A Hundred Pyeong and a Husky

I classed up again. From archer to kitchen assistant.

Kang Min-chae was wiping down cafeteria trays in the mess hall.

The woman cleaning trays beside her spoke up.

“Min-chae, you want to see this?”

It was the woman who had driven the cargo truck back in their wandering days.

She unfolded an A4 sheet covered in print and held it out for Min-chae to see.

“What ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠is that?”

“The signal corps guy printed it out for me.”

Because of the base station problem, the civilian internet in the area had gone completely dead.

The military's operational communications network, however, was still intact.

The soldiers had been sharing certain pieces of information with the refugees.

“Hyunsung Group is recruiting people.”

“I'm not interested in that stuff.”

That was the truth. Kang Min-chae had inherited a very substantial fortune from her late parents.

Once she came of age, she'd be free to spend that money however she wished, no permission from her uncle required.

She didn't have a career path decided yet.

Her plan was to enroll in a university, enjoy herself in moderation, and take her time figuring out what she wanted to do with her life.

Getting a job at a company wasn't even on the table.

“They're taking anyone from eighteen to thirty-five, so you could apply too.”

“What's the work?”

“You go to an island down south, do two weeks of basic training, then get deployed overseas. To a warm country. Your job is killing zombies over there. Pay's not exactly huge, but it's in dollars.”

“Isn't it dangerous?”

“Zombies can't do a thing in warm climates. They say it's easier than swatting bugs!”

“Well, spending winter somewhere warm does sound tempting.”

“Right? They say you come back to Korea around May and clear out the big cities, and once this whole thing is completely over you might even get hired on as a permanent employee at a Hyunsung affiliate! Should we apply together?”

Kang Min-chae kept wiping trays, thinking it over.

Back in the village, three of them had lived crammed into a narrow room.

Here at the military base, ten people shared a single barracks room.

Thanks to the zombie apocalypse, she was living a squad-barracks life she'd never signed up for.

The heating worked and it was warm, which was nice, but privacy had ceased to exist ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠entirely.

“If I apply and get in, would I get a room to myself?”

“Hmm, you think it says anything about that?”

At Min-chae's question, the woman scanned the notice again.

“Oh, here it is! During the training period, they provide two-person dormitory rooms!”

“Then I guess I'll have to think about it.”

Kang Min-chae decided to seriously consider applying to this Hyunsung Group recruitment.

The week flew by like an arrow.

Over that time, I had tilled a rectangular field fourteen squares wide and seven squares deep.

Just two more pyeong of tilled land, and the hundred-pyeong field would finally be complete!

And with that, I would receive the corresponding reward.

With seven coins in hand, I could till that extra two pyeong right this second.

But I held back.

The larger the Blessed Farmland grew, the more it carried the risk of someone spotting it — and that unease grew along with it.

So I raised my emergency coin reserve standard from one to seven.

Armed looters, or a pack of fierce beasts like wild boars, could come crashing into the Blessed Farmland at any time.

If that happened, I'd need Binding to weather the crisis — which meant stockpiling at least this many coins.

In any case, roughly a tenth of the thousand-pyeong valley field had now been converted into Blessed Farmland.

That was by no means a small space.

The part of it I used constantly, though, was small: a three- or four-pyeong patch where my tent and gear sat, and about five or six pyeong for growing plants.

I was raising watermelons, tomatoes, and potatoes.

Back when I'd done guard duty at a fenced facility, I had stashed a few uncooked potatoes and brought them home. I planted one of them in the field and boosted the soil's fertility — within twelve hours, tubers had shot through the earth and potatoes hung from the vines in fat clusters.

I hadn't even used proper seed potatoes, yet I harvested premium spuds.

Wheat or barley would have grown well too, but they required complicated post-harvest processing — threshing, milling, and so on — so I chose potatoes as my carbohydrate source.

After all, once you brush the dirt off a potato, you can roast or steam it on the spot.

Ah, and the SUV was occupying one corner of the field as well.

Keeping a car somewhere warm rather than somewhere freezing is simply better for vehicle maintenance.

Parking the SUV inside the field taught me something new.

The Blessed Farmland was soft, crumbly soil, perfect for planting seeds — yet even when I drove the heavy SUV in, the wheels didn't sink deep into the ground.

Which made moving the vehicle wonderfully easy.

This, too, was 'magic' that the laws of physics couldn't explain.

Kill just two more zombies and I hit a hundred pyeong.

I scanned the surroundings through my telescope.

Not a single one in sight.

I'd drawn the water, dug the potatoes, picked all the watermelons and tomatoes I could eat…

Nothing that needed doing.

Guess I'll browse the internet.

I was paying a fixed daily expense of one coin for internet access.

I could conserve coins and only connect when absolutely necessary, but in times like these, I had to keep my eyes and ears open to how the world was turning.

As an extreme example, the government might drop bombs on a particular region, claiming to control the zombie population.

If I buried myself in the joys of farming and tuned out the world, I could miss an evacuation order entirely and take a bomb to the face.

So I wasn't going to skimp on internet costs.

I could make do with a radio, but why stop at radio?

Carrying my fully charged phone, I stepped into the tent.

The Blessed Farmland never had a cloudy day, so my portable solar charger had proven invaluable.

Resting my head on my rolled-up sleeping bag, I lay back comfortably and started browsing.

The breaking news held nothing special.

For the past few days, the main banner of every portal site had been taken over by a Hyunsung Group recruitment ad.

Recruiting young people to send them zombie hunting across the equator and the Southern Hemisphere…

I had a rough idea whose idea this was.

A notice was up on the employee-only app as well.

Any employees interested in zombie hunting would be appointed to management-level positions and deployed overseas alongside the recruits.

None of my business, either way.

I was already well along in making up my mind to quit the company.

Once spring came and the domestic situation improved, my course was set.

Keep the field's secret locked down tight, and sip the honey bit by bit!

Though if I went to the equatorial region now, I could rack up a lot of coins.

I pictured myself with the kukri in hand, roaming the tropics, lopping the heads off helpless zombies.

I could amass an enormous stockpile of coins in a very short time.

But there was no need to be that greedy.

Korea's temperatures would climb again soon enough.

When they did, I'd have plenty of time to roam the big cities hunting zombies.

No reason to abandon my Blessed Farmland and sail off to some distant foreign land just to earn coins a little faster.

That was when it happened.

A warning message appeared before my eyes.

I quietly sat up and looked out through the tent window.

A water deer.

A water deer stood stock-still, startled by the sudden shift in temperature.

Whenever I was inside the tent, pheasants and mountain hares had a way of wandering into the Blessed Farmland.

I debated whether to catch the deer or not.

After all, I still had plenty of wild boar meat left.

Ta-ta-tat—

The deer bolted in fright.

It hadn't fled because it sensed me — it was something else.

From across the valley, a crowd of figures came sprinting toward the Blessed Farmland.

Zombies!

There were a staggering number of them.

Someone was clearly being chased by the horde and running this way.

Well, this is awkward.

Out of simple humanity, I ought to help — but the real problem came after.

The mystery of the Blessed Farmland would be exposed.

What if, to hide the field's secret, I stepped outside the Blessed Farmland and took on the zombies myself?

That would be suicide.

For now, I stepped out of the tent and picked up my bow.

Then I studied exactly who — or what — the zombies were chasing.

It turned out to be something that made all my worrying pointless.

It's a dog!

The one driving a horde of dozens of zombies wasn't a human — it was a doggie.

Truly bizarre.

Zombies only lunged at people.

Ta-ta-tat—

Spotting me, the dog made a beeline for the Blessed Farmland.

A Siberian husky.

The moment it crossed into the field, the zombies stopped running.

Huff, huff—

The dog halted and gulped down air.

Whine—

It looked up at me with pleading eyes.

A belt was strapped around the dog's body, with a plastic pouch attached to it.

Through tiny holes that looked like needle pricks, a red liquid was seeping out little by little.

So that's it.

Now I understood why the zombies were chasing the dog.

The pouch clearly held human blood.

To keep the blood from clotting in the cold, heat packs had even been stuck to the front and back of the pouch.

Someone had used the dog as bait to lure the zombies.

I swept my gaze over the area.

No people in sight.

There was no telling where the dog had run from, either.

Siberian huskies have remarkable endurance — they can run tens of kilometers without resting.

It could have started running from somewhere far beyond Inje-eup.

A dog's running speed is faster than a zombie's.

But even after shaking off its pursuers, new zombies in the vicinity would have latched on again and again.

The poor thing had simply had no choice but to keep running.

I filled a large bowl with water and set it down in front of the dog.

Slurp slurp—

It drank frantically, out of its mind ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠with thirst.

It seemed to have suffered from dehydration for a very long time.

Who on earth would do something like this?

Watching the dog, I suddenly thought of my neighbor's dog back in Seoul.

Same breed as this one.

Whenever we ran into each other in front of the elevator, it would come bounding over, tail wagging.

Even though I'd never once given it a sausage.

Siberian huskies are, for the most part, highly social and fond of people.

This one had probably approached a total stranger in a friendly way, only to be turned into bait.

Most likely by someone trapped and looking for a way to escape the zombies.

Surely the dog's own owner wouldn't have done this to their pet.

I turned my head toward the zombies.

By a rough eyeball count, there were more than thirty.

I wasn't going to hunt them down just yet.

If a party of intruders who used dogs as bait happened to be nearby, the zombies would serve as my bodyguards.

A long while passed, and still no one appeared.

The zombies continued shuffling slowly around the perimeter of the Blessed Farmland.

At this point, I figured I could go ahead and hunt them.

I placed the blood pouch, detached from the dog, outside the Blessed Farmland.

The zombies immediately began swarming toward it.

Standing in the middle of the field, I beheaded them one by one as they approached.

After some time, I'd wiped out nearly all of them.

I deliberately left three zombies alive.

They were my security detail, guarding the Blessed Farmland.

If an intruder showed up anywhere nearby, the zombies would react automatically.

Of course, it was a temp position.

I'd eliminate them later, whenever I needed to leave the field or wanted the coins.

Since the tent sat in the middle of the Blessed Farmland, there was no chance of me waking up groggy in the morning and stepping outside the field by mistake, only to get mauled by a zombie.

As for their stench — whether it couldn't enter the Blessed Farmland or was ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠simply purified on contact, either way no unpleasant odor reached me even with the zombies close by.

One worry did nag at me: an innocent person, not a looter, wandering near here and falling victim to them.

But that was excessive worrying.

Outside the valley, the zombie numbers were vastly greater — no ordinary person could punch through that territory and make it here.

I spoke to the zombies.

“Keep up the good watch.”

Until a few minutes ago, I had been alone.

Now I had one dog and three zombies for company.

As for the dog, if it wanted to leave later, I'd let it go.

With the blood pouch removed, it would have no reason to be chased by zombies anymore.

It looked at me and wagged its tail gently.

Even though I'd given it food, it wouldn't touch it — perhaps the terror of being hunted by the horde hadn't fully faded yet.

Well, it would eat once its appetite came back.

Shall we get on with the important business, then?

A bolt of coins had struck me out of nowhere.

Which meant I could finally till my hundred-pyeong field.

I was dying to know what the reward would be.

Please be something amazing!

Heart swelling, I picked up the hoe.