Chapter 3
Chapter 3
Hyuncheol’s gaze instinctively traveled up and down the dynamically flexing muscles exposed beneath the clothing, and he soon saw the orc’s face twist in irritation.
“What are you staring me up and down for?!”
It was a rough voice that sounded almost like a growl. Then the orc took a large step toward Hyuncheol. His behavior and reaction were like that of a thug, but perhaps because of the massive green muscles writhing with primal power, the pressure felt more like facing a wild beast.
“A-Ah. Sorry.”
Hyuncheol barely managed not to freeze and force those words out.
Fortunately, it seemed the orc merely had a violent temper and wasn’t actually some gangster or criminal.
“Tch! Watch yourself.”
After throwing out that warning, the orc simply brushed past him and continued on his way. Honestly, the greater fault in this trouble lay with Hyuncheol. Even by his own standards, staring openly at a stranger was rude.
But Hyuncheol wasn’t in any state to reflect on that. He blankly watched the orc’s retreating figure before turning around again and examining the other pedestrians.
Most were ordinary humans like Hyuncheol. But mixed among them were people with appearances that could never be explained as simple racial differences. There was a young woman with pointed ears rising upward, a middle-aged man with furry animal ears and a tail, and a dwarf whose face was covered in a thick beard.
They were fantasy races that existed only in imagination back on Earth.
If this had merely been several decades in the past, then although it might take a long time, he could eventually return to the world he knew. But another world? The thought made Hyuncheol dizzy.
After somehow making his way back to the room, Hyuncheol sat down in the chair and grabbed his head.
It was difficult to accept this reality. But his attempt at denying reality did not last long. An intense hunger struck him, forcibly dragging him back to his senses.
Another world or not, my stomach clock still works just fine.
Being dropped into an unfamiliar world without any explanation was certainly despairing, but it had already happened. What he needed to do now was not bury his head in the ground, but think about how to survive here.
And filling this hunger immediately would be the first step.
Once he calmed down a little, he realized the situation wasn’t the absolute worst. He hadn’t wanted it, but he had an identity and a place to stay. And in a way, perhaps he should even consider himself fortunate simply for not being restrained and still being free.
Hyuncheol searched the room for something to eat. But even after rummaging through the drawers, refrigerator, and kitchen area, he found nothing.
What’s with this Ras guy?
There were people who never cooked at home and always ate out. But unless someone literally went to restaurants for every meal, there should at least have been canned food, bread, or snacks. The place was too clean. It lacked the traces of everyday living that naturally accumulated wherever a person lived.
Doesn’t seem like he’s rich enough to eat out for every meal...
He hadn’t yet checked the full extent of his finances, but simply living alone in a small room inside an old apartment building didn’t exactly give the impression of wealth.
After thinking for a moment, Hyuncheol considered the possibility that the man had moved in recently. That would explain why the essentials were there while the miscellaneous belongings that naturally accumulated through daily life were almost nonexistent.
But he was too hungry to think any deeper, and even aside from that, figuring out how to survive in this unfamiliar world was the greater priority. Hyuncheol stood up and left the room again.
In the corridor, he passed a man with pointed yellow animal ears and a tail, pretending not to notice as he continued down the stairs. He didn’t know what percentage of the population these races made up, but encountering another one immediately after leaving the room made it sink in again that this was not Earth.
As expected, there’s nothing like a convenience store around here.
He wandered the streets near the apartment searching for a suitable shop, but the place was different from the streets he knew. It didn’t seem like he would be able to solve meals by casually buying instant noodles or ready-made food and eating at home like usual.
There were restaurants. One was located directly on the first floor of the apartment building. The sign said “Restaurant,” which made it feel somewhat intimidating, but the place itself looked suitably old and somewhat dirty, and the clothing of the people coming and going didn’t appear particularly luxurious, so it probably wasn’t expensive.
Still, he didn’t feel like entering. There were too many people.
On Earth, that wouldn’t have mattered much, but the thought that all those people were residents of another world made him instinctively shrink back.
Of course, if he had no other options, he would have to return eventually. Fortunately, after walking a bit farther, he found a bakery.
Jingle.
The exterior of the shop, with its crudely hand-painted wooden signboard, large glass windows, and walls built from brick and wood, strongly evoked the past. But the interior itself didn’t feel especially alien.
It was undeniably somewhat old-fashioned, but at the same time, it felt like there could easily be a neighborhood bakery like this somewhere in Korea.
“That’ll be 4 Del.”
The bakery owner was a plump middle-aged woman with a kind face. Her warm smile eased some of the tension Hyuncheol had been carrying.
The money in his wallet turned out to be worth far more than he had expected. Since there were no small breads apart from pastries, he had chosen a fairly large loaf, yet it only cost about one-hundredth of the money he possessed.
Thank goodness.
He truly felt relieved. At the very least, it meant he had enough time to gather information and search for work without starving immediately.
Afterward, Hyuncheol found a grocery store, bought a carton of milk, and returned home.
Looking down at the milk carton inside the paper bag, Hyuncheol felt strangely conflicted. Since the world seemed so old-fashioned, he had expected milk to come in glass bottles. But although the design and writing were unfamiliar, the fact that it came in the same kind of paper carton he often saw at supermarkets made this distant world feel slightly more familiar.
Still, judging by the rustling yellow paper bag, this place definitely felt more old-fashioned than Earth.
But don’t milk cartons require plastic coating? If they can do that, shouldn’t they be able to make plastic bags too?
As he walked back to the room, he thought about it. Maybe nobody had simply come up with the idea yet.
And then another thought occurred to him.
What if he made use of that idea himself?
Plastic bags were undeniably convenient. There was no way they wouldn’t succeed. In his own world, that had already been proven.
Environmental pollution is a little concerning, but even if not by me, someone would eventually invent them anyway. So it should be fine, right?
As he climbed the musty stairs of the old apartment building, Hyuncheol absentmindedly imagined himself becoming rich. He didn’t even know what he would spend the money on, but merely imagining piles of cash stacked up made him feel happy.
Click.
But once he entered the room, shut the door, sat down in the chair, and thought carefully, it no longer seemed realistic.
At best, he only had enough living expenses to avoid starving for a while. He certainly didn’t have the massive capital needed to build factories.
Of course, there was a saying that businesses weren’t started solely with one’s own money. But whether through loans or investments, one still needed connections or collateral. As a stranger from another world, Hyuncheol naturally had neither.
Using unfamiliar dishes and a strange knife in the kitchen, Hyuncheol cut up the bread and ate it. It wasn’t especially delicious, but it also wasn’t much different from the bread he had eaten before, which oddly reassured him.
After finishing his meal, he left the room again.
He had already gone out and come back twice, and he was exhausted in many ways, so he briefly considered simply resting. But his sense of crisis outweighed his fatigue, and he felt he had to gather information somehow.
After wandering around the area for a while, secretly checking the clocks inside the shops along the street, Hyuncheol returned home shortly before it became dark.
He hadn’t gained any remarkable information, but there was still value in what he had done. By personally observing the geography and scenery around him, he had managed to imprint at least part of this once-vague and unfamiliar other world into his mind.
The next morning, Hyuncheol awoke in a daze and stared in confusion at the still-unfamiliar room before belatedly remembering the previous day’s events. Smacking his lips, he climbed out of bed.
After washing up, he toasted the leftover bread from yesterday in a frying pan and ate a simple breakfast while considering how to gather information.
What surprised him was that despite this world seeming at least half a century behind modern Earth, there was still a gas stove, albeit an old-fashioned one.
Well, I guess city gas already existed fifty years ago?
He wasn’t exactly an expert on detailed modern history, and there was no guarantee this world had developed in the same way Earth had, so perhaps it wasn’t that strange after all.
In any case, today he decided to visit a library.
Since he had suddenly been dropped into an unfamiliar world, he needed access to organized information as quickly as possible. Without computers or the internet, books were the obvious answer. And a library was the place where books could be accessed in large numbers at low cost.
He wandered around for roughly two hours.
After asking the bakery where he had bought bread yesterday whether there was a library nearby and learning its approximate location, he eventually managed to arrive by feeling his way through the unfamiliar streets.
Not bad.
Hyuncheol looked up at the four-story building standing directly beside the road alongside other commercial buildings. It lacked the flashy architecture of modern libraries, but at this scale, the collection likely had to be fairly extensive.
Perhaps because of the time, there weren’t many people around. Climbing the concrete stairs at the entrance, he saw that the heavy wooden double doors stood open, giving a clear view inside.
The first thing he noticed was the guard with a dog’s head.
His head above the neck was literally that of a dog.
He wore something resembling a police uniform. With his elongated snout tightly closed and dark brown eyes staring directly at him, Hyuncheol felt pressured.
It seemed to be one of those races called beastmen in genre novels.
Animal ears and tails like the residents he had seen in the apartment were one thing, but an actual animal head was on an entirely different level of alienness. If he had come here with nothing more than casual curiosity about reading books, he might have turned around and left immediately.
Avoiding the guard’s sharp gaze, Hyuncheol headed toward the counter at the side.
“How may I help you?”
The librarian behind the counter was an ordinary young woman. Feeling oddly relieved, Hyuncheol asked how to use the library.
“First, you’ll need to make a library card.”
It wasn’t very different from libraries on Earth. Aside from the fact that making a library card cost 2 Del, usage was free. Books could be borrowed for three days, with a limit of four books at a time.
The explanation wasn’t complicated, so Hyuncheol quickly memorized it, left the counter, and began using the library.
As he looked over the shelves densely packed with books and the volumes filling them, Hyuncheol briefly felt overwhelmed. There were simply too many choices, making it difficult to know where to start.
I should probably start with geography.
He felt that before he could build up knowledge piece by piece, he first needed to understand the shape of the land beneath his feet.
Geography wasn’t exactly a rare field, so Hyuncheol easily found the section containing related books. He ignored titles like The Geography of Kabatan and The Geography of Laudor, names of places he didn’t recognize, and searched for something that could show him the world as a whole.
This should do it.
He didn’t have to search long.
There, sitting plainly on the shelf, was a book titled The Geography of the World.
And barely a few pages after opening it, he found a world map.
At that moment, he felt the last remnants of his hope shatter completely.
The shape of the land printed there was utterly different from Earth.
Nor was it some simplified fantasy map from a novel. It was an extremely realistic and modern map, complete with latitude and longitude lines, packed with terrain details, borders, and place names printed in tiny text.