WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: DereKimchi
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Unlimited Money Shelter of the Apocalypse ◈
Chapter 27: The Search Operation Begins
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The shielding doors slid open to either side with a soft mechanical sound, and the sight of the Central Control Room beyond them overwhelmed me at once.
I had built this area myself too, but seeing it in blueprints and seeing it with my own eyes were entirely different things.
If I had to compare it to something, it felt like someone had picked up the U.S. Operations Command from a blockbuster with an absurd production budget and dropped it here.
“Ooh...”
A space forged by gathering every pinnacle of modern technology and shaping it into its most futuristic form stretched out before me.
The first thing that stole my attention was the enormous main display filling the entire front wall. The massive eight-meter-high wall was packed with dozens, perhaps hundreds, of screens and monitors.
Below that overwhelming sight, tiered console desks and monitors stood in a semicircle around the command center so countless operators could take their positions and control the system at once.
The smooth matte metal panels, along with the soft LED lights of the controls scattered across them, created an atmosphere that was both cold and incredibly refined.
“Do you like it?”
I liked it. I liked it way too much. My mouth twitched so badly I could barely hold back a grin.
I liked it so much that I did not even care that the Central Control Room was not yet fully functional.
Forget linking it with external satellites, even the basic internal communications network had not been set up yet. That was why most of the monitors, including the main screen at the front, only gave off the chilly glow of blue screens.
But my mind was already picturing the future, when every screen would be running.
“...”
What kind of spectacle would unfold if I bought satellites and linked this room to the backdoors established by the Enigmas I had sent outside, along with the surveillance cameras installed aboveground?
The thought of sitting safely in this underground control room while taking in every corner of Korea at a glance sent a thrilling shiver down my neck.
“I will continue the tour.”
Leaving my swelling emotions behind, I stepped out of the monitor room.
The corridor leading to the next area was also lined with seamlessly finished metal walls and clean white fluorescent lights.
It felt like walking through the heart of a top-secret research lab with the highest security clearance, one determined never to allow an intruder inside.
It was definitely my style.
At the end of the straight corridor, Anne stopped and held a key card to the security panel.
“This is the emergency resource stockpile warehouse you mentioned, Administrator.”
With a hiss, the metal door lightly slid open to the side.
Cool, dry air flowed out from within. Sturdy metal shelves nearly reaching the ceiling stood in neat rows.
They held premium preserved foods and canned goods for me to eat in an emergency, boxes of MREs sealed in silver packaging, and all sorts of survival supplies, all carefully organized.
Was there any more reassuring sight in the face of an apocalypse?
I really liked it, but I had to ask.
“...What about drinking water?”
Anne answered sharply.
“You may use the water purification system here, which has high-performance filtration.”
Where she pointed was a small drinking fountain cleanly built into the wall.
“Can I drink it right away?”
“May I test it first?”
Anne filled a paper cup with clear water from who knew where, then took a pen-shaped water-quality tester from her pocket and dipped it in and out of the water.
“It is safe to drink.”
That meant the waterworks and purification system had also been built perfectly, without the slightest error. I took the paper cup and drained it in one gulp.
“Ahh.”
It was cold enough to chill me to the bone, so the cold-water function seemed to work properly too.
With a satisfied smile on my face, I passed through the warehouse and finally entered the approach to the residential space prepared just for me.
Unlike the previous stern, dry areas, the scenery changed from this point on, as though my mental and emotional stability had been given top priority.
Artificial skylights perfectly imitating a clear day aboveground, artificial sunlight, and the refreshingly high ceiling made it easy to forget that I was dozens of meters underground.
‘It feels similar to the rest facility.’
That place felt like a city, while this place was more like...
A rural village, maybe?
Beneath the dazzling skylights was a modest vegetable garden and yard.
Nothing had been planted yet, but the scent of soil that hit me made me strangely certain that anything would grow well here, even if I just scattered seeds around.
I touched it just in case.
It was real soil.
Across from the garden and yard stood a neat, modern two-story house where I would live from now on. After looking at nothing but hard, cold metal doors, the house's warm wood finish felt almost surreal.
Still, this would be much better for my mental health in the long run.
“Is it because of the yard? It’s bigger than I expected.”
“The other facilities will also feel different in person than they did in the blueprints.”
With Anne guiding me, I opened the smoothly finished wooden front door and stepped inside.
The house was literally empty, without even a sofa or dining table.
But it did not feel bleak.
That was thanks to the huge picture window taking up an entire wall of the living room, overlooking the artificial yard we had just passed through.
Artificial sunlight poured in through that window from the ceiling, so I did not feel even a hint of the enclosed, stifling sensation unique to deep underground.
I could tell Anne had put a lot of thought into it.
Was this what it felt like to live in one of those luxury homes in the Hannam-dong neighborhood?
I looked through the open space reaching up to the second floor and each of the empty rooms, swept up in an inexplicable pleasure. It was probably the excitement of being able to decorate this wide space however I wanted.
I immediately picked the largest room with the best view on the second floor as my bedroom, bought an ultra-luxury designer bed costing over $100,000, and flopped down on it.
“Uuugh...”
The moment I dropped onto the soft, spotless bedding, a groan slipped from my mouth.
Maybe it really was worth the price, because the comfort was on a completely different level.
I looked at Anne, standing by the door, with a satisfied smile like I had reached heaven.
“...Why the hell did I sleep in a tent all this time?”
“I advised you several times from the beginning to sleep inside the shelter.”
Let me just say that spending nights shivering in that goddamn tent had been the stupidest thing I had done among all the decisions I made that year.
Well, putting past hardship aside.
Maybe because I had lived in a cramped tent smaller than thirty-six square feet until recently, I had no idea where to even begin now that I was suddenly living alone in a house well over 3,500 square feet.
‘I should just decide what each room will be for today, then go to sleep.’
I sketched out a rough blueprint in my head. A room decorated like a gaming café, with a top-of-the-line computer and moody lighting, was a given. A man's eternal dream.
And since I might hold meetings with my advisers someday, I needed to reserve one large room as a reception room and conference room.
Anne and General Kang would also be staying here from now on, so I would give each of them a room too...
Even then, I still had five rooms left.
I could find five more advisers to fill them, but there was no rush. I could think about those rooms later.
After all, even once the shelter was complete, I could keep decorating it one piece at a time like a game until the demo version ended.
That sounded pretty fun too.
Since I was doing this anyway, I decided to fill the kitchen with top-of-the-line appliances so I could make every kind of food possible.
Of course, the emergency resource warehouse was piled high with more premium preserved food and canned goods than I could ever eat.
But no matter how expensive the MREs or preserved food were, they could not replace freshly cooked hot rice with golden-brown fried Spam.
Of course, the extent of my cooking ability was probably tuna kimchi stew or steamed eggs, so there was a good chance I would not make proper use of the expensive equipment anyway...
“Anne, are you good at cooking too?”
“I can perform at a level beyond what you expect, Administrator.”
“Reeally?”
With Anne, a $1.8 billion secretary, adviser, housekeeper, and master chef, eating whatever food I wanted was not an impossible dream.
Anyway, it was about time to sleep.
“If you press this button, you will be able to sleep comfortably right away.”
When I pressed the button on the wall, the artificial skylights that had been bright as day slowly went dark in an instant.
Soon, a soft bluish light reminiscent of midnight moonlight came on in the yard, while white noise resembling chirping insects played quietly.
That night, I slept comfortably for the first time in a long while.
* * *
January 8, 2027. Fifteen days remained until the demo service ended.
“Gghk!”
Getting out of the soft bed, I stretched long and hard. Unlike usual, my body felt much lighter and refreshed.
After getting breakfast out of the way with the morning coffee and toast Anne had prepared, I immediately began construction on the infirmary.
In fact, securing medical personnel was one of the trickier problems in building a survival shelter.
For a skilled, young, capable scientist, there was a chance of recruiting them out to the provinces by tempting them with jaw-dropping salaries and unimaginably advanced research equipment.
But skilled young doctors were another matter.
Even when regional hospitals aboveground begged them to come by offering annual salaries of several hundred thousand dollars, they still tried to stay in major hospitals and cities in the capital region because of infrastructure problems and other difficulties.
So if I had tried to recruit qualified specialists to an underground shelter in Gangwon Province, it would have been much harder than recruiting scientists.
Fortunately, there was no need to recruit doctors for my shelter.
Our $1.8 billion, ultra-genius all-purpose android, the Enigma, could handle everything perfectly, from basic treatment to complex surgery.
At this point, it was reasonable to suspect that Enigmas being unable to conduct Research was some kind of balance patch.
Still, Enigmas had plenty to do outside hospital wards, so it would be better to recruit actual doctors if possible.
Anyway.
“I figured you would say that, so I made it last night.”
“Thanks.”
Without thinking too deeply about it, I decided to use the exact layout of a real university hospital for the infirmary.
If I built some half-baked small general hospital suited for a population of seven thousand and ran into trouble later, we would be screwed.
Since there were no doctors' salaries to worry about, I included every department found in a university hospital: Emergency Medicine, Internal Medicine, General Surgery, Orthopedics, Neurosurgery, Thoracic Surgery, Obstetrics and Gynecology, Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, and more.
We did not need to accept countless outpatients like a normal university hospital, so I compromised by reducing the size of the waiting areas and lobby.
The completed comprehensive medical facility covered roughly 213,000 square feet. Its average ceiling height was 3.5 meters, and total construction cost came to $3.47 billion.
On top of that, I bought every piece of medical equipment that might be useful even once in the future, including MRI machines, CT scanners, ultrasound diagnostic equipment, endoscopes, defibrillators, surgical-assist robots, and artificial-kidney dialysis machines.
I would feel much better if the facility could provide any medical service available at a decent university hospital aboveground. I had no idea what disease I might come down with, after all.
“The total cost of the medical equipment and interior installations is $2.5 billion. The total comes to $5.97 billion.”
“That came out fairly cheap.”
That meant I had spent roughly $681 billion so far.
Once I added the money needed to buy over a hundred Juggernauts, satellites, and more Enigmas for actual espionage, the money I truly had left would be much lower.
Still, that was more breathing room than I had expected.
At this level, I could buy one more satellite, expand the rest facility, or increase the stockpiles of raw materials and food...
“Another option is to stockpile large quantities of unrefined crude oil and secure fuel for combat equipment such as helicopters and tanks.”
“Crude oil?”
After considering it for a moment, Anne casually continued.
“With appropriate storage conditions, unrefined crude oil can be stockpiled for decades. Of course, we would need a separate refining facility to process it. However, considering that most modern military equipment requires petroleum-based fuel, it may be worth considering.”
One hundred thousand tons of crude oil, or seven hundred thousand barrels, came to roughly 120,000 cubic meters by volume. At that scale, constructing the storage tanks alone would cost around $6 billion.
That was a price worth considering, so I decided to think about it again once I had more room to spare.
In other words, I did not have room to spare right now.
A radio call came from General Kang, who had been keeping watch outside.
[Administrator, the nearby search operation has begun.]
January 8, 2027. The soldiers had arrived a day earlier than expected.
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