Chapter 133
Chapter 133
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 133
Chapter Title: 69. Message from Space (2)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
No doubt about it.
This voice, this way of speaking.
It's my senior, Baek Seung-hyeon, who went off to China.
But how is he still alive?
China right now, excluding a tiny handful of regions, should all be under monster control.
Especially that wasteland in the video he released—it's literally no different from the Otherworld.
And yet...
Suddenly, a message popped up at the top of the screen.
It was the chat.
They'd added a feature where Viva! Apocalypse! users could chat in real-time while watching the broadcast.
And sure enough, our world's creator chimed in with a bigger, flashier font than anyone else's.
In response to Melon Mask's question, Dongtanmom replied not with his voice, but with a pretty clever gimmick.
A woman's hand—presumably his wife's—held up a sketchbook in front of the screen.
"YES" was scrawled on it in big, bold crayon letters.
The board users' reaction to that was ecstatic.
...
...
As the board heated up, Melon Mask naturally took charge of the proceedings—he who held full authority over our board.
In response, the screen suddenly shook side to side.
Probably shaking his head.
Looks like the video gear is mounted on a helmet or his forehead.
His feelings were soon revealed through another sketchbook page slashed with crayon by what seemed to be Baek Seung-hyeon's wife.
- SHOW TIME
Showtime?
He's gonna show us something?
What else is there to show?
The moment everyone wondered, a deep, low foghorn blast erupted from the speakers.
Bwooooooo—
As the foghorn laid down its bass, Dongtanmom's showtime began.
He suddenly shot up into the sky.
Like Superman.
But the screen soon revealed what had launched him skyward.
A crane.
He'd hung himself from the crane's tip with some stretchy rope or the like.
A close-up showed a bushy-bearded man atop the dizzyingly tall crane, operating it and giving a thumbs-up.
The screen panned back to capture the ash-gray pier and the dock below his feet.
Ships.
Huge container ships, at that.
Probably the flagship of the refugee fleet called the Hope.
Not a single one of the refugees who'd once crowded the decks was in sight.
Just empty decks, as if swept away by the waves.
Dongtanmom's view circled obliquely over the deck, heading toward the ashen city beyond.
His eye level suddenly plummeted, and with a thud!, he landed in the gray city.
The moment his feet hit the ground, zombie howls echoed from all directions.
Dongtanmom's sprint began.
He headed for a half-destroyed warehouse door beyond the pier.
Inside, red eyes snapped open in the darkness, filling the whole place.
Dongtanmom held a grenade front and center, pulled the pin, and lobbed it at the zombies.
Kaboom!
Explosion and dust clouded the screen; when it cleared, boxes presumed to be Chinese combat rations appeared.
Dongtanmom snatched one up.
"Nyam!"
Uttering his patented incurable-disease line.
Then his view rocketed skyward again, revealing hundreds of zombies chasing him, plus grayish monsters even I couldn't identify.
Leaving the receding ruins of doom behind, he turned toward his base.
-Hope
A few people on the deck waved at him.
As he landed on the deck, he covered the screen with his palm and delivered his final line.
"Nyam nyam."
That was the grand finale of Dongtanmom's live.
"......"
Honestly?
It was cool...
Not just my thought.
Dies Irae? Where's that guy?
Live! Apocalypse must have a different mechanism from the usual.
Anyway, that human trash and thousands of other users were going wild.
Pailnet users without chat privileges were flooding our board, worshipping Dongtanmom. One thing was clear.
The whole world was chanting his name.
The board's worst troll had ascended to global influencer status.
Even the world's most famous man, Melon Mask, was no exception.
What is this? This feeling?
This sense of falling behind, being lesser, worthless?
Am I, the Professor, feeling inferior to Dongtanmom?
Well, maybe a little, but there was something weird in that video just now.
Chasing Dongtanmom weren't just zombies.
Mixed in were monsters that looked Otherworld-born, ones I'd never seen before.
Not Otherworld species.
Those only live around rifts and dissipate soon after emerging on Earth.
Monsters, then?
Possible, but they seemed inferior to monsters with their own elegance and superiority. Still, their numbers were significant—about one per ten zombies.
At least 40 mixed in, I'd say.
Above all, they actively hunted humans alongside the zombies.
Monsters kill intruders in their territory, sure, but they're generally static. They don't chase people in packs like that. What the hell were they?
I wasn't the only one wondering.
Extermination type?
New classification?
Never heard of it, but I've been out of the field for ages.
New monsters, types, theories popping up without me knowing? Totally normal.
The show wasn't over yet.
After Dongtanmom's shocking showtime, Melon Mask granted broadcast rights on Live! Apocalypse to the hottest, most talented user among Viva! Apocalypse users worldwide.
For three whole years since the war began...
Our world's board users weren't just corroded by erosion and doom.
They'd been honing their blades in the dark abyss, shaking hands with solitude, waiting for the day to reveal their true worth.
The following broadcasts featured a man living in a balloon, a real naturalist surviving primitively in the heart of Canada's great forests,
A doomed radiation victim living in solitude in a nuke-wiped city devoid of life, an indomitable animator debuting his homemade animation—all users brimming with their own stories and drama, competitively flaunting their colors.
Hard to believe, but another Korean user appeared toward the end.
"Hi~ My name is m9. People say me the Cliff Hanger. Let me introduce my sweet home, The Hope, miracle in Seoul."
m9.
Maybe conscious of Dongtanmom, he'd duct-taped his phone to his big bald head for a first-person view and was spouting Konglish when he suddenly bolted to his tilted apartment, scrambling up it frantically.
They say even a dog learns poetry in three months at school; after over two years in that leaning building, he showed decent agility, but in what looked like a slanted elevator shaft, the phone taped to his dome fell off, rolling down with a "Fuck!" and the broadcast cut off abruptly.
And so the live of the day ended.
As countless users expressed their feelings via chat, communing with global users, Melon Mask shared his thoughts in a dedicated message window.
Melon Mask definitely knows his stuff.
No John_nenon-style tragic heroism, but in tech, creativity—especially community savvy—he outshines John_nenon. He elaborated on the weekly gap.
That beatboxing... he doesn't mean me, right?
Nah.
Anyway, our world's creator—who suddenly dropped fun, excitement, and above all hope like a bomb—had mentioned his dire straits up front.
And it seemed more serious than thought.
The briefly slowed chat exploded again.
Everyone asked why.
...
...
I chimed in too.
But moments after sending, a warning popped up.
Admin account "VIVA BOT014" has suspended your chat function for 24 hours due to "malicious aggro user."
- For early reinstatement, inquire via Help Center.
"What."
What'd I do wrong?
Did they target me?
By some VIVA BOT014 staffer, not even Melon Mask?
But no time to rage.
Before I could submit an angry reinstatement request, Melon Mask dropped his shocking update.
Melon Mask's death loomed.
His self-revealed appearance was no different from a starvation victim's.
Melon Mask granted Dongtanmom special chat privileges.
Unlike regular chat in the upper left, special chat appeared in a golden slot sliding down screen center.
What would our Dongtanmom say?
Nyam nyam?
Highest probability.
But Dongtanmom's actual chat brutally shattered my expectations.
"?"
Not like he had room to talk, freeloading gear off dead guys without paying Melon Mask a dime, but Dongtanmom's words reverberated, tugging heartstrings again after his overwhelming opener.
Melon Mask wasn't immune.
The instant I saw that, I bolted to settings to request a nickname change.
Click!
"Fuck..."
While I strayed briefly, Live! Apocalypse entered a new act.
The dim, weightless void.
In the pitch-black cosmos where discolored blood droplets still floated, Melon Mask took advice from Dongtanmom and board users alike, scheming survival with his scant resources.
This cosmic-scale showtime? "Save Melon Mask" fits best.
< 69. Message from Space (2) > End