Everyone Has a Story
Jeron spent the entire night moving books from the library.
He brought back every single volume that looked intact, operating on the assumption that even if they weren't useful right now, they might come in handy someday.
Shuttling between Earth in the dead of winter and the Karen Continent, which was currently experiencing sweltering tropical nights, made him sweat like rain.
It felt as though he were spending the night jumping back and forth between an ice bath and a hot tub.
Throughout the entire operation, Jeron kept the small solar charger on the library windowsill to gather power.
Today's farming run had yielded great results.
He had found and brought back an MP3 player, a smartphone, a solar charger, writing utensils, and books.
The school was vast, and the library still had plenty of books left, so it looked like he would need to farm here for at least a few weeks.
"This was a massive jackpot."
Aside from the items, finding traces of Blacksmith Kang was a significant discovery.
Kang's character was so renowned that the neighborhood residents couldn't praise him enough.
Even in the dead man's diary, there were records praising the blacksmith's nature.
Though he was difficult to get close to at first, he possessed a warm heart and could never bring himself to ignore someone in distress.
It was a miracle that such a man had managed to survive until now.
This was a world overrun by vagrants and pillagers.
The diary even mentioned witnessing intact families being dragged away to be used as slaves.
The absolute worst-case scenario would be cannibalism, but Jeron decided not to think about that just yet.
If such horrors were truly happening on Earth, it would make his daily farming runs too agonizing to bear.
The solar charger was only filled to one bar out of four.
He connected the cable to the MP3 player to check its contents.
"Ha... This song was on here?"
Following our shadows that have grown so long, I walk with you in the twilight darkness~
Holding hands, just being together forever, it brings tears to my eyes~
As the wind grows colder, winter draws near~
Jeron closed his eyes.
He recalled the days that had passed since he first crossed over to Earth.
He reminisced about his family and savored the memories of the acquaintances he had lived with back then.
Sometimes he fell into deep sorrow, and sometimes his emotions boiled over as he walked the devastated streets.
Yet, Jeron did his best to suppress his feelings. He tried to think of himself as merely walking through a different, third-party world.
But now, after months of farming Earth, he was listening to its music again.
It was a song that had been his go-to at karaoke, a song his wife and children had loved.
It naturally made him sentimental.
It wasn't because the lyrics were sad, but because they carried a flood of memories.
His eyes grew moist.
"I'm acting like an old fool."
Jeron had thought his humanity had been too eroded to shed tears.
The years he spent surviving on Earth had dealt him that much trauma.
Yet, listening to the lyrics of a song from the days when Earth was still intact made the bitter wounds beneath his skin flare up.
After listening to the music on repeat for a long while, Jeron turned on the smartphone.
Ding-ding-diriri~
A familiar melody played.
He had never expected to see the KTS logo again.
It was a mega-hit product from S-Group. The phone booted up with the familiar logo.
At the top of the screen, a notification was clearly visible.
"A lock pattern?"
He figured as much.
Older folks were usually too lazy to set patterns, but kids back then sometimes even used iris recognition.
He was just glad it wasn't biometric lockouts.
Jeron tilted the phone's screen toward the candlelight.
The pattern was clearly visible, etched into the screen like hardened grease.
After a few attempts, the lock screen unlocked, revealing a wallpaper of a very smart, handsome boy and a schoolgirl.
Judging by how the girl was kissing the boy on the cheek, they seemed to be a couple.
"Kids these days grow up too fast. A middle schooler acting like that."
Jeron clicked his tongue, only to suddenly remember that his current body in this world was only eighteen years old.
Technically, he wasn't much older than the phone's owner.
He checked the phone's storage first.
- InterXstellar
- Memories of MurXer
- AvXtar
...
"Yes!"
There were about ten movies and a few dramas saved.
How long had it been since he last saw a trace of modern civilization?
For the time being, he would be able to watch movies or dramas before going to sleep, letting him reminisce about his life on Earth.
Listening to the music on the MP3 player, Jeron opened the boy's KakaoXalk messenger.
There were countless messages.
Among them, the conversations with the girl who seemed to be his girlfriend were particularly numerous.
"..."
Although the complex emoticons and teenage slang made him grimace, the translation of their chat was simple enough.
To think he needed to translate Korean. The world really had ended.
The sweet dialogue between the young lovers continued.
He thought it was a good thing the phone's owner had experienced love early.
If it had been any later, he might have died without ever knowing what love felt like.
But the peace did not last long.
It cut to the day the mutants overran the school.
...
Even amidst the chaotic emoticons and abbreviations, the desperation was palpable.
On the ruined Earth, adults weren't the only ones with stories.
Even these young teenagers had their own struggles.
Thinking that only adults were capable of profound thoughts was a foolish notion.
Children were far more mature than adults gave them credit for, a fact Jeron had realized while raising his own kids.
If he had known things would end like this, he wondered if it would have been better if his own children had experienced love before they died.
Jeron also looked through the conversations the boy had shared with his family.
Judging by the messages exchanged with his family, it seemed mutants had breached their home, and everyone had perished.
The boy had tried to call his family countless times, but none of the calls had connected.
Once the world fell, the cellular network itself would have gone down.
They had only been able to message each other because the local internet connection was briefly kept alive.
It was tragic.
Jeron checked the messages with the girlfriend again.
The boy's messages were brief, but he couldn't have been calm.
Jeron understood all too well the storm of emotions that must have passed through him.
After a long silence, a message from the girl arrived.
That was the end of it.
The boy seemed to have stopped using the phone after that final message.
Why had the phone been kept inside the pencil case?
"Because it was the only way he could remember his family, his girlfriend, and his friends."
Jeron let out a long sigh.
He looked at the photos in the gallery.
Seeing the world before the apocalypse kept Jeron scrolling through the album for a long time, lost in thought.
He had become briefly sentimental, but to someone like Jeron, who had survived for nearly eight years, these tragedies were common occurrences.
The phone contained a story from the very beginning of the disaster, but in a world where society had completely collapsed and laws were gone, far worse things happened every day.
Jeron exited the messenger and looked at the phone's default apps.
There was a clock, a stopwatch, and a calculator.
He already had a clock, but the calculator seemed like it would be quite useful.
But more important than those were the movies and dramas.
With basic games installed as well, he would finally be able to fall asleep while looking at a screen again.
As he was browsing through the phone, the battery died.
He had charged it for too short a time, and because Earth's sunlight was weak, it had only charged up to a single bar.
Starting tomorrow, he would leave it to charge by the window while he worked.
That way, he could take some time in the evening to listen to music or watch a movie.
"Wait. If I have a USB cable, couldn't I listen to music and watch movies indefinitely?"
Abandoned phones were scattered all over the world.
Finding one in such pristine condition was rare, but he was sure he could find more if he searched thoroughly.
No matter how he thought about it, the solar-powered phone charger was a massive win.
It might not be of immediate help, but if he kept farming USB drives, he might stumble upon useful information.
If he could find data compiled by military history geeks or professionals with specialized knowledge, he would hit the jackpot.
Jeron took his eyes off the phone and examined the books.
For now, the books were what could bring immediate change to his territory.
Specifically, the book detailing saddles and stirrups.
Jeron immediately read the contents.
Before the invention of the saddle, cavalry combat was a specialized form of warfare limited to nomadic cultures. Mastering a horse without a saddle was virtually impossible for anyone who hadn't grown up on horseback. Anyone who has ridden a horse knows that maintaining balance using only thigh muscles requires immense skill. However, with the invention of the saddle, balancing on a horse became much easier, allowing riders to wield spears and other weapons in combat.
Jeron let out an audible exclamation of admiration.
"Yes, the saddle is a cheat key for cavalry. If used correctly, it will give us a massive advantage in war."
Stirrups were invented in China around the 4th century, but it took a long time for them to reach Europe. A stirrup is a footrest attached to the saddle, allowing the rider to brace themselves. This enabled free movement and increased the operational range while riding. It was truly a revolution in horsemanship. It was a decisive weapon of war, and the reason it took three hundred years to spread from ancient China to Europe was due to the strict secrecy maintained around it.
Jeron realized he needed to be cautious about introducing saddles and stirrups.
Saddles and stirrups only required a shift in perspective; they were easy to manufacture, meaning they could be easily copied.
If they spread too quickly, it would only escalate the scale of warfare, inevitably leading to massive casualties.
Therefore, unless he was prepared to completely annihilate the enemy, he had to maintain absolute secrecy.
"I should start production in advance. If we deploy them as a decisive weapon in a major war, we will achieve a great victory."