Chapter 83 – LV.Fourteen Orc Vampire Oh Haengbok – [One]

Oh Haengbok had recently come to truly understand why there were so-called “people drunk on national pride.”

He never knew that having his own group praised could be so thrilling.

A few weeks ago, a Frenchman had crossed over to Happy Village. He was someone Oh Haengun and his group had brought along, claiming he had been driven out of his own village while trying to help them.

A young man from the village translated what the Frenchman said.

“In the place I originally came from, we couldn’t even increase the village population as we pleased.”

“Why on earth not?”

“Because in the Rulebook, or video game, or whatever it was, there was roughly a set number for our village population. If our village population exceeded that number, monster attacks would become noticeably more frequent…”

The Frenchman went on to lament how torturous life had been in his village, how oppressed the people were, and how many had been driven out and died for absurd reasons like himself.

“Sounds like Hell.”

At Oh Haengbok’s words, the Frenchman exclaimed.

“Yes, it was Hell! Compared to that, life here in Happy Village is truly unbelievable. It’s almost like Heaven…”

As the Frenchman choked up, Oh Haengbok tried hard not to show how pleased he was. Fortunately, it wasn’t difficult with this Orc Vampire face. This face looked angry even when smiling.

He didn’t know how lovely this Frenchman was. Nor how satisfying the words coming from his mouth were.

Every word that came from that mouth was truly, truly thrilling. Because he could think about how livable this Happy Village was compared to other places that had become Hell in this ruined world, and how great his own achievement in building this village was, and take pleasure in it.

He knew it was a base pleasure, but there was no helping it. If he couldn’t even enjoy this kind of joy, how could he endure the bloodlust he still felt?

“So, is there any reason for the people there to keep living in that Hellish place?”

In response to Oh Haengbok’s question, the Frenchman answered.

“Huh? They have no choice. Other villages are in similar situations, so they can’t migrate elsewhere…”

“Not to other places in France, but can’t they cross over here to Korea? Over there in France, you said you couldn’t even speak French freely, right? Meanwhile, here in Incheon land, there’s so much empty space!”

Oh Haengun chimed in from the side.

“Then from their perspective, it might be better for living in the long term, but wouldn’t it be difficult to settle? They probably already have their own fields, and starting new cultivation…”

“Do they all need to cross over at once? Just send about thirty people here first to scout out a place for them to settle, cultivate the land, and once preparations are done, the rest can all cross over together!”

His reproachful voice didn’t come out nicely.

That fucking bastard Oh Haengun, not long ago, when he confessed how miserable a thing he had done and offered to work in his place so he could rest, Oh Haengbok had truly wanted to kill him.

It wasn’t just because he suspected that Mage bastard was trying to usurp the position of village leader. The feeling of being treated like a useless good-for-nothing was horrifying.

Oh Haengbok himself had to continue being an important person in the village. He had to be like before, when he was everyone’s protector and savior.

Four years ago, around the time the world had become like this…

Four years ago, Oh Haengbok was a Taekwondo Master. He took care of kindergarteners, elementary school students, and a few middle schoolers. Even to his own eyes, it seemed like a job unbefitting this two-meter-twenty giant, so he made efforts to do it well.

For example, Oh Haengbok never uttered curses so his trainees wouldn’t get scared. He tried to do the same in daily life. No matter how angry he got, he only swore to himself.

Even that day, when the Taekwondo dojang on the second floor of a building shook violently and he almost died along with his trainees, Oh Haengbok only muttered this.

“Sh… what the hell is this?”

It was an earthquake. An earthquake strong enough to make several buildings collapse.

Seeing fires breaking out everywhere, it was clear many people must have died, but no disaster alert text messages announcing the earthquake came. Not even a single phone call, let alone texts. From anywhere, including government agencies.

Villagers urgently gathered and chattered about what was happening. Most argued this:

“Is there any need for discussion? It’s war!”

“Then did the Northern puppets finally…?”

“Yes! You know those bastards succeeded in their nuclear test, right?”

So the theory was that electronic devices weren’t working due to EMP from a nuclear bomb. And this earthquake was an artificial one caused by a nuclear explosion.

Someone pointed out that an earthquake of this magnitude couldn’t possibly be created by something like a nuclear bomb, but they weren’t an expert either, so they couldn’t offer a better explanation than the war theory.

Eventually, while most villagers left to evacuate south, Oh Haengbok stayed in the village with some others.

It wasn’t because he had any grand blueprint. It was because he had to take care of his trainees.

After the earthquake, parents came to the Taekwondo dojang to check if their trainees were safe and took their children away.

But some parents never came. It wasn’t hard to guess that the earthquake and fires had taken their lives.

In the end, a few trainee children with no one to care for them were left at the dojang.

Normally, he would have tried to place them somewhere by calling a public institution or relatives rather than taking care of them himself, but in this case, that wasn’t possible either. Because phones weren’t working either.

So what could he do? The Taekwondo Master who happened to be there had no choice but to take care of them himself.

At first, there was no sense of crisis. He only secretly hoped that once the world normalized, the heartwarming story of the Taekwondo Master who calmly took care of children during the chaos would spread.

But problems emerged in less than a week: there wasn’t enough food.

“Is there really not a single pack of ramen for sale?”

Even when he asked the neighborhood mart owner, only this answer came back.

“No! Everyone scraped everything clean when they evacuated.”

Damn it, the mart owner bastard absolutely refused to sell, even though he clearly must have hoarded stuff.

In such a situation where even his own food was insufficient, Oh Haengbok had to feed the children.

When the chaos broke out, like others, Oh Haengbok had also bought a lot of rice, ramen, butane gas, and such. But even those were soon in danger of running out.Now the only provisions left were the snacks. The snacks he’d bought in bulk at wholesale prices to feed the kids as the Taekwondo Master. Those boxes of snacks piled up were now a help.

Of course, it wasn’t enough to last long with several kids.

In the midst of this, it was hard to tolerate the immature children whining about when their mom was coming, asking to charge a smartphone so they could watch YouTube, and complaining they wanted chocolate-flavored snacks instead of barbecue-flavored ones.

It was even harder to overcome the sense of victimization that those ungrateful brats were eating the provisions meant for him.

Especially since, given his large build, wasn’t he in a situation where he needed to eat several times more than others? The worry that he had to keep playing a caregiver role that was never in his fate came flooding in. He even felt the impulse to kick all the kids out of the dojang.

When people heard the Taekwondo Master was looking after kids he didn’t necessarily have to be responsible for, some, acting all nice, had brought over a few packs of ramen each, saying, “Oh my, Master, you’re really having a hard time.” But not long ago, those same people had come back with greedy eyes, pleading that if he hadn’t eaten that ramen yet, could they have it back.

Everyone’s altruism had vanished long ago. In this situation, did he, as the Taekwondo Master, need to act altruistically?

‘These are snacks for weekend recreation and snack Parties. Snacks bought with money from the kids’ parents to feed the kids.’

To do that, Oh Haengbok had to convince himself.

‘They were the kids’ from the start. If I eat them all by myself, it’s embezzlement and theft.’

Several weeks passed like that. There were still snacks left, but it was clear they couldn’t hold out like this forever.

Oh Haengbok was gradually shuddering with a sense of crisis. While he made the kids eat only one pack of snacks a day, Oh Haengbok himself, the owner of the snacks, wasn’t even eating half a pack a day.

The problem was that the heartwarming story of the Taekwondo Master feeding the children had spread by word of mouth among the parents of the Taekwondo trainees.

As if to stir sympathy, they all brought their kids and begged him to feed them some snacks.

Every time he gave out a pack of snacks and sent them back, there was one particularly shameless parent. That parent seemed intent on having their kid’s meals taken care of at the Taekwondo dojang. Even though the Taekwondo dojang had already closed down, weren’t they sending their kid to the dojang regularly?

The parents of the middle school boy Park Taeyang were those kinds of people.

“Um, they said if I come here, I’d get snacks…”

Park Taeyang muttered with his head hung low, seeming to know it was shameless himself.

Oh Haengbok muttered again. “Damn…” And after some thought, he said.

“Alright, come in and eat.”

He couldn’t bring himself to coldly send him away. Whether this Park Taeyang kid had a developmental disorder or his parents just didn’t educate him properly, he was a bit severely self-centered, and because of that, he had no friends his age. He attended the Taekwondo dojang hoping that if he got stronger, he wouldn’t be Ostracized.

What a pitiful kid. Park Taeyang, even though he was a middle schooler, said his joy in life was coming to the Taekwondo dojang and playing dodgeball with elementary school kids. After this powerful Taekwondo Master chased away the classmates who came to bully him after school a few times, he had also developed an excessive reliance on him.

So, because he didn’t kick out this middle school kid either and kept feeding him snacks, things eventually blew up.

“Park Taeyang?”

In a situation where they couldn’t rely solely on snacks, Oh Haengbok had been out with a crowbar, searching a few villas to see if there were any provisions left in houses people had evacuated from.

And there was Park Taeyang, standing blankly in front of the Taekwondo dojang, which he had locked up for fear of the snacks being looted.

Had he come to eat snacks again? But it wasn’t even mealtime yet, why was he already waiting?

Oh Haengbok was angry but held it in and asked why he had come.

“My mom and dad told me to come here. Oh, and they said this is a gift…”

Oh Haengbok glanced over and saw Park Taeyang had come with his school backpack stuffed full of things like ramen and Spam cans. Only then did Oh Haengbok’s heart soften a little, and he let Park Taeyang into the dojang and even gave him snacks.

But even as night fell, Park Taeyang didn’t go home. Park Taeyang’s parents didn’t come to pick up their deficient kid either.

Oh Haengbok, struggling to hold back his anger, asked.

“When are your parents coming?”

“Um, I’m supposed to sleep here…”

“So they said they’ll come back tomorrow?”

“No. They didn’t say that either…”

Oh Haengbok started to get angry, asking why they were deciding that on their own, but stopped.

Along with anger, anxiety sprouted—the suspicion that those parents were trying to abandon Park Taeyang here. Those few packs of ramen and cans they had gifted now might be equivalent to the food people put in a box when abandoning a dog or cat.

Oh Haengbok had endured and endured until now, but this was something he absolutely couldn’t tolerate. Even he could hear the anger in his own voice as he spoke.

“I need to go see your parents. Take me to your house.”