A Lucky Day (1)
The rooftop of the township post office.
Over the past month, Jeron had scavenged the surrounding area with meticulous care.
He had secured a decent haul of items here, and while there was still room to explore the smaller villages, time was not an infinite resource for him.
For this reason, he had decided to move his farming location.
Whoosh.
While the Farrow Territory was heading into summer, the weather on Earth was early winter.
With temperatures dropping below freezing, he instinctively pulled his collar tight.
Turning his back to the biting wind, Jeron unfolded a map.
Rustle!
This was Eumyang-myeon, Seosan.
When the end of the world drew near, Jeron had taken his family and fled Seoul, heading toward the coast.
He had figured Incheon would be too crowded, and Seosan seemed like a reasonable alternative, which was why he had chosen the west.
He had hoped that if they could secure a fishing boat at the docks, they might escape to a safer, uninhabited island.
The problem was that almost everyone else had the exact same idea.
The docks were completely deserted, and people had slaughtered one another just to claim the few remaining boats.
Unable to bring himself to drag his family into that bloodbath, he had driven straight to Eumyang-myeon, a township boasting two large reservoirs. In hindsight, it hadn't been a bad choice. He had managed to survive here for several years, after all.
"Sigh."
Whenever he crossed over to Earth, the PTSD that usually lay dormant beneath the surface flared up again.
He had lived on Earth for forty years and watched his family die before his eyes. It would be stranger if he could remain completely cold and detached.
Jeron forced the emotions down and studied the map closely.
"If I head south, there's a middle school, and further down, a township apartment complex. There's an agricultural and industrial complex to the southwest, which isn't bad either."
He still needed to think twice about heading into downtown Seosan.
There was no need to risk going into the city center just yet.
His first destination was the middle school.
Jeron wasn't planning to loot the school itself, but rather the stationery shop right in front of it.
In a ruined world, stationery shops were rarely targeted by looters.
Supermarkets were always the first to be ransacked, while pens, paper, and other miscellaneous supplies were pushed to the bottom of the priority list.
Jeron figured that hitting just a few stationery shops would yield plenty of goods to supply his merchant guild.
His second destination was the agricultural and industrial complex.
Jeron had still not managed to find any decent seeds.
Of course, the Farrow Territory would soon bloom with colorful flowers unseen on the Karen Continent, but that alone wasn't enough to serve as a primary commodity.
To fundamentally transform the territory's agricultural foundation, he absolutely needed the resilient, genetically improved seeds bred to survive on Earth.
His final destination was a bookstore.
A treasury of knowledge was perhaps the greatest item one could obtain from Earth.
Looting a library would be even better, but most libraries were located in the city center. Since there was no need to invite disaster by rushing in, he could take his time and proceed slowly.
Having set his destinations, Jeron climbed down from the post office roof.
He strapped an empty backpack to the rack of a bicycle he had scavenged earlier.
Whoosh.
Then, for the first time in a long while, he began to pedal.
The biting wind tried to slip through the gaps in his clothes, but Jeron was wearing high-end brand outdoor gear.
The inner lining was coated with heat-reflective silver foil, and it wasn't long before he began to sweat.
Jeron's bicycle headed south along the national highway.
The road was completely unmaintained, its asphalt cracked with withered weeds pushing through the fissures, but it was still passable for a bicycle.
The occasional road signs hung half-tilted, and the silence was absolute, without even a single bird in the sky.
Click! Click-clack!
Only the spinning of the pedals and the bleak wind echoed along the road.
Once he left the township center, low hills began to roll past on either side.
Every time dry leaves blew across the asphalt or rustled in the wind, Jeron's nerves shot up.
Though he hadn't encountered any mutants in Eumyang-myeon so far, one could never be too sure.
If a mutant appeared while he was riding a bicycle, he could find himself in a very tight spot.
At the same time, he kept an eye on the Golden Key, checking if there was any movement of mana.
If he couldn't detect any mana movement this month either, he was planning to ask the Count for assistance.
The reason Jeron was so fixated on this was simple.
Three hours per visit to Earth was simply too short.
As Jeron rode toward the middle school in the south, he kept his eyes peeled for any houses worth looting.
In the distance, he spotted a two-story house that looked remarkably intact.
After riding a bit further down, Jeron steered his bicycle to the left.
A neat stone retaining wall ran along the base of the hill, and further inside lay a small reservoir.
Places with reservoirs or valleys were where survivors tended to hold out the longest.
Given how difficult it must have been to secure drinking water in this ruined world, people would have filtered water from the valleys or reservoirs. If they were exceptionally lucky, they might have used generators to pump up groundwater.
The house was surrounded by a sturdy concrete wall.
It stood at least two meters high, and the main gate was made of a very solid metal.
"Not bad."
Jeron dismounted and slung his backpack over his shoulders.
The gate was slightly ajar, and the gap was smeared with a large amount of blood.
"..."
Jeron stopped in his tracks and scanned his surroundings.
A sudden chill ran down his spine.
Until now, he had only seen old, dried, blackened bloodstains.
But the blood on this gate looked like it had been spilled within the last few months, not years.
This was a massive difference.
'There are always mutants in the cities.'
A bloodstain only a few months old.
Jeron was no forensic expert, so it could have been older, or perhaps even more recent.
The important thing was that it meant he wasn't the only one left on Earth.
At the very least, there was a possibility that survivors existed, and mutants were likely still roaming the area.
Jeron's movements became even more cautious.
Clack.
He chambered a round into his sniper rifle and slipped through the gate.
The yard, which looked to be about a hundred pyeong, was covered in short, pale brown grass.
The fact that the grass was kept short meant someone had been maintaining this house at least until this past summer.
The walls were splattered with blood, and human bones lay scattered below them.
Step. Step.
His footsteps felt unusually loud today.
Even the wind that had been blowing earlier had died down, leaving the trees completely still.
The two-story house was well-preserved, though its windows were shattered and strewn across the ground.
Before checking the inside of the house, Jeron decided to search the storehouse first.
Like most storehouses he had seen, it was a simple structure built with a basic frame and sandwich panels, topped with a concrete slab roof.
Screeeech!
The metal door shrieked loudly as he opened it, making him freeze for a moment.
"Whew."
Just knowing that a mutant had been here within the last few months made him incredibly tense.
He had fought plenty of monsters on the Karen Continent, but the mutants of Earth were a massive source of PTSD.
It was only natural, considering he had been torn apart and eaten alive by one of them.
There was no telling how much stronger those things had become by now.
Fortunately, there didn't seem to be any mutants nearby.
Stepping inside the storehouse, he found it surprisingly tidy.
There were agricultural tools like shovels, pickaxes, and sickles, along with flowerpots, unused pesticides, rolls of wire, and rubber tubs.
Jeron rejoiced at the sight of the various items.
It was a farm storehouse preserved exactly as it had been before the fall. The tools, nails, steel stakes, and plastic sheeting would all be incredibly useful.
Just as he had used the blacksmith shop in the township center as a base camp, this place could serve as an excellent secondary base.
But there was something he had to do before settling in.
Now that he had strong evidence that a mutant might have passed through here toward the city a few months ago, he needed to climb the hill and scout the area with binoculars.
If he was lucky, he might find rice seeds inside the abandoned greenhouses scattered around.
If that happened, he wouldn't even need to go to the agricultural and industrial complex.
With that thought, Jeron searched the storehouse further.
By the window, garlic, onions, and ginger seeds were drying out.
"Good. Not bad at all."
Jeron combed through the storehouse.
He hoped to find even better seeds.
After rummaging around for a while, he discovered a mesh bag full of seed potatoes tucked away in the deepest corner of the storehouse.
"Oh!"
Jeron let out an audible gasp of admiration.
How hard had he searched for famine crops, rice, or wheat seeds?
He had desperately wanted just a single type of seed.
Even if he only planted a few, potatoes would multiply rapidly as long as they grew well. Within a few years, he would have enough to fill an entire field.
And now he had found a whole bag of them?
This meant he could harvest them as early as this autumn. He could save the entire harvest to use as seed potatoes for the next planting, exponentially increasing his yield.
It really was a lucky day.
As he thought, the answer was to expand his farming range rather than just sticking to the safe zones.
At this rate, Jeron felt confident enough to push his search all the way to the front of the middle school.
After packing the seed potatoes, Jeron began to search the house.
The survivor here had held out tenaciously until relatively recently. That meant there was a high probability of finding valuable items inside.
Sure enough, the living room showed clear signs of a struggle.
A pool of dried blood stained the corner of the room, with a trail leading all the way outside.
It looked like a mutant had hunted the resident inside, dragged them out to the wall, and feasted on them.
Jeron offered a brief silent prayer before searching the kitchen cabinets.
"Oh ho."
About five kilograms of milled white rice, a one-kilogram bag of flour, a few snacks, and several cans of food.
Finding this much food in a ruined world was nothing short of a miracle.
And to top it all off.
On the display shelf sat two bottles of Scotch whisky and a bottle of wine.
"The person who lived here must have been devastated. To have gathered all these resources only to be ambushed by a mutant."
Jeron glanced at his watch.
An hour and a half had already passed since he entered Earth.
He still had half his time left, so there was no need to rush.
Jeron packed the alcohol, seed potatoes, a few cans, and snacks into his backpack.
Due to the weight, he would have to leave the rice and flour for his next visit.
With his backpack slung over his shoulders, Jeron slipped out the back door that connected to the hill and began his climb.
Getting to high ground to scout the area.
Now that he was certain a mutant had lived here and swept through the area just months ago, scouting would have to become the most critical part of his farming routine.