Chapter 17
The rubble of a collapsed building at the entrance to the Orange Zone.
Crunch, crunch.-!
“Fuck. Can't they make these bug blocks without that cockroach-leg texture...”
A Stalker exploring the danger zone had been resting against a building pillar when he chewed on a hard, dark-brown lump and grimaced.
The companion beside him, who had been polishing a weapon, snorted and replied.
“Don't be so picky. Eat that shit gratefully. You don't know what happened to those Wild Dog gang guys last week?”
“Oh, the guys who grilled and ate mutant meat?”
Among Stalkers, there was a kind of underground, improvised eating method passed down like a folk remedy or a pufferfish-preparation technique.
They would cut out clean portions of mutants they had killed and eat them, either to taste something resembling meat or because they could no longer endure their hunger.
There were even some lucky bastards who got to taste meat and survived, so it was also a life-or-death gamble that the starving never stopped trying.
Yet most attempts ended the same way.
“They thought they were being clever. In the end, two of them got infected, and it spread through the whole party, didn't it...?”
“Yeah. They all wailed for someone to kill them before they were purified. So just eat that ground-up crap. It tastes like shit, but nothing beats those bug blocks for providing calories without the risk of dying.”
Bug blocks.
Battle rations from the ruined world, made by crushing low-contamination insects whole and binding them together with sawdust or some unidentified starch.
Naturally, the texture was like hardened mud and the taste was horrific, but Stalkers had no more cost-effective food than this.
With the contamination levels of the land rising alongside the apocalypse, farming was out of the question.
So, in practical terms, obtaining any other food in this world was itself little more than a life-threatening gamble.
“Fuck... These shells keep getting stuck everywhere.”
The Stalker spat out the insect shell wedged between his teeth, pulled a plastic water bottle from his waistband, and gulped from it.
Bottled water from before the apocalypse, recently made available through the Gallery Shop.
“Ahh... The water tastes incredible. Thanks to the Shop, at least I won't die of thirst anymore, but...”
I just can't get used to these fucking bug blocks.
Their thirst was gradually easing, but hunger was another hell.
Of course, as Awakened people working as Stalkers, they had the ability to find enough food to fill their own stomachs.
They knew it, too.
The fact that they could even put something in their stomachs and feel full was a luxury.
The disparity was obvious just by looking at the black market beyond the collapsed building they were leaning against.
“Come on! A freshly scavenged can of corn from an unexplored zone! There's only a little rust on the outside, and it's only three months past its expiration date! Come on! Starting bid: 50 mana stones!!”
“Damn it! A can of corn! 55!”
”60 mana stones!! I'm buying it!!
“70!! I'll throw in a porter slave!”
In the middle of the black market, Stalkers with some clout and small-guild leaders were bidding mana stones over a single dented can of corn.
Then what was life like for non-Awakened people and the poor who did not even have the strength to fight zombies?
“Hey, look over there. They're coming swarming again after catching the smell.”
One of the Stalkers resting there snickered as he took a hard, desiccated crumb of some unidentified bread from his pocket and tossed it onto the ground.
It was a casual gesture, like tossing food to a stray cat.
Splat-!
“Aah!”
“Give it here, you son of a bitch!! I saw it first!!”
“You fucking bastard, die! Dieeeee!!!”
"Kehk! Cough!"
Two destitute people with nothing left but bones and skin lunged at each other to claim the single bread crumb lying in the mud, stabbing at each other's eyes and choking one another.
A single playful act of charity from the Stalkers, and someone's life was snuffed out.
For them, worries like mold or food poisoning were luxuries.
If they did not force something into their stomachs today, they were destined to starve to death.
“...!”
“Huh?”
They all stopped at once, their gazes snapping toward the translucent system window floating in the air.
Title: [★Starplex★] New Stock Arrival and Update Notice
Thanks to our members' enthusiastic support, we are pleased to announce that new products are scheduled to arrive at our shop.
The next scheduled product is food.
That was an announcement the Shop had posted in the Gallery.
It was an unhelpfully vague announcement that did not even say what kind of food was being sold.
“W-What?”
“W-Water, not just water...”
“C-Can we buy food now...?”
But even that announcement alone made it obvious that the laws of the outside world were about to be turned upside down.
*****
The Shop sells food, too.
The place that reacted most desperately to this news was not a trading company or a mercenary group, but, unexpectedly, Relief Center No. 1 on the outskirts of the Orange Zone.
“Uuuugh...”
“J-Just kill me...”
“M-My stomach feels like it's going to split open...”
Despite the sign calling it a relief center, hundreds of patients writhed in agony on wretched sickbeds inside tents roughly pieced together from torn rags.
They were dying not from wounds inflicted by zombies, but from severe malnutrition and protein deficiency, as well as conditions such as chronic intestinal obstruction and gastrointestinal bleeding.
“Director... Three more people passed away this morning...”
“If we force them to eat something like bug blocks, they'll die of shock before they can even digest them...”
At the nurse's report, Director Kang Seok-hyeon, the person in charge of Relief Center No. 1, rubbed his dry face.
“Phew....”
A healing skill could only delay infection, stitch up wounds, and stop bleeding.
It could not repair ruined digestive organs or resolve the underlying malnutrition itself.
The same was even more true if they were ordinary people rather than Awakened.
Thanks to the Oadasu released earlier, they had barely managed to prevent epidemics and dehydration, but the crude food of the ruined world was gnawing away at the patients' internal organs.
The solution was surprisingly simple.
“They just need to eat properly... That's all it would take...”
If they could provide just a few nutritious meals, they could save more than half the patients.
Yet in this hellish world, six months after the apocalypse, even such a hope was a luxury.
‘Even if a doctor who frequented the Gallery came, they couldn't save them... This is beyond anyone's control...’
Unable to bear his helplessness, Kang Seok-hyeon was finally about to let a resigned joke escape his lips.
“Director!! T-The Shop's announcement is up!!!”
A nurse came rushing in and shouted.
“Director!! T-The Shop's announcement is up!!!”
“An announcement? What kind of announcement?”
“Food!! They're selling food!!!!”
At the nurse's single sentence, all the medical staff inside the tent hospital fell silent.
“Food...?”
“Yeees!! The Shopkeeper is selling food this time...!!!”
At the nurse's single sentence, all the medical staff inside the tent hospital fell silent.
Director Kang Seok-hyeon, the healer in charge of Relief Center No. 1, quickly brought up the Gallery window in midair.
[The next scheduled product is food]
“I-It's real...? We still don't know what kind of food they're selling, do we?”
“We don't know that yet... It only says they're selling food!!!”
At that answer, Kang Seok-hyeon's rough, cracked hands began to tremble.
It was a shop that sold clean water.
Any food put out by the Shop would obviously be in a different league from the contaminated garbage lying around here.
‘If... if, by some tiny chance, it's really food from before the apocalypse again...!’
The other medical staff inside the tent were thinking the same thing.
“What on earth... What kind of food could it be...!”
“Please... Even clean grain flour would be fine...”
“No, even a piece of hardtack we could soak in water would be fine, please...!”
They did not even dare hope for something as luxurious as meat or porridge.
If food were made available that the stomachs of malnourished patients could digest safely and completely?
They could save countless people dying here in an instant.
Even so, Director Kang Seok-hyeon whispered quietly.
“Let's not hope for too much.”
“D-Director...”
“As long as it's something our patients can swallow...!”
****
It was not only the dying relief center that had staked its fate on the Shop's announcement.
The Orange Zone's foremost defensive line: Pangyo Northern Fortress.
Unlike the other warlords who had either lost contact or declared independence and turned into raiders, regular army troops remained here, responsibly maintaining the Orange Zone's front line to the very end.
Although they were unusually united by a strong sense of duty under their commander, there were no internal complaints or defections. Even so, normal food had disappeared long ago.
“Fuck... Why does this beast meat taste like I'm chewing on a tire...?”
“Swallow it anyway. Otherwise, you won't even have the strength to fire your gun when the wave comes.”
Because their food stores had run dry, the soldiers guarding the defensive line were surviving on meat from animals they hunted outside the ramparts.
They had to force themselves to fill their stomachs despite the disgusting smell and the risk of infection, because that was the only way to survive.
At that moment.
“Captain!! The Shop... The Shop has posted a food notice!!”
The adjutant flung open the command post door and shouted urgently.
“Food is being stocked at the Shop?!!”
“Yes, Captain! The announcement just went up!”
Captain Kim's eyes filled with shock.
They had thought the Shop's ability to pour out clean water alone was a miracle,
“Food....”
“Captain... If, if the Shop really puts up food that people can actually eat...”
At the adjutant's trembling voice, Captain Kim swallowed dryly.
The faces of the soldiers who endured by chewing disgusting mutant meat every day flashed through his mind.
If such food were released, whether the Pangyo defensive line could be maintained—and the fate of the entire Orange Zone—would depend on what exactly the food sold by the Shop turned out to be.
“Please... Let it be something that can raise the soldiers' morale...!”
****
At that moment, as the hopes of countless people converged.
[Trolling NEET] No, fuck, how are you supposed to survive eating that?;;
ㄴ You haven't eaten bug blocks?
ㄴ What the hell do you live on?
[Trolling NEET] No, fuck, how can you eat something compressed from bugs and starch ㅠㅠㅠㅠ
ㄴ What a spoiled brat. Newbie bastard, lol
ㄴ Come to the Orange Zone and you'll starve to death in a day ㅇㅇ
ㄴ Before the Shop put bottled water up for sale, we even purified our piss and drank it, you bastard;;
[Trolling NEET] You guys are all fucking lying!!!!
ㄴ Fuck, you're the one who sounds like a liar!!!!
ㄴ You crazy bastard!!!!
Only the mysterious user Trolling NEET remained utterly unable to believe any of these stories.