

“Oh, what is that? Just what is happening?”

“Wait wait, where is the part-timer?”

It seemed the thief had done it while the part-timer was in the warehouse. It took less than 10 seconds for the entire cash to disappear from the cash register. Then, the door of the convenience store slowly opened before closing once again.

When the part-timer came back to the cash register, he was so taken aback to see that it was empty.

The thief used invisibility, I was certain of that.

I don’t know the exact reason, but it seems that those who had encountered Survival Life awakened their status windows as well as ability. Some of them were even committing crimes.

Mi-kyung then spoke once again. “If I remember correctly, not too far from here, there’s also someone who stole money from a local store. No one could stop him.”

“No one could stop him, why?”

“He’s invisible. Who could stop him?”Well, there’s really nothing to do about it if the criminal was invisible. However, it’s not like there’s no way at all. In Survival Life there’s a myriad of monsters with hiding abilities, and yet we, stagnant waters, could defeat it just fine.

Well, I don’t have time to commit a crime. Perhaps, am I the only one who knows the end is coming?

Then, Mikyung continued talking about the topics.

“Ahjussi, you see, people said if you say a specific keyword, something will come out in your sight…like levels and stats.”

“This is reality, not a game. How could they appear?”“I’m telling you it’s real, Ahjussi. The status window, like this.”

Wait, why are your eyes moving there? Don’t tell me, this lady, could she see the status window?

I ignored her and kept eating in silence as if I wasn’t interested.

Looking at my disinterest, Mikyung also closed her mouth and waited for her order to come out without talking to me anymore.

(T/N she probably just wants you to survive you dense… Just don’t end up like Yoo seodam please.)