It had been a long time since I’d returned to Croatoan Island. With the Damas precariously loaded onto a barge.
The reason I’d brought the Damas was obvious. There weren’t exactly many things on Croatoan Island to haul cargo with.
The Damas might look pretty pathetic, but that’s only from our twenty-first-century perspective.
The engine in this tiny car can produce a whopping 35 horsepower.
···Of course, it looks damn pathetic, but as I said, that’s by twenty-first-century standards. Let’s think about what “horse”power actually means.
Horses. Actual horses.
From the perspective of this era, where horses pull carts, doesn’t that mean the Damas has the tremendous power of a carriage pulled by no fewer than thirty-five horses?
Clunk!
“···Guess not.”
Anyway, after getting off the barge, I drove this way and that along a well-paved road (by sixteenth-century standards), but every time I hit a rock, I got so anxious I felt like I was going insane. Was this thing going to tip over or what?
If I were just driving it, that’d be one thing, but with all sorts of materials and equipment loaded for the maintenance of the Chesapeake settlement, it was unbelievably nerve-racking—
Clatter! Thunk!
“Uh, uhh··· uhhhhhh···!”
W-w-wait, why is the wind suddenly blowing from the side right now?
No way.
Come on, it’s still a car. It’s not made of cardboard or corrugated paper, it’s a car made of metal. How could it possibly tip over in the wind—
Bang!
···It can.
I thought I was going to die.
No, to be precise, I actually had died once already. Judging by the way I could feel my broken ribs rattling around inside me, that seemed to be the case.
If things had gone normally, I’d have been 100 percent dead. The reason I could say that with certainty was obvious.
Medicine in this era was so underdeveloped that things like, “You have too much blood in your body. Let’s drain some,” and, “Blood··· circulates around the heart? Eeeek! I’ve never even heard of such a thing!” were still accepted.
If your ribs broke and stabbed your organs, you’d die before anyone could even try to do anything. You’d just die, painfully.
But I survived. I was surviving.
I could feel the bones inside me fusing back together and the wounds in my organs healing.
Right. Thanks to the immortal cheat, how many brushes with death had I overcome now? I should be grateful for that much.
‘···Though if I hadn’t been dropped into the sixteenth century, I wouldn’t have had any brushes with death in the first place.’
Getting stabbed in the heart by a Spanish soldier who came flying out of nowhere, having my organs turned into a showcase by some assassins, or dying defenselessly because the Damas flipped over on a remote dirt road like this···
Ah, the last one could totally happen in the twenty-first century too.
Cold sweat suddenly ran down my back. As I climbed out of the car through the broken window in my blood-soaked clothes, it finally hit me.
If I’d kept driving this piece of junk around, I would’ve kicked the bucket someday even in the twenty-first century.
Did Hwangsuksoft actually extend my life, then? As expected··· I shall bow three times a day toward Montreuil, France, where Hwangsuksoft’s headquarters are located.
No, it wasn’t like I originally drove around in a trash car like this.
Maybe in the city, sure (though it’s dangerous there too), but in the countryside, where there are plenty of narrow, rough, winding roads that aren’t properly paved, riding something like a Damas is the perfect way to end up taking a naked swim across the Jordan River.
You think I was crazy enough to just drive this car for no reason? This coffin that weighs just under one ton? A car that keels over and tips the moment the wind blows a little hard?
You’re saying anyone who drives a Damas, with or without a reason, is a lunatic? Why are you sprinkling salt on my wounds? I had a better car than this piece of shit too.
A 2017 Porter. Double cab, long bed, four-wheel drive, rock solid.
I used it to haul grapes to the direct sales store, and I even posed in the driver’s seat for a corner of the local paper under an article like, “Shine Muscat? It’s Not Dead Yet! The Cry of a Young Farmer.”
Anyway, that was how it was.
Until the flood came and washed it away to the hill right behind the farm.
By then, my income had already started plummeting vertically, so there was no time to do anything about it. Honestly, it would’ve cost more to find it, drag it out, and scrap it, so I just left it there.
Those bastards who sold watery-tasting Shine Muscats and dragged down the brand value should go to grape-farmer hell.
Anyway, after that, I bought a secondhand 1992 Damas for 500,000 won.
A Damas that had been on the verge of going to the junkyard, which I barely managed to keep driving.
“Hah··· haah··· hah···.”
A Damas that, once midnight passed again, would be found in the storage shed good as new.
This Damas had been my temporary personal car, “for now,” but now it had become the car of my life (forced).
I went around to the back of the Damas, which had toppled onto its side, and loaded various things from the trunk onto my back.
Ugh, heavy. I’d been cursing the Damas until just now, but now that even that Damas was gone, I was losing my mind.
The paint cans and other things I’d brought from the shore had already spilled everywhere in the chaos. I’d just have to consider those abandoned now and say bye-bye. See you after midnight.
···
···
···
Ah, seriously, this is so miserable.
I want to go back to the twenty-first century.
I don’t care if I have to take out a loan, I want my own car back.
My Porter. If only I had my Porter, I could move this kind of cargo easily. They say Porters are even used as weapons when civil wars break out overseas, but what are you supposed to use a Damas for? Scrap metal? A coffin?
Anyway, leaving the Damas crumpled like a sheet of paper behind me, I trudged along, my legs trembling and my whole body shaking. Even after coming to the sixteenth century and gaining a ridiculous amount of strength, I was still like this.
Had I walked for about an hour and a half?
“Uwaaaaah! I-I’m alive!”
I finally changed out of my bloodstained clothes and lay down on the bed.
The people who had stayed behind at the settlement saw me covered in blood and rushed over in a panic, but since everyone knew I wouldn’t die anyway, I more or less sent them all away.
Because I wanted to rest first.
I clenched my trembling hands and let out a sigh.
Why, why did Immortal Order: Origin have to be released when I was driving around in a Damas?
Could it be that I got the immortal cheat because of the Damas? Was there some agreement among the Hwangsuksoft executives, like, “His personal car is a Damas, so let’s at least give that bastard a cheat so he doesn’t die”?
Anyway.
Wow, I’d seen people get into traffic accidents and go to another world, reincarnate, or transmigrate, but getting into a traffic accident after transmigrating was pretty novel.
Now··· I want to quit everything.
I want··· to quit.
···.
And so, I slipped into sleep.
In my dream, I saw a scene from the past.
It was definitely the day of the flood. This house, the fake-Green Gables my mother, a huge Anne of Green Gables fan, had designed, had fortunately been built on a high foundation to suit Korean conditions, so it hadn’t flooded.
The problem was the fields.
—“Th-this··· fuck! All the grapes are screwed! The grapes are all gonna taste like water!”
Why did it have to pour right before harvest season? I was cursing Korea’s damn climate and Dangun’s masochistic choice of starting location when it happened.
That was when I saw it through the second-floor window of the house, the casement window.
The Porter parked outside··· uh···
Kwa-kwa-kwa-kwa-bang!
It was··· being washed away···.
As you can tell from the fact that my parents started farming very late in life, and from the fact that they were city people to the bone, we originally had no ties to the countryside.
And because we tried to move to a village we had no ties with, we went through all kinds of hardships, and this land was part of that suffering. There was a reason our farm was stuck in an extremely remote corner of the village.
You could tell just from the fact that, out of these 4,000 pyeong, several hundred pyeong included part of a hill.
The car had slammed into there—
Huh?
“Uhh?”
Right around the time I was wailing over the Porter buried in muddy water like chocolate milk, I woke up. And my mind immediately started turning.
Wait.
No matter how badly an object in my house gets damaged, once midnight passes, it’s restored cleanly.
Then, what exactly does “once midnight passes, it’s restored cleanly” mean?
What is “restoration”? Does it simply mean returning to its original state?
Then what standard defines that “original state”?
For example, if the cultivator, which had already been rattling badly because I’d neglected its maintenance, broke down and came back, would it return to that same rattling state?
No.
It comes back gleaming, as if it had just been bought and unwrapped. That was also one of the reasons I’d started treating things more roughly these past few years.
Because rather than having them end up awkwardly scratched or awkwardly messed up, it was better for them to break completely and be repaired cleanly.
In that case···
‘What about the Porter that was already flooded and wrecked to begin with?’
The Porter··· then··· what would happen to it?
When I came outside in my pajamas, dawn was only just breaking. Well, of course it was dawn, since I’d woken up with a start because I’d dreamed of the Porter.
Even if North Carolina was a bit warmer than Korea, coming outside in autumn, and at dawn no less, wearing pajamas was a little chilly. But I didn’t care about that.
I wouldn’t catch a cold anyway, so I shoved my feet into sneakers and went straight outside.
Then I grabbed a shovel from the shed, gave the damn Damas that had just returned a kick, and ran toward the hill.
Back then, in my dream and in my memories of the past, I had watched you in despair.
I had watched you flood, be buried in earth, and disappear.
But···
I can save you now, Porter!
I wiped away the tears half-blurring my vision and ran like mad. After running and running, before I knew it, I could see the hill where water parsley and mugwort were growing.
I immediately charged toward the spot I’d seen in my dream, shovel in hand.
And then! I dug like crazy!
An excavator? That was over at Chesapeake right now, so there was nothing I could do about that. All I could trust were my two arms and two legs, which would absolutely never break.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
Waking up at the crack of dawn to shovel dirt made me wonder what the hell I was doing, but thinking of the “something” that would come afterward, I held onto my arms as they trembled from the cold.
It’ll come out soon.
It’s coming out···! The “thing” I’ve dreamed of!
And at last.
Clang!
When the shovel struck “something” in the dirt and made a strange, clear metallic sound, I couldn’t believe my ears.
Looking around, I found myself stuck in a dirt pit as deep as my waist, with piles of dirt about waist-high scattered all over the place.
And it wasn’t as if I’d dug··· just one pit like this.
“Wh-what is this? Who suddenly dug up the ground··· Nemonim?”
“What are you doing in there!”
The villagers were calling to me, but my chest was too full right now for me to answer, so I gritted my teeth. Then, as if the strength had left my legs, I dropped to my knees, threw aside the shovel, and began digging through the earth wildly with both hands.
And then··· I saw it.
A clear, deep onyx blue, like the sea.
Beautiful curves and straight lines.
And beyond the car window··· a pristine driver’s seat.
Ah.
Aah.
“A-are you all right?”
“···.”
“You are all right, aren’t you?”
“···Everyone, please bring your shovels over here.”
If an angel suddenly appeared in dirt-covered pajamas and told you to bring a shovel first thing in the morning, what would you do?
You might think he was a lunatic, but for the time being, our kindhearted settlers listened to me. Each of them brought a shovel and dug the ground beside me.
And then.
Its outline was revealed.
“Ah··· ah-huk···.”
Premium trim.
Six-speed manual transmission.
Front-seat airbags included.
External tool box and spare tire beneath the cargo bed.
On top of that, even a PTO, a power take-off.
And finally.
133 horsepower.
About 3.8 times the Damas.
The very thing that, with just one of them, could keep an entire village alive in the backwoods of the Third World.
Before the villagers could look at me any more strangely, I hurriedly sent them back. I gave each of them potatoes roasted in butter, which I’d set aside for myself as a snack, as an apology for making them work hard so early in the morning.
And then.
I returned to the front of the Porter.
“U-ugh··· uuuugh···.”
Tears came out.
Even when I’d realized I’d just been dropped into the sixteenth century and fallen into panic.
Even when I’d rammed the fence with the excavator and then been stabbed in the heart, making it stop for a moment.
Even when some assassins had opened dozens of holes in me.
Even when that bastard Oitotan had sliced into my shoulder with a chainsaw.
I had not cried.
I shed those precious tears here.
“Lord Hwangsuk··· my overwhelming gratitude···!”
That was how much I loved this one-ton truck.