Return of the Apocalypse Knight

Chapter 13: Zahina, Daughter of the Divine Tree (1)

“Talking undead?!”

Hoffman exclaimed, firing an arrow into the corpse of the elf.

“Thwack!”

The arrow struck the corpse that only had its upper body left, and it groaned.

“Do not attack me. Again, I am not undead.”

The words spilled from the corpse’s mouth once more and I raised my hand to ward off Hoffman.

This was no ordinary corpse or, rather, not a corpse.

“…….I was just playing dead. I can’t do any damage to you two in this form, so please be patient.”

The voice was harsh, but it was the voice of a living person.

“Are you sure it’s alive?”

Hoffman asked in surprise, and I nodded.

I’d been confused at first, but now I could feel it.

The elf in front of me was not dead.

She was half buried in the ground with only her chest remaining, but she was definitely alive, though I don’t know how.

“My race is more resilient than yours, and a wound like this can heal with time.”

As if reading my mind, her ears perked up eagerly.

She was right.

Even with my own eyes, I could see that she was healing.

Flesh was growing beneath her ragged clothes, and the holes were filling in.

One of her arms had already grown up to her elbow, and the other was starting to appear from her shoulder.

The gaping hole in her head was filling in real time.

It was a resilience that no amount of potions or priest prayers could have achieved.

It was like the super-regenerative powers I’ve seen in hero movies in my previous life.

Healing factor?

It was like the ability of a four-dimensional hero in red who ran around with bullet holes in his body.

“But, the elf in our party is dead…….”

Hoffman muttered to himself as she listened to the elf woman.

Our party’s elf had suffered no ordinary wound, and although he managed to hold out for some time even in a fatal situation, he died just as Hoffman had said.

“……Faur is dead?”

Once again, I didn’t say who, but the elf guessed who we were traveling with.

“This…….This place is weird, our powers are incredibly weakened. Maybe that’s why Faur died.”

Was that why the elf was ranting when he died?

But the woman in front of me was healing at an incredible rate?

“I’m not recovering well either, though I was able to hide from the demon army thanks to it.”

I clicked my tongue in disbelief.

“If you’re alive, you shouldn’t be buried like that…….Let me get you out.”

The elf words seemed to convince Hoffman that she was alive.

He approached the woman and tried to pull the half-buried elf out of the ground.

At the sight, the woman shouted urgently, and I stopped Hoffman.

“Oh, no!”

“I think it’s better to leave her there, she seems to get some restorative energy from the ground.”

At my words, Hoffman withdrew his hand, and the woman sighed, then looked at me.

“How did you know that?”

I could see the mana being sucked out of the ground, and I couldn’t help but notice.

Come to think of it, was mana this visible?

It wasn’t this obvious when I was in my world…….

After a moment’s thought, I shrugged.

It couldn’t hurt to be visible.

“That’s what I thought based on the situation.”

But there was no point in telling her that I could see mana.

I sheath my sword again, and turned to the elf woman.

“From the looks of things, potions won’t help…….How long do you think it will be until you recover?”

“I’m picking up speed, so I think I’ll be able to move soon enough.”

Her legs were growing fast, and I could see that she would be walking soon enough.

The undead had left, and the area was quiet.

“I don’t see any more enemies around, so we should be able to rest here for a while.”

I nodded, then turned to Hoffman.

This was a bloody battlefield with a dead hero, but it was no different from the one I had fought against the demon army, except that the hero was dead.

“Isn’t that right, this…….I’ll rest then.”

Hoffman scratched his head and sank to the ground.

He was exhausted, too and what he’d been through today was not something ordinary.

Crossing the gate, fighting during reconnaissance, being wounded by mines, and seeing the hero die, it’s only natural to be physically exhausted.

I, on the other hand, was only mentally tired.

A knight’s battle-hardened body could take this much.

Instead of resting, I sank to the ground and asked the elf.

“What the hell happened?”

Now that I had a witness to the scene, I needed to hear how the hero came to die here.

As we’d seen earlier, the elf had no trouble speaking, even while recovering.

“Before I tell you the situation, how did you find out about us and come to help?”

She first asked me who I was.

It was a normal greeting and question, but not the kind of question you’d expect someone with half a body to ask.

“I am Jansen Eger, a knight looking for the hero party.”

I told her the truth of what had happened.

The gate had been closed, and when the party didn’t return, it was thought they had fallen into a trap and our party was sent here.

“The troops that had crossed over into……this world were all withdrawn. We saw the gate close, and came here to rejoin the hero.”

“I see. I understand. I am Zahina, the daughter of the divine tree. I will also explain the situation.”

The woman’s voice was much smoother than before, as if she had recovered more during the conversation.

It was a beautiful voice, with no highs or lows.

“Upon receiving word of the demon king sighting, the Goddess’s Champion set out for the gate with me and the rest of the party…….”

The group raced through the forest, following Zahina and though she was given no directions, Zahina did not slow down.

She could feel the marks left by her clan.

She didn’t need to find a destination, as she could go wherever the clan had gone.

For that reason, she could traverse the forest at great speed.

Even a knight with mana would have trouble keeping up, but those following her didn’t seem to tire.

They chatted easily as they ran.

“It could be a trap, couldn’t it?”

Said the wizard with the ornate, jeweled staff,

“We still have to go, we don’t know how big this place is, if it’s as big as our continent, it won’t be easy to find the demon king. We can’t just say it’s a trap and not go.”

The hero calmly replied.

“Even if it is a trap, our group should be able to get through it, the Goddess will protect us.”

The saint backed up the hero’s words.

The two knights also nodded, as did the mage who had first asked the question.

The wizard nodded, even the two knights and the wizard who had first asked the question.

He was the royal chief wizard of the empire, the woman behind him was a saint, and the two knights running with him were among the ten most powerful swordsmen in the Empire.

Plus, they had the hero.

Moreover, they had come close to defeating the demon king.

If the demon king had not fled, the war would have ended a month ago.

If what lay ahead was a trap, the party felt that they were more than capable of navigating it, except for the Zahina, who had come to support the hero party.

Zahina, the daughter of the divine tree, questioned the saint’s words.

“You are more confident than I thought. A trap could be dangerous enough.”

The god’s daughter, from another world, could not understand.

“But, since you’re here…….”

Hoffman said in a gloomy voice in response to the elf words.

I nodded at Hoffman’s words.

It was incomprehensible to me as I remembered my previous life, but as a knight of the kingdom, I couldn’t help but agree with Hoffman.

Everyone on the continent was of the same opinion.

The hero sent down by the goddess must fight the demon king and win unconditionally.

So when we fought the demon king, our strategy was to send the hero party to the demon king’s doorstep.

That’s how we succeeded in driving the demon king away.

“Anyway, the group of heroes followed behind me while we were having this conversation, and I continued to guide them. After running for a while and approaching the target, the Tainted appeared.”

The expressionless elf half-corpse face twisted slightly.

“Then, the Tainted attacked us with weapons we had never seen before.”

Thunder rumbled loudly along with the smoke.

-Bang, bang, bang, bang!

“What attack is…….My shields won’t hold for long!”

“The enemy is too far away for my prayers to reach!”

“Hold on, I’ll take care of it!”

“We’re on the move!”

“This is the strangest weapon I’ve ever seen. An endless stream of arrows so small and fast that we couldn’t see them, we couldn’t keep our wits about us.”

“Due to the distance, the saint’s prayers could not reach the tainted ones, and the wizard rushed to protect her with a shield.”

“The hero and knights stepped up and defeated the Tainted, but everyone in the group seemed very surprised.”

On the bone-strewn floor lay a collection of unfamiliar weapons.

“My God…….Are these weapons from this side of the world?”

“I can’t believe the undead use weapons like this…….I don’t think I can deal with weapons like this.”

The holy woman asked in surprise, while the mage looked at the broken weapons with a frown.

The knights also looked around with serious faces.

Unlike the more serious members of the party, the hero was about to hand Zahina the potion.

“You looked like you were hurt earlier…….”

“I’m fine. All my wounds are healed.”

However, Zahina refused the potion.

“The attack was concentrated on your group, so I only had a few scratches. If I’d been hurt more, I would have known something was wrong then…….”

The woman continued, sounding not at all sorry.

“The hero and his companions contemplated retreating after the first fight, but in the end, they had no choice but to move forward. The goal was right in front of them, and the undead kept coming from all directions.”

“So they fought their way through the undead to reach their destination, only to find that instead of the demon king, there was an army of undead.”

Seeing the undead, or rather, the demon army, the saint sighed.

“It really was a trap.”

The mage shook his head at the weapons the undead were carrying.

“We’ll have to put off capturing the demon king until another time.”

The hero’s grim words were echoed by the rest of the group.

“Let’s get through this and head back.”

“Yes!”

“Even then, I think they all thought we’d make it back safely. In fact, if it were the undead of the continent, I’m pretty sure we’d all make it back alive.”

I looked around.

We were in a wasteland, a clearing that had been turned into a wasteland, with countless pits dug into it.

“But it wasn’t the undead that attacked us,” she said, “it was countless bolts of iron from the sky. Exploding chunks of metal attacked us.”

Once again, the death of the hero party was not caused by the undead but by the weapons of this world.

Countless bombs had killed them.