The Apocalypse Regressor's All-Purpose Shelter

“Hoo....”

Junho moved back and forth between the steaming hot bath, the ice-cold plunge pool, and the hinoki cypress sauna, slowly washing away the fatigue that had built up over time.

But even that still felt about two percent lacking.

“Khhh!”

After chugging an ice-cold pine needle drink straight from the refrigerator to fill in one percent, Junho finished off the remaining one percent with a top-tier massage chair before finally leaving the shelter bathhouse.

“Mmm. Good smell.”

“Oh, done bathing?”

Yoon Youngsu and Baek Hail, who were sitting on the lounge sofa, greeted him.

“Yeah. Have you been waiting long?”

“No. Youngsu and I just got here too. But Hoya, shouldn’t you get examined too?”

“I’m planning to do it tomorrow.”

Since they had spent a long period outside before returning, everyone in Junho’s group—including Junho himself—needed to undergo medical examinations from Dr. Choi Uisu and Kim Heeyoung at the infirmary.

Choi Hyunwoo and Han Areum were mandatory cases after surviving in isolation for so long, no matter how much they insisted they had been eating and living fine.

And Yoon Seolhee and Kim Jimin had also picked up various minor injuries during the expedition.

Though in reality, they were little more than scratches.

“But they’re staying in the container housing?”

“Yeah. They said it’s more comfortable.”

For the time being, Choi Hyunwoo and Han Areum decided to stay in the container residential area while going through an adjustment period.

The two of them could have moved directly into the shelter itself without issue, but Junho honestly appreciated that they were voluntarily trying to follow their shelter’s rules.

And besides—

- We’ll do anything you tell us to, Boss!

- Same here. I worked a ton of part-time jobs starting in high school.

The two of them were overflowing with laborer mentality, so Junho had told them to think things over while staying in the container district.

“Anyway, Sua and Suho both said they’re good people. Said the kid’s nice.”

“That’s right. They’re really good people.”

Yoon Youngsu deliberately nodded with a solemn expression in agreement with Baek Hail’s praise.

Seeing Yoon Youngsu act like that toward actual humans—not 2D characters—made Junho snort with laughter.

“What, suddenly feeling generous? You that happy about looting Techno Mart?”

“Ahem? What kind of person do you take me for... though yes, you may absolutely say that. Obviously. Hehehe, thank you, Boss.”

After receiving dozens of the newest GPUs and SSDs, plus Play Terminal 5 consoles, Yoon Youngsu looked so happy his mouth practically reached his ears.

“With thirty 24-gigabyte-class cards like the 4090s and 3090s, we can bundle several GPUs together and dedicate them to large-model inference, while the rest can separately run 7B and 13B models for agents and monitoring pipelines. And since we’ve got enough SSD capacity now, we can comfortably store logs, sensor data, and even model caches—”

“Yeah, yeah. So basically it’s good, right? Even if this isn’t enough for the full AI upgrade, it means we won’t need to raid an IDC center for a while?”

Junho instantly cut off the returning humanities-phobia lecture.

“Yup. And I’m gonna use the Play Terminal 5s for the greenhouse farms and cattle ranch too. In short—it’s awesome.”

Adjusting his glasses, Yoon Youngsu raised a thumbs-up.

“How’s the greenhouse work in Gahyeon-ri going, Boss?”

“Almost done. They’re already growing all kinds of crops in the first greenhouses we finished. Planting in the rice paddies is done too, and transplanting starts next week.”

“You sent over the cultivators and electric tractors, right?”

“Of course. The village chief looked so happy his mouth was practically splitting open.”

Among the supplies Junho purchased in preparation for the apocalypse were small cultivators for garden plots and electric tractors.

The electric tractors were so expensive that he only bought three, but he had purchased a full hundred Chinese-made electric cultivators without hesitation.

Of course, Gahyeon-ri already had agricultural machinery like tillers and rice transplanters, and gasoline and diesel were still usable for now.

But when working inside greenhouses instead of large outdoor fields, compact electric cultivators were vastly more convenient.

“There’s plenty of fertilizer too, and everyone’s expectations are high. Especially the old folks—it honestly makes me feel good seeing them lively again.”

Last winter, quite a few of the elderly survivors in Gahyeon-ri—who made up nearly a third of the population—passed away.

Many had emotionally collapsed after losing all news of children or grandchildren living elsewhere, and the shock weakened their bodies as well.

Some even lost the will to live entirely and simply gave up.

And yet, the elderly who endured until the end ironically became invaluable manpower in the ruined world, passing down decades of farming knowledge and experience.

People who once considered themselves “useless” had, ironically enough, found both purpose and the will to live after the world ended.

“Old Man Go’s doing fine too. He still visits the nursing home every week. No major problems.”

“Yeah. Things are fine at the shelter and Gahyeon-ri. But other places are turning into a mess.”

The moment Yoon Youngsu got to the main point, Junho’s eyes darkened.

“The place past the tunnel? Jinjeop-eup?”

“Yeah. Like I said, there’s an Alpha over there going completely wild. At least three or four thousand slaves under it. So....”

Because of the Alpha occupying the apartment complexes near Jinjeop Station on Line 4, nearby residential districts and apartment blocks had been devastated.

And when the creature started moving south along Line 4, survivors who had stubbornly endured around the area began fleeing en masse.

“A lot of them headed toward the reservoirs and mountains around there. Then some crossed the mountains and came through the tunnel into our territory. Around Peach Valley.”

Those survivors settled into abandoned campgrounds and pensions in the mountains.

Of course, since they were all small groups of fewer than ten people, they were not an immediate threat.

But once winter came again and food in the mountains became scarce after spring and summer passed, nobody knew how they might change or what they might do.

And they were not the only problem.

“The people coming down along the Han River from Cheongpyeong, Hanam, and Gwangju are the real issue. More than twenty have already entered Gahyeon-ri. Song Gijun and the extermination squad guys caught all of them, but they’re apparently struggling with what to do.”

“Mmm.”

Junho nodded heavily.

They had not harmed Gahyeon-ri or its residents.

They were simply people who wanted to survive, wanted someplace safe, and ended up here after crossing mountains and walking endless roads.

Song Gijun might be willing to kill if necessary, but he could not bring himself to execute innocent survivors from elsewhere.

“And most importantly, there’s an even bigger issue.”

“...?”

For some reason, Yoon Youngsu looked strangely cautious around him, making Junho tilt his head.

The answer came from Baek Hail.

“Some of the people who came into Gahyeon-ri seem to be talking about you, Hoya.”

“...What? What does that even....”

Junho frowned, unable to immediately understand.

Baek Hail gave a bitter smile before continuing.

“Hoya. You’ve become a rumor.”

***

- You made it all the way there? Damn, impressive.

Kang Baekho, who congratulated Junho’s Bucheon expedition like it was his own achievement after reconnecting over radio for the first time in a while, soon spoke again in disbelief.

- You know this already, Junho, but we’ve had a lot of people arriving here too, right? But lately some of the newcomers have been saying weird stuff. Something about a messiah, a paradise, whatever. But the more I listened, the more it sounded like they were talking about you and your shelter.

“...Where are those people from?”

- Some from Hanam, some from Yangpyeong. Not all of them, obviously. Haah... honestly, I think the story may have leaked from our side too. There are just too many people. Sorry about that. Seriously.

Junho smiled bitterly at Kang Baekho’s sigh.

“You don’t need to apologize. Honestly, it’d be stranger if rumors hadn’t spread by now.”

There was no such thing as a perfect secret.

And even in a world where electricity and communications had collapsed, rumors still traveled.

Before regression, Junho himself had learned various things from other survivors.

Especially information about the survivor group Kang Baekho built in Gwangju.

So compared to the old-timeline Kangho Resort, the current situation—where an entire village called Gahyeon-ri had effectively become a survivor settlement—would naturally become famous eventually.

“Besides, I go outside a lot and stirred up plenty of trouble. It happened a little earlier than I expected, but still. Anyway, this isn’t your fault, Hyungnim. You’ve already done so much for me.”

- Well, thanks for thinking that way. Anyway, I’ll tighten control on our side a bit more. Seriously, even after the world ended, it’s amazing—and ridiculous—the kinds of stories people still spread around.

“Anything else?”

- Yeah. There’s a military force dug in around Gonjiam. But these bastards have a lot of manpower and insane firepower. And more Alphas are crawling upward too. How about your side?

“Pretty similar. Well, it’s about time.”

Soon, it would already be one full year since the world collapsed.

Most Alphas had continued evolving and solidifying their identities, while survivors had almost fully adapted to the apocalypse itself.

“I heard there’s a huge survivor group in Gapyeong and around Nami Island. Though calling them survivors is generous—they’re basically looters.”

That information came from survivors captured by Song Gijun who had traveled down from that region.

Of course, the odds of directly encountering the Gapyeong group were low.

Because in the old timeline, nothing like that had happened to Gahyeon-ri.

But the problem was that Junho had interfered in countless events and changed the future itself.

In the previous timeline, stories about Junho and Gahyeon-ri had never existed.

Now rumors were quietly spreading from person to person.

- Seriously, this damn world’s a problem whether it ends or not. Oh right. I also heard something completely insane. But because of what you told me before, I couldn’t just ignore it.

“What kind of story?”

- Ulsan. Apparently factories are running there. Supposedly somebody brought in crude oil on a tanker ship. Hahaha, sounds ridiculous, right?

“...!!!”

Junho’s eyes widened sharply.

Anyone else would have laughed it off as nonsense.

But he knew.

What Kang Baekho just said was not a rumor.

It was true.

“Hyungnim, that story just now. Who told you? No—do you think I could meet the person who told you?”

At that moment, Junho instinctively realized that his brat, Viktor Volk Choi, had finally arrived in Korea.

***

“Namyangju? Why there?”

Park Gyumin, now effectively the “owner” of the family that had possessed Nami Island for decades, chewed grilled fish while asking the question.

The man in military uniform sitting across from him grinned.

“The guys around Gapyeong Station were saying something interesting. Apparently there’s a paradise in Namyangju.”

“Paradise? What kind of bullshit is that? Some tourist hotel? A nightclub?”

“No. A real paradise. A heaven-like place. They say solar power’s running nonstop there, they’ve got tons of food from looting nearby towns, and they’re even farming. Supposedly they’re raising livestock too.”

“What? What kind of ridiculous nonsense are you spouting? Maybe if they were living on an island like us. But in that area? Like zombies would just leave them alone.”

Park Gyumin smirked while wiping fish oil from his mouth, but the soldier’s expression remained serious.

“Right? But what if it’s true? What if a place like that really exists?”

“Hm.”

As Park Gyumin fell into thought, the soldier leaned closer and whispered.

“Sounds nice, doesn’t it? At the very least, it’s worth checking out once, isn’t it? We could go by boat or take the Gyeongchun Line. Aren’t you sick of eating freshwater fish all the time too?”

Of course, they still had plenty of rice and other supplies here.

But in a world like this, the more food and resources you had, the better.

That was why they used Nami Island as a base and launched raids not only into Gapyeong, but even to the outskirts of Chuncheon.

“Namyangju, huh... well, checking it out doesn’t sound too bad. Hope there are plenty of young ones there. I’m getting tired of these people too.”

Park Gyumin grinned as he slowly looked over the young men and women standing nearby in nothing but underwear, all attractive and physically fit.

Maybe it was time to expand his power further.

Maybe it was time to become greedier.