23
Vroooom~
Vroom~ Vroom~.
For several days, the sound of moving centers coming and going could be heard all over.
Like that, all fifty households finished moving in.
Among the residents who had finished moving in, a few scratched their heads.
Now that they had actually moved in while paying such an enormous monthly rent....
‘D-Did I really need to go this far just to move in here...?’
Of course, the air was truly clear.
Since it had been Buy This’s review, the mana concentration of 200 was probably real as well.
Most of all, one factor in their decision to move in was the fact that they were loyal customers who always carried Krushvalbi Elixir whenever they went hunting.
Was this not an opportunity to see Thundercloud?
It was also true that their contract had ended anyway, and they had applied for the move-in screening half as a joke.
‘The screening was strict....’
Those deep-sea-like eyes that looked at them.
The feeling of being stripped bare!
Even though he was D- Grade, he could not meet the eyes of Thundercloud, who was definitely lower Grade than him, for long.
And,
‘the necklace of acceptance was placed in my hand....’
Thinking about it, it was truly funny.
No, this was not some Produce 101, so why did they, the people moving in, have to be screened?
He did not know, and it was strange...but once he actually passed, the fact that he was among the fifty out of three hundred did not feel bad at all.
Of course, worry came first too.
‘Will he be a good building owner?’
It was probably a worry every tenant had.
That was a completely different matter from having a good public image. It was also something no one could know until the lid was opened.
Now that move-in was complete, he might gradually reveal his true colors.
And then,
Ding!
[Building Owner Thundercloud has invited you to the “Forest-Access Druid Village Notice Room” chat room.]
“Uh...?”
He picked up his smartphone and checked the chat room.
Inside the chat room, fifty people, including himself, had been invited as a group.
Should he say something in greeting?
Just as he was about to type, a long message that looked as if it had been copied in advance quickly appeared.
Building Owner Thundercloud:
First of all, it is a pleasure to meet you all!
This chat room was created for smooth communication with the heads of each household.
As the chat room name says, it is a notice room.
No conversation other than notices should be posted here! (If any are posted anyway, I will have no choice but to delete them, sob sob)
I will say this in advance, but I am prepared to provide everything for your convenience.
It will not happen, but if the iron door creaks, or water leaks, or especially if you really dislike the basic molding! In such cases, please do not spend your own money. Contact me separately, and I will fix it right away.
That is what the expensive monthly rent is for ^^
Nails? Hammer them in freely.
Flooring? Change it freely!
I will not interfere at all regarding restoration to original state!
Hmm! Shall we comfortably set the monthly rent date to the end of every month?
If you think it might be late, message me privately, and we will solve it together!
Naturally, you do not need to reply separately. Please contact me only when a problem occurs. (Even if you reply, I do not plan to reply!)
I simply hope that all of you will be happy in my forest-access area.
Rather than a building owner...hmm, I cannot think of a suitable comparison.
Just a village chief?
For now, I think you can think of me that way!
I would really like it if you simply thought, “This is my home~” and lived comfortably.
Then goodbye.
Bye!
“...Whoa?”
For a while, he could not say anything as he looked at the notice.
“What is this... Is this allowed?”
What was an ordinary building owner like? When tenants moved in, they smiled as if they would even pull out their own gallbladder for them, but once tenants were about to leave, they became legal plunderers desperate to shave down the security deposit by finding even the tiniest scratch on the wallpaper with a microscope.
He, too, had suffered all kinds of such grievances.
‘I thought it would be fine once I became a hunter, but that wasn’t really the case either...!’
Why would he not have met psycho building owners who raised the rent unreasonably under the excuse that the air purification system had been expanded and the mana concentration had risen, or who started construction upstairs without saying anything and interrupted the precious rest time after he returned from a dungeon, or who pressed the password and entered without permission when he was not there, checking the state of the house whenever they pleased and trying to control the tenant somehow?
His previous building owner had also treated him with a slimy smile, only to become a son of a bitch at the end who tried to loot the security deposit by lumping together every flaw that did and did not exist.
But this building owner, Thundercloud, was different from the way he stepped.
“A village chief...pfft!”
It was funny!
Thinking about it, it even felt less like a notice and more like the result of him listing his thoughts without order.
He would not interfere at all?
He told them to think of it as their own home and live there, while minimizing intervention?
Then, literally, as long as they paid on time and had no complaints about the house itself, it was a system where they might not exchange even a single word with the building owner all year!
On top of that....
“Wow...what is this, a new construction?”
The exterior was clean too, but the inside of the house was flawless.
A trendy white-wood-toned rustic interior built with all kinds of new construction methods!
If he simply sat on the sofa and looked at the scenery outside the window, a loose smile naturally formed.
In particular, Thundercloud’s one casually thrown line slammed hard into his heart.
– That is what the expensive monthly rent is for ^^
“Krrrghhhhhhh!”
What beautiful words those were!
He wanted to convey this deep gratitude,
so naturally, he had no choice but to send a message of thanks...!
There was only one problem.
He sent a long message filled with sincerity, but...!
“Uh...he read and ignored it.”
It had been read and ignored!
“I-I want to be friendly......!”
This kind of read-and-ignore was not only happening to him.
Hunters who were fairly influential in Area 4, hunters who could easily live on prime land, were being “read and ignored” one after another by Village Chief Thundercloud!
Village Chief Thundercloud was, in every sense, a god-tier building owner,
but at the same time, he was also an extremely clean-cut building owner who had no intention of mixing even a single speck of soul into anything outside business!
***
Ding.
Ding, ding-ding-ding~
“Ugh, I should turn off the notifications or something.”
He had told them not to reply, so why were so many replies coming?
Just from the opening lines, most of them were things like they looked forward to his care from now on or they were moved.
“Heh heh... They are all angels. Angels!”
There was something a certain philosopher(?) in Japan, whose name he could not remember, once said.
When five people gathered, one of them was always trash!
Normally, there would have been no small number of private messages nitpicking one thing or another, telling him not to act like a big shot because he seemed unlucky, or disguising condescending lectures as various suggestions...!
But these were the carefully selected fifty out of three hundred!
There was not even one such person.
They were simply saying thank you, that they had a good feeling, that they would invite him to their homes, and so on.
“What good people they are! I will accept only the sentiment from everyone. Ohohoho!”
Feeling infinite satisfaction with the tenants he had chosen, Building Owner Ki Ja-hyeon marked all the messages as “read” and stopped paying attention.
It might seem cold, but it was right to cut this off early.
Even if the conversations were pleasant now, people, once they kept talking, naturally came to want more and ask for more.
They might want more from him, or the reverse might happen.
To block such things in advance, this was right.
“I am sorry, everyone!”
In any case, Ki Ja-hyeon’s lips were filled only with smiles.
How much hardship had he gone through as he moved from one house to another?
Yoon Se-hak, who had managed the Scorpion Gang rental housing, was literally cute by comparison.
Thinking back to Area 5 was enough to make him spring up even from sleep!
Now he had become the building owner.
Though he was charging far more than the surrounding market price...in truth, Ki Ja-hyeon did not intend to make a great deal of money from the rental business.
In the first place, if that had been the situation, instead of renting them out, using all that land as fields and planting Krushvalbi to maximize production would have earned him far more money.
‘Of course, I’m not saying I’m not making money....’
How should he put it? It was the realization of a romantic ideal?
Ki Ja-hyeon simply intended to let the kind and good people who had not worn down and were still shining in this dystopian world bear fruit without breaking.
If he had to say it, perhaps this was human farming?
Was that too arrogant a thought?
No!
“If I fail, it is arrogance. If I succeed, it is revolution, is it not?”
Therefore, Ki Ja-hyeon only wanted to continue embodying the kind of building owner he had wanted to meet when he was a tenant, and take care of his own people.
To do that,
he needed to earn a lot of money, did he not?
“So elixir manufacturing, elixir manufacturing!”
Fwoooooosh~
Natural mana poured from Ki Ja-hyeon’s body as he embraced the elixir.
Accordingly, the enormous Krushvalbi Elixir jar began sparkling and copying credits.
Like that,
time flowed and flowed.
***
Thundercloud became a building owner.
And he created Forest-Access Druid Village and began offering 100 units.
The insane price of 2,000,000 credits!
The number of people who moved in was 50!!
└ Forest-Access Druid Village? Is it real that he said he was recruiting 100 households but only got 50? lololol.
└ Well, who would pay 2,000,000 monthly rent to go to an Area 4 outskirts garbage dump? Of course it is an unsold-unit party, lololol.
Some people laughed.
They were people who knew nothing.
└ You idiots, it was not that they failed to sell. They deliberately left units unsold.
└ If you do not know, just stay quiet. Did you not even watch Buy This’s review? More than 300 people went. More than 300.
└ I heard Family Master Kang Cheol-jin was among them too?
└ Come on, no way.
└ ????Is that real?
└ It is an unverified rumor.
In any case, about 300 people had gone, yet fewer than 50 had survived there.
└ What is the standard? Looks? Personality?
└ Not looks. A lot of people around me applied, and exactly one got in, but he is ugly as hell.
└ Same with personality. That bastard curses all the time and is stubborn.
└ But Buy This got in, did she not? Did she get in because she is pretty?
└ Honestly, after how many reviews she did for him, it is understandable that he let her in. Maybe they have a connection?
└ There is also gossip that they are lovers.
└ They say Thundercloud is extremely handsome too?
└ What’s this, what’s this... My instincts are really good...!
At last, various rumors about Thundercloud and Buy This began creeping up.
Before they could spread like wildfire, Buy This swiftly turned on an explanation broadcast.
{Buy This Emergency Live! There is nothing between Lord Thundercloud and me!}
└ Explain. Explain yourself, explain.
└ Ex
└ plain
└ Ex
└ plain
└ Ri
└ ot
└ Ri
└ ot
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
“Oh dear...everyone, would you please listen to me? This is all a misunderstanding... If you keep this up, I might get kicked out of the forest-access area...!”
Buy This first began explaining.
It was not as if there was anything special to explain.
She merely confessed in detail that there had been no connection, and that she had gone through the same screening as everyone else before entering.
└ When is Buy This sis’s nasal voice coming back? I will come then.
└ Ah, her voice is pretty, but I cannot get used to it....
└ Nasal-voice faction, please get lost... If you got crushed in a 9:1 vote, then be crushed by the majority and disappear!
└ Ah, anyway, what was that screening? What was the standard?
“I-I do not really know the standard! He just stared at me. For about one minute...? Really intensely...then he said I passed and gave me this!”
On the neat gold necklace, “Forest-Access” was written in pretty calligraphy.
└ Then you are saying you made eye contact?
└ For a whole minute? You had eye-contact time!
└ What’s this, what’s this. There is definitely something!
└ WTWT
└ WTWTWTWTWT!
“E-Everyone...I am telling you, every person went through that process...?”
– BuyThisThatThisI’llBuyYou donated 200,000 credits.
└ One-minute eye contact with everyone’s Buy This? I will kill him!
“Oh dear, Chairman! I-It really is not like that.”
– Thundercloud donated 500,000 credits.
└ It is not like that...it was merely part of the mind-reading process....
└ Shiver shiver shiver shiver. The man himself appears.
└ It is real. It is the real one.
└ 500,000 credits...money really is good. He crushed the chairman with money.
└ But what mind reading? Is he Gung Ye or something....
└ Gung Ye, shiver shiver shiver.
└ Thunder Gung Ye, shiver shiver shiver shiver.
– BuyThisThatThisI’llBuyYou donated 500,000 credits.
└ ???? ?????
– Thundercloud donated 500,000 credits.
└ I merely said it was not because it was not....
└ Shiver shiver shiver shiver shiver shiver.
└ 500,000, insane....
└ Well...the rent is 2,000,000, so is that one week’s worth...!
└ Let us squeeze out just two more.
└ Let her live for free this month!
“Oh dear, Village Chief! You do not have to give this much!”
– Thundercloud donated 500,000 credits.
└ Rent is rent, donations are donations....
“O-Oh dear...you really do not have to...!”
Receiving donations all at once that would usually take several days of broadcasts to receive left Buy This deeply moved.
A happy smile formed on her face without her realizing it!
However,
– Thundercloud donated 500,000 credits.
└ To say it again, there is no pink atmosphere between us. Not even 1%.
That happy smile vanished in an instant.
The smile turned into an expression where disappointment, smallness, and dejection were mixed together well.
“Ah! I-Is that so? One percent.... Ah, nothing between us... No! Th-That is right! Of course it is! W-We are not anything to each other, I told you?”
└ Wow. 0 confessions, 1 rejection.
└ A one-second moment of silence.
└ What was that change in expression? That expression was real.
└ Clipped.
– BuyThisThatThisI’llBuyYou donated 100,000 credits.
└ I will kill him after all!
└ The combat power in that reply donation is weak....
└ Chairman lost....
└ A new chairman has arrived.
└ But the new chairman is not interested in Buy This....
└ Not even 1%....
“Kyaaaak! It is a misunderstanding...a misunderstanding, I said! Ah, seriously!”
Now that Thundercloud himself had appeared, Buy This’s live channel was on the verge of exploding.
Concurrent viewers: 30,000!
Truly tremendous firepower!
And amid that firepower, Thundercloud’s next donation followed.
– Thundercloud donated 500,000 credits.
└ That was the advertising fee so far....
└ ???? Advertisement?
└ Is a new product coming out?
└ Is it a new elixir product?
└ What is it? What advertisement is it?
“...Advertising fee? Did you give me an advertisement?”
– Thundercloud donated 500,000 credits.
└ The advertisement starts now....
?????
Advertisement? What advertisement?
While everyone held their breath and waited for Thundercloud’s next donation,
– Thundercloud donated 500,000 credits.
└ One month later, Forest-Access Village will accept second-round tenants. The price is 4,000,000 credits.
????????????
The chat window was covered in question marks.