Hoarding In Hell [EN]: Chapter 59

59. Flood (1)

“Wow! Oppa [older brother or close male friend, used by females], did you see the mosquito in the bathroom?! It was huge!”

“Ah, that…….”

“I guess mosquitoes are huge in the mountains. I sprayed so much mosquito repellent, but it wouldn’t die, so I dropped an encyclopedia on it. But it still wouldn’t die and was wriggling around, so I used a lighter with bug spray to burn it.”

“…….”

“Maybe that was the culprit who murdered the owner of this place!”

Hyeon-woo couldn’t bring himself to say that it was his familiar and offered a silent prayer for the poor mosquito.

Of course, there’s no place for mosquitoes in heaven.

Releasing the mosquito wasn’t exactly to surprise Yu-min, but to see how much he could control his familiars without being conscious of it.

He had been trying to move them blindly, even when they were out of sight, and it seemed to have made its way to the bathroom.

Hyeon-woo and Yu-min were in a suite at a high-rise hotel.

The bunker was undergoing non-stop renovation and couldn’t be stayed in.

It seemed to have been modernized when it was purchased from the Sejong Institute, but the interior needed improvement.

“What were you doing, Oppa?”

“Ah, stocks.”

“Huh? Stocks? Oppa, you know how to do that? You’re not short on money, are you? Saving for retirement?”

“Something like that. Can you help me if you know something? All the financial sites in Korea require you to install and authenticate everything, so it’s too complicated.”

“I have an account, so should I help you? What do you want to buy?”

“Ah, I’ve already bought what I needed. Um, do you know about futures trading?”

Yu-min’s eyes widened as she looked at Hyeon-woo.

“You’re trying to start with gambling. I guess you know what it is. Have you heard anything? Insider information is illegal, you know?”

“It’s a bit late to worry about illegality…… Don’t worry, it’s not insider information.”

Hyeon-woo said, glancing at the scrapbook he had brought from hell. If it’s information from the future, it can’t be called insider information.

“So, what are you going to sell?”

When Hyeon-woo mentioned a few company names, Yu-min’s eyes widened.

It included Tae-sung, companies making a lot of money from mana industries and dungeon accessories, and almost all of Korea’s leading companies.

Companies that would never go bankrupt unless the country collapsed. Hyeon-woo bet that the stock prices of those companies would plummet in a few days and put the stocks he just bought on the market.

“Is a nuke going to drop on Seoul or something? Is that why you bought a bunker too?”

“If I knew that, I would have left the country.”

Yu-min followed Hyeon-woo’s lead, half in doubt. As Yu-min said, Hyeon-woo knew of an incident that would shake the country, even if it didn’t collapse.

To be exact, he was inducing the incident. And he was planning to use it to buy stocks.

It wasn’t to make money.

Selling crystal moss was enough to make money.

Hyeon-woo’s goal was to acquire stocks and secure shares.

‘Of course, I still don’t have enough cash to secure meaningful shares.’

The upcoming incident would bring him enormous profits. And the next, and the next plan, were also prepared.

Every time Hyeon-woo carried out a plan, the market would shake, and he planned to use that to gradually increase his stock holdings. Of course, in the name of the company Hyeon-woo owned, not Hyeon-woo himself.

‘I need to create a background like Tae-sung.’

In the process, countless victims may be created. But from the beginning, preventing victims was not something Hyeon-woo could do.

Hyeon-woo was only adjusting the timing with information about an event that was bound to happen. There was no preventing the incident.

Maybe he could reduce the damage.

Hyeon-woo picked up his phone and checked the text message from Park Hwi-soo.

「Delivery successful」

It was a short and concise message. That was enough.

Now that it had been three days since the text message arrived, it seemed like a good time to start preparing.

Hyeon-woo stroked the scrapbook Baek-gol had left behind. He had an outline of what would happen, but he didn’t know the details.

Hyeon-woo wondered if he could control the flow enough. This was the first step.

“Oppa, now that I think about it, what’s that? A photo album?”

Yu-min asked, looking at the scrapbook Hyeon-woo was holding.

Hyeon-woo replied briefly.

“A record of the apocalypse.”

Yu-min stared at Hyeon-woo for a moment.

“Oppa, are you still going through your chuunibyou [a Japanese term for adolescent delusions of grandeur] phase?”

“……No, that’s…….”

“It’s okay. It’s common for ability users to go through it again after awakening their abilities. Like shouting spells or skill names for their skills. They also believe that it makes their power stronger. But you know that’s not true, right?”

Hyeon-woo felt a little wronged.

It’s real.

***

Late afternoon.

As evening approached, the area around the Guillotine Dungeon was crowded with people exercising along the walking paths.

Even though it was a dungeon with heavy security, familiarity lessened the fear.

Even if monsters leaked out, they were usually dealt with inside the barrier, so it was just one of those inconvenient places.

The Guillotine Dungeon had a high reputation, but it was just an everyday scene for ordinary people.

But even in the midst of all this, there were people preparing for the future.

Click.

A civil servant took a picture from the barrier overlooking the dungeon entrance.

His photo album contained records spanning hundreds of days. The civil servant slowly flipped through the phone’s photo album, checking for any differences from the other photos he had taken before. But aside from the occasional rearrangement of the stonework, he didn’t notice any major differences.

“Hey, what are you taking pictures of?”

Startled by the sudden voice, the civil servant turned to look. A man he had never seen before was standing right next to him without him knowing.

“What is it? Civilians are not allowed in here.”

“They just let me in when I said I was a hunter.”

The man took out his hunter registration card.

Kang Hyeon-woo. It was a name he had never seen before. But his appearance didn’t look like a hunter.

He didn’t have any weapons or equipment, and he looked too young. But the soldiers tried to keep as many hunters as possible by their side, even if they were suspicious.

After all, hunters were better at dealing with monsters.

“I’m Kang Hae-cheol. The photos are for my personal research.”

“Research?”

“Is it possible to predict the possibility of monster appearances based on the shape of the entrance to a fluid-type dungeon…… something like that.”

“Fluid-type dungeon? Ah, I’ve heard of it. They say the dungeon’s state changes frequently?”

Kang Hae-cheol looked at Hyeon-woo with disdain. How could such a simple guy become a hunter? Do they just let anyone in if they get an ability user rating?

Kang Hae-cheol felt it was unfair, but he decided to think that Hyeon-woo was just a rookie.

“I think you’re understanding it too simply. The fact that the state is fluid is not such a simple problem. It’s like exploring a new dungeon every time you go to attack it. Maps are useless, and monster information is useless. The numbers and the degree of strength change every time. So it takes a long time to attack. The biggest problem is that the dungeon entrance is unstable, so monsters can pop out easily.”

“Monsters?”

Hyeon-woo craned his neck and looked into the Guillotine Dungeon.

Black basalt stoneworks grew like parasites on the steep cliffs. The bizarre environment, which was out of place, was similar to the Cheonggye Dungeon, but the barriers surrounded by wire mesh, the soldiers patrolling with weapons, and the hunters waiting and stationed there made the security incomparably stricter.

“Don’t worry. That’s why we have resident hunters here to stop the monsters. Ordinary monsters can’t get through here. But the problem you should worry about is the Flood phenomenon.”

“Flood?”

“You’ve probably heard that the Baekdu Dungeon near Pyongyang caused a Flood eight years ago. And Floods only happen in fluid-type dungeons.”

The Baekdu Dungeon was the only 5-star dungeon in the world where a Flood phenomenon had occurred.

The world, which didn’t even know of the existence of the dungeon due to North Korea’s closed nature, realized the fact only after the monsters covered Pyongyang due to the Flood phenomenon.

A silent civil war broke out within North Korea, and there were stories of mushroom clouds and radiation detection. The result was the victory of the monsters.

Neighboring countries briefly experienced chaos due to refugees. But there was not enough time or budget to remove the overflowing 5-star monsters. Above all, no one made the decision to drive valuable forces, the hunters, to their deaths.

“That’s why we’re fighting the monsters pouring in from the north instead of the North Korean army.”

“Lee Ji-tae attacked the 5-star Taebaek Dungeon, so wouldn’t it be possible to do the Baekdu Dungeon soon?”

Kang Hae-cheol scoffed at Hyeon-woo’s words.

“Ha, how can the fixed-type Taebaek Dungeon be the same as the fluid-type Baekdu Dungeon, which has a Flood? Hunters are dying just from fluid-type dungeons, but with a Flood, the number of monsters is beyond imagination. In fact, you should see it as a step up. I wouldn’t be surprised if the first 6-star dungeon was designated as the Baekdu Dungeon.”

Hyeon-woo nodded.

“Flood, Flood……. I see. So there’s a possibility that a Flood could happen here too?”

“It’s rare, but since Floods have only happened in fluid-type dungeons so far, the possibility exists. Well, we’ve entrusted the dungeon’s state to the clan to manage it stably so that such a thing doesn’t happen in the middle of Seoul. If any abnormalities were detected, the clan would have reported it.”

“I see. Has there been any abnormality lately?”

“Well…… there have been rumors that goblins that don’t fit in the dungeon have been found, or that a child seems to be wandering around, but goblins aren’t really noteworthy information. Oh, and the reason I take pictures is that the entrance to the fluid-type dungeon changes every day. So I compare the previous appearance with the current appearance to guess the state of the dungeon. If it has an unusually unstable structure, it seems that there is a high probability that monsters will appear that day.”

“So, is today a dangerous day?”

“Well. Actually…… the pattern is a bit strange today…….”

“Show me the picture.”

Then Kang Hae-cheol seemed a little embarrassed.

“Well, it will all look the same to ordinary people. In fact, this is something I started taking pictures of with the thought that maybe I could listen to what the hunters say as a jinx, so it’s still a bit lacking to make a meaningful comparison.”

“Indeed…….”

Kang Hae-cheol was embarrassed, but he showed the picture anyway. No one had been interested in what he had been writing reports and submitting them to his superiors.

Still, he felt good that a hunter was interested in his research. Hyeon-woo, who had been looking at the picture for a while, smiled and handed the phone back.

“You’re doing a great job. It will definitely be helpful someday.”

Kang Hae-cheol smiled pleasantly at Hyeon-woo’s compliment. Hyeon-woo was the only one who didn’t laugh at him for doing something useless.

But Hyeon-woo said that because he really knew that what he was doing was not useless.

‘I’m sure. Today is the day.’

Hyeon-woo erased the smile from his face and walked away from the Guillotine Dungeon.

The assumption of the civil servant named Kang Hae-cheol was not wrong.

‘Today, a Flood will occur here.’

Today, a Flood will occur, and the data that the civil servant named Kang Hae-cheol has been researching for years will become valuable data.

Based on the photos he took, research will begin, and in a few years, it will be possible to know the signs of a Flood in advance.

But Kang Hyeon-woo was the only one who knew that fact in this place.