WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: DereKimchi

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Unlimited Money Shelter of the Apocalypse ◈

Chapter 23: The Entire Korean Peninsula Within My View

──────

InariSushi1300 was, as their username alone made clear, someone of considerable status in the chatroom.

As the 1300 attached to their name proved, their rank in the chatroom belonged to the highest caste, the “Imperial Family.”

Considering that not a single person with funds exceeding $1 billion, the so-called “God” rank, had been discovered yet, they were clearly among the highest-ranking members of the caste.

They were currently ranked third in the chatroom I frequented, after all.

Of course, from my lofty Trillion-Dollar God-Emperor-Gigachad-Final-Boss-of-the-Universe tier, even InariSushi1300 couldn’t compete with my fertilizer warehouse...

Anyway.

InariSushi was a sub-admin of the chatroom?

More importantly, how did they know I had more money than $33 million? Were they just fishing for information?

With those worries in mind, I typed a reply.

KoreaU188cm80kg18cm330: ???

Message from InariSushi1300: I could tell just by looking at the survey you did.

That couldn't be true. Before joining the Telegram chatroom, I had Anne, an expert in this field, review everything several times.

At the time, Anne had judged that while it was impossible to rule out the chance that a government official had infiltrated the chatroom, identifying my identity or actual location within twenty days through the survey and chat logs alone was absolutely impossible.

“...”

Even so, I looked at Anne just in case.

Thankfully, Anne shook their head again without the slightest hesitation.

“It is only a guess, so you may disregard it.”

As if trying to ease my anxiety, Anne immediately added an explanation.

“There were no trap questions or hidden codes in any part of the chatroom survey designed to assess a participant's actual assets.”

“...”

“Even if they made an estimate based on your reactions to the questions or your choices, it would ultimately be nothing more than circumstantial suspicion.”

So they were fishing for information?

At those words, I looked back at the screen.

Message from InariSushi1300: Curious how I figured it out? If you are, act cute for me.

Tap tap.

KoreaU188cm80kg18cm330: Ooh, I wanna know...

“...Administrator?”

This was purely a strategic choice to shorten the time needed to achieve our objective. As the leader, I couldn't dump something this horrible on Anne or General Kang. I had at least a bare minimum of conscience.

Message from InariSushi1300: I actually put a few trap questions in that survey. Well, calling them trap questions is not quite right. They were more like subtle psychological nudges? I majored in psychology lol.

KoreaU188cm80kg18cm330: Ooh...

Message from InariSushi1300: Stop acting cute before I kill you.

KoreaU188cm80kg18cm330: Sorry.

Message from InariSushi1300: Anyway, unlike everyone else, you did not even try to answer the questions set up so that only people in the $100 million range could get them right.

Message from InariSushi1300: Normally, people get curious and look things up online, then try to guess at least one or two.

KoreaU188cm80kg18cm330: Why try when I can't get them right? (Genuinely don't know.)

Message from InariSushi1300: Hm. So that is how you are going to play it?

Message from InariSushi1300: Then let me ask again. Would people cautious enough to join a Telegram chatroom really reveal exactly how much money they have?

Message from InariSushi1300: Unless they are idiots, everyone fakes things a little. They inflate or reduce the amount, or make an entirely separate account.

Message from InariSushi1300: But you did not even attempt that. At first, I thought you were just an idiot like that bastard Cham170. But judging from the questions you ask, your brain works fine. So would someone smart enough to think that far really reveal their amount so readily?

Message from InariSushi1300: Then there is only one answer. Before making your account, you watched the chatroom and sized things up. Then you faked your amount to be just a little above average without standing out.

KoreaU188cm80kg18cm330: (18cm startled) !!!

Message from InariSushi1300: Well? What do you think of my deduction?

“...”

They certainly had a sharp mind.

Of course, even that was only circumstantial suspicion. Still, the fact that they had built a system that could bring them to the conclusion they wanted based on suspicion alone meant they were clever.

Impressed by InariSushi1300's deductive ability, I decided to give them the answer they wanted.

Whether I admitted it or not, they would only hear what they wanted to hear anyway.

In that case, it was better to give them the answer they wanted and reduce unnecessary variables as much as possible.

KoreaU188cm80kg18cm330: That's right, sob sob, I got more than $33 million, sob sob.

“...Administrator, please.”

Message from InariSushi1300: Then how much did you get? Tell me, and I will tell you something good too.

KoreaU188cm80kg18cm330: What is it?

Message from InariSushi1300: There is actually a separate group for people above $100 million.

Message from InariSushi1300: We obviously do not hold real-life meetups. It is more like exchanging information online.

Message from InariSushi1300: Honestly, there are too many small fries in that chatroom. Right?

KoreaU188cm80kg18cm330: Yep.

I had thought it was being run suspiciously poorly, but it seemed the Telegram chatroom itself had been a fish trap meant to filter out the real players.

I considered it for a moment, then realized I did not need to think about this myself.

An expert in this field was already beside me. There was no reason for me to waste time on this while I was so busy.

General Kang, who had been waiting nearby, spoke first.

“Please give me your instructions, Administrator. I will handle the rest.”

“Could we turn the tables and get information out of them instead?”

“We can.”

General Kang answered without hesitation.

“Without allowing any information regarding your identity or the shelter to leak, I will use deception tactics to uncover only their information.”

“Good. Then I'm counting on you.”

“Understood. Leave it to me.”

After handing my phone to General Kang, I decided to focus on shelter construction again.

Did I really need to interact with other survivors?

The apocalypse had not even arrived yet. It was far too early to consider building connections.

Leaving aside whether they could be trusted, even if I dealt with a trustworthy group, there was nothing my side, with its $1 trillion, could gain through trade right now.

Information was the only thing worth exchanging, and I could somehow make up for that by deploying androids and placing cameras along the nearby roads. Not to mention reconnaissance satellites.

There was no reason to take risks by contacting other survivors this early.

‘Hmm.’

Back to construction.

For the kitchen and dining halls, all I had to do was build them according to Anne's drawings.

For the dining halls, I decided to copy the methods domestic and foreign conglomerates used to run employee cafeterias.

When major companies had five thousand employees, they staggered meal times and built several cafeterias capable of holding hundreds of people each.

So I divided meal times into thirty-minute intervals and had people eat in shifts. I also distributed the dining halls across several sections.

This would let me use the interior space efficiently and prepare for the possibility of an infectious disease spreading inside the shelter.

I built five dining halls, each 250 pyeong in size and capable of seating around five hundred people.

That meant 2,500 people could eat at once. If I divided meal times into two or three shifts, handling meals for several thousand people would not be difficult.

I also separately arranged areas for kitchens, washing rooms, and food storage for each dining hall.

A real major corporation would have given each cafeteria a different menu, but how could that be possible in an apocalypse?

I should be grateful I was not serving cockroach protein bars like in Snowpiercer.

“If we build stairs here, can people go straight down from the residential area to the dining hall?”

“Yes.”

As I reviewed the dining hall design and made plans with Anne to construct the rest facilities, General Kang approached me.

“Did you find anything?”

“I confirmed that the user lives in one of three places in the Gyeongsang region: Mungyeong City, Yeongju City, or Andong City. Of those, Mungyeong is most likely, as its many abandoned and active mines make it advantageous to use existing infrastructure.”

“???”

What had happened in the past thirty minutes?

“Assuming the user's background knowledge and judgment are quite strong, I worked backward from the conditions suitable for building a shelter in North Gyeongsang Province and narrowed down the possible locations.”

So knowing they were smart had actually made it easier to identify their location?

It was not hard to understand.

I had come all the way to the granite region of Gangwon Province with excellent nuclear protection because I had thought of it. There was no guarantee that other people would not think of the same thing.

If someone had similar background knowledge, they would be likely to reach a similar conclusion.

In other words, the government could use the same method to find me.

It gave me a small chill.

But how did General Kang know InariSushi1300 was in the Gyeongsang region?

“The user mentioned that part directly.”

As if waiting for the question, General Kang handed me the phone.

On the other side of the screen, InariSushi had become so outgoing that it was hard to believe they were the same person from thirty minutes ago.

Message from InariSushi1300: By the way, where do you live, junior?

Message from InariSushi1300: For the record, I live in the Gyeongsang region lol.

Junior?

It was far too familiar a term. The sort of thing an older man might use toward a younger woman.

General Kang, surely not...

I checked just in case, but thankfully, General Kang was not acting cute like I had or pretending to be a woman online.

Instead, they behaved exactly like a soldier.

KoreaU188cm80kg18cm330: Which university's psychology department did you graduate from, senior?

Message from InariSushi1300: Senior? You studied psychology too? Trying to make yourself sound younger, you little brat? lololol

KoreaU188cm80kg18cm330: Did you perhaps attend Yonje University's psychology department?

Message from InariSushi1300: !!!

KoreaU188cm80kg18cm330: I entered in 2018.

After that, InariSushi1300's attitude became noticeably friendlier.

Message from InariSushi1300: Hm.

Message from InariSushi1300: Then why is your username KoreaU?

KoreaU188cm80kg18cm330: Actually, I wanted to show you this, senior.

[ The user's nickname has been changed. ]

[ KoreaU188cm80kg18cm330 -> YonjeU188cm80kg18cm330 ]

YonjeU188cm80kg18cm330: What do you think?

Message from InariSushi1300: You 18cm bastard...!

Of the three close ties long said to bind people in Korea, school ties are considered the first.

Of course, as a graduate of a top one-percent university, InariSushi1300 did not simply take General Kang's words at face value. They conducted their own verification.

They questioned every detail, from the names of university professors to the locations of buildings, where psychology students usually ate, and even the campus layout and nearby restaurants, things a real student would know but others might confuse.

They even told General Kang to make a post exactly as instructed in CampusTalk, an anonymous community accessible only to current students who had verified their enrollment.

18cm: Which is better, Yonje U or Gojjeon U?

But unlike Korea’s generals doing their best “How do you do, fellow kids?” routine, General Kang actually was young. He handled that too.

To summarize the method simply, they appeared to have acquired a dormant account through hacking.

Message from InariSushi1300: Wait, Professor Yang is still teaching?

YonjeU188cm80kg18cm330: He is an emeritus professor now, but he still teaches brutally hard.

Message from InariSushi1300: That bastard has not changed lolololol

After that, everything went smoothly.

Starting with the fact that they had settled near the Gyeongsang region, InariSushi1300 gave General Kang quite a bit of high-quality information.

There was no way to confirm whether it was true, but apparently they had contacts within the government as well.

Yonje University was one of the Republic of Korea's most prestigious universities, and InariSushi1300 was estimated to be at least in their late thirties or early forties. It would not have been strange for them to have connections there.

Then General Kang said something.

“It would be best to send personnel ahead to search that region.”

“Why?”

I had expected a vague answer about how it would be good to identify the location of a friendly survivor in advance, but General Kang's answer went far beyond my expectations.

“We should establish a surveillance network in the Gyeongsang region while also determining how the government responds when it detects another user. We must also learn their method of contact in case the person is an informant.”

They said we could determine many things: how the government classified groups of survivors, at what scale it considered them a threat or a potential partner, and whether InariSushi1300 might be a government spy in the first place.

“If we come into contact with the government during the apocalypse later, this will be highly useful information.”

I understood.

“This applies to regions besides Gyeongsang as well, doesn't it?”

General Kang nodded silently. Once I saw that, I immediately logged into the game again.

The Republic of Korea had nine provincial-level local governments including Jeju Island. Adding Seoul, the capital, made ten locations.

Assuming I dispatched ten Enigmas to each region, the cost alone would total $180 billion.

Until now, I had delayed purchases as much as possible because I was worried I would spend too much on androids and fail to build the shelter's essential facilities.

But now that more than seventy percent of the shelter was complete, I concluded there was no reason to delay any longer.

Naturally, I did not intend to use them only for initial reconnaissance.

Once the apocalypse arrived, these personnel would become the core force responsible for the shelter's most vital facilities.

“What can one hundred units do?”

General Kang looked directly at me and answered without the slightest wavering.

“You can do everything you imagine, Administrator.”

“...Really?”

「You have purchased 100 P-7 Enigmas.」

Then let us begin by bringing the entire Korean Peninsula within my view.

Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried