WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: DereKimchi
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Unlimited Money Shelter of the Apocalypse ◈
Chapter 4: A Total of $38.985 Billion
──────
A few things I’d learned so far.
First, the construction function only worked within a certain radius centered on this “terminal.” Its limit seemed to be roughly three kilometers.
Second, its construction method was exactly like the Snap and Voxel systems in a typical sandbox game. You placed a structure on the grid shown on-screen and clicked, and a physical object immediately appeared, ignoring the laws of reality.
For example:
「[Basic Structure] Creating concrete foundation.」
「Cost: $199.60」
Like the one-meter-long, one-meter-wide, ten-centimeter-high concrete block that had just appeared beneath my feet.
“...Wow.”
I didn’t know the first thing about architectural engineering, but even I knew how absurd this was.
Wondering if it might be a hologram, I rapped my fist against the cold concrete surface. Tap, tap. All I got was an ache in my hand bones. It was undeniably real concrete.
Third, structures I built could be demolished and recovered with a single click at any time.
「Recovering concrete foundation.」
Sssh.
The concrete supporting me vanished in an instant, scattering away like pixels.
As I blankly touched the ground that had returned to bare dirt, I let out a deep sigh instead of marveling at it.
Make sure you survive! You can do it!
...Was Earth really about to end?
The possibility that Earth would soon be destroyed was starting to feel more credible than the possibility that I was in the early stages of schizophrenia.
“...”
If so, I didn’t have time to space out.
If I couldn’t be certain, it was more rational to prepare for the worst.
To pull myself together, I muttered to myself for no reason.
“Let’s see. If this is such a detailed game, there should be a separate custom design function.”
Sure enough, the tabs on the left side of the screen included Precision Design and Sandbox Mode. There were also countless preset blueprints provided by the system.
They ranged from cheap, pathetic tin-can shelters that were basically containers roughly buried underground, to luxurious bunkers with thirteen underground floors, self-sustaining ecosystems, and guard posts.
Their prices varied wildly too, from generous $10,000 options to hundreds of millions of dollars.
But there were no shelters in the billion-dollar range. It seemed that shelters beyond that scale had to be built personally.
‘I don’t know anything about civil engineering, but...’
Still, there was one thing I had more confidence in than anyone else.
Construction games.
* * *
“...”
Two hours.
That was how long it took me to realize I was an idiot.
「Warning: Critical design flaw」
⦁ Load calculation error: Insufficient support for upper granite bedrock.
⦁ 97.4% probability that the upper bedrock layer will collapse within 48 hours of excavation beginning.
Rumble!
Along with the dry warning tone, my masterpiece of a blueprint, Home_Sweet_Home_v.7, crumpled in the simulation beyond the screen.
Thankfully, the actual bedrock hadn’t collapsed. It had only happened in the 3D simulation. Still, I couldn’t hide the feeling that my pride had collapsed with it.
I knew the laws of physics would apply to some extent, but I hadn’t expected it to be this strict.
How was a computer science major supposed to calculate things like stress and load distribution?
‘Fuck.’
Just as I was seriously considering using one of the standard blueprints, a notification popped up in the corner of the screen.
「[Construction Contracting Service] is recommended.」
It gave me a slight chill. The timing was too perfect.
Could it read my thoughts?
Then again, this was an insane program that dropped chunks of concrete into reality with a few mouse clicks. Reading a user’s mind didn’t seem impossible.
“...”
Unconcerned with my shriveled heart, the laptop blinked impassively and displayed the message again.
「[Construction Contracting Service] is recommended.」
I stared blankly at the screen for a moment, then moved my cursor and obediently clicked the button as if giving up.
Quick acceptance was one of my few virtues.
I couldn’t even begin building a shelter without its help anyway.
[ Construction Contracting Service ]
⦁ A state-of-the-art AI will manage the entire construction process based on the facility grade to be built.
⦁ Select the facility grade to be built. (Tier 1 to Tier 9)
⦁ [Caution] Construction speed and unit cost increase exponentially by grade.
Facility grades were divided from Tier 1 through Tier 9.
A Tier 9 was an exposed tin-can shelter shaped like a Dragon Ball capsule, where one person could barely crouch inside and live. A Tier 1 was on the scale of a massive underground city capable of housing thousands, complete with a self-sustaining ecosystem and nuclear defense systems.
In other words, if I wanted a bigger shelter, I had to pay more.
After considerable thought, I selected Tier 1. It was a hundred times better to have too much space than to be gasping for room once more people arrived later.
Was it Yemilab in Jeongseon County, Gangwon Province? Anyway, even that research facility a thousand meters underground had made its space large first because they never knew when it would need to expand.
[ Construction Contracting Service: Tier 1 ]
⦁ Uses only cutting-edge construction materials.
⦁ Automated construction begins immediately upon design input.
⦁ Manages all construction processes, including excavation, foundations, floors, walls, and ceilings.
⦁ No additional personnel or equipment is required.
⦁ Unit cost: Approximately $50,000 per cubic meter.
...$50,000?
$100,000 for two clicks?
It seemed like an outrageous rip-off, so I did the math. If I used around $500 billion, half my budget, on excavation and construction, I could carve out a gigantic cube with sides approximately 215 meters long.
Numbers alone didn’t make it easy to picture, but by volume, it would have room to spare even after cramming several enormous Lotte World Towers inside.
Once I realized that, the vicious price tag of $50,000 per click started to sound reasonable.
After all, it said it would use only the finest and most expensive construction materials.
‘Hmm.’
After looking through the system some more, I found the real reason Tier 1 construction was so absurdly expensive.
It was like spending money in a mass-produced mobile game to shorten the timer on a base upgrade. Here too, it seemed I was paying an exorbitant amount to skip civil engineering work with a single click.
Even excavation alone took a full day to remove a single cubic meter at the cheapest Tier 9, while Tier 1 construction finished the instant I clicked.
In other words, the higher the tier, the more I was buying time with money.
‘Okay.’
I understood perfectly.
I gazed steadily at the enormous granite mountain rising majestically before me, its elevation 1,400 meters.
Wasn’t the Cheyenne Mountain Complex, America’s largest nuclear bunker, buried six hundred meters beneath a granite mountain?
I didn’t know about anything else, but my shelter would be far bigger and sturdier than that.
* * *
There was one ironclad rule when playing city-building games: you had to plan the big picture from the very beginning.
Otherwise, you might make everything look nice only to have a sewer pipe burst and cover the entire city in shit water later. Speaking from experience, I knew that for a fact.
Before beginning construction in earnest, I decided to establish the overall plan first.
For the basic shape, I decided to follow the Americans’ approach exactly. They were surely far more expert than an ordinary guy like me in this field.
Public information was scarce, but after spending several hours combing through relevant papers and military materials, I managed to pick out quite a few useful details.
First, like the Cheyenne Mountain Complex, I would excavate a huge arched tunnel inside the rock face, large enough for heavy machinery to travel through.
To block direct fire and shockwaves, the road inside the tunnel would curve several times.
That way, if an enemy fired missiles or direct-fire weapons into the tunnel from outside, the attack would not reach the critical facilities within. It would instead strike the tunnel’s bedrock walls.
Excavating a single arched tunnel 260 meters long with a cross-sectional area of 46 square meters cost $594 million.
...Was this right?
Nearly $600 million had melted away with a few clicks.
It only felt bearable because the amount was so unreal that it seemed like game currency. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have stopped at merely having my hand shake around the mouse.
At the end of the tunnel, I only prepared a spacious area for the first checkpoint. I didn’t think it was time to worry about such details yet.
Next came the shelter entrance. In this case, I decided to install two ultra-heavy blast doors made of low-carbon steel alloy.
【 ■ Defense Equipment List 】
⦁ Mk.IV Ultra-Heavy Blast Door (Low-carbon steel alloy / 2,000 mm thick)
⦁ Unit price: $68 million
⦁ Status: [Available for Purchase]
I bought the most expensive blast door available. A monster appeared in the blueprint, hundreds of tons in weight, nine meters wide, seven meters high, and two meters thick.
I had doubts about whether this lump of steel could move with hydraulic motors. Hell, I doubted it would even budge. But since the system guaranteed it was possible, I decided to accept it.
Something else caught my attention more.
‘So it specifically displays the [Available for Purchase] status...’
Did that mean that after the twenty-nine-day “demo period” was over, I would no longer be able to buy things with a simple mouse click?
There was no way to find out right now, so I focused on designing the shelter’s interior again.
According to the papers, shelters were much more advantageous defensively when dug deep vertically rather than spread wide horizontally. A broad, horizontal shelter had more contact area with the ground, and if one floor broke, all the equipment would be ruined. A deep vertical shelter could endure losing one or two floors.
Then I should dig deep vertically too.
Next, I considered what facilities the shelter needed to survive.
‘The essentials are residential quarters, a dining hall, kitchen, hydroponics room, laboratory, food storage, raw-material storage, armory, ammunition depot, military factory, recreation area, power facilities, maintenance room, archive, control room, and infirmary. Oh, and I can’t forget the battery room...’
That was roughly what came to mind. From there, I divided them by priority for survival.
‘The control room and power facilities.’
Shouldn’t those two be classified as the most critical facilities?
I wouldn’t die immediately if the others disappeared. But if the control room, which monitored internal conditions such as the shelter’s air and pressure, and the power facilities were destroyed, then a shelter with a trillion-dollar budget, humanity’s last ark, whatever it was, would just become a coffin.
So I decided to build the power facilities first.
【 ■ Power Generation Equipment List 】
⦁ Small Modular Reactor (SMR / 300 MW class)
⦁ Unit price: $1.5 billion
⦁ Status: [Available for Purchase]
⦁ Emergency Hydrogen Fuel Cell Generator Set (10 MW class)
⦁ Unit price: $80 million
⦁ Status: [Available for Purchase]
⦁ Large Diesel Emergency Generator
⦁ Unit price: $25 million
⦁ Status: [Available for Purchase]
.
.
.
I never even considered anything except nuclear power for the main generation system. No other energy source could continuously maintain a giant shelter on this scale.
That was why I chose MS-SMRs, molten-salt small modular reactors.
Unlike conventional large light-water reactors, they did not use solid fuel rods, which made them better suited for long-term operation. Since their coolant circulated in a closed loop, they also did not need a continuous supply of enormous amounts of cooling water. More than anything, the equipment could be distributed, making them much more suitable for an underground facility.
Their drawbacks were their comparatively low power generation, complicated equipment due to their use of specialized coolants such as molten salt, the need to replace internal parts every few years, and difficult spent-waste disposal.
The most critical drawback was that the technology had not yet been properly commercialized. Not because it was unfinished, but because it wasn’t profitable.
For developed countries seeking to introduce new nuclear facilities, there was no reason to choose SMRs, which had lower output while demanding more development and construction costs, over proven large light-water reactors.
But my situation was different.
My shelter, built hundreds of meters underground, would have no access to the tremendous amount of cooling water necessary for a light-water reactor. There was a reason nuclear power plants were always built beside the sea.
But an SMR? I only needed to secure enough coolant for the system’s initial charge.
‘Hmm.’
In any case, since the power facilities were the shelter’s heart and most critical installation, I decided to put them in the deepest section.
China’s Jinping Underground Laboratory, CJPL, was built 2,400 meters underground, so I planned to dig even deeper than that.
‘Just in case, I’ll build three of each.’
I generously bought three reactors with a design life of thirty years. A total of 900 megawatts was an insane amount of electricity, enough to run an entire major city of roughly one million people. That would leave plenty of power no matter what facilities I installed in the shelter.
「Purchased three MS-SMR units, 300 MW class.」
「Purchased three sets of SMR spare parts.」
「Purchased hydrogen fuel cell generators and large diesel generators.」
Just in case, I bought three extra sets of the SMRs’ core components. And because they might prove useful, I also bought hydrogen fuel cell generators and large diesel generators.
Of course, they were just empty shells if I left them as they were. Later, I would have to connect buried power lines and finish various complicated processes before they could operate properly.
But establishing the big picture came first, so I put that off.
Let’s see. According to the papers, nuclear power facilities needed containment buildings, transport cranes, specialized shielded storage areas, and so on.
Using more than a dozen papers as references, I excavated a total of 613,000 cubic meters. It included a reactor facility for three 25-meter-class SMRs, a warehouse for related components, an area for transport cranes and specialized shielded storage, and finally, ample room for access routes and safety clearance.
That meant I had spent $30.65 billion on construction alone.
Then I burned another roughly $7 billion on the power equipment itself and plenty of spare parts...
$38 billion?!
I had spent more than half of South Korea’s annual defense budget on a single power facility. Yet I still had plenty of money left.
‘A trillion dollars really is a ridiculous amount.’
The Americans burned through this much money as their annual defense budget?
The sun was already sinking below the horizon. I looked back and forth between the one-touch tent in my bag and my laptop, whose battery was nearly dead, before deciding to return to my lodging.
Camping here without proper cold-weather gear would be a perfect way to freeze to death.
‘Next time I come, I should bring both batteries and Starlink.’
* * *
Choosing not to camp had been one of the wisest decisions of my entire life. If I had descended even a little later, I might really have frozen to death on the mountain trail.
“Brr... brrr...”
I fled into a motel room in town with the heating blasting, plugged chargers into my laptop and power bank with frozen hands, then immediately ran into the bathroom and turned on the hot water.
Even as I thawed my frozen body beneath the steaming water, my mind remained completely consumed by <Shelter Builder>.
‘Should I build something like a guard post outside the tunnel too? But then there’d be no point hiding it in the mountains. Maybe small surveillance cameras and sensors would be better...’
After showering and returning to the bed, I immediately logged into domestic and international online communities.
Before leaving for the mountain, I had set alerts for every keyword I could think of: “apocalypse,” “Shelter Builder,” “bunker construction,” and so on.
I needed to find out whether anyone else in the world was experiencing the same unreal phenomenon as I was.
But the only things appearing in my feed were the usual delusional doomsday posts and survival gear recommendations. Nothing useful turned up.
‘Should I just sleep?’
I had to crawl back up that damned mountain trail early tomorrow morning.
Just as I set my phone alarm and was about to pull the blanket over my head.
Ding!
【 Notification: One new post matching the keyword “Shelter Builder” has been posted. 】
A familiar logo appeared with the notification sound.
It was from an overseas community.
The post’s title read:
[headpats: Review of <Shelter Builder>, a shitty demo game that isn’t even officially released and got shoved down my throat while I was walking down the street.]
Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried
