The Apocalypse Erotica Writer
Woojin spotted the item sitting on the counter near the exit and sprinted toward it like a man possessed.
Birthday present acquired!
It was a women's handbag. A luxurious piece that the middle-aged zombie woman must have carried around. As he picked it up by the handle and turned it over in his hands, his eyes suddenly widened.
"Whoa!"
The brand tag read Hermès. A luxury label from the old world. Even counterfeits used to trade for 100 to 200 thousand won, while authentic ones started at a minimum of one million. These days, plenty of good bags were still being made, but they could never match the emotional weight of the originals. It was the same principle as why paintings by long-dead masters sold for far more than those by living artists. And Hermès? It was basically the Picasso of the fashion world. If the condition was decent, this thing could easily fetch tens of millions.
"But that's not happening here."
The reason was simple. None of them could actually tell a fake from the real thing. The craftsmanship had been so precise that even people back then struggled to tell them apart. There was no way modern survivors, decades removed from that era, could do any better. Besides, you needed constant exposure to develop an eye for it. Unlike the old world, where foreign cars cluttered the streets and almost everyone owned at least one or two luxury items despite constantly complaining about the prices, people living in the apocalypse had no frame of reference. If someone told them "this is fake," they'd just say, "Oh, really?" If told "this is authentic," they'd reply, "Oh, really?"
It had gotten so bad that buyers would claim something was counterfeit to drive the price down, while sellers insisted it was genuine to jack it up. Neither could actually explain why. That was the reality of the secondhand luxury market. These days, if there was no authenticity certificate, people just casually treated it as fake and traded it that way.
"Hmm… that's a shame."
The disappointment Woojin felt wasn't about the bag. It was about his Spirit Brain. If every single life he'd lived had been fully absorbed into his main body's memories, there would be nothing in the world he didn't know. He would have become an expert in countless fields. But cramming eons' worth of memories into a human brain was impossible. The Spirit Brain trait that let his main body survive without issue didn't simply store those experiences in some other mental space. It had completely severed them from the main body and isolated them in a virtual realm.
As a result, memories that should have become part of his lived experience instead felt like watching a movie about someone else's life. From the perspective of a third party.
To put it simply: just because you watched a martial arts movie didn't mean you could suddenly fight. Just because you watched a movie about music didn't mean you could compose. No way in hell.
That was Woojin's current state.
"Well. Even if that wasn't the case, certain information was restricted anyway."
Like censorship. For example, he would gain basic information about the avatar and the relationships of people connected to it, but any details that could influence the dimension where his main body existed remained locked away no matter how hard he tried to access them. He was dropped into the middle of a life already in progress, and he couldn't control the body directly.
Take the time he had become an alien, for instance. Yes, one of those big-headed, short-bodied species. The avatar had been an engineer who built spaceships, but while Woojin knew that fact, he had no idea how the ships were actually constructed.
The conclusion? He hadn't become some omnipotent being who knew and could do everything. He'd simply been a frog that finally escaped its well.
Still… it's better than nothing.
"Let's see here…"
He lifted the bag with both hands and examined it closely. It had accumulated some dust and slight discoloration, but the overall condition was excellent. No scratches or tears anywhere. He unzipped it and pulled out the contents one by one. As expected, most of it was cosmetics. There was a rustling sound as he pulled out a small plastic bag.
It was a pack of condoms.
"Well, well. Look at this lady. Carrying condoms around with her?"
What wife would pack condoms in her bag to use with her husband? She must have had a lover on the side during her lifetime.
She was quite the wild one.
Woojin let out a stunned chuckle. Then again, with a face and body like hers, even as a married woman, the men around her probably wouldn't have left her alone.
"This must be the store key."
A single key had come out from one of the inner pockets. He'd been ready to smash the front door if necessary, but now that wouldn't be needed. If this was the key to the main entrance… maybe he could turn this place into a personal outpost? He could stop by occasionally to visit our pretty auntie too.
"Oh, I knew it! I knew it had to be real!"
Inside the final zipper compartment, he found a piece of paper. It was the authenticity certificate. The color was so faded he couldn't tell if it had originally been yellow or had simply yellowed with age. After carefully examining it, Woojin folded it back up with delicate hands and put it away.
"In a way, this is worth more than the bag itself."
If the bag itself was worth ten percent of the value, this scrap of paper accounted for the other ninety. The difference in price with or without it was massive.
Woojin was about to toss the empty bag into his inventory when he paused.
"Hmm… should I test it out?"
He had planned to grab everything quickly and examine it properly once he got home, but seeing the Hermès bag still bearing the clear marks of time made him curious about how effective the skill would be. It was supposed to break down foreign substances. How clean would it get?
"Yeah. Let's try it now."
His body felt grimy anyway. Using it as an area skill should take care of everything at once.
The moment Woojin focused his will to activate the skill, a circular range formed around his body. About five meters. Pretty wide. He could also freely move the center point anywhere he wanted. After playing around with the position out of curiosity, he centered it over the counter.
"Clean."
The moment he uttered the activation word—
"Whoa…!"
Woojin's eyes flew wide open. A magical scene was unfolding before him. The dust piled on the counter vanished completely. The counter itself became spotless, as if brand new, while rust that had eaten away at the edges crumbled and disappeared. The luxury bag underwent the same transformation. Dust, discoloration, and stains from years of neglect slid away, revealing vibrant, vivid colors.
The sight of everything within a five-meter radius around Woojin regaining its original clarity was so beautiful it bordered on sacred.
"Ah…"
By now, Woojin could feel the changes in his own body. The dried blood crusted on his shoulder was gone. His greasy hair and skin felt fresh and clean. The sticky mixture of semen and love juices that had coated his lower body disappeared, leaving him refreshed. It wasn't just the surface, either. Even the inside of his mouth felt pristine. When he ran his tongue across his front teeth, they had that satisfying squeaky-clean texture like he'd just brushed. True to the name Perfect Clean, even unpleasant odors had been completely erased. All that remained was the faint, natural scent of a human body.
It felt refreshing. His whole body felt lighter.
"Wow… this is practically S-class, isn't it?"
He'd vaguely thought of it as a convenient cleaning ability, but this was on another level. This wasn't a skill. This was straight-up magic. Magic.
He picked up the luxury bag, now looking like new, and couldn't hold back his laughter.
"Hahaha. Hahahahaha!"
This was incredible. Absolutely insane. It was the kind of ability anyone would covet.
"Hahaha! Haha, ha…"
He'd been swelling with the urge to brag about this amazing skill to someone when a sudden thought made his laughter fade.
Once I get back to the Shelter, I'll just be a cleaning shuttle anyway.
Damn it!
He opened the counter drawer. The inside had been cleaned as well. It was truly mind-blowing.
Anyway.
"Time to head back. It's getting too late. It'll be evening soon."
No matter how bold someone was, everyone returned to the village before sunset. Just as Woojin had experienced today, even though the Developed Land was a gold mine that sustained their livelihoods, it was still a place filled with danger. Humans relied most heavily on vision, after all. And even beyond that, farming during the day meant simply wandering around and looting empty houses. At night, it turned into solo exploration of abandoned buildings. That was a completely different story.
The former was a means of survival. The latter was pure horror.
The wind! Even though there was nowhere for it to come from! The curtains would move! The door! Even though it was closed! It would suddenly open! Things you could brush off during the day would make your heart jump at the slightest sound of an animal's footsteps once night fell.
Unexpected danger usually struck when you were already that tense.
Anyway.
Since he'd already taken the items from the warehouse, he'd have to come back another day to collect everything else. Unlike when he'd snuck in like a petty thief through the narrow window, Woojin proudly opened the glass door at the entrance and stepped out. Then he used the key he'd found in the handbag to lock it with a satisfying click. The feeling of having his own secret base was incredible.
The moment he got home, the accumulated exhaustion hit him like a truck. Woojin collapsed onto his bed and fell asleep instantly.
When he opened his eyes, it was morning.
"Huuuaaaam…"
He yawned as he got up and scratched his butt vigorously. Maybe because his body was in better shape now, even scratching his ass somehow felt cool. He grinned to himself. Until just yesterday, everything he did had looked pathetic.
Crack. Pop.
Woojin rolled his stiff neck from side to side, then peeled open an energy bar, stuck it in his mouth, and sat down in front of the computer. There was one thing he needed to do first.
Make every novel he'd ever serialized private!
He logged into the Intranet and entered Nopia. When he clicked on his account info, the settlement amount appeared.
Sixty-three thousand won. That was all the money he'd earned in a year. He'd been getting about ten readers per chapter… It was a miracle he hadn't dropped the pen. A complete miracle.
Even while surviving on a single energy bar a day, he'd never withdrawn the settlement money. It felt too precious. In reality it was a significant sum for him, and while it was a small amount for a year's work, those roughly sixty thousand coins were like a trophy. Proof that he was making at least some money from his novels.
"It's strange. Even with so few readers, the comment ratio is insanely high."
Just looking at the previous chapter, there were seven comments. The brave warriors who had endured until the bitter end. Maybe to them, he was a love-hate author. Perhaps they'd missed the right time to drop the story and were now stuck following along, crying and eating mustard at the same time, just to see how it would end.
Private. Private. Private. Private!
He set all his previous works to private. Then he submitted deletion requests for them. Only after that did his heart feel lighter. After experiencing countless lives and realizing just how terrible his old novels had been, those previous works were nothing but dark history to him now.
Still, having too big a gap between old and new works would be problematic. For his latest story, he left the individual chapters private but wrote a notice to say goodbye to the readers who had followed him this far.
Thank you for sticking with my lacking writing. Thanks to all of you, I was able to keep going. I'll return with a new work… I really hope you'll read it again.
As he wrote while recalling the past days, he felt tears welling up. He felt both pitiful and proud of himself for stubbornly continuing to write despite having almost no real experience and shallow imagination. He felt grateful and sorry toward the readers who had followed him even while leaving mountains of criticism because of his shortcomings as a writer.
After finishing the notice, Woojin drank a glass of water, then cracked his knuckles.
"My dear readers. I'm going to write something truly amazing for you now."
His eyes sparkled as he clicked on New Work.