Chapter 5

The Apocalypse Game I Created Became Reality Chapter 5

My daily life had changed completely.

Until just a few days ago, I would wake up in the morning and start by getting ready for work.

Wash up, take the hellish subway, arrive at the office, and get chewed out all day.

Then, when night came, I would return home completely exhausted and turn on a game.

That was my daily routine.

‘It was neither fun nor rewarding, and it was fucking miserable.’

Before long, the moment would come when I would even miss that routine.

Yeah.

And it wouldn’t take very long.

“Phew...”

I stood in the middle of the underground workshop and slowly exhaled.

In front of me were piles of garbage bags I had spent all day yesterday clearing out.

Dust, scrap wood, rusty nails, broken shelves, dried-up paint cans, even unidentified scraps of plastic.

“...Then, shall I get started?”

I sorted through all of it again.

‘Anything that might be useful later should be set aside.’

Even just the bracket in front of me had plenty of uses.

Reinforcing temporary shelves or supporting a doorframe.

Or even securing wiring in place.

Clatter.

I put the bracket into a box in the corner.

Then I immediately picked up a pen.

“Now let’s sort out the priorities.”

There were priorities even when it came to survival.

At first, naturally, food had been the first thing that came to mind.

When people thought of an apocalypse, didn’t everyone imagine scenes like that first?

Running straight to the supermarket, filling carts to the brim, and stacking boxes of bottled water and instant noodles like mountains.

Scenes like that.

But.

‘Especially things like instant noodles have a shorter shelf life than you’d think.’

I shook my head while looking at the laptop screen.

It was still 184 days before the end.

There were still six months until the apocalypse.

It wasn’t as though zombies were knocking on the door right now.

So what I needed to do now wasn’t hoard supplies.

‘What matters more is building a system that will let me endure here for a long time.’

I opened a file from the external hard drive.

[EarlySurvivalBalance_TestLog]

Causes of early deaths on the Last Protocol test server.

It was data I had already looked at several times.

[Major Causes of Death in the First 30 Days]

- Failure to secure drinking water

- Failure of base ventilation

- Neglect of injuries and infectious diseases

- Group influx caused by noise exposure

- Conflict with other survivors

- Loss of information due to power failure

- Failure of food management

“Food is number seven.”

I tapped the screen with my finger.

Food was important too, but starvation wasn’t what killed people early on.

Even in Last Protocol, most beginners had obsessed over securing food.

Instant noodles, canned food, chocolate, things like that.

‘But.’

Most of them actually died because they ran out of water.

Or they shut themselves inside a room and collapsed because of ventilation problems.

Or they stepped on a single nail, the wound festered, and they died.

Without a generator they couldn’t even listen to the radio, and without batteries they couldn’t use their phones, leaving them isolated.

And the most common thing people said in the middle of all that was this.

- No, why did I die when I stacked up that much food?

- There’s seriously so fucking much to keep track of lolol

- They made this game fucking insanely hard. I quit. Later.

That was what beginners were like.

So I wrote something new in the notepad.

[Preparation Priorities at Day -184]

1. Base infrastructure

2. Drinking water production and purification system

3. Power system

4. Tools and modification materials

5. Medical supplies and hygiene

6. Long-term storage food

7. Consumables for final replenishment

Below that, I wrote another line in bold.

[Survival isn’t about piling up supplies. It’s about building systems.]

____________

After that, the first thing I started working on was the rear emergency exit.

At the back of the underground workshop.

A small iron door leading to a narrow alley.

This was my most important escape route.

The front entrance was easy for people to see.

It was located in an out-of-the-way spot and underground, but most importantly, it was connected to the hallway of the commercial building.

If someone came looking, it would be the first door they knocked on.

‘On the other hand.’

The rear emergency exit was different.

The alley behind the commercial building.

Between an old outdoor air-conditioning unit and trash cans.

It was barely visible, easy to pass by without giving it much thought, and hardly anyone ever came near it.

‘If I have to escape, it has to be through here.’

To survive, you don’t block off doors. You secure a way out.

It would also serve as an ‘entrance’ I could use to secretly come and go from the base.

“Hmm...”

I immediately crouched down in front of the rear emergency exit.

A rusty lock and loose hinges. The doorframe was slightly bent.

“This needs to be replaced right away.”

Of course, I already had an idea of how I wanted it.

“The outside has to clearly remain in a worn-down state.”

It couldn’t look sturdy from the outside.

Once the apocalypse began, a clean iron door would immediately catch people’s attention.

‘There must be something here.’

Because it would make anyone looking at it think exactly that.

But if it looked old and shabby on the outside while only the inside was reinforced?

‘That would be perfect.’

Click!

Afterward, I immediately started taking pictures.

The door, hinges, lock, doorframe, even the height difference in the floor, all carefully documented.

Then I headed straight to the hardware store.

“Welcome.”

The hardware store owner, who looked old enough to be my father, greeted me while wearing nothing but a white undershirt.

“A young man, huh.”

“Hello. I’m looking to do some work on a door.”

“A door?”

“Yes, I recently rented a workshop, and I want to leave the outside as it is while reinforcing only the locking mechanism on the inside.”

The hardware store owner tilted his head.

“Is it broken or something?”

“No, it just seems too old...”

At that moment, the hardware store owner stared intently at me.

“Young people with such a strong sense of security are pretty rare these days.”

“...!”

For a moment, I was at a loss for words.

This was the problem at times like this.

If I explained things too precisely, I would look suspicious.

I shrugged as though it was nothing.

“I’m planning to keep some tools and materials there. I thought installing an obviously new door might actually draw more attention.”

“Ah!”

Only then did the hardware store owner nod.

“That’s true. Put in a brand-new door for no reason and people think there must be something inside, so they try to clean you out. The world’s dangerous these days too.”

“Exactly, exactly.”

“Then you can install an auxiliary lock on the inside, reinforce the hinges, and put some rubber weather stripping in the gaps. That’ll reduce the noise too.”

“I’ll need lubricant as well.”

“WD?”

“Yes.”

At that moment, the owner snapped his fingers as if he had just remembered something.

“If you’re going to open it in the dark, stick some glow-in-the-dark tape on it too. If the power goes out, you’ll be fumbling around and cursing.”

It was actually quite.

No, extremely useful advice.

‘Real-world experts really are different.’

There were things game data alone couldn’t tell you.

People who actually sold tools, people who had repaired doors, people who had done this kind of work.

The instincts such people possessed.

I had no intention of ignoring them.

The game data and knowledge I had pointed me in the right direction, but at the end of the day, direction was all they could provide.

‘Auxiliary lock, hinge reinforcement plates, long screws, rubber weather stripping, lubricant, glow-in-the-dark tape, work gloves, safety glasses...’

Things someone setting up a workshop would reasonably buy.

“Have a good day.”

That was a satisfying first shopping trip.

______________

That night.

For the first time in a while, I visited the Last Protocol message board.

Honestly, I didn’t want to go there.

Just seeing the game’s name reminded me of the company.

And thinking about the company naturally brought the CEO’s face to mind.

“Haah.”

I shook my head and opened the message board.

True to a failed game’s forum, the very first page was nothing but complaints.

- Is the operator even alive?

- If server costs are such a waste, just shut it down.

- This game is dead, but I’ll give it credit for the atmosphere. That’s why I keep coming back.

- If that other game is famous for its OST, then this one is definitely famous for its atmosphere lololol

- I keep quitting Last Pro, reinstalling it for no reason, quitting again, and repeating forever.

Last Pro was short for Last Protocol.

“There are still guys playing this?”

A snort of laughter slipped through my teeth.

A game with fewer than 100 concurrent players.

And yet the people who were still hanging around were beyond merely hardcore.

“...Huh?”

That was when it happened.

One particular post among them caught my eye.

[(Link) - Something Something Bermuda Structure.]

That was the title.

[Oh my god, the game became reality lololol]

94 comments.

My hand stopped.

“...Already?”

I clicked it immediately.

The post itself was short.

It contained nothing but a link leading to the news article.

The problem was the comments.

ㄴ News says they found a deep-sea structure in the Bermuda Triangle. Isn’t this the Last Pro prologue?

ㄴ If something about Arctic glaciers shows up 30 days from now, then I’ll actually believe it lololol

More comments were lined up underneath.

ㄴ lololololololol the devs patched reality

ㄴ Last Pro Season 1 finally released in real life, damn

ㄴ But seriously, it is pretty similar to the prologue event

ㄴ Wasn’t it Bermuda → glaciers → satellite failure → riots?

ㄴ Man, you guys are even more impressive. Someone actually remembers the order of the prologue events from a dead game?

ㄴ You people still remembering this game are legendary.

ㄴ Dead-game veterans collectively activating PTSD

ㄴ If reality becomes Last Pro, I’m killing myself immediately. The early-game difficulty is fucking hell.

ㄴ Newbies, buy water first lololol

ㄴ This bastard is the most evil one here.

I kept reading the comments.

‘...For now, the atmosphere is still just joking around.’

It was nothing but jokes, so it was about the level of veteran players from a dead game reminiscing among themselves.

But.

‘What matters is that they remember.’

My fingertips suddenly went cold.

Right.

The players remembered.

The order of the prologue events.

The early-game difficulty.

Which events occurred, and who died first.

Of course, what the players knew would be the ‘release’ version.

Publicly released events, guides, streamer broadcasts, community information.

Nothing beyond that.

They didn’t know about [Season2_UpdatePlan], nor [HiddenEvent_Table]. They probably didn’t know about [UndergroundBunkerBalance] either.

They didn’t know the true identity of the mutant infected that had been scrapped during development, nor the military collapse route.

But.

‘I can’t ignore this.’

I was the one who planned this game.

But I wasn’t the only one who had played it.

“Hmm...”

That fact suddenly weighed heavily on me.

If, 29 days from now.

An actual news article about microorganisms in Arctic glaciers appeared?

‘This board will explode again.’

At first, they would joke about it again.

But what if the third and fourth events matched too?

‘Someone will start preparing seriously.’

There were quite a few maniacs among the hardcore Last Protocol players too.

Guys who played sixteen hours a day.

Guys who had memorized every corner of the map.

Even guys who reverse-engineered item drop tables and worked out efficient survival routes.

What if people like that started moving in reality?

‘Competition will appear.’

Bases, supplies, information, early safe zones.

Everything would become a race to claim things first.

Right now, I was the only one taking it seriously, but as time passed, this atmosphere would definitely change too.

Click.

I refreshed the page.

In the middle of that, new comments appeared in real time.

ㄴ If an Arctic article really appears next, I’m buying a generator lol

ㄴ I already bought one, later

ㄴ You lunatics lololol

ㄴ Should we organize the Last Pro early-game guides again?

The final comment in particular remained stuck in my vision for a long time.

[Should we organize the Last Pro early-game guides again?]

I immediately closed the laptop.

“...I need to hurry.”

Maybe I didn’t have as much time as I thought.

‘183 days.’

It looked long when written as a number.

But the time before other people caught on was much shorter.

My true monopoly window was probably only until the next omen appeared.

‘28 days.’

I had to finish the first stage of preparations within that time.

‘Water, food, base. At minimum, those three absolutely have to be secured.’

I stood in front of the plan posted on the wall.

Then I wrote in large letters with a pen.

[First Preparation Deadline: 28 Days]

The apocalypse had not arrived yet.

But the competition had already begun.