Chapter 23: The Entire Korean Peninsula Under My Watch
Translator: ShutDoor
As his username suggested, InariSushi1300 held a fairly high position in the chatroom.
As the 1300 appended to his username attested, his rank within the chatroom belonged to the highest caste: ‘imperial family’.
Considering that no one had yet been found in the ‘god’ rank, reserved for people with at least one trillion won, he was clearly among the very highest members of the caste.
He ranked third overall even in the chatroom I frequented, after all.
Of course, to someone of my quadrillion-won King-God-General-Emperor-Admiral-Yi-Majesty-Hyper-Ultra-Fantastic rank, even InariSushi1300 amounted to no more than a ‘fertilizer warehouse’…
Anyway.
Someone like InariSushi was the chatroom’s deputy administrator?
More importantly, how did he know I had more than 33 billion won? Was he just fishing for a reaction?
With that concern in mind, I typed a response.
HangukUniversity188cm80kg18cm330: ???
Message from InariSushi1300: I could tell from that survey you took.
That could not be true. Even before entering the Telegram chatroom, I had asked Ann, an expert in the field, to check it over again and again.
At the time, Ann had concluded that while she could not rule out the possibility of a government agent infiltrating the chatroom, it was absolutely impossible to identify me or pinpoint my actual location within twenty days using only the survey and chat logs.
“…”
Even so, I looked at Ann just in case.
Thankfully, Ann shook her head without the slightest hesitation once again.
“It is nothing more than speculation, so you may disregard it.”
As if to ease my anxiety, Ann immediately explained her reasoning.
“No part of the chatroom survey contained trap questions or secret codes designed to reveal your actual assets.”
“…”
“Even if he inferred it from your reactions to the questions or the choices you selected, it would still be no more than a suspicion.”
So he was fishing for a reaction, right?
At that, I looked back at the screen.
Message from InariSushi1300: Want to know how I figured it out? Act cute for me and I’ll tell you.
Tap tap tap.
HangukUniversity188cm80kg18cm330: Aww, I wanna know…
“…Administrator?”
This was purely a strategic decision to shorten the time needed to achieve my objective. As their leader, I could not foist such a horrible task onto Ann or General Kang. I had at least that much of a conscience.
Message from InariSushi1300: Actually, I slipped a few trap questions into the survey. Well, rather than trap questions, I guess you could call them a little psychological nudging? I majored in psychology lol
HangukUniversity188cm80kg18cm330: Aww…
Message from InariSushi1300: Quit acting cute before I kill you.
HangukUniversity188cm80kg18cm330: I’m sorry.
Message from InariSushi1300: Anyway, unlike everyone else, you didn’t even try to answer the questions set up so that only someone in the hundred-billion-won range could get them right.
Message from InariSushi1300: Most people get curious enough to search online and try to guess one or two, you know.
HangukUniversity188cm80kg18cm330: Why bother trying when I wouldn’t get them right anyway? (I genuinely have no idea)
Message from InariSushi1300: Hmm. So that’s how you want to play it?
Message from InariSushi1300: Then let me ask you something else. Do you really think people cautious enough to join a Telegram chatroom would honestly reveal how much money they have?
Message from InariSushi1300: Unless they’re complete idiots, everyone fudges it a little. They either inflate the amount, lower it, or make an alt account altogether, right?
Message from InariSushi1300: But you didn’t even try anything like that. At first, I thought you were just a moron like that bastard Cham170, but the questions you ask show that your brain works. And someone smart enough to think that far would honestly reveal the amount?
Message from InariSushi1300: That only leaves one answer. You sized up the chatroom before creating your account, then faked a number slightly above average so you wouldn’t stand out.
HangukUniversity188cm80kg18cm330: (18cm jumps in surprise) !!!
Message from InariSushi1300: Well? What do you think of my deduction?
“…”
He certainly had a sharp mind.
Of course, even that was nothing more than circumstantial speculation, but the fact that he had devised a system for reaching the conclusion he wanted from circumstantial evidence alone was itself a sign of intelligence.
Impressed by InariSushi1300’s powers of deduction, I decided to give him the answer he wanted.
Whether I admitted it or not, he would hear only what he wanted to hear anyway.
In that case, I would be better off giving him the answer he wanted and eliminating as many unnecessary variables as possible.
HangukUniversity188cm80kg18cm330: Yesh T_T I got waaay more than 33 billion won T_T
“…Administrator, please.”
Message from InariSushi1300: Then how much did you get? Tell me, and I’ll let you in on something good too.
HangukUniversity188cm80kg18cm330: What ish it?
Message from InariSushi1300: There’s actually a separate group for people with over 100 billion won.
Message from InariSushi1300: We obviously don’t hold real-life meetups or anything. It’s more like we exchange information online.
Message from InariSushi1300: Honestly, there are way too many small fry in the chatroom. Don’t you think?
HangukUniversity188cm80kg18cm330: Yep.
I had felt that the place was run suspiciously poorly, but apparently the Telegram chatroom itself had been a fish trap designed to pick out the genuine big spenders.
After considering it for a moment, I realized there was no need for me to think through this problem myself.
Why should I waste my time on this when an expert in the field was already standing beside me and I was busy enough as it was?
General Kang, who had been waiting nearby, spoke first.
“Simply give me your instructions, Administrator. I will handle the rest.”
“Could you turn the tables and pump him for information instead?”
“I can.”
General Kang answered without hesitation.
“Without divulging any information whatsoever about your identity or the shelter, I will employ deception to extract information solely from the other party.”
“Good. I’ll leave it to you, then.”
“Understood. Leave it to me.”
I handed my phone to General Kang, then decided to redouble my efforts on the shelter’s construction.
Did I truly need to interact with the other survivors?
The apocalypse had not even arrived yet, so it was far too early to consider establishing ties with them.
Leaving aside whether they could be trusted, even if I traded with a trustworthy group, there was nothing I stood to gain at present when I possessed one quadrillion won.
The only thing worth exchanging was information, and I could meet that need by deploying androids to install cameras along the surrounding roads. The reconnaissance satellites went without saying.
In other words, there was no reason to risk contacting the other survivors this early.
‘Hmm.’
Back to construction.
For the communal kitchen and dining halls, all I had to do was follow Ann’s designs exactly.
For the dining facilities, I decided to benchmark the methods major corporations in South Korea and abroad used to operate their employee cafeterias.
When major corporations had 5,000 employees, they staggered meal times and built multiple dining halls capable of accommodating hundreds of people each.
Following their example, I split meal times into thirty-minute intervals so people could eat in shifts, and distributed the dining facilities across several separate halls.
This would make efficient use of the interior space and also prepare us for the possibility of an infectious disease spreading through the shelter.
I constructed five dining halls, each measuring 250 pyeong and capable of accommodating around five hundred people.
That meant 2,500 people could eat at once, so serving meals to several thousand people would not be difficult if I divided meal times into two or three shifts.
Separate areas containing kitchens, dishwashing rooms, food storerooms, and other facilities were also assigned to each dining hall.
A real conglomerate would have offered different menus in every dining hall, but how could that possibly be done during an apocalypse?
People would have to be grateful they were not being served cockroach nutrition bars like in Snowpiercer.
“If I build stairs here, can people come straight down from the residential zone to the dining halls?”
“They can.”
While I was reviewing the dining hall designs and planning the recreation facilities with Ann, General Kang approached me.
“Did you find anything?”
“I have confirmed that the user resides in one of three cities in Gyeongsang: Mungyeong, Yeongju, or Andong. Of those, Mungyeong is the most likely because its numerous mines, including abandoned ones, make it advantageous for utilizing existing infrastructure.”
“???”
What on earth had happened in the past thirty minutes?
“Assuming that the user’s background knowledge and judgment are both highly developed, I worked backward from the conditions suitable for constructing a shelter in North Gyeongsang Province and narrowed down the potential sites.”
So knowing that he was intelligent had actually made it easier to pinpoint his location?
It was not difficult to understand.
Had I not gone out of my way to settle in the granite terrain of Gangwon Province for its superior protection against nuclear attacks? There was no guarantee that someone else could not think of the same things I had.
In fact, someone with similar background knowledge would be more likely to arrive at a similar conclusion.
Put differently, the government could use the same method to find me.
A slight chill ran down my spine.
But how had he learned that InariSushi1300 was in Gyeongsang?
“The user mentioned that himself.”
As if he had been waiting for the question, General Kang handed me the phone.
On the screen, InariSushi had become so outgoing that it was difficult to believe he was the same person from thirty minutes earlier.
Message from InariSushi1300: So where do you live, Junior?
Message from InariSushi1300: For the record, I live in Gyeongsang lol
Junior?
That was far too friendly a form of address. It was the kind of thing an older man might call a younger woman.
General Kang, don’t tell me…
I checked just in case, but thankfully, General Kang had neither acted cute like me nor pretended to be a woman online.
On the contrary, he had behaved exactly like a soldier.
HangukUniversity188cm80kg18cm330: Senior, which university did you study psychology at?
Message from InariSushi1300: Senior? Are you a psychology major too? You little bastard, where do you get off casually pretending you’re younger than me? LMAO
HangukUniversity188cm80kg18cm330: Were you in the psychology department at Yeonje University, by any chance?
Message from InariSushi1300: !!!
HangukUniversity188cm80kg18cm330: I enrolled in 2018.
Immediately afterward, InariSushi1300’s responses became noticeably friendlier.
Message from InariSushi1300: Hmm.
Message from InariSushi1300: Then why does your username say Hanguk University?
HangukUniversity188cm80kg18cm330: Actually, this is what I wanted to show you, Senior.
[ The user’s username has been changed. ]
[ HangukUniversity188cm80kg18cm330 -> YeonjeUniversity188cm80kg18cm330 ]
YeonjeUniversity188cm80kg18cm330: What do you think?
Message from InariSushi1300: You 18-centimeter bastard…!
Of the three powerful ties long recognized in our country, weren’t school ties always named first?
Of course, as befitted a graduate of a top-one-percent university, InariSushi1300 did not simply take General Kang at his word and conducted his own verification.
He grilled him about the names of professors, the locations of buildings, where psychology students usually ate, and even details about campus structures and nearby restaurants that would trip up anyone but a real student.
He even told him to post exactly what he dictated on CampusTalk, an anonymous community accessible only to current students who had verified their enrollment.
18cm: Is Yeonje University better, or did Gojeon University give birth? [TL Note: The second clause substitutes “gave birth” for a near-homophone meaning “is better”.]
Unlike South Korea’s sixty-something generals who fancied themselves young, however, General Kang really was young, and he managed even that.
To summarize his method briefly, he apparently hacked into a dormant account.
Message from InariSushi1300: Wait, Professor Yang is still teaching?
YeonjeUniversity188cm80kg18cm330: Professor Yang is emeritus now, but still teaches brutally demanding classes.
Message from InariSushi1300: That bastard hasn’t changed LMAOOOOOO
After that, everything went smoothly.
Beginning with the fact that he had settled somewhere around Gyeongsang, InariSushi1300 gave General Kang a fair amount of useful information.
There was no way to verify whether it was true, but he claimed to have some connections in the government as well.
Yeonje University was one of South Korea’s most prestigious universities, and InariSushi1300 was estimated to be in his late thirties or early forties, if not older, so there was nothing strange about him having connections in that sphere.
Then General Kang made a suggestion.
“I recommend dispatching personnel in advance to search the area.”
“Why?”
I had expected a vague answer about the benefits of determining a friendly survivor’s location ahead of time, but General Kang’s response went far beyond anything I had imagined.
“While establishing a surveillance network in Gyeongsang, we must observe how the government responds when it detects the presence of another user. We should also determine their contact procedures in advance in case the user turns out to be a plant.”
He explained that this would reveal the criteria the government used to classify survivor groups, the size at which it began treating them as threats or potential partners, and even whether InariSushi1300 himself might be a government spy.
“If we come into contact with the government during the apocalypse phase, this information will prove extremely useful.”
I understood.
“And this applies to regions other than Gyeongsang too, right?”
General Kang nodded silently. Once I saw that, I immediately logged back into the game.
South Korea had nine province-level regions in total, including Jeju Island. Adding the capital, Seoul, brought the number to ten.
Assuming I dispatched ten Enigmas to each region, the total cost would be 180 trillion won.
Until now, I had put off purchasing androids as long as possible out of concern that I might spend too much on them and leave myself unable to construct the shelter’s essential facilities.
But now that the shelter was over seventy percent complete, I calculated that there was no longer any reason to delay.
Naturally, I had no intention of using them only for the initial reconnaissance.
Once the apocalypse phase arrived, these units would become the core personnel assigned to the shelter’s most critical facilities.
“What could you accomplish with a hundred units in total?”
General Kang looked me directly in the eyes and answered without the slightest hesitation.
“You can do anything you can imagine, Administrator.”
“…Really?”
「Purchased 100 P-7 Enigmas.」
Then I would start by bringing the entire Korean Peninsula under my watch.
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