"Hold it there, son! That's it!" Jung's father, Kim Hyusil, said as he began hammering nails into the chicken coop fence. Jung obeyed as he patiently held the metal net in place. His father absently reached out and signaled something to Jung with his hand.
Jung noticed the hand, hesitated for a moment, and then happily completed the rugged “heart” with his own hand and smiled brightly at his father. Hyusil saw it, and slap the hand away, cringing. “The pliers son, give me the pliers.”
Hyusil muttered to himself, as Jung shook the slapped hand with a pout. Hyusil used the pliers to straighten the old nail and then hammer it again.
Twice, the rustic recycled nail bent the wrong way. His father cursed as he straightened the nail once more before trying it again. Jung smiled in amusement as he waited patiently for his father to finish the work. His father kept muttering absently to himself, and Jung learned a lot of things about office politics and the inner workings of the co-op because of this.
This is normally how Jung gets his gossip in his dad's work since if he asked him directly he will clamp up and it amuses Jung to no end. Jung's interest in what's going on in the co-op is always high because these are the same neighbors and friends he grew up with. Of course, he is still 7 and a half years old, but still, these are the people he considered his extended family.
Despite his dad's hard work, Jung already knew that the work on the chicken fence is not going to be finished that day since the metal fence they brought along for the job is simply inadequate to cover the entire side of the left house. Since the fence is nothing more than a donation from old man Sung, It was expected to happen. Kim Hyusil needed to find more of the metal fence before he can protect the chicken from the coming winter.
Finally, his dad finished burying the nail head and straightened up. He stretched his sore back before looking up in the sky with a lamentable, "Aigoo!"
The older man frowned at the 4 feet of space not covered by the border fence. He scratched his backside before finally shrugging. "We'll finish this tomorrow," Hyusil said. "Go change and get ready for dinner."
Jung nodded, and his father left for the kitchen door. Jung Hee was cleaning up when he noticed the rectangular remains of the chicken metal net. It wasn't wide or long enough to be used to cover the 4 feet of remaining open space that the fence needed to cover. So the boy decided to cut the remains of the chicken wire in a lengthwise fashion before connecting them with small metal wires and hooking them together to form a sort of border. It wasn’t much, but it covered the necessary area.
A new prompt startled him.
Congratulations! You have unlocked the general skill "Metalworking."
-The ability to make something out of metal.
Requirements: DEX 1, INT 1
Current level: 0
Needed skill points to upgrade to the next level: 1
Remaining Skill Points: 4
Jung stared at the new message for a moment, then shrugged before placing 1 skill point towards it. It is a good thing he received several skill points as a reward for a few particularly hard quests for the last couple of months and he still has a few reserve points to play around with.
Congratulations!
You have upgraded the general skill "Metalworking" to level 1.
The ability to make something from metal.
-Your basic understanding and knowledge of metal and the minerals composing it will increase every time you work on metal.
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
-10% faster in fixing the metal part of any devices, appliances, or apparels
Current level: 1
Needed skill points to upgrade to the next level: 1
Remaining Skill Points: 3
"Kim Jung Hee! I told you to clean up and set the table!"
"Commmming!" Jung shouted back as he started jogging back to the house. Jung didn't even notice the fog of white air coming from his mouth as he hurried inside.
The school year is about to close due to the winter break. And like the years before it, the people of the North started preparing for another grueling slugfest.
Soon North Korea will be a snow-covered landscape that is is blanketed in a thick layer of white, creating a picturesque scene. The trees are already bare except for the one in the nearby forest, and the only sound to be heard is the soft crunching of snow underfoot. Even the animals in the area are subdued. The biting cold air is crisp and refreshing, and the sky is often a brilliant shade of blue these days that fascinated the boy. To him, the isolation of the countryside during the winter months adds to the sense of tranquility and solitude.
But it was a different story for his parents. The night will get longer and the days shorter, and the peasant will toil with every day's work just a little harder. Just a bit slower. With just a little bit more effort.
The harvest before was another failure. Kim Hyusil's farming co-op did a bit better than their other comrades on the farm from the neighboring provinces, but overall, it was a disastrous year for farming. For the third consecutive year, the citizens of North Korea are facing another famine.
The west would smirk and shake their heads and explain it in their nightly news in a vague and roundabout way that this happened to the hermit kingdom mainly because of the failure of their communist system. Or simply because the North Koreans are simply not as hard-working as them. But analytically speaking, the main culprit for the disaster will be the total embargo imposed by the world on the country.
Maybe the reason for the embargo has some justification years ago, but the final result is that there are simply not enough raw materials and chemicals to produce the needed pesticides, and fertilizers to enrich the fields. Nor are there enough machine spare parts for the massive tractor fleet to cultivate and seed the land. These all contributed greatly to the detriment of the agricultural industry of North Korea. All these, on top of the corruption, state-wide incompetence’s of the leadership in high places, and the overall low morale of the farmers, it was a recipe for a disastrous farming outcome.
The government's ongoing military expansion also did not help the situation since much-needed capital are being diverted away from the agricultural infrastructure and as a result, existing farmer's cooperative assets such as tractors are all rusting away in warehouses or out on the plains due to the lack of maintenance equipment and spare parts. The backdoor black market is alive and thriving but even then the government is not likely going to spend their hard earned dollars on the farmers. They would rather buy more guns to feel safer at night.
But whether or not the debate on whose fault is it is not muddled by politics, there is nothing else for the citizens of the republic to do but to endure it.
like they always did.
***
That night Jung studied his lessons. Winter break might be coming soon, but that also mean that test and assignments will be coming in droves to give them something to do during the break. Teachers are sadistic that way.
Jung was just merrily writing up a storm in his essay titled, "The great leader of Korea, our protector." When he heard another prompt at the back of his mind. At this point, he is getting sick of the chime sound that accompanied it.
Congratulations!
You have unlocked the unique general skill called "Creative Writing."
-You have a knack for writing anything that you are aware of, especially those that are related to your skills that are over level 1.
Current level: 0
Needed skill points to upgrade to the next level: 1
Remaining Skill Points:3
He sighed. Getting more and more skills are starting to wear down on him. It was just too many and he is not able to gather his thoughts and analyze the skills he is getting so that he could use them appropriately in his daily life. It is just a feeling of a daily grind to get more points to make the skill afloat because keeping them at level 0 seems to be a danger to himself.
This is the second time he received a unique skill that he didn't understand. The first one is a skill called "Tailoring." Jung received that several months ago and as he continued to sew and repair other old clothes, he started to unlocked related skills like weaving, sewing, knitting, stitching, and to his surprise, medical suturing as well. It just didn’t make sense to him.
Speaking of which, he went to the tiny kitchen and opened a drawer there, and he looked at the number of weaving materials from threads and yarns he collected for the last few months. Jung slaved around at Chungha noona's place by cleaning her roof gutter, fixing her yard, cutting down a rotten tree, and repainting the outside of her house. In exchange, he received a sizable supply of threading materials that he and his mother are stocking up on in anticipation of the coming winter. When the heavy season hits, there are very few works they can do outside, and so he is making sure he and his mom will be busy weaving clothes and other cloth products they might need.
Jung's mother was surprised when he showed interest in knitting, completely unaware that Jung's only motivation is to grind an unknown skill that he had obtained. Even so, his interest was enough for his mother to show him more intricate technique in weaving finely made strings of plant fibers. And Jung learned all of them.
Soon he is making not only sweaters but other forms of ointricate embroidery with almost silk like surface using customized cotton threads.
As he continued to study and learn skills, Jung’s introspection just made him think deeper about what the hell the system is all about. The more answers he received from the system, the more question it also generated. He wished he has someone to teach him more about it. But for now, that is nothing but wishful thinking. For now, he closed his status screen and did not upgrade the new skills he received simply because he didn’t have any use for them at the moment, unique skill or not.
For now, all he cared about is his family’s welfare and the new skill will not help them directly so he didn’t bother upgrading them. But the system remained in his brain. The unknown simply made the boy uneasy and he didn't know why.
He woke up early the following morning and after doing his chores for the morning, he then went ahead and help his father in his project once more.