Even the God of Farming Provides Internet
After the people of Deoksu-ri left, this whole stretch of land belonged to me and the zombies alone.
Thoughts crossed and tangled in my head.
It was true that a corner of my heart felt empty. Having no dealings with neighbors was one thing; having no neighbors at all was another. It wasn't as if we'd been completely cut off before, either.
'I chose this myself.'
I set all sentimentality firmly aside and weighed only the practical.
Starting today, I no longer had to stand watch or man the fence duty. All twenty-four hours of the day belonged to me alone.
'That part is good.'
But if I got hurt or fell ill, there would be no one to help me. And if a band of raiders ever showed up in the area, I would have to deal with them single-handedly.
'That part I'll just have to shoulder.'
I arrived at the Blessed Farmland and checked on the watermelons first.
From now on, if the food ran out, there would be no one left to beg from. The soil's fertility was now directly tied to my survival.
I looked down at the field and smiled. 'No more worrying about starving to death.'
It had been barely four hours since I planted the watermelon seeds. Yet already several true leaves had unfurled, and the stems had grown past fifty centimeters. In an ordinary field, you wouldn't see that for at least four weeks.
And this miracle had come despite the field temperature being far below the optimal range for watermelon growth.
Well, why would a little thing like temperature matter when neither water nor fertilizer were needed at all?
I ran the numbers in my head. Watermelon was a hundred-day crop — a hundred days from sowing to harvest. Early varieties could be harvested in seventy.
So extrapolating from four hours of growth...
'Wait a minute. I could be eating watermelon just twelve hours after planting the seeds!'
In eight more hours, plump watermelons would very likely be hanging from the vines. I could hardly stand the anticipation!
But standing there staring at the vines until then wouldn't be particularly productive.
'Let me think about how I'm going to hunt zombies from here on out.'
I wanted to extend the Blessed Farmland all the way down to the stream as soon as possible, and I was desperately curious what reward awaited for completing the second mission, 'Reclaim 100 pyeong.' Which meant I needed to hunt zombies and earn coins.
I scanned my surroundings. Not a single zombie had appeared since the three I'd taken that morning. Even though the area had turned yellow on the map, the valley itself rarely drew many in.
I looked at the SUV. Should I drive it out to the highway and lure zombies back toward the field?
'Too risky.'
I shook my head. Luring back three or four at a time would be no problem at all. But things never went as smoothly as you planned. The car could skid on the ice and flip over. It could break down and stall without warning. And if a pack of dozens of zombies surrounded me out there, it would be over on the spot.
Team Leader Park's death — trapped inside his car, torn apart by zombies — was still vivid in my mind.
'What about luring them with fire?'
Under the old fence-duty routine, we'd built fires at night beside the Blessed Farmland to draw zombies in. But that method had one fatal flaw: firelight attracts living people too.
Nobody alive didn't know that zombies were drawn to light. So ordinary people wouldn't carelessly approach a fire in the middle of the night.
Then who would come? Raiders — men confident they could handle a few zombies. To them, a light in the darkness was a sign of prey worth plundering.
One or two of them, I was confident I could handle alone. I had weapons, and I could lure them into the Blessed Farmland and use Binding.
But five or six of them, armed with guns or bows and all fixing their sights on me? I'd be cornered, plain and simple.
'So I need to judge this carefully.'
No clever method of luring zombies came to mind, so I decided to gather the latest intelligence on them instead.
I watched zombie experiment videos on the internet. Once the Mad Scientist's videos caught the public's attention, other creators had rushed to produce similar content. Warmer regions were full of dormant zombies, so creators there could make zombie content at comparatively little risk.
"Everyone! Today I'm going to inject zombie bodily fluids into five different species of animals!"
Inject a human with zombie fluid, and obviously they'd be infected and turn. But animals were different. The rot bacteria only gave them sepsis — no zombification ever took hold. The zombie virus, in the end, was a disease that spread only to humans.
"Everyone! Do zombies actually attack dogs and cats?"
Zombies threw themselves madly at any living human they spotted, but showed no reaction whatsoever to dogs, cats, or other animals. Even when a trained dog was ordered to bite one, the zombie didn't fight back. It was as if a virus that infected only humans was steering the things' brains. The experts, as usual, hadn't weighed in — only the amateurs were getting louder.
Oh! Now this was an interesting video.
"One million dollars in prize money to whoever builds the best armor for fighting zombies!"
I'd seen competitions before where handy contestants built swords or shields and had experts evaluate them. But zombie armor!
The contest had only just opened. I was curious what kind of incredible gear would come out of it.
It was nine o'clock at night when I checked on the watermelons, and a smile spread across my face.
'I knew it!'
Enormous watermelons — the kind that would cost a fortune apiece at the supermarket — hung heavy from the vines in clusters. In a normal field, a single seedling yields maybe two melons. But one seed had given me more than ten!
It had been dark since five in the afternoon, and yet they'd grown this magnificently without a scrap of sunlight. It was honestly bewildering.
'It'll taste great too, won't it?'
My trust in Casar Aurelion was pushing one hundred and twenty percent.
I plucked one watermelon and brought a clean knife to its rind.
Crack —
It was so perfectly ripe that with only the barest touch of the blade, the melon split wide open. The cross-section was a brilliant crimson, ripened to perfection, the rind not even all that thick.
I sliced it into neat pieces and took a bite. 'Sweet!'
The watermelon flavor was intense and honeyed. It'd be even better chilled.
I set one outside the Blessed Farmland to cool it slightly. It couldn't be allowed to freeze, so I chilled it just enough, then tried it again. 'Cold and sweet!'
Eating watermelon this delicious in the depths of winter, in the middle of a zombie apocalypse — I truly hadn't even dreamed it possible. I ate until my stomach nearly burst.
Four days had passed since the villagers took refuge at the military base.
I'd decided not to overexert myself hunting zombies. I only had the one life, after all.
Lately I slept soundly somewhere warm, ate well, and generally lived well. My one complaint was that the ice on the stream had thickened to the point where tending to the water had become very difficult.
'That problem might just solve itself today, too.'
I typically killed about two zombies a day. Which meant my current assets stood at:
If one pyeong counted as a single square, the result was one long, straight strip of thirteen squares — roughly twenty-four meters end to end.
'I've finally reached the water!'
I picked up the hoe and drove it straight down beside the frozen-over stream.
If the ice and water vanished entirely and turned to farmland, I'd be a little disappointed. But the situation I'd dreaded never came to pass.
Oh! The ice transformed into water in an instant. Only within the Blessed Farmland's boundaries did the ice melt; everywhere else, it stayed frozen solid — the natural result of no heat exchange taking place.
I dipped my hand into the stream. No needle-sharp sting like a midwinter mountain stream, but still cold. When the ambient temperature sits around fifteen degrees, stream water stays genuinely chilly. I dunked a thermometer in, and the mercury sank to six degrees.
"Perfect for chilling watermelon."
Until now, my usable temperatures had come in exactly two flavors: fifteen degrees, or ten below zero and colder. In other words, all I had was a natural freezer. But thanks to the stream, I'd gained a natural refrigerator, too.
Come to think of it — I fetched one of the watermelons and submerged it in the stream on the spot.
'Ah. A visitor.'
A cherry trout had slipped quietly into the field's domain.
Another ten days slipped by.
The number of zombies approaching the valley had crept up a little. Some days I took five. The best part, though, was that apart from zombies, no one came anywhere near the place.
The day I reclaimed a full hundred pyeong wasn't far off.
Today was a very special day. January 1st — the first day of the new year.
Bzzz —
My phone vibrated. A video call from Jin-beom. He'd been contacting me at least twice a day lately. I knew it was because he worried about me, but honestly, at lover-like frequency it bordered on embarrassing.
I checked the surroundings for zombies, threw on my coat, and stepped outside the Blessed Farmland. The sky was overcast, with a light snow drifting down.
I pressed the call button. I couldn't exactly show Jin-beom a crisp blue sky, so this was the only way I could manage it.
"What now?"
"Hyeong-woo! You do know today's New Year's Day, right?"
"Obviously. It says January 1st right there on my phone."
"Did you eat tteokguk?"
I snorted and threw the question back at him. "Did you?"
"Yeah, I did. The cook here is seriously good. Come by and try it sometime!"
The guy still hadn't given up hope that I'd come to the base. In any case, his face had noticeably filled out. Living in heated bunks at the base had done his body good.
Jin-beom looked straight into the camera and called out. "Hyeong-woo!"
"What?"
"Happy New Year."
"Yeah. You too, buddy."
"Your network connection is unstable."
The signal had gone bad and the video call dropped. We'd said everything worth saying, so there was no need to call back.
But then —
'Huh?'
Ten minutes passed and the signal never recovered. I waited ten more. Nothing.
'So the time has come.'
In a yellow zone, nobody sends a repair technician out when the neighborhood wifi dies from equipment failure. One trivial defect and the internet can go dark for good.
The 3G voice signal still connected. But who knew how long that would last.
Ha —
I let out a long sigh. Losing the internet hit me with a far deeper sense of isolation than when the villagers had left. Was I now truly, completely cut off from the outside world? No more up-to-date intel on the zombies, and I couldn't even check the government's app anymore.
That was when it happened.
A new message appeared before my eyes.
Casar Aurelion is granting the Farm Owner the ability Communication.
Spend 1 coin to use ultra-high-speed internet in every zone of the Blessed Farmland for 1 day.
While using the internet within the Blessed Farmland, you are fully protected from hacking, location tracking, IP tracing, and all other threats.
Haha!
I leapt for joy — and at the same time, I was utterly dumbfounded.
'The God of Seasons and Farming throws in an internet service too?'