Chapter 17

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Translator: MadScientist

Chapter: 17

Chapter Title: Wall Valley Pill

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Dukcheon Granary.

I'd raided an old abandoned shop and scored five sacks of frozen grain.

Then I boiled them all up into porridge.

Barley porridge, rice porridge, bean porridge, you name it.

A real lavish spread.

The gallery folks took one look and called it dog food not fit for a mutt,

but in this ruined world, this was a feast that put even the finest full-course meals to shame.

I couldn't even remember the last time I'd eaten grains from the five cereals.

"Looks like they stockpiled it to sell, but when the apocalypse hit, the owners all died off and it just got left behind to freeze solid..."

As much as I hate to say it, if there's one upside to a frost zombie apocalypse over a regular zombie one, it's stuff like this.

Food scattered everywhere stays preserved in the ice.

Mother Nature herself is one giant freezer.

"This is so good... I'm gonna cry..."

Whether from joy or sorrow, I didn't know, but I shoveled down the barley porridge I'd slaved over anyway.

I could've just dumped it all into one big mixed porridge, but I went out of my way to make separate batches just to savor the victories.

Scoring five whole sacks of grain? That's some seriously precious shit.

"The number of trips I made back and forth to haul all this."

No way my military backpack could hold it all at once, so I had to make multiple runs.

A cart would've cut the trips down, but breaking into that shop at the village entrance made it clear that wasn't feasible yet.

Crunch.

'The mutants are looking rougher than before.'

I chewed on the texture of a bug corpse mixed into the barley porridge as I pondered.

The mutants were tougher now than when I'd escaped that city overrun by them back in the day.

Sure, Type 2 mutants with those stretchy arms existed even then, but they were rare as hen's teeth.

Now? I spot one right at the village entrance.

Can I just chalk that up to bad luck?

No way. Not a chance.

In an apocalypse like this, letting your guard down means death.

Always plan for the worst, and the worst I'd come up with was what the gallery folks had mentioned: mutant evolution.

"The mutants have evolved. They might've started out primitive, but after conquering the world, they've clearly undergone some separate development... or evolution."

I figured there was one main cause.

Ether.

That stuff they call the world's primal essence.

Humanity, the former owners of this world, never tapped into it once, but these mutants—latecomers to the party—are somehow making full use of the mysterious resource.

They're not advancing through science and tech like we did, but through some wildly different bio-engineering path, achieving super-evolution...

"This is so damn unfair. Here I am scrambling for food and martial arts, barely enough time as it is, and those bastards are light-years ahead?"

I've got to grind exploration, foraging, farming, fishing, hunting, training, and tech development, while they just evolve endlessly.

Feels like a salty vet bullying a total noob.

"Tch... nothing for it."

The injustice burned, but what could I do?

In a world like this, getting screwed is par for the course. Wasting time whining meant falling further behind—noobs like me have to hustle twice as hard just to catch the pioneers' shadows.

And to do that, I've got one play.

"What else? Gallery grinding, obviously."

Gulp.

I scraped up the last spoonful of pine nut porridge and fired up the gallery.

Top posts were all about me, as expected:

-[Newbie <----- Where the fuck did this asshole go???]

-[Analyzed the mutants from Newbie's latest live stream.]

-[Newbie's world is seriously fucked, didn't realize it was this bad]

Yeah, all me.

Anger Control Expert, living up to her name as always.

But amid the usual tirades, something caught my eye.

Unyielding Magic Sword: Wall Valley Pill? What's that?

Anger Control Expert: Wall Valley Pill is Wall Valley Pill, what else? FFS

Unyielding Magic Sword: Whoa, calm down calm down. Seriously, what is it? We don't have that in my world.

Anger Control Expert: What kinda bullshit is that? How can there not be Wall Valley Pi— ...there is.

Suddenly, her rage cooled off like ice water.

Anger Control Expert: Fuck, your world really is trash. How can there be no Wall Valley Pills?

Wait, what the hell even is a Wall Valley Pill?

Sounds vaguely familiar...

But no guarantee it's the same thing I know.

Somebody tell me!

As frustration wracked my body,

Colorless Bird: Here you go, sweetie!

Unyielding Magic Sword: Master!!!

My sex friend wagon, the succubus queen, had arrived.

Unyielding Magic Sword: Ooooh, there's an item like that?

Colorless Bird: Yup! Check the link below for details!

Colorless Bird: https://gall.dcinside.com/godofmartialartsgallery/board/lists/?id=martialarts/&no=124437&exception_mode=recommend&page=1

Unyielding Magic Sword: What's this?

Colorless Bird: An old compilation of Wall Valley Pill recipes someone put together!

"Whoa."

My eyes went wide.

"There's a way, huh?"

A way to slash non-training time dramatically and max out my martial arts grinding.

The classic wuxia staple.

Making Wall Valley Pills.