Hiding a House in the Apocalypse-Chapter 94.4: Influencer (4)

The will to live is one of the most crucial variables that a person preparing for the apocalypse must manage.

There aren’t many ways to strengthen one’s will to live in an era where everything is deteriorating.

The closest thing to a solution is people.

Family, a lover—something like that.

But human relationships come with baggage. Bringing someone else into your life means taking responsibility for another person (who, more often than not, is less capable of surviving than you are). Worse, if conflict arises, that relationship might end up doing more harm than good.

That’s why, in the early days of the war, I actively avoided adding people to my circle.

Rather than increasing my will to live by bringing in outside influences, I managed it by ensuring it never broke in the first place.

A certain level of comfort, an environment free of unnecessary discomfort, security, and some form of daily enjoyment—these are essential to maintaining the will to live.

When these elements are lost and stress builds up, people either go insane or start viewing death lightly.

SKELTON: You know you're being poisoned with arsenic, right? It's your bunker caretaker. They've probably been adding a little bit to your meals every day.

For a long time, Dolsingman didn’t reply.

Then, after what felt like ages, he finally responded.

Message from Dolsingman: Isn’t that more like a service, though?

His will to live had already been broken for a long time.

I tried again to help him.

SKELTON: I can help. At the very least, I have the strength to take out the caretaker who's poisoning you.

His response?

Message from Dolsingman: You didn’t read my post carefully, did you?

For a moment, I imagined a balding, arsenic-poisoned man with a face blackened from chemical exposure staring me down.

Then, he followed up:

Message from Dolsingman: I like her. What do you think you're going to do if you show up? Kill her just because she poisoned me?

Message from Dolsingman: Actually, can you even kill her? Lol.

Message from Dolsingman: And by the way, who the hell are you? You sound like some young brat. And, damn, you reek of someone who didn’t get a proper education.

This content is taken from freeweɓnovel.cѳm.

“Huh?”

This asshole.

Was this what he was really like?

I hadn’t interacted with him enough to know his personality, but I didn’t remember him being this much of a bitter, twisted bastard.

Did he go insane from arsenic poisoning? Or had he always been this deranged?

I used to enjoy looking at all the pictures of “healthy, beautiful women” he posted, but if he wanted to act like this, I wasn’t going to let it slide.

SKELTON: Why the sudden meltdown?

Message from Dolsingman: Don’t overstep, kid. What school did you go to? Should I do a background check on you? Me? I went to S University, you dumb fuck. Lol.

SKELTON: No wonder you got divorced.

Message from Dolsingman: Can you even get married? Lol.

“...”

This bastard.

*

< Would you like to disconnect your account? >

It had been a long time since I’d last logged out of my SKELTON account.

It wasn’t something I usually did.

But if someone spits in the face of my goodwill, then I won’t hold back.

Honestly, this was a win-win situation for me.

I’d punish Dolsingman for shitting all over my generosity, and at the same time, I’d eliminate a competitor to my soon-to-be-released visual novel, The Hunter.

From my years of internet experience, I could tell—Dolsingman was an overly sensitive guy.

That’s probably why he got divorced.

But what he didn’t understand was that I was far more capable than he assumed.

Most users in Viva! Apocalypse! only had one account per person.

But I still had several spare accounts.

During the Armband Incident, VivaBot had banned all the dummy accounts Valentine had created.

But that lazy bitch only banned the accounts directly involved in the scheme.

The inactive backup accounts? Some of them were still untouched.

I activated one of them.

< Please enter a nickname. >

Taptaptap.

Nickname: factosman

- Verifying Obelisk connection and account information.

- Login successful.

- Welcome to Viva! Apocalypse!

“...”

When a Viva! Apocalypse! user gets too pissed off to hold back, they usually change their nickname to go incognito.

I had done that before.

But our forum used a fixed account system.

It didn’t matter how many times you changed your nickname—as long as someone checked your account’s unique ID, they could see your entire post history.

Plenty of people had tried to hide their tracks by changing their names before.

Plenty had failed and made complete fools of themselves.

But skilled users? Smart users? They didn’t bother with name changes.

They switched accounts entirely.

And I had several to choose from.

It was the equivalent of having multiple satellite devices at my disposal.

I had watched carefully as Dolsingman’s visual novel barely scraped its way onto the trending list.

I read his second post, too—I even enjoyed it.

But the public’s reaction? Lukewarm.

Who the hell wants to read about an old man’s love story?

Especially Dolsingman’s.

His ugly mug alone was enough to make any uninterested reader click away instantly.

His post had, what, five comments?

Nobody truly liked it.

Honestly? I was probably the biggest fan of his story.

And yet he had the audacity to insult the one person who appreciated his work?

That was unforgivable.

What I was about to do?

It was poetic justice.

From our brief conversation, I had figured out that Dolsingman had a deep sense of intellectual pride and vanity.

People like him weren’t fazed by direct insults.

But if I made him look like a fraud? That would break him.

I went to his first post for New Love and left a comment.

factosman: Sigh... I get that it's fiction, but where’s the realism? It’s been three years and six months since the war ended. Who the hell would believe this bullshit?

The attack had begun.

And, as expected, Dolsingman immediately took the bait.

Message from Dolsingman: Who the hell are you? Never seen you before. You new here?

A rookie mistake.

He engaged me directly.

But my goal wasn’t just to piss him off.

It was to make sure his painstakingly crafted AI-generated romance was seen as worthless garbage.

So I had factosman go silent.

Let Dolsingman’s seething reply echo pathetically into the void.

Instead, I went to his second post and left another comment.

factosman: Sigh... so you’re telling me a bunch of fifty-year-old fogeys were leaving books and flowers on a table like it’s some kind of teenage romance? If you were gonna write a diary, why didn’t you just do that? And that damn jazz music—Jesus, even your conscience must be screaming at you.

A few moments later, a message popped up.

Message from Dolsingman: Where the fuck are you?

Message from Dolsingman: You bastard. I have bombs, you know? I could blow up your whole bunker, got that?

“...”

As I thought.

Dolsingman wasn’t even close to my level.

He was far beneath me.

Just as Pygmalion carved and refined a marble statue until even he himself fell in love with his creation, I too, after thousands of iterations with the AI image generation tool, finally produced a female character that the forum members would approve of.

“Hmm...”

I crossed my arms, taking a moment to appreciate my masterpiece.

Then, I uploaded my new ambitious project, The Hunter Begins, Episode 1.

Posting something on the forum was like throwing out a fishing trap.

All that was left was to wait and check back later to see what I had caught.

Stepping outside for some fresh air, I took a moment to inspect my facilities.

The broken generator was now humming back to life, supplying power to my battery storage.

The secondary water intake system, which I had started construction on last year, was finally trickling with murky water after months of work.

With a little more effort, I’d have enough water to sustain more people if it ever came to that.

A contradiction, of course—wanting to live alone while simultaneously preparing for the arrival of others.

But you never know.

Someone I know, or even someone I like, might one day find their way to my bunker.

By the time I finished working on the water intake system and returned to my bunker, the sun had already set.

As expected, I had notifications waiting for me.

Heart pounding, I checked the responses to The Hunter Begins, Episode 1.

mmmmmmmmm: What is this? Did you copy Dolsingman’s thing?

unicorn18: Damn, your taste in women...

gijayangban: ?

Only three comments.

None of them positive.

In fact, I had even received a warning message.

Message from gijayangban: Senior, what the hell are you doing?

Message from gijayangban: This “Lightning” you mentioned... are you talking about our Lightning?

If he was on the battlefield, he should be focused on the battlefield.

Why the hell was he on the internet?

Seemed like I had to take the post down for now.

Using Lightning’s call sign verbatim had been a mistake.

I’d fix that and reupload.

But why were the views and upvotes so abysmal?

I had posted it at dawn, a time when new posts had better visibility due to low traffic.

As I kept refreshing the page, hoping against hope that the numbers would improve, something caught my eye.

“....”

For just a moment, my eyelid twitched.

Dolsingman: New Love, Episode 3

He had just uploaded it.

Fresh.

Unlucky bastard.

Of all times to post, he had to do it right as I was watching.

Might as well check it out.

Click.

What unfolded before my eyes was not a long, dramatic story.

It wasn’t an AI-generated composite image either.

It was a photo.

A picture of Dolsingman—smiling, looking relaxed—sitting closely with a young woman.

And then, he spoke to us.

"Age means nothing. That was just another prejudice, shaped by a narrow mindset."

"Even in the very first novel she lent me, there were two women: one young but inexperienced, the other mature yet protective. The protagonist fell for the latter, but the one who truly supported him in reality was the former."

"So I took a leap of faith. And now, we’re together."

The next slide showed Dolsingman grinning from ear to ear as he addressed us again.

"Vibarians! Have confidence! You can do this too! Before the war, we were seen as losers—but now, we’re the most attractive men around! Look at me! Even someone like me pulled this off!"

The bastard who was literally eating arsenic was saying this.

But the forum’s reaction was something else.

In just a short time, comments began pouring in.

Positive ones.

This wasn’t just another throwaway post.

It was gaining traction.

Fast.

“....”

What should I do?

Logging out to drop a hate comment wouldn’t be enough to stop this momentum.

But I had to do something.

Even if it meant starting a keyboard battle, I couldn’t let this post hit the trending list.

Just as I was about to log out and intervene, something caught my eye.

“?”

In the background of the photo, beyond Dolsingman and the bunker caretaker woman, something was hanging on the wall.

A white cloth.

On it, written in red paint, were Chinese characters.

I zoomed in to read them.

萬流歸宗 (All streams return to the source)

So that’s what this was.

*

I had overlooked something.

Among the many ways to sustain the will to live, there was one method—one of the most ancient, yet still powerful—that had yet to fade.

Faith.

Whether a real belief or a blind one, faith gave people a reason to live.

Just as kids form cliques at school, there were groups within the forum that stuck together.

Dolsingman had once belonged to the older, more socially respected circles.

I decided to ask some of his acquaintances about him.

tntn_Orthopedics: Dolsingman? Yeah, he used to post a lot of “tasteful” pictures and loved cracking sexual jokes, but he was incredibly smart. You can tell just from the way he talks.

Anonymous424: He had a cool-headed vibe, unlike how he might have seemed. He never really shared personal details, but he hinted enough that we could guess his pre-war career. He was always careful.

No matter how intelligent or rational someone is, when you leave them alone in a miserable situation for too long, they lose their ability to make sound judgments.

And honestly?

My impression of Dolsingman wasn’t too different from theirs.

Despite his casual-sounding username, his behavior was calculated, his words measured.

The early chapters of New Love had even drawn me in with their emotional depth.

But he had changed.

Dolsingman: New Love, Episode 4 – The Path ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) of True Faith

The man dying from arsenic poisoning had become a missionary for the very cult trying to kill him.

Dolsingman: There’s nothing to fear. The monsters aren’t our enemies. Perhaps they’re our friends—our brothers, our sisters.

A founding member of Viva! Apocalypse! spewing this kind of garbage?

I couldn’t let it slide.

SKELTON: You disgusting bastard. Out of everything, you fell for a fucking cult? You know this is bullshit, right? You went to a good university, and you’re buying into this nonsense?

Message from Dolsingman: Right back at you~

SKELTON: I’ll be honest. I liked your writing. I found it interesting. The way you described your bunker, the sense of distance and relatability in your romance—it was engaging. But then you swerved into this cultist trash?

SKELTON: It’s not too late. Do you need help? If you cooperate, I can kill them all for you.

Message from Dolsingman: And then?

SKELTON: ?

Message from Dolsingman: What happens after you “liberate” my bunker?

SKELTON: What do you mean?

Message from Dolsingman: Will happiness return?

That was our last conversation.

All of Dolsingman’s posts were deleted.

He never showed up again.

His account never posted another sermon.

It ended as just another incident—but at least, for a moment, he left an impact on me.

He showed me that even within doomsday survivalists, there were different perspectives on the end of the world.

And soon, more friends would disappear too.