Unlimited Money Shelter of the Apocalypse - Chapter 2

WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: DereKimchi

◈ Unlimited Money Shelter of the Apocalypse ◈

Chapter 2: This Doesn't Seem Like a Game

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“Hmm...”

The recommendation list showed place names I’d seen earlier, like Wonju City, Taebaek City, and Geochang County, but I took my time.

From experience, the more immersed I got in something like this, the more fun it became.

The more I treated it like the world was really going to end, like I was building a shelter I’d live in for the rest of my life, the more enjoyable it would be.

I chewed on chicken while studying the map. As the part-timer who had pitched the game to me had said, there were several types of apocalypse.

There were eco apocalypses involving natural disasters like ice ages or volcanic eruptions, pandemic apocalypses reminiscent of disease outbreaks, nuclear apocalypses that literally meant nuclear war, and relatively implausible zombie or alien apocalypses.

Zombies were one thing, but aliens broke the balance all on their own, so plenty of people excluded them from consideration. I was one of them.

‘Aliens are a bit much.’

Maybe they ruined the immersion.

Anyway, I decided to build a shelter for the other, “more realistic,” apocalypses.

‘There are no location restrictions?’

Since there were no limits on choosing a location, it seemed I could even build a shelter overseas.

‘Hmm.’

I did not deliberate for long.

Building it in Korea would make it more immersive. Sure, living here was basically life on hard mode, but spend a month abroad and any Korean would decide there was no place like home.

The next thing I considered was the danger level of the apocalypses I might face.

The most dangerous was probably nuclear war. Even if I generously assumed that zombies, ice ages, and pandemics could somehow be handled, nuclear weapons had no answer.

Unless I built a nuclear bunker hundreds of meters beneath a granite mountain range, like the United States, I would turn to ash the instant I was bombed.

Before I knew it, I was so immersed that I was even asking questions of the AIs that had fucked up my computer science major.

“Recommend the most suitable geological location in the Republic of Korea for building a nuclear bunker.”

The answers poured in without delay.

―Wonju and Taebaek in Gangwon Province are optimal locations. Their bedrock continuity and strength are exceptional enough that they were once considered as sites for government high-level radioactive-waste research facilities.

―We also recommend Pocheon City, Gapyeong County, and Geochang County and Hapcheon County in South Gyeongsang Province, all of which have high geological stability. Is there anything else you would like to know?

But I did not take the AI’s answer at face value. I had studied computer science, after all.

I immediately began my own verification by asking follow-up questions.

“If Wonju is geologically perfect, why was it passed over as a candidate for the waste research facility?”

―Wonju is an ideal granite region for constructing a facility on the level of a nuclear bunker, but it lost out to Taebaek during the administrative and political selection process. However, controversy over the suitability of the Taebaek site has recently brought Wonju back into the spotlight...

I kept asking follow-up questions, fact-checking while browsing the web. The corners of my mouth gradually rose.

I had vaguely felt it before, but the fact that I enjoyed doing this meant I might have had a bit of an obsessive nerd streak in me.

‘Gangwon Province, then.’

The map provided by the game was so detailed that it was not difficult to immerse myself.

While digging through geological reports online, I found a suitable spot. It was a forested, rocky mountain in Gangwon Province that someone like me, with no interest in hiking, had never heard of. Its elevation was roughly 1,400 meters.

The mountain was imposing enough to house a massive underground shelter. The nearest city was about fifteen kilometers away, and most importantly, the mountain was one solid mass of granite.

The moment I clicked the center of the rocky mountain, a notification window appeared.

Ding!

「Would you like to conduct a geological analysis of the surrounding area before confirming this location?」

⦁You may choose either a basic analysis or a detailed analysis.

A basic analysis cost $50,000, while a detailed analysis cost a whopping $1.5 million.

According to the explanation, a basic analysis only estimated the general bedrock strength and fault-line locations. A detailed analysis created a 3D model of bedrock density dozens of kilometers underground and examined every possible detail.

I did not really understand what any of that meant, but money was the one thing I had to spare, so I chose the detailed analysis.

The results came out in ten seconds.

[ Detailed Analysis Report ]

「Detailed Bedrock Characteristics」

⦁Stratum Name: Daebo Granite

⦁Density: 2.75 g/cm³

⦁Compressive Strength: 200 MPa

「Energy Potential: Geothermal Gradient」

⦁Surface Temperature: 15°C

⦁Underground Temperature Gradient: +3.2°C per 100 m

⦁Estimated Temperature: Approximately 175°C available at a depth of 5 km.

「Hydrological and Water-System Analysis」

⦁Groundwater Vein: Large fractured-bedrock aquifer detected at a depth of 800 m.

⦁Flow Rate: 150 tons per hour

⦁Usability: Suitable for generator cooling and research after heavy-metal treatment. Can be used as a water source with additional purification facilities.

「Special Notes」

⦁No active faults within a 15 km radius.

⦁Slightly elevated radon levels due to granite characteristics. Possibility of gas emissions.

⦁High-density crystal clusters detected at a depth of 2.5 km. Possible acquisition of large quantities of minerals during excavation.

“...What the hell does all this mean?”

I blinked at the endless report for a while. It was all Korean, yet it was incredibly difficult to understand.

In summary, if I dug deep enough, I could generate geothermal power. Poisonous gas might form, there were mineral deposits nearby, and groundwater flowed underground. Was that about it?

‘This really is a game for obsessive nerds.’

The oppressive level of detail made my head spin. The densely packed text gave off the strong scent of expertise.

Anyway, the conclusion was that the site was highly suitable.

It was an optimal location for a large underground shelter and could maintain structural integrity even against a mid-range nuclear blast. With additional shock-absorption devices, it could apparently withstand an earthquake with a seismic intensity of 8.0 as well.

I figured I had immersed myself enough before even starting the game.

「Would you like to confirm this location?」

The moment I pressed the confirmation button, a message popped up on the screen as if it had been waiting.

「Location confirmed.」

―Administrator. You may now begin shelter construction.

‘Hmm.’

Instead of starting construction right away, I began examining the map around my home again.

There was more than one strange thing about it.

‘No matter how I think about it, this seems too high-quality for something peddled on the street...’

There were levels to simulation games. And the easiest way to gauge that level was through the graphics.

In that regard, Shelter Builder’s graphics were far from ordinary. Its UI was garbage, but otherwise, it could have passed for a new AAA game.

‘Even the map is needlessly detailed.’

I searched for my home address again. I wanted to find out how old the game’s satellite map imagery was.

Maybe it was a programmer’s instinct. Even though I had not graduated, whenever something I knew came up, I wanted to look into it further.

Just as AIs were prevented from learning the latest information, the OpenStreetMap data Shelter Builder presumably used could not provide completely up-to-date maps due to privacy and security concerns. That went doubly for a country like Korea, where military security facilities were everywhere.

I zoomed all the way in and searched the businesses around my home. I did not know the exact dates, but I roughly remembered when certain shops had opened.

Still, I had not expected to find a cafe that had opened only a few days ago.

‘...Huh?’

Just in case, I stuck my head out the window. The cafe at the end of the alley had an awning with alternating green and white stripes.

The awning on the game screen had the same alternating green and white stripes.

That meant it was not graphics. It was an actual satellite image.

“...”

A chill suddenly shot up my spine.

If it was OpenStreetMap, I could let it slide. The map used an open-source model where users directly edited and updated map data.

In other words, some bored programmer living nearby could have updated the surrounding map data for fun.

But this was clearly not an ordinary map. It was a satellite map, and even ultra-high-resolution satellite maps like Google Earth updated their data, at best, once every six months in major cities.

‘Ah.’

This was sketchy as fuck.

Of course, the update cycle might have coincidentally aligned. By an absurdly tiny chance, this situation might have happened by coincidence.

Still, this was sketchy as fuck.

I immediately went online and visited the OpenStreetMap website for the first time in ages. I confirmed that the cafe did not appear there. Then I opened Google Earth and Google Maps.

The cafe was not on Google Earth either.

* * *

When MBTI was all the rage, I had taken the test with my friends.

The other two letters changed every time, so I did not remember them well. But I clearly remembered being an introvert, I, and a thinking type, T.

It meant I enjoyed being cooped up alone in my room more than socializing outside, and that I was the kind of person who would logically determine the facts before wasting time awkwardly empathizing with someone else’s feelings.

The reason I brought this up was that every time I took the test, my feeling-type score, F, was nearly zero. I was a genuine T.

And as a proud member of the T club, I had a duty to objectively verify whether the program before me was truly a game, or something wearing the skin of one.

‘All right.’

First, to determine whether these were simply recently taken satellite photos or a real-time satellite feed broadcasting this very moment, I conducted passive observation.

After confirming that the cars on the map remained in place for over ten minutes, as they would in a normal satellite image, I learned that the map did not update every minute or second.

I waited another hour before learning that it did not update hourly, either.

I opened social media and looked for recently opened stores. I searched Instagram, blogs, local communities, and every post I could find with the most recent dates.

[Suwon Station Concept Cafe! Opening on Christmas Day, December 25!]

[Blue Button Board Game Cafe, Mangpo Branch, is now open!]

Stores that had opened that very day did not appear in the search results. But every store that had been open for at least a day appeared on Shelter Builder’s map.

At that point, I was half certain that the map updated daily.

As it happened, it was Saturday, so a bargain market was being held at a nearby apartment complex. The market did not appear on the map. If it showed up when I checked again tomorrow, I could confirm the update cycle.

The second method was active observation. No matter how convincingly a game imitated reality with graphics, there was always a limit somewhere.

No matter how vast the world it created, it could not display every location at the same resolution, nor could it make every building interactive. Eventually, either the data volume, computational load, or rules set by the developers would reveal a limitation first.

I decided to find that limit.

First, I zoomed in as far as possible. I kept zooming until a single building filled the screen, then kept going until I could zoom in no further. Then I examined the surrounding area.

‘...It isn’t pixelating?’

Normally, something should have gone wrong around that point. The resolution should have broken down, for example.

This time, I did the opposite and zoomed out as far as possible. I zoomed out until the city disappeared, then the country, then the continent.

...Again, I saw nothing strange.

I repeated the process everywhere, from the middle of a Korean city to remote places like the center of the Sahara Desert.

But nowhere did the screen lag. It loaded quickly, and naturally, the resolution never changed.

Naturally, every building I found looked exactly like its real-world counterpart. There were even Indian shantytowns that no normal game would ever bother to render.

...This should not have been possible.

No matter how new the game was, handling this much data without any bottlenecks was truly absurd.

I eventually decided to inspect the game’s inner workings, but even that failed.

No matter what I tried, I could not interpret the code. It felt like a language deliberately designed to screw with people, like brainfuck. A joke programming language whose name was basically a warning label.

I spent hours taking apart the code, even consulting an AI, but I learned nothing.

“...”

I had no choice but to use the final method. I would search somewhere that a normal satellite map would never display for security reasons.

[8th Division, Yangju City, Gyeonggi Province]

The Ottogi Division, my old unit.

On ordinary maps like Naver and Kakao, it was blurred into a barren mountain with nothing on it. Overseas sites that ignored security laws might show its rough shape, but even they observed certain boundaries. They did not label it as a military base, and they automatically censored any military equipment in the images.

“...”

But Shelter Builder’s map was different. Armored vehicles and tanks were displayed in plain view without a single mosaic blur.

Just in case, I shifted the screen toward the battalion motor pool where I had served. The number of armored vehicles matched the number in my memory exactly.

The layout of the roofed vehicle bay and the placement of the vehicles. It was definitely the unit where I had served.

“...”

While I was at it, I also searched for the rear-area homeland-defense division where I had trained as a recruit. Even that bizarre scene, with only one display armored vehicle sitting alone in an empty lot, was reproduced exactly on the map.

After that, I went through several more “verifications” to gain certainty.

I searched everything from the massive ammunition supply point where I had spent a month or two on detachment duty, standing guard at a sentry post, to an Air Force base with the highest security classification.

“...”

But as if mocking the very concept of military security, the map on the screen clearly displayed every facility and its layout.

I opened Google Earth and OpenStreetMap again and entered the same coordinates.

Nothing came up.

“Make sure you survive! You can do it!”

Was it really a coincidence that the part-timer’s final words came to mind at this moment?

“...”

This did not seem like a game after all.

* * *

_____________________________

「Notice: A VVIP has confirmed their shelter’s coordinates.」

「Region: Shelter Construction has been unlocked for players in the Republic of Korea.」