Episode 1. There’s someone here!
Episode 1. There’s someone here!
“Ha…I’m tired…I’m tired.”
A monthly salary of less than 2 million won. There, he saved 12 million won by paying monthly rent and student loans and saving 1 million won a month in savings. Although it was a large amount, it was far short of Sejun’s goal.
“Whew. So when do I buy tickets? “Will I be able to survive?”
Sejun sighed at the daunting goal.
A 99-story black tower that suddenly appeared in the middle of Gangnam, Seoul 10 years ago. The tower had geometric patterns and a structure that ignored the laws of physics.
As many as 100 such towers were created simultaneously in various cities around the world. Each country investigated the towers that appeared in its territory, but did not gain much.
The information they found was that the tower was 990 meters high, was made of a material so strong that even a nuclear bomb could not make a hole in it, and that there was no door to the inside of the tower anywhere.
In that situation, people suddenly started coming out of the tower one by one. They naturally passed through the wall of the tower and came out.
Investigators rushed to determine their identities and discovered that the people who came out of the tower were people who had suddenly disappeared recently.
“How did you get into the tower?”
When questioned by investigators, they said that they did not go in, but were sucked into a black hole and that when they came to, they were on the first floor of the tower.
In this way, information about the tower began to be revealed by people who came out of the tower.
-100 towers are connected as one.
-When you enter the tower, you awaken and become either a wizard or a warrior.
-There are monsters from the second floor of the tower, and the higher the floor, the stronger the monsters become.
-You can receive a reward every time you clear a floor, and the higher the floor, the better the reward. However, there is no reward even if you clear a cleared floor again.
No one knew the purpose of the tower. But one thing is certain: climbing the tower makes money. Items obtained inside the tower were sold at high prices on Earth.
Among those items was a ticket. Tickets are one of the important ways to earn money for awakened people, and there is a high probability that one or more tickets will appear when you clear a floor.
People who have already awakened do not need tickets to enter and exit the tower. However, if the general public holds a ticket, they can enter the tower.
And when you enter the tower, you awaken and become qualified to climb the tower. Therefore, tickets were not cheap and not easy to obtain.
In the case of Korea, the Korean Awakened Association was purchasing and selling hunters’ tickets in bulk.
The price is 150 million won per piece. Since there are so many people looking for it, there is news that the price will rise to 200 million won in a week. There are hundreds of people waiting and paying in advance to buy tickets.
‘I can’t give up!’
And when the news about Kumpa Patek began to appear frequently these days, Sejun made a big decision.
Let’s grow crops at home!
How to tighten your belt even more. Well, I’m not saying I’m going to grow anything great, but to save on living expenses, I was thinking of buying and growing a few things that will grow on their own as long as you give them water.
‘I have to do it right away starting today.’
So I bought green onions and a few other things at the supermarket and headed home.
“Heungheungheung…”
Sejun hummed.
This was due to the expectation that if people grow fruits and vegetables at home in the future, they will be able to save a lot on food costs and be able to eat vegetables and fruits as much as they want.
‘This is how you save money to buy a ticket and enter the tower. And I earned a lot of money at the top, and with our Sarah…’
“Hehehe…”
Sarah is a member of Korea’s top girl group Moonlight Fairy. In short, it was Sejun’s only delusion.
As Sejun was delusional and walking around laughing, a black hole appeared in the air in front of him with its mouth open.
And
wow.
It started to absorb the surroundings.
“uh?! This…!”
Sejun was very surprised to discover a black hole with no view of the other side.
‘It’s vanishing!’
Vanishing is a phenomenon where you are invited to the tower, and all the first awakened people go through vanishing…
Anyway, this is a luck that is harder than winning the lottery!
Da da da da.
Sejun hurriedly sent a message to his family. He was worried that his family would look for him if he disappeared without saying a word.
When I sent all the messages like that, I thought,
‘Why am I still here?’
Even if he was sucked into the hole, he should have been sucked in a long time ago…
Sejun continued to stare at the black hole, waiting for it to take him away. However, the suction power of the hole showed no signs of getting stronger.
“Hurry and take me. uh! what? Why are you getting smaller?!”
Even the hole was closing.
‘no! my future! Sarah!!!’
Sejun made up his mind. The future is about pioneering.
“okay! “I’ll go!”
Sejun ran into the hole. Just like that, Sejun disappeared into the pitch-black darkness.
***
“Where is here?”
As soon as Sejun came out of the hole, he realized something was strange. It was very different from the information he had heard about the first floor of the tower.
I heard that on the first floor of the tower, the surroundings are illuminated by gorgeous chandeliers, the floor is covered with white marble, and in the large plaza, there are shops selling equipment and potions, as well as a training center where you can learn the skills of warriors and wizards.
But instead of a store or training center, this was a cave made of rock.
If there is anything similar to the first floor of the tower, it is that it is spacious.
The good news is that there is no fancy chandelier lighting, but there is a ray of sunlight coming through a hole in the ceiling of the cave.
‘First, let’s find an exit.’
Sejun looked around and started looking for a place to get out.
The first place to go was a hole in the ceiling of the cave. However, climbing the wall to the hole in the vaulted ceiling of the cave seemed impossible, unless you were Spiderman.
‘Let’s find another place.’
Sejun put his bag down on the rock and explored the cave.
After a while.
“How can it be so wide…”
The cave was much wider than I thought. The sun did not reach the end of the cave, so it was almost impossible to see.
“I have to save it…”
Sejun had no choice but to turn on his smartphone’s flash to a low level and continue exploring the cave.
3 hours later.
The cave exploration is over. The cave was a cavity completely blocked on all sides. I checked each rock to see if there were any cracks or weak spots between them, but there was nothing I could escape through.
“There is no way out… Am I in trouble?”
Sejun muttered as if in a daze and trudged back to the place where the sun was shining under the hole in the ceiling of the cave.
“What should I do…”
I had to admit. It was impossible to go out here alone.
“Hey! There’s someone there.” !!!”
In a last-ditch effort, Sejun shouted into the hole in the ceiling of the cave, “There’s someone
here
!”
Sejun’s desperate cry could not escape through the hole and only lingered inside the cave.
“Hey! There’s someone there!!!”
Sejun shouted at the top of his lungs. But nothing, let alone a person, passed near the hole.
“Damn it. There’s someone here!!!”
Puck!
Sejun couldn’t hold back his anger and kicked the ground for no reason. A day passed like that.
Day 2 of the shipwreck.
[May 11, 6 a.m.]
Beep beep beep beep beep beep.
The alarm I had set for work rang.
“Uhm. ..”
Sejun woke up with difficulty in an uncomfortable sleep and turned off the alarm on his smartphone.
“······”
Sejun woke up and stared at the hole in the ceiling of the cave all day.
Several hours passed and no one passed by. “There’s someone here!
”
Only Sejun’s cries were reflected off the damp rock and returned as a gloomy echo.
Rumbling.
Sejun’s stomach churned. Although he was extremely worried, he had to eat and survive right now.
“Ugh… I’m really hungry.”
When I thought about it, I hadn’t eaten anything since I got off work.
‘Should I eat something?’
Sejun found a flat rock and sat down.
And
rustling.
I took out an apple in a bag from the bag I had put down. It was a washed apple given to me by a colleague at the office.
‘thanks. ‘Minjun.’
Sejun decided that if he were to leave this place, he would repay his classmate Minjun with sweet and sour pork. It’s not that Minjun likes sweet and sour pork, but he just wanted to eat sweet and sour pork with black bean noodles.
So Sejun decided to give Minjun some sweet and sour pork, so he opened the plastic packaging of the apple and took a big bite of the apple.
Crunchy.
The sweet and sour juice of the apple took over my mouth.
‘It’s so delicious!’
As soon as my appetite returned, my hunger arose uncontrollably.
Crunch. Crunch.
Sejun frantically ate the apple as if he were a glutton.
“ah.”
I looked at the remaining apple core and seeds with a vain look. The quantity was very insufficient.
Puck. Puck.
Sejun roughly dug the ground with his feet and buried the apple seeds and top together.
And then he started taking out the things in the bag.
I brought my laptop and 500ml bottled water with me as I had leftovers from eating in the office.
Green onions, cherry tomatoes, and pumpkin sweet potatoes that I bought to grow at home.
“One, two, three…”
Sejun started counting the number of cherry tomatoes in the plastic container. This was to accurately determine how much food they had.
27 cherry tomatoes, 10 green onions, 7 pumpkin sweet potatoes.
First, I planted all the green onions, then 3 cherry tomatoes and 2 pumpkins and sweet potatoes, and saved the rest for food.
Cherry tomatoes have many seeds inside, so you can plant a lot with just three. And sweet potatoes… could not be planted in large quantities because they provided the least amount of carbohydrates among the food we had.
‘First, fill your stomach more.’
Pout, pout.
Sejun washed one sweet potato and five cherry tomatoes thoroughly in the pond.
Fortunately, there was a small pond in one corner of the cave. Because drinking water can be solved.
‘It would have been nice if there were fish…’
There was not even a small minnow-sized creature in the pond. Come to think of it, there were no small animals like bugs or rats in the cave.
Sejun gets scared when he sees bugs or mice, so he had to like things that weren’t there, but when they weren’t there, he felt somewhat disappointed. In movies, I have seen many scenes of people eating bugs or rats when there is nothing to eat.
‘If we really run out of food, we have to eat something like that.’
Of course, it’s best to get out of here before the food runs out.
Wow.
When I chewed the sweet potato, all the distracting thoughts disappeared along with the cheerful sound. Now was the time to focus on sweet potatoes.
Munching.
it’s good! The more you chew it, the more sweetness comes out, making it much more delicious than I expected. I always eat it steamed or grilled, but sometimes I thought it would be okay to eat it raw.
“Now let’s get to work.”
Sejun, who finished eating one sweet potato and five cherry tomatoes, picked up the green onions first.
And
pudduk.
I cut the green onions about a third of the way from the root, tore off the green leaves, and placed them separately on the ground.
‘I’ll eat it later.’
It might not taste good, but I might have to eat it to survive.
Sejun buried the white part with the roots of the green onion in the ground where the sun was shining and the soil on the ground was soft.
Next, I planted two pumpkin sweet potatoes to the left of the green onions and a cherry tomato to the right.
Pumpkin and sweet potatoes were simply buried in the ground one by one, and cherry tomatoes were planted using the seeds that came out from inside the masher.
Jjongjjong.
Sejun approached the pond, sucking the tomato juice off his hands. Then, I filled a 500mL water bottle with pond water and thoroughly moistened the land where the crops were planted.
When the work was finished, Sejun lay down on the rock and looked at the ceiling, waiting to see if anyone would pass by. Since there was no food, I tried to reduce my energy consumption as much as possible and occasionally shouted, ‘There’s someone here!’
But no one passed by.
Beep beep beep beep beep beep.
[May 12, 6 a.m.]
It was the third day of the shipwreck.
