Rule of Thumb (5)

May 10th. Sometime past eight in the evening.

"Cheers!"

"Bottoms up!"

"Drink, drink!"

"Meat! Fresh, easy-to-digest meat!"

"It's canned meat, you idiot!"

On the largest stretch of lawn beside the old National Assembly Building in Yeouido, a barbecue party was once again in full swing.

More than a hundred survivors — residents belonging to Jeong Hoon's territory — had gathered in one place, almost every last one of them. They clinked beer cans and soju glasses, tore into grilled meat, and savored the simple joy of the moment.

By rights, this party should have been thrown on May 6th, right after they defeated the Vampire Lord. But one thing after another had gotten in the way, and there'd never been a chance to actually pull it off.

The day after the expedition, they'd simply rested. The day after that, they'd executed that ungrateful bastard Han Daegeon. Yesterday, new resident registrations and a sudden system update announcement had forced them to scrap their existing plans entirely.

And today, they'd cleared a dungeon at a speed so absurd even I could barely believe it. So I decided to use that as an excuse and put together a proper celebration.

Two hours after heading out to Gangbuk, we'd returned to the territory. The moment we got back, I called in Guild Leader Jung Yun, Guild Leader Jung Miju, the house staff, and the people in charge of food distribution and supply, and told them we were throwing a barbecue party that evening.

Despite how last-minute the request was, both guild leaders agreed with bright smiles on their faces. They relayed the news to their guild members, who spread the word through the entire territory. The people who specialized in cooking, along with the food distribution and supply teams, raided the warehouses like they'd been waiting for this exact moment and had the whole party set up on the lawn right beside the castle in three or four hours flat.

They hadn't said anything, but clearly everyone had just been waiting for me to give the word. They'd been craving a place where they could shake off their exhaustion with light hearts — somewhere they could enjoy drinks and meat together.

I could tell just by looking at the people eating and drinking with happy faces right in front of me. And I mean it when I say this was a rare sight. Outside Seoul, there were still plenty of people for whom scraping by day to day was a struggle, and beer or meat was nothing but an unattainable luxury.

Even so... honestly, they could have just asked me. Watching them enjoy the party this wholeheartedly made me wish they had. If they'd only said something, I would have set up regular get-togethers every few days under the pretext of building camaraderie — just so we could eat and talk like this.

"Everyone saw how hard you were working for us first, Jeong Hoon-ssi, so they couldn't bring themselves to ask. They wondered if it was really okay to throw a party that would just waste the food and supplies you'd earned through blood and sweat. And more than anything... once the number of residents grows even larger, throwing a party like this will only get harder. What they were really worried about was putting too much of a burden on you."

The alcohol must have loosened her tongue. Jung Yun grinned at me, all soft and tipsy, and passed along what everyone had been thinking.

Yeah. Even today, nearly twenty people had requested resident registration screenings and were waiting in buildings just outside Yeouido, using them as temporary shelters. According to Kim Seyeon's projections, that number was only going to keep climbing — it wasn't going to shrink anytime soon.

If that happened, the upside was that a larger population would raise the territory's rank, dramatically expanding the area I could rule under direct control. The downside was that ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠food and essential supply consumption would climb right along with it. Raiding every department store in Seoul might keep us stocked for a while, but there was always going to be a limit to that kind of slapdash, rule-of-thumb logistics.

"Ah, Jeong Hoon-ssi. Please don't worry about that part. I'm working on a good solution. It's not fully fleshed out yet, but... once our numbers grow a little more, I think we'll be able to put it into action."

I'd been nursing a beer and grumbling about the future when Kim Seyeon leaned in with a rather bright expression and gave me that quiet tip. Whenever thoughts of "governance" started making my head throb, there was no one more reliable than Kim Seyeon. Honestly, without her, I never would have managed a territory at all.

Anyway — enough heavy political talk. Time to think about what my party and I had actually gained from clearing that dungeon. This, at least, was genuinely good news.

Han Sora was level 34. Kim Seyeon was level 34. Park Seeun was also level 34... and the latecomer, Yun Mina, was level 32. The experience requirements kept climbing with each level, but they'd still managed consecutive level-ups without much trouble. Aside from me, my women were probably among the strongest survivors on Earth who'd inherited a system. Probably.

Yun Mina, as a Mage, had gotten to taste the benefits of one of Brave Saga Online's more peculiar skill systems.

"From now on, I can pick up Alchemist or Illusionist skills. Well, at level 30 they're still just basic magic, but still... they're surprisingly useful. Ah, the one I took is Blurred Mirage. It's an Illusionist's starter skill."

A system that let you learn skills from other subclasses within the same job category. It had been introduced early on under the name Skill Theft System... or so Han Sora had explained to me through Park Seeun. (She was still sulking and hadn't gotten over it yet.)

Mage–Elementalists, in particular, could learn the basic skills of other Mage subclasses once they passed level 30, and first-tier skills once they hit level 120. Apparently it had been an extremely useful system — specifically for Mages. For other job categories, not so much.

Warriors, aside from Magic Knights, had almost no meaningful differences between subclasses. Clerics only had two subclasses — Holy and Combat — and Combat Clerics weren't particularly strong, so it barely mattered. Archers had been a thoroughly failed class in the game, and their skill system was so different from everyone else's that comparison was impossible. Blacksmiths were the same. Lords didn't even have subclasses.

In the end, as time passed after the update, people had torn into it as a meaningless patch that basically turned the game into "Mage Online." The importance of Mages in every raid, event, dungeon, and PVP match had skyrocketed... again, according ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to Han Sora, via Park Seeun.

Of course, that was all just game talk. In reality, a skill system this unusual was bound to be useful for survival. I myself freely mixed skills from three classes — Warrior, Mage, and Rogue — and that versatility had gotten me through crisis after crisis.

Reality and games were never going to line up perfectly anyway. In the game, Archers lost out to Mages as ranged DPS. In reality, Archers were top-tier — early warning systems with exceptional vision who could also snipe.

Anyway. Enough about my women's growth. As for what I'd personally gained from this dungeon clear, it looked roughly like this.

Reaching Mage level 12 had finally granted me the right to invest one more stat point. I'd boldly dumped it into Agility... and now possessed strength and speed that were unequivocally beyond human. Not that I felt any dramatic difference in day-to-day life.

The next-level experience requirements had ballooned to something truly nightmarish, which was a little disappointing — but Dragon Gate RPG had always demanded absurd amounts of EXP like this, so it didn't feel unfair. In that game, from the mid-game onward, heavy, grueling quests would dump sixty or seventy thousand EXP on the party at a time to push level-ups. Not too slow, not too fast — paced so that top-tier skills and magic only became available near the end.

But plug these stats into reality — even if you couldn't convert them perfectly — and you got a catastrophic balance-breaker.

Today was May 10th. Counting from April 1st, when the zombie apocalypse began, only a month and nine days had passed. By any game's standards, this was still the very early game.

And yet here I stood on this earth with levels and stats that, in a game, you'd only start seeing in the mid-game — the kind of power mid-tier players who'd been grinding steadily for at least half a year might possess.

No matter how generously you looked at it, I was a complete balance-breaking overpowered character. No matter how brutal the dungeon or how sudden the monster wave, if I stepped in, I could clean it all up. That wasn't an exaggeration.

And because I'd grown this excessively strong... the question lodged in my heart never went away. I didn't have any warm feelings toward the "Administrator" who'd given me this power, but I still couldn't shake the desire to put that question to him.

Why me? Why give someone like me a system this alien — one that could shatter the balance of everything?

The old Administrator had started to explain something more when he gave me this system, then shut himself down. And afterward, even on the many occasions when that same Administrator's irritating voice drilled into my ears, he never offered so much as a single word of explanation about this alien system.

And as the days piled up — one, two, three, four — and my mismatched system kept racking up achievements and proving itself in this world, the questions only grew louder. Well. The Administrator had changed now, so it looked like there was no one left who could give me an answer.

Ah, of course... if I restored hope to this world, if I kept growing until I possessed transcendent-level power — then maybe things would be different.

Because if the system I'd been given faithfully recreated the lore of Dragon Gate RPG... a player who reached truly enormous levels would eventually—

"Jeong Hoon-ssi! Jeong Hoon-ssiiii!"

Someone hauled me up out of my thoughts. I focused in the direction of the voice and found, surprisingly, not one of my women... but someone else.

Jung Yun. Cheeks faintly flushed, a rosy smile on her face, she suddenly closed the distance between us. Was she drunk? She wasn't the type to come on this aggressively.

"Um, so...! When you first entered Yeouido — did you ever check out the broadcasting stations?"

"Hm?"

"Celebrities! I'm talking about celebrities! Did you run into any celebrities on your way into Yeouido?!"

Broadcasting stations? Celebrities?

"Yun unnie! You're seriously asking that? I already told you — no!"

"Haa... Jung Yun unnie, honestly..."

I tilted my head at the completely out-of-nowhere question, and the voices of Park Seeun and Yun Mina — who'd drifted over at some point — reached my ears. Yun Mina sighed and filled in the blanks.

"Sorry, Orabeoni. We were talking about territory promotion, and then Jung Yun unnie got drunk, said she'd had an idea, and just bolted over to you. She always gets like this when she's tipsy. Honestly."

"Territory promotion?"

"Yes. To raise our territory's rank — well, specifically your territory's rank, Orabeoni — we need to attract more residents, right? That came up in conversation, and then Jung Yun unnie suddenly started going on about how promotional broadcasts are the best way to draw people in! 'Recruit celebrities!' Ugh."

"Promotional broadcasts, huh."

A truly baffling idea. On paper it made sense, sure... but the problem was that the current state of the world had long since blasted common sense into the Andromeda galaxy.

First of all, setting aside whether television broadcasting was even possible... ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠even if we actually pulled it off, would there be anyone left who could watch? Were people's TVs even working properly?

I looked at Jung Yun with an expression loaded with those perfectly reasonable doubts, and she bristled.

"That's not it! I know a TV broadcast wouldn't be very effective, okay?! Do you think I'm some airheaded woman who lives entirely in her own fantasy world with zero grip on reality?"

I quickly swallowed the words Well, you were hanging around a guy like Han Daegeon before you joined me, so I kind of did.

"Radio! I'm talking about radio! Portable radios work on batteries alone, and you can even pick up radio signals on a phone! As long as you've got a station and the equipment! And we've got all of that! We can supply electricity too! We just need to broadcast over the radio and promote ourselves. That's what I was trying to say!"

"Okay, I get that part... but why the sudden question about whether I'd ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠met any celebrities?"

"What's the most important thing in a promotional campaign? Faces! Faces! Being handsome or pretty is nice, sure — but what's even better is a face people already know! Think about celebrities! Famous entertainers, idols... if people like that came on and said something like, 'Come running to Jeong Hoon's territory, where hope and love still breathe!' — wouldn't way more people take the bait... ah, I mean! Take an interest and come flocking in?"

...Had Jung Yun majored in media or public relations or something? I just nodded along at a steady rhythm, sipping my beer can as she rattled off her colorful pitch with surprising fluency.

"So... you never went into any of the broadcasting stations? You never found any celebrities?"

"Jung Yun. When you arrived here, did you see a single celebrity?"

"No. Not even one."

"That's reality. What you were hoping for simply didn't pan out. I've visited both broadcasting stations in Yeouido under the pretext of internal reconnaissance... and we didn't rescue a single person who even vaguely resembled a celebrity. I'd have better odds raiding an apartment complex in Gangnam."

"Aah! So that's how it is. That's really, truly a shame..."

She must have been genuinely disappointed, because Jung Yun gazed up at the sky and let out a long sigh. Then she started muttering to herself.

"I was hoping I might get to meet Oppa Kang Eunwoo or Oppa Park Youngwoong... ah, and the Bangwol Boys too!"

So it was a self-serving idea after all. I knew it. Not taking her seriously had been the right call.

"...Just so you know, more than half the celebrities and idols you just named are younger than you, Jung Yun unnie? I don't know for sure, but—"

"Hey, Mina! If they're cool and handsome, they're all oppa. Oppa! Ah — wait! That absolutely does not mean Jeong Hoon-ssi isn't handsome! If I had to put it into words, he's more like a... a reliable, admirable senior type...! Mina, why would you bring up age and put me on the spot like this?!"

"And who started spouting nonsense first, I wonder?"

"Mina! Hic—?!"

Yun Mina and Jung Yun launched into a comedy routine over the topic. The people nearby, treating it as free entertainment, watched their not-quite-argument with beer cans in hand and snickered.

I let a small smile tug at the corner of my mouth and raised my own beer can to my lips. For someone who'd been sinking into heavy thoughts over serious subjects, these little worries were nothing but pure enjoyment.

Even though we'd blitzed through the Gangbuk dungeon today, plenty of things still sat wrong with me. Why hadn't a single notification or announcement related to "dungeon management and difficulty adjustment" appeared? Why, despite how quickly we'd cleared it, had there been no talk of additional rewards beyond EXP and gold? Why hadn't that "Merchant"-type entity shown up again?

All those questions had settled into the corners of my mind and were quietly tormenting me... but the joyful scene unfolding right in front of my eyes helped me forget them entirely — or at least stop caring so much.

No. To be more honest... I wanted to see this every day. I wanted to change the world so that days like this would keep coming.

Yeah. The kind of person who creates scenes like this, and protects them... maybe what I'd wanted more than anything was to become that kind of great person — someone who safeguarded other people's happiness—

Cold water always got dumped right at the moment when laughter was in full bloom.