WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: DereKimchi

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Unlimited Money Shelter of the Apocalypse ◈

Chapter 19: 18 Days Remaining

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Winter dawns in the mountains were brutally cold.

There was a heater and hand warmers inside the tent, and I’d even laid down a thick mattress on the floor. But because it was still a tent, I couldn’t completely block out the cold seeping in.

Still, maybe because I’d practically been sleeping rough for over ten days now, I was no longer trembling pitifully like a newborn fawn in the predawn cold.

“Administrator.”

“Th-th-thanks...”

My jaw was chattering uncontrollably, stretching out my words horribly, but still.

“...Are you sure you’ve adapted?”

Huff, huff. Instead of answering Anne’s lukewarm response, I hurriedly drank some warm canned coffee.

Only when the hot liquid ran down my throat did I finally feel human again.

“How cold was it last night?”

“The wind chill was fifteen degrees below zero.”

“Ugh.”

No wonder it had felt especially cold.

Perhaps worried by the sight of me, Anne added something.

“It seems you could sleep indoors now. If you are concerned about security, I will prepare separate measures for you.”

I answered calmly.

“If I go inside once, I don’t think I’ll come back out.”

I’d retreat inside if things became truly dangerous, but I wanted to stay outside as long as possible. The scenery was quite nice, too.

And I wanted to see the completed shelter all at once later.

It wouldn’t be as fun if I started looking at it halfway through.

“...Understood.”

Anne did not try to persuade me further.

Anyway, it looked like Anne had stayed up all night designing the research facilities.

“Do you need more time?”

“I finished two hours ago.”

“Really?”

After draining the canned coffee in one go, I examined the blueprint Anne had brought up on the monitor.

“...Whoa.”

It was the kind of blueprint that drew a sigh from me automatically.

‘What even is this?’

Water pipes and electrical lines, along with all sorts of piping and equipment, packed every part of the drawing. I had no idea where I was even supposed to begin.

At least Anne had separately written down the purpose and major equipment of every facility, so I could roughly tell what was what.

‘How much is all this worth?’

It contained all kinds of research equipment whose names I’d never even heard before, including a dark-matter detector in the space science wing.

One piece of equipment stood out in particular.

“Can we even use this particle accelerator...?”

My research wing had an actual particle accelerator.

“It is an essential facility for advanced research. I determined that the power generated within the shelter would be sufficient to support it, so I included it in the construction plan.”

Apparently, it was the single most expensive piece of research equipment in the entire research wing.

I wondered whether we really needed something like that, but the Republic of Korea had as many as five of them, so I decided to build it in the end.

There were twenty-three areas specifically designed for different research purposes, connected by dozens of sealed corridors like a spiderweb.

As someone outside the field, even looking at it and copying it was overwhelming.

But what could I do? I was the only one who could handle this. If it were up to me, I’d love to dump the work on someone else.

“I will explain it to you, so let us begin immediately.”

“Okay.”

After letting out a short, heavy sigh, I gripped the mouse with grim resolve.

Let’s work ourselves to death again today.

* * *

After four hours of eye-straining, hyper-focused work, I successfully constructed about a third of the research facilities.

Winter was dry enough already, and staring wide-eyed at a monitor in the freezing outdoors made it feel as though my eyes were about to fall out.

“Please take a short break.”

Unable to waste even my break time, I checked world events whenever I could while eating cup noodles for lunch.

In the mornings and at lunch, I mainly followed the news to track developments in different countries. Before bed, I gathered information primarily from domestic and foreign survivalist communities.

Naturally, every other moment went into Shelter Builder.

I did not only watch Korean news, either. I subscribed online to global broadcasters such as the BBC, CNN, and ABC, as well as newspapers with a somewhat old-fashioned feel. Important information could appear anywhere.

Today’s topic was extreme weather.

[Portugal has experienced a staggering 104 tornadoes nationwide. Most were minor tornadoes, but some developed into F3-class tornadoes, injuring thirty people...]

Tornadoes were reportedly occurring simultaneously across Spain, Portugal, and other places.

Tornadoes themselves were not particularly strange in the middle of winter. Strong pressure differences and atmospheric instability often produced tornadoes in the central United States even during winter.

The problem was that they were occurring in southern Europe along the Mediterranean.

Europe had not even possessed a word for tornadoes until Spanish conquistadors saw them in the Americas. Yet now, tornadoes were occurring locally throughout the Mediterranean.

Fortunately, there had not yet been any deaths from this incident. However, the damage was expected to keep worsening as the tornadoes continued.

And France still had not lifted its state of emergency.

[Citizens, today we will apprehend the suspects in the New Year’s Eve attack...]

They still had not arrested the terrorists responsible for hundreds of casualties, including the interior minister, during the New Year’s Eve celebration.

Since the UN was taking the incident seriously, even France’s neighboring countries were unusually quick to impose strict border controls and cooperate in apprehending the terrorists.

Then today, France’s National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office released a new announcement.

They had comprehensively reviewed dashcam footage and CCTV installed within a five-kilometer radius of the New Year’s Eve venue, identifying eight suspicious individuals. They had also miraculously succeeded in restoring the dashcam from a vehicle caught in the explosion.

Pranoei: VIVA FRANCE (French flag emoji)

wamims: America stands with France as well. Those of us who experienced 9/11 stand with France in its pain, and the terrorists will surely face justice.

ukleon: Seven-year-old Leah lost her grandparents, parents, and every other relative overnight. She is currently in a coma.

Kronbopulos774: How have they still not caught those fucking terrorists?

qpv: France’s Ministry of Education has ordered all elementary, middle, and high schools to hold classes remotely in preparation for further attacks. Nothing this terrible has happened since World War II.

[Deleted User]: Fucking president. Why are they hiding that Muslims did it?

englishmuse: God, help France.

Meanwhile, the wildfires in Italy had already continued for five days. They were supposedly the second-largest wildfires of the past twenty years, after the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires.

“...”

Whenever I saw these horrifying events one after another, the part of me that had been slacking off and thinking, ‘This should be enough, right?’ was forcibly snapped back to its senses, as if doused in cold water.

It made me certain that the preparations I was making were not excessive at all.

For now, only Europe was in chaos, but it would not be strange if a disaster like that struck the Republic of Korea at any moment.

No.

At this point, it almost felt as if Europe was taking the bad luck for us, while Northeast Asia sat right in the eye of the storm.

How could Northeast Asia be this quiet when China, Japan, North Korea, Russia, and even the United States Seventh Fleet were all entangled there?

It made no sense.

The moment it became practically certain that the game had been released worldwide, I became convinced that the United States government was responsible for wiping out the American community ten days ago. And ZOMBIE_MAN had likely been kidnapped because of this game too, though I did not know by which country’s government.

That meant the governments of the United States, Korea, China, Japan, and perhaps even North Korea definitely knew about Shelter Builder.

If people found out you had purchased the game, you got kidnapped. Even in the United States, supposedly the symbol of liberal democracy, people were being kidnapped. What would China do?

It would be worse, not better.

‘I need to be even more careful.’

The people who had loudly posted about Shelter Builder in the early days after the game was released must have disappeared for the same reason.

Anyway, I had rested enough.

“Whew.”

The moment I got up, I threw myself back into constructing the research wing. The area I was building now was the virus research wing.

I was putting special effort into the virus research wing because it was the facility most directly connected to a possible future apocalypse.

It was designed with not only a pandemic in mind, but even a non-scientific(?) apocalypse such as a zombie outbreak.

Even if we could not create a vaccine, we would need to determine, at minimum, how an infection spread and how to prevent it if we wanted to survive.

That was why the virus research wing included rather intimidating equipment, such as isolation rooms and restraints.

To name only a few of its core internal facilities:

First was the BSL-4 maximum-containment pathogen isolation zone, which handled the deadliest infectious diseases. If even that place could not contain a pathogen, then it would feel like we would all just die together.

Second was the negative-pressure infectious-disease patient management room, where patients suspected of infection could be isolated from the outside and observed. Unlike the medical room that would be built later, this area focused more on research than treatment.

Lastly, there was the emergency fully sealed isolation zone.

It was a space meant to physically isolate part or all of the research wing if a large-scale outbreak occurred or an uncontrollable accident happened inside the wing.

Beyond those major facilities, around forty-seven smaller specialized installations had been added throughout the virus research wing.

‘Money is melting away.’

Maybe because it was included in the $200 billion budget anyway, I had reached the point where even billions of dollars vanishing did not faze me.

The problem was that after repeating that process for hours, my brain had melted along with it.

Anne immediately scolded me.

“Administrator. The emergency sealed isolation zone must be placed farther inside than it is on the blueprint.”

“Ah.”

Even I, copying the blueprint Anne had made for me exactly, was struggling this much. What would ordinary people do?

They would not even dare attempt it without considerable knowledge.

After a suffocating, brutal grind that lasted sixteen hours without rest, I finally completed construction on every research wing.

“...How long have I been awake today?”

“You have been awake for eighteen hours.”

“I couldn’t even eat after halfway through...”

Anyway, that was my limit for today. Even if I wanted to keep going, I was too physically exhausted.

‘Ugh.’

This was even harder than when I went through army obstacle training and scraped up all my skin while crossing seventy meters on a single rope from an eight-meter cliff, all for the chance to get leave once.

The skin on my chest and groin had torn, and I had kept going while crying, but I never got the leave in the end. Those fucking officers. If they had no intention of granting it, they should have said so from the beginning.

Forcing my closing eyes open, I collapsed into the tent.

“...Please handle the final inspection.”

“Yes. You worked hard today as well.”

Today, I did not even have the energy to search survivalist communities. The level of concentration required had been on another level from usual.

...Should I look around just a little before sleeping?

I immediately logged into the Telegram chat room.

Cham170: Honestly, I’m a little curious how the apocalypse will begin.

Anonymous: I gave up on building a shelter and am stockpiling as much food as possible at home. If nukes come, I guess I’m dead anyway;;

Lupin720: Honestly, the realistic scenarios are nuclear war or natural disasters? Sea levels might rise because of global warming, but I don’t think an ice age is coming.

Anonymous: Can someone recommend a generator?

Arrow300: I put together a small hydroponics room ^^

The usernames had become fairly familiar after seeing them so many times.

“...”

I could feel someone looking at me somewhere with disappointment, but I had finished everything I needed to do, and this was my break. I had nothing to feel guilty about.

KoreaU188cm80kg18cm330: Goodnight, everyone :)

Anonymous: Royal bro!

Cham170: What? You’re going to bed already at this hour?

What kind of person looked at someone going to sleep at three in the morning and said they were going to bed already?

“If you mean that user, I have confirmed that they live on the United States East Coast.”

Oh, they lived in the United States?

No wonder they had seemed especially optimistic and disinclined to plan ahead. It looked like there was a reason for it.

Then again, who would have expected someone here to live in the United States?

But I intended to stay planted in Korea for the rest of my life, so Cham170 and I probably would never meet in person.

‘Should I sleep now?’

Unfortunately, I could not fall asleep easily that night.

「[Exclusive] Massive Explosion and Fire at Saudi Royal Palace... Numerous Key Royal Figures, Including Crown Prince, Dead」

「International Oil Prices Surge, Second Terror Attack This Year After France」

An enormous explosion, large enough to recall the New Year’s Eve terrorist attack in France, had completely burned down Saudi Arabia’s Al Yamamah Palace without leaving a trace.

International oil prices surged, conspiracy theories claiming Iran was responsible spread across social media, and the French government publicly stated that the method matched the terrorist attack in France.

Anonymous: Fuck.

Anonymous: Is there anyone who could let me live with them in their shelter?

Anonymous: Guys, I’ll give you every cent I have. Is there any way I can get a spot?

No one answered.

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