Chapter 8: A Fucking Safe Base
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 8: A Fucking Safe Base
The Safe Base was a mode well worth investing in.
"Wow..."
The Safe Base, which was only 5 pyeong, had expanded to 20 pyeong.
Not that my cramped room itself actually grew to 20 pyeong, though.
[You can expand the range of the Safe Base.]
Within the 20-pyeong limit, I could expand or contract it at will.
For now, I left it as it was without expanding it further.
While a larger Safe Base wasn't a bad thing, expanding it beyond this room meant I might have to deal with unwanted noise pollution again.
Plus, I could now visually see the boundaries of the area.
"Ah, it can go up into the sky too."
Although it was measured in pyeong, it seemed to calculate the area based on a cube of width, length, and height.
If I wanted to, it didn't seem impossible to expand the Safe Base to encompass this entire building.
Not that I had any reason to do so right now.
"Water and electricity... now that's huge."
The reason I had thought the Safe Base was an insanely broken cheat mode ever since Level 1 was because it solved the food problem.
Now that it was Level 2, it solved water, electricity, and even heating.
If you had to pick one of the biggest barriers to entry for newbies in a zombie apocalypse, food was a given, but the pressure of power outages and water shutoffs was right up there.
Without water, washing aside, you can't even drink.
People who have never played survival apocalypse games probably only realized for the first time during a real zombie apocalypse that you're absolutely fucked if you just drink any random water.
Or maybe they realized it after traveling to a developing country.
Either way, the moment the water gets cut off, you realize what a blessing it is to be able to drink purified water.
And a power outage is actually a minor issue compared to a water shortage.
After all, no crazy bastard would live with the lights on in a world crawling with zombies day and night.
Of course, if you've secured your base perfectly and blacked out the windows so no light leaks out, living with the lights on is perfectly fine.
By that point, you'd probably have a generator set up anyway, so a power outage wouldn't even matter.
The problem before that, however, is not the darkness when the power goes out, but the inability to use the electrical appliances in your base.
Most notably, the refrigerator.
In a world where food is everything, preserving that food is also a critical issue.
If you go through all the trouble of getting meat but have to leave it out at room temperature, it'll spoil in no time.
And then there's the weather.
It's fine right now because the weather is moderately cool, but in the summer, just sitting still will feel like hell.
In the winter, freezing to death wouldn't be surprising either.
It solves all of those problems.
You have to pay a price in Coins, but if paying that price lets you enjoy a luxurious resort life inside your base, what is this if not a cheat mode?
It doesn't even cost that many Coins.
[Water Activation Cost: 24 Hours / 2 Coins]
[Electricity Activation Cost: 24 Hours / 2 Coins]
[Heating Activation Cost: 24 Hours / 2 Coins]
This might only be because the Safe Base is currently just a small studio apartment of about 5 pyeong.
If the area increases, the cost might go up too.
And 6 Coins a day might actually be a tedious and difficult price to pay for ordinary users.
Hunting six Level 1 zombies every single day is no easy feat in a zombie apocalypse.
There are even users in the zombie apocalypse who survive without hunting zombies at all, so how much harder would it be in actual reality?
Some people even view killing zombies as murder.
Not that their opinions matter to me, though.
I didn't activate them right away.
The water and power hadn't been cut off yet.
The heating and hot water were still working fine.
More than that, I was curious.
When the power and water actually got cut off, or if the water pipes burst, how exactly would the water flow?
"I'm definitely leveling up the Safe Base no matter what."
This was a mode I had to get to Level 10, no matter what.
I came to that realization after checking the mode details once I finished looking over all the Level 2 benefits.
"What the fuck? Why did a mode level go up when I didn't even upgrade it?"
I knew Safe Base and Base Invincibility were linked modes, but I never expected a separately numbered mode to level up without me spending points on it.
Is this even allowed?
For a second, I wondered if it was a bug.
But no matter how I looked at it, both Base Invincibility and Safe Base had become Level 2.
I hadn't lost 2 points, and since I only had 1 point to begin with, the only logical explanation was that the system inherently linked Safe Base and Base Invincibility together.
"Fucking awesome."
Getting it for free was one thing, but the Level 2 mode effects themselves were absolutely insane.
"An extra 2 to all stats, plus a random 1-level stat boost for 6 hours after waking up? This is basically a sleep buff."
It even came with an effect that went far beyond what the name "Base Invincibility" implied.
The buff gained from staying at the base still applied even when I went outside.
Right now, it was just a random Level 1 boost to either Strength, Agility, Stamina, or Mana, but what would happen if I leveled it up further?
Once maximized, my stats could potentially go beyond Level 20.
And since it applied independently of the Safe Base's range, I could receive the effects of Base Invincibility even outside my home, as long as I stayed within that roughly 20-pyeong area.
Though 20 pyeong wasn't that large of an area, it was great because there was no height limit toward the sky.
Even though I was just inside my house, the feeling was completely different.
I could instantly feel my body growing lighter and stronger.
Of course, compared to my stats on the server I used to play on, this was still far from enough.
Still, it was much better than my base stats.
Any lingering regret about not unlocking a hunting-type mode vanished; with the random Level 1 stat boost secured, this was an incredibly satisfying choice.
---
8:00 AM.
When I arrived at Seongsu Apartment for "work," I saw a bustling crowd of people already hard at work.
People everywhere were busy piling up anything that could serve as a barricade, while tattooed try-hards—who apparently didn't feel the cold, given how they kept their sleeves rolled up to show off their arms—strutted around ordering everyone else around.
I always noticed this, but in situations like this, it was always only the men doing the physical labor.
In normal reality, that wouldn't be much of an issue.
It was a fact that there was an inherent difference in physical build between men and women.
Even in a zombie apocalypse, men naturally start with 1 higher Strength, so it made sense for men to handle the heavy lifting.
But this was a world where "modes" had been introduced.
While some people didn't seem to have modes, modes didn't discriminate by gender. There were bound to be women with strength-related modes and men with healing modes.
In other words, it would be far more efficient to divide people based on their modes rather than their gender.
Of course, those bastards probably didn't care about any of that.
They surely had other reasons for separating men and women.
"Alright, alright! Hunting Squad, over here!"
Work was scheduled to start at 9:00 AM.
The crowd moved according to the squads assigned by those tattooed try-hards, who had gathered everyone's information beforehand and given themselves the bullshit title of the "Executive Committee."
Putting aside my prejudices, they might actually be a decent group in their own way.
Coercive or not, getting a group of over a hundred people to organize and unite this quickly was no easy task.
Especially in the early days of the apocalypse.
People who hadn't even shed their pre-apocalypse mindsets, willingly moving under someone else's control?
And under a bunch of young, obvious punks, no less?
It might look like they shared some deep mutual interest, but they were really just sticking together because each side had something they wanted.
And the moment those mutual interests collapsed, a very entertaining event would unfold.
That was why I willingly headed toward the Hunting Squad.
My reason for participating in this event wasn't to watch some scripted play put on by programmed NPCs, but to witness the raw, living conflict of real human beings.
To feel emotions within it, to play along...
How incredibly fun.
That didn't mean I could neglect my own tasks, though.
Watching was strictly for entertainment; I still had to keep my own survival in mind.
Just because I had a cheat mode and some breathing room didn't mean a zombie apocalypse was a place where you could survive by just slacking off.
I had to carve out my own time to complete quests and gather points.
[Tutorial Quest 2]
- Defeat Zombies (★★)
- 0 / 10
- Reward: 2 Points
[Repeat Quest 1-1]
- Defeat Zombies (★)
- 0 / 200
- Reward: 1 Point
This was the real reason I volunteered for the Hunting Squad.
Well, rather than volunteering, I had simply submitted a mode that practically made me a volunteer.
"Is that really a broken mode?"
"The Zom-Meat Mode is a tier-1 mode. We have to keep that guy alive no matter what."
I overheard a conversation between one of the tattooed thugs and a man in his 20s as I walked past.
That guy was probably someone who had played a fair share of zombie apocalypse games.
That was exactly what I was aiming for.
Anyone who played zombie apocalypse games would know just how incredibly useful a mode that harvested meat from zombies was.
In a game, it might have just been a controversial retexture mod that people bitched about, but in reality, it was a mode that literally conjured meat out of thin air.
The Hunting Squad was divided into five groups, and in my group, I spotted a familiar face once again.
"Oh? Hey there!"
"..."
The woman who had sucked my dick scowled and turned her head away.
At this point, surely this had to be fate.