Webnovel Author In The Apocalypse World-Chapter 222: Snowfall (Part 2)

When someone offered to call the Safe Zone Commander back, Kim Haru stopped them. Instead, he decided to take a short stroll on his own.

Thanks to Moon Baein’s early efforts, all the roads in the Pyeongseong Safe Zone had been cleared into passable paths. The residents were busy shoveling snow in front of their homes, while organized snow-clearing teams took care of public areas. Snow on the rooftops had already been removed earlier in the morning.

However, some people remained indoors, unable to venture outside. Most of them were individuals with weaker constitutions who couldn’t withstand the sudden cold and didn’t yet have sufficient heating measures.

While some were busy clearing the snow, others were working against the clock to produce more heating equipment.

Kim Haru didn’t linger in the safe zone for long. As long as he stayed there, people kept trying to entertain or accommodate him. Not wanting to add to their already heavy workload, he quickly returned to his farm.

This time, the teleportation device transported him directly to the living room of his wooden cabin.

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Go Okrim was at the door with an iron shovel, digging through the snow that had piled up outside.

The small farm’s iron shovels were made by a metal-type ability user during the safe zone’s farming initiative. After the initiative ended, Kim Haru had bought five shovels from them, which were now proving their usefulness. However, if he remembered correctly, the shovels had been stored in the barn. How had Go Okrim gotten his hands on one?

Perplexed, Kim Haru voiced his question.

Go Okrim sighed. "I teleported to the barn to grab it. Hyung, those zombies in the barn are completely useless. Just a bit of snow, and they’ve all frozen stiff. I was hoping they could help clear the snow, but no luck."

That response took Kim Haru by surprise.

"All of them froze?"

"Pretty much. Seven from the Power Ranger Gang are completely out of commission, they were buried entirely under the snow. Only Little Aeris and Little Ignis are somewhat resistant. They can still move a little. Little Ignis, being a fire-type zombie, is faring better than Little Aeris, but if this snow keeps falling like this for another two days, they’ll probably stop moving too."

Kim Haru frowned in confusion. "Isn’t there heating in the barn?"

He distinctly remembered checking this before going to bed last night. The barn, chicken coop, and pigpen were all equipped with heating. How could they end up frozen like this?

Hearing this, Go Okrim became even more exasperated.

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"Kim Haru-hyung, you probably don’t know this yet, but the zombies have this weird attraction to weather. Whether it’s raining or snowing, as long as something is falling from the sky, they’ll run outside to soak in it. This time was no exception—they went out on their own and spent the entire night standing in the snow."

It seemed to be an inherent instinct for zombies. Even though Go Okrim had already turned them into robot-like creatures, he still couldn’t change this behavior. On the bright side, after being soaked like this, the zombies would act as if they had been lubricated, moving more nimbly than before. For this reason, Go Okrim didn’t usually pay much attention to it.

However, life on the farm with Kim Haru had been so carefree that Go Okrim completely forgot about this particular quirk of the zombies. As a result, he didn’t take any precautions in advance. When he checked on them in the morning, he found all the zombies lying neatly in a row outside the barn.

This caught Kim Haru off guard too.

Now, nearly half of the small farm’s labor force was incapacitated.

Oh, right, there was another important issue. Kim Haru asked, "If Little Aeris is frozen, can it still use its abilities?"

He hadn’t forgotten that his convenient teleportation skill was all thanks to Little Aeris’s abilities.

As soon as Go Okrim heard this question, his face froze in shock.

Seeing his expression, Kim Haru immediately understood.

"Looks like it can’t," he concluded.

This was troublesome. Without Little Aeris teleportation skill, he’d have to figure out an alternative, like finding a reliable means of transportation.

Moreover, he had to think about how to explain this to the others in the safe zone. After all, they had originally claimed that this ability belonged to Go Okrim. It would raise suspicion if Go Okrim’s space-type ability conveniently stopped working every winter while other space-type ability users had no such issues.

"How about I just say I’m awakening a second ability?" Go Okrim, no longer the novice he’d been when they left Gokmul County, quickly came up with an excuse. "I can ask the Nicaraguan Blood Sucking Vine for help. It gets along well with me and can pretend to be my ability. People awakening second abilities display all kinds of symptoms, so I’ll just say my space-type ability is temporarily unusable during the process."

The Nicaraguan Blood Sucking Vine he referred to was the same plant he had been using as a pole to hook lotus pods and the same one Kim Haru often used as a makeshift rope.

"Alright," Kim Haru agreed, unable to think of a better solution. They settled on this plan.

With the zombies out of commission, the two of them had no choice but to grab shovels and clear the snow themselves.

The cabin door could open both inward and outward, but with snow piling up outside, they had to pull it inward. Thankfully, the inside of the cabin was heated, so the snow near the entrance was easier to remove. Before long, they cleared a narrow path that was wide enough for one person to pass through.

The moment Kim Haru stepped outside, the freezing air hit him like a slap in the face, making him shiver uncontrollably. He quickly fetched the silk clothes that was woven by the Mutated Pine Tree and sharing some with Go Okrim.