Return of the Apocalypse Knight

Chapter 12: The Hero Dies (2)

A gunshot rang out, and I felt a strong impact on the sword I held at my side.

“Get on the ground!”

I shouted at Hoffman and stomped the ground.

I ducked low, flung myself in the direction the bullet had come from, and felt it whiz past my ear again.

-bang.

Gunfire followed.

It was an accurate shot that would have hit me in the head if I hadn’t known about guns, or if I hadn’t been a knight with keen senses.

No wonder the hero was killed.

They had no knowledge of gunpowder explosions and no knowledge that such a long-range attack was possible.

Even if there had been a trap with the firepower of the Otherworld, if they had known the weapons of this world, they would not have been defeated.

Fortunately, I am a knight familiar with the weapons of this world.

-Tang.

As I leapt through the bushes and trees, keeping low, my opponent failed to hit me.

The knight’s movements kept me out of the gun’s line of sight, and he couldn’t hit me easily but I couldn’t get to where the bullet came from quickly enough.

The bullet came from hundreds of meters away, over a hill.

The shot was a long-range sniper shot.

“The undead aren’t just shooting, they’re sniping. What’s going on in the world…….?”

I’d seen undead knights with the same abilities as the living, but I didn’t think that would lead to undead sniping.

As I felt the bullet whiz by my ear, I realized why the demon king had crossed over to this world.

-Puck, puck

Fortunately, it didn’t seem to have gotten used to the weapons of this world yet.

The undead that was sniping now was not suitable for a trap to catch a knight or soldier coming to rescue the hero.

I quickly closed the distance between me and the sniping undead, then leapt into the line of fire and swung my sword.

The sniper I saw as I swung my sword was, as expected, an undead.

It was the corpse of a North Korean soldier who looked like he hadn’t been dead long.

His decomposing face still retained the habits of the living, and as I approached, he threw the rifle he was sniping at me and reached for a pistol from his waist.

Unfortunately, there was no pistol in his waistband.

Of course, even if he had, it would have been useless.

The undead groped for his waist and was decapitated by my sword.

Of course, the sniper wasn’t the only one there.

There were several other undead huddled together.

However, there was nothing an ordinary undead could do to a knight who was so close.

All of the undead soldiers who tried to bayonet me with their guns were cut down by my sword.

After I had smashed every undead skeleton, I grabbed the sniper rifle and stared at the decapitated undead.

He must have been a pretty good sniper when he was alive.

“You were ill-prepared. You should have brought a machine gun, not a sniper rifle like this, to take on a knight.”

Or, they can just rain down mortars or 155mm artillery shells like when they fought the hero party.

It’s a shame they’ve concentrated enough firepower to change the terrain for the hero, but only have these crappy undead for the cleanup crew.

Well, this last trap isn’t what the Demon King had in mind.

Having already wiped out the hero party, he doesn’t care about cleanup.

The undead here must have been left behind by his minions.

A trap that he hoped would catch someone, and didn’t care if they failed.

“Some sort of alarm signal, I suppose?”

It was a fitting arrangement, if nothing else.

In any case, it was a relief.

I wouldn’t have survived if any of the troops that had killed the hero were here.

I surveyed the smashed undead, then snatched the sniper’s gun as loot.

It was a sniper rifle that looked like a cross between a common AK-47 and a Soviet sniper rifle.

It was probably a North Korean modified sniper rifle.

Compared to the other guns that looked like they were about to explode, this one looked well-maintained, so I figured I could keep it.

Plus, I found two more magazines on the corpse.

Other than this undead, I didn’t see any more enemies. My senses were quiet.

I tucked the gun and magazines into my magic pouch and returned to the spot where the hero had fallen.

Hoffman had been prostrate the entire time. After all, he was an old man who had survived the war.

He’d kept my word to stay down so far.

“It’s over.”

He heard me and raised his head from the bushes.

He jumped to his feet, pressing his fingers to his ears several times, startled by the sound of gunfire.

“What was that?”

“The weapon from this side of the world that killed the hero. Something like a double-barreled crossbow.”

A double-barreled crossbow would make a sniper rifle angry.

I pointed to the gun rolling on the floor as I spoke.

It wasn’t the gun that killed the hero, and it wasn’t anything like a crossbow, but it was an easy and comfortable explanation for Hoffman, who didn’t know about guns.

“But there’s no way the hero would die from a crossbow…….”

“I’ve never seen one before, and I’m sure there wasn’t just one of those weapons. If hundreds or thousands of undead attacked with them, even the hero would have a hard time stopping them.”

It was unlikely that thousands of undead had attacked simultaneously, but the artillery scars on the ground suggested that the firepower that had been unleashed on the hero party had been more than that.

Mortars, 155mm artillery, and numerous machine guns.

If it was the Demon King trap, there was more.

The bottom line was that the hero had died here.

“If the hero is dead, who’s going to stop the demon king? What if he invades again, leading the undead that killed him?”

Was it the aftermath of potion poisoning? Or more than that, because he believed in the hero?

Hoffman was more distraught than I expected.

He continued to mutter as he stared at the dead hero on the floor.

I was perplexed.

Surely Hoffman wasn’t going to become a burden?

Now that the hero was dead, the whole plan of joining him and waiting for the gate to open was out the window.

I would have to make other plans immediately, but with the man I was supposed to be making plans with being distracted like that, I was in trouble.

Fortunately, Hoffman came to his senses in time.

He organized the body of the hero before the others and set it on fire.

It was the only funeral ritual left after the rise of the Death Demon who could raise the dead.

Of course, it was unlikely that the hero who had been given divine powers would rise as an undead, but as a soldier who followed the hero, this was a proper burial for him.

I didn’t feel anything dangerous around me after the undead who was sniping.

I did sense a strange presence nearby, but it didn’t feel dangerous, so I figured I’d check it out after this funeral.

Dry grass, leaves, and cut branches quickly burned the shattered corpse of the hero.

The funeral was quickly over and Hoffman put some of the bone meal into a bag.

He wanted to give the hero a proper burial when he returned and these bones were also proof that we had found the body of the hero.

Since it was bone with divine power remaining, it was enough evidence to confirm the hero’s death.

“What do we do now?”

Hoffman asked, after finishing the cremation.

“We’ll have to hold out until the gates open.”

As Hoffman cremated the hero, I contemplated what to do next.

We hadn’t found the bodies of the others, but the two of us couldn’t go looking for them alone.

The hero party members were very skilled, but aside from the hero, they were just better party members than the others.

In fact, with the hero dead here, there was no way they could have survived.

If their bodies weren’t here, the Demon King must have taken them away to be processed.

I might have a glimmer of hope that they might be alive, but I couldn’t act on that small hope.

No, for whatever reason, the hero was dead, and there was no reason to care about him anymore.

We had to stay here and hide as best we could until the gates opened again.

“……We should.”

Hoffman didn’t argue with me.

“Then which way do you think we should go? I don’t think we can stay here forever…….”

“Anyway, the demon king left a trail to the north, so we’ll have to go south.”

We can’t chase the demon king when we’re trying to stay hidden.

It made sense, and Hoffman nodded.

Of course, it wasn’t for that rationalization that I headed south.

Where we are standing is just above the military demarcation line on the Korean Peninsula.

Up here was North Korea, down here was South Korea.

The reason I stayed here was to get to South Korea.

* * *

“Let’s go then.”

Was it the funeral that rested him?

Hoffman was somewhat refreshed.

There would still be lingering effects of the potion treatment, but the seasoned soldier didn’t mind.

Of course, he’d already seen the problems of potion addiction, but if he could fight properly, he could handle it.

“Wait, just one thing before we go.”

Hoffman looked at me with questioning eyes.

The awkwardness I felt during the funeral became clearer.

I hadn’t noticed it when I first arrived here.

It had been there in bits and pieces during the funeral, but now it was definitely there.

It felt like a living thing.

No, was it alive?

It felt too quiet to be alive.

It was more like the undead.

The feeling was coming from the ground now.

I looked to the side of the clearing, to a tree that had been smashed and had nothing left but a nest underneath.

The feeling was under that tree.

It was a sensation that had saved my life many times before, but never like this.

It was different from the feeling of the undead, different from the feeling of a living creature.

Like a human being in a tree, or an animal in hibernation but it didn’t feel quite the same.

In the end, I had to see for myself.

If I had felt it since I arrived, I might have thought I was an unseasonably hibernating animal, but obviously, I didn’t feel anything at first.

So I figured it was most likely undead, despite what it felt like.

After all, only the undead move again after death.

I approached the tree and cleared the bushes around it.

As I cleared the bushes, I saw a half-buried body.

“Child of the Divine Tree?”

Hoffman’s eyes widened at the sight of the corpse.

He was right, it was an elf.

Only this time it wasn’t a male, but a female.

This one was definitely dead, anyway.

There was no way she could be alive, lying on her side with her head half blown off and her chest missing.

I sighed as I looked at the elf corpse.

“So this is what the undead of the elf race felt like?”

I must have been mistaken, because I’ve never seen an undead of the elf race.

I drew my sword and raised it because the dead body was increasingly becoming more and more alive.

A smashed corpse like this could become an undead, but it would be better to give it a peaceful rest than a headless undead.

She must have been a high ranking elf, as she traveled with the hero party, but in this state of dismemberment, she was no different from any other corpse.

I clicked my tongue, and was about to swing my sword.

-flash.

The corpse’s one remaining eye opened.

Then the light returned to its pupil, and it looked straight at me.

No way, has it become undead already?

I thought, but I couldn’t bring myself to swing my sword.

The eyes staring back at me were too clear.

At the same time, the corpse’s mouth opened and from its mouth came words.

“I am not dead.”