Unlimited Money Shelter of the Apocalypse - Chapter 15

WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: DereKimchi

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Unlimited Money Shelter of the Apocalypse ◈

Chapter 15: Construction of the Research Lab Begins

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There were a little over thirty regulars in the Telegram chat.

Most used fixed usernames, though anonymous users appeared now and then.

Anon: Arrow, do you really have $30 million?

Anon: If you only have $1 million like me, isn’t lasting even a year impressive?

But the posts anonymous users spewed had little substance. Most were blind praise or complaints about their own lives, and they did not even carry conversations among themselves.

The so-called named users, on the other hand, exchanged somewhat useful information.

Arrow300: Just finished a light $700,000 power installation. (Photo of diesel generators attached)

Cham170: Damn, Arrow bro. Never doubted you...

Roji99: The Great Arrow.

More or less like that.

I assumed the number after their usernames represented their initial funding in Shelter Builder, with each unit standing for $100,000. That would mean Cham170 had $17 million, while Arrow300 had $30 million.

If all these named users had been screwups, I would have lost interest quickly. But quite a few of them were seriously preparing for the future and holding constructive discussions.

InariSushi1300: Thoughts after seeing the Indian landslide. (Video attached)

InariSushi1300: As you can see, it was enough to sweep away an entire five-story shopping mall. They haven’t counted the deaths precisely yet, but I hear at least several hundred people died.

InariSushi1300: You might not know this, but Gangwon Province’s mountain regions receive more rain than you’d expect. Gangneung City’s highest daily rainfall was 870 millimeters, and the Daegwallyeong area’s was around 710 millimeters. At that level, even large bridges professionally designed by experts can be swept away by landslides. There are lots of forest fires too.

Lupin720: I agree, but Gangwon’s greatest advantage is that it is granite country. There is a reason all the Republic of Korea’s underground laboratories are in Gangwon. Of course, we can’t build there even if we want to because of the regional lock...

‘Regional lock?’

I could pick up useful information this way. Hooked by that phrase, I immediately typed in the chat anonymously.

Anon: What does it mean that Gangwon has a regional lock??

Lupin720: So I’m considering the coast of South Chungcheong Province. Or maybe the Naro Space Center area in Goheung County, South Jeolla Province.

InariSushi1300: Naro Space Center?

Lupin720: Most people don’t realize how much cutting-edge equipment is concentrated in Goheung County. InariSushi, you didn’t know either. There’s quite a bit of good equipment there, and the facilities are sturdy.

InariSushi1300: Interesting.

But I was completely ignored. Before long, my message was buried without a trace beneath the flood of other chats.

“...”

It seemed there was an unspoken rule among users with fixed names to thoroughly ignore anything anonymous users said.

They said it was a newly created room, so I hadn’t expected such strict rules. But after repeatedly shutting down and rebuilding the room over security concerns, a closed-off culture had apparently taken root where only people with confirmed identities interacted.

‘Tch.’

For a moment, I considered revealing my spiritual pressure and slaughtering every small-timer here rolling around mere billions.

But I decided against it.

There was nothing to gain by showing off.

For all I knew, a police officer could be undercover among them.

“Could you scout the area for me? I’ll send you the map, so mark any important locations too.”

The Juggernaut looked down at me silently, but I casually ignored its gaze and bought another roll of gimbap. I intended to seriously watch the chat now.

The Juggernaut soon moved away with heavy footsteps.

Thud. Thud.

Surprisingly, the sound faded by the time it left my sight.

It had only gone about two hundred meters. Maybe it was quieter than expected for something that big.

More importantly, could people just put any number they wanted after their usernames? Was there a way to verify it?

Anon: Is there a way to verify your initial funding?

Fortunately, one kind anonymous user replied.

Anon: Read the fucking notice.

‘Ah.’

There was a notice pinned at the top. This disaster had happened because I was using Telegram for the first time.

Suppressing my embarrassment, I checked how verification worked.

As I skimmed the notice, I learned several things I had not known.

First, the items unlocked in Shelter Builder’s store were strictly determined by the size of one’s initial funding.

Second, the quality of unlocked items rose noticeably whenever the funding crossed another digit threshold. Based on that, people could roughly determine whether a user had assets in the hundreds of thousands, millions, or tens of millions of dollars.

Third, none of the named users in this chat had funds in the billion-dollar range.

And finally, that was why anything said by an anonymous user hiding their identity was generally ignored.

In short, named users accepted the risk of revealing their financial standing in exchange for smoothly sharing high-quality information, while anonymous users who avoided that risk could not join their inner circle.

The “initial funding verification” I had asked about was also done as a quiz, where users asked and answered the prices of specific store items.

Of course, it could only distinguish the highest digit range. There was no way to verify the exact number below that.

In other words, someone with $10 million could inflate it and pretend to have $19.9 million.

‘No wonder so many usernames ended in nine.’

It seemed everyone wanted to make themselves look even a little bigger.

I immediately entered the verification room.

Since the answers required written responses, it didn’t seem possible to guess correctly by luck. More importantly, there were more than one or two verification questions.

The answers themselves were not difficult. I only needed to log into Shelter Builder and check the prices.

[ ■ Logistics Depot ]

• Item: Integrated Air Conditioning System for Small Bunkers

• Unit Price: $1.55 million

• Status: [Available for Purchase]

Like that.

<Correct. Moving on to questions for the $20 million range.>

Someone might luckily guess one or two answers, but accurately naming the unit prices of more than a dozen items seemed impossible.

Still, this method was not entirely without flaws.

‘Someone with assets in the $100 million range could deliberately pretend to have only tens of millions.’

It could stop people from inflating their wealth, but there was no way to catch someone pretending to have less money than they did.

The reason I was suddenly thinking about this was that I also intended to cosplay as a user with a few tens of millions of dollars.

There was no reason to reveal the insane sum of $1 trillion and make myself a target in a chat where even $100 million was the ceiling. Honestly, I couldn’t be sure everyone here was a normal user.

I wasn’t the type to put much effort into usernames when gaming, so I placed my hands on the keyboard and typed out whatever came to mind.

KoreaU188cm80kg18cm330: Hello. I just got verified :)

Anon: $30 million?

Anon: Royalty has arrived.

Cham170: Bro!

Arrow300: Is that username for real?

The response was on an entirely different level from my anonymous days. Feeling a strange sense of satisfaction, I asked again the question that had been so thoroughly ignored before.

KoreaU188cm80kg18cm300: What is the Gangwon regional lock?

The answer came back far faster than before.

Cham170: We don’t know the exact reason either, but you can’t build shelters in Gangwon.

Anon: We think it might be blocked because it’s too overpowered a region.

Anon: But if Gangwon is overpowered because of granite, aren’t there also plenty of granite areas in the Chungcheong, Honam, and Yeongnam regions?

King250: Even Mount Bukhansan and Mount Gwanaksan are granite in their central areas.

That was true. The reason our country’s water was so clean was also because dense granite was spread across the nation.

Still, judging by everyone’s reaction, it seemed certain that Gangwon had a regional lock preventing shelter construction.

‘Then why was I able to build one?’

Could it be that because I had built a shelter in Gangwon, no one else could? With no information to go on, that was the most plausible guess.

Did that mean I was the only one in all of Gangwon?

Gangwon was the country’s second-largest province by area. Its population barely exceeded 1.5 million, and it did not have any particularly critical facilities for strategic nuclear strikes.

KoreaU188cm80kg18cm300: Thanks for the answer :)

Fewer people and less danger of getting nuked. That was both Gangwon’s strength and weakness.

If there was one fortunate thing, it was that my shelter stood at the edge of Gangwon. I could reach Gyeonggi Province or the Chungcheong region after moving only twenty kilometers.

“Where did you leave the Juggernaut? Why did you return alone?”

I had been walking while looking at my phone, and I had somehow reached the tent. I immediately showed Anne the screen.

“I sent it to scout in my place while I check what the other users are doing. You should read it too.”

“...Administrator?”

To my surprise, Anne’s expression changed. Had new information appeared while I was walking?

“What exactly is the eighteen centimeters?”

Ah.

“Tch. So this is the kind of person you are, Administrator. I understand.”

“...”

“Still, I believe that may be somewhat exaggerated...”

Before Anne could continue with any more nonsense, I hurriedly cut in.

“That’s enough.”

“Understood.”

As if the contemptuous look from a moment ago had been a lie, Anne instantly returned to the usual blank expression.

“Excuse me for a moment.”

Anne naturally took the phone from my hand and began examining the chat one message at a time.

“Would you like me to organize the information and report it separately?”

“I’d appreciate that.”

I looked around to see what Anne had been doing while the Juggernaut and I were out scouting. It appeared Anne had been inspecting the armory, maintenance depot, and garage we had established over the past three days.

‘The basic infrastructure seems to be more or less in place now.’

Anyway, the facility I would build today was a research lab.

Unlike the other facilities, which could at best maintain the status quo, 「Research」 could be used to build toward the future even during the apocalypse.

That was why I considered the research lab the next most important facility after the central control room, power facilities, and hydroponics room, all of which were essential for survival. Depending on the situation, it could become even more important than those.

「Research」 would certainly become a key pillar of long-term survival. Even simply finding a way to increase hydroponic output or reduce water consumption could feed at least several hundred more people.

To put it in RPG terms, it was a kind of enhancement.

That was not all. Someday, I might even be able to make robots like the Juggernaut and Anne myself instead of buying them at a premium.

“I don’t know how the apocalypse will unfold, but the odds that highly skilled researchers would safely reach the Administrator’s shelter are extremely low.”

That really was the biggest problem.

How was I supposed to bring researchers to this mountain valley without even a road?

Kidnapping was the last resort. Not because I hesitated over its inhumanity, but because making such highly skilled people hostile would cost me far more than I gained.

Ideally, recruiting personnel should take the form of an agreement, a contract, or at least a “rescue.” That way, they would be more inclined to cooperate.

But I didn’t want to bring them in too early either.

“May I ask why?”

“Because someone who has personally gone through the chaos outside will have a different attitude from someone dragged here without knowing anything.”

A scientist rescued after suffering through hordes of zombies would never consider leaving the shelter. But a scientist brought in before anything happened would obviously complain about feeling stifled and demand to see the outside world.

Because I would probably feel the same way.

Besides, making contact too early risked being discovered by a government agency like the National Intelligence Service.

When I considered why I was camping out in a tent on a mountain in the middle of winter, that was far too great a risk.

So for now, I decided to identify the locations of the country’s leading universities and broadly plan to “rescue” people when the time came.

“Then I will prepare a list and rescue plans in advance.”

“If possible, focus on the top engineering schools.”

“Understood.”

That was five hours before the rescue plan underwent a complete revision.

Footnotes:

“Spiritual pressure” references Bleach, where overwhelming spiritual power can intimidate or crush weaker opponents.

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