C25
Chapter 25: Apartment complex (1)
-Hiss.
We burned the soldier who committed suicide.
Smoke billowed over the ammunition dump and into the sky.
We apologized to the dead soldier, but we could not bury him in the ground.
We couldn’t bury him in the ground, lest the death energy turns him into an undead so we burned him with the other corpses.
As we watched the flames roar, Zahina asked me.
“I can understand why the two of you didn’t stop him, but why did he kill himself? I could have infused him with mana and he could have stayed insane for quite some time…….”
Despite the similar appearance, I wonder if she’s different from humans.
She rationalizes that Hoffman and I didn’t stop him from killing himself, but she doesn’t know why he did it.
“It was because the trauma was too much and he went crazy because he couldn’t handle it. If he tried to force himself to be sane, it would have been harder to hold on.”
In our world there have been many soldiers who have committed suicide after fighting the undead.
Fighting the undead, the demon army, was nothing like a normal war against humans.
It wasn’t for nothing that the capable mountain soldier Hoffman became addicted to potions.
If I was sane, it was only because I had fought for years as a free knight before joining the demon army.
No, I’m not sane.
Zahina didn’t seem to understand my explanation.
It didn’t matter. I didn’t think I could make her understand.
She just wanted answers, and I gave them to her.
Leaving the burning flames behind, we made our way back to the ammunition depot.
We swept up the remaining ammunition and weapons from the unattended magazines.
I ripped open the wooden crates and stuffed the steel magazines into the space-expanding pockets.
Thousands of rifle rounds, dozens of grenades and claymores, mines and grenade launchers.
It was a nearly empty ammo cache, but it was more than enough for us and Zahina.
We also grabbed the K2 rifle the dead soldier had been carrying, the K1 rifle that was still in the magazine, the overheated and bent barrel of the machine gun, and the spare barrel of the machine gun.
I didn’t see any grenade launchers. A grenade launcher would have given me a similar effect with firepower without the mana.
It’s a shame, but I had no choice.
I’m lucky to have this many weapons and ammo.
Zahina looked troubled by the soldier’s suicide, but once we had filled her empty ammo and weapons, she seemed a bit content.
Was this the last of the behemoths we’d defeated?
There was a great fight, but no more undead appeared before us.
Perhaps the battle between the demon army and this force had driven all the lesser undead back to the earth,
Or perhaps the other undead were caught up in the demon army pushing down from the north and moved south.
Either way, we were grateful to not have to deal with the undead anytime soon.
We left the troop and continued along the highway, which led south or west.
“There aren’t many undead left here either, so I’m guessing they’ve all been taken, or dragged away, by the demon army, not by the battle.”
Hoffman was right, there were few humanoid undead, or zombies, on the highway.
Just a few seatbelted undead in abandoned cars, a few with broken legs, and a few others roaming the highway for other reasons.
-Bang! BANG!
The sound of Zahina’s gunfire doesn’t deter many of the undead from swarming toward us.
I didn’t even reduce the noise as much as before to save mana, but there were hardly any undead coming.
“That’s good for us, isn’t it? We’ll be in much less danger if we don’t run into the demon army down south.”
Both Hoffman and I nodded as Zahina continued.
She was right.
Either way, there would be fewer undead to encounter.
However, Hoffman’s and my expressions were not cheerful as we realized the situation.
If the Demon Army was leading a group of undead, it meant that the Demon Army had minions of the Demon King who could turn ordinary zombies into skeletons, or worse.
“That means the one leading the demon army that went south isn’t just some random guy, right?”
Anyone who could turn ordinary undead into a demon army was likely to have a name.
‘A name.’
Come to think of it, it was the Demon King’s subordinates who took over the northern lands and Manchuria.
A subordinate of the Demon King who made the Demon Army take over more than one country and defended it until the Demon King came.
The one who led the demon army south must have been at least the level of the Four Heavenly Kings, and the one who descended to the south must have been a Named below him.
‘The Named leading the Demon King’s army and the undead army… We must never go near them.’
I would not set foot in that direction if I did not wish to relive that terrible battle.
“We’re just a scouting party.”
Hoffman seemed to think the same thing.
I locked eyes with Hoffman, and we nodded at each other.
Even though the Demon King’s army brought along humanoid undead, there were still some undead there, so their movement was not very fast.
We kept walking, taking care of the occasional undead that jumped out at us.
As we continued to walk southwest, more and more houses lined the roadside but not a house in sight was intact.
Windows were shattered, doors smashed, walls crumbled and some were burned to the ground.
Unlike the first mountain village we encountered, this one looked like it had been swept away by the demon army.
Unlike the normal undead, who leave buildings untouched, the Demon Army did not leave inhabited houses alone.
The Demon Army was the army of the Demon King, destroying human civilization.
Seeing that none of the houses were still standing, we ignored them and kept walking until we could see the city.
We made it to bed in the only intact house before nightfall and didn’t see the city until the next day.
The day we saw the city, our breakfast was a stale army mess of dry bread from our world, smeared with strawberry jam from the ammunition depot.
Even though it was hard bread and army strawberry jam, they preferred it to the rice I made them on their first day.
After eating, we set off again, and before an hour had passed, we were on the road again, with buildings jutting out over the national highway.
They were tall and different from the houses we were used to seeing.
Hoffman and Zahina were quite surprised to see them.
They were nothing like the houses they had seen before.
But unlike them, I felt at home once again.
The buildings beyond the highway were high-rise apartment complexes.
The sign visible on the national highway had the city name [Namyangju-si] written on it.
I had finally arrived in the city.
A satellite city attached to Seoul.
“Too many obstacles, too many undead.”
Once in front of the city, we could no longer move along the national highway.
The road into the city was filled with cars.
What’s more, I could see hundreds of undead milling about among the cars.
It was difficult to move through such a tightly packed traffic jam while killing hundreds of undead.
Besides, there was no reason to move along the highway now that we were in the city.
“Let’s go to the woods off the road.”
It was more of a park with trails than a forest, but it was easier for the two of them to describe it as a forest.
Parks weren’t without their undead.
They could sense the undead roaming the woods attached to the park, but it was nothing compared to the undead that lined the highway.
They were so few in number that it was possible to cross the park without being spotted by the undead in the park.
Zahina regretted that she hadn’t fired her gun, but firing here would surely attract the undead on the road.
As we crossed the park in silence, we saw people instead of undead.
Two middle-aged men in tattered clothes, prostrate on a low hill.
We stopped dead in our tracks, but at that moment, the undead roaming the park changed their behavior.
“They’ve been spotted.”
The undead ran, not toward us, but toward the two men lying on the hill.
They were weak-looking zombies with rotting flesh, but the two men would have none of it.
Before we could decide what to do, they made the first move.
One jumped to his feet and ran for the woods behind us, while the other stayed where he was, ready to fight the oncoming zombies.
“Did they evacuate?”
Zahina asked, and I shook my head as I watched the two men move.
“No, they didn’t. They ran away.”
Judging by the tail end of the man who moved first, he had clearly left the other man behind.
Furthermore, the direction in which he moved made it clear that he was using the other man as bait.
From the way they were lying down, it looked like they were out scouting like us, albeit on a different scale.
That meant they belonged somewhere, and that there was a group of survivors in the area.
We hadn’t met any real survivors so far, so it was time to start meeting this world civilization.
“Silence.”
I instructed the two men, and ran forward.
The first one had already fled, hidden by the hills as four undead rushed at the remaining man.
The lead undead had already reached him.
‘Am I a little late?’
I was worried that I would have to use holy water and potions, but to my surprise, the remaining man managed to stop the undead with the iron pipe in his hand.
I was lucky.
Two more undead arrived in front of the man before I did, but I wasn’t worried.
I wasn’t moving alone.
-Hiss!
The next moment, I felt mana shift behind me, and the second undead burst into flames.
It was Zahina’s spell.
It wasn’t as powerful as the wizard’s fire magic, but it was enough to stop the undead in its tracks.
At the same time, a mana-filled arrow whizzed past my side.
-Puck!
The arrow struck the third undead in the head, and it immediately collapsed.
‘Mana in an arrow. Did Zahina help?’
If bullets could hold mana, then other people’s arrows should be able to hold enough mana.
However, putting mana into someone else’s weapon was no easy task.
‘That seems a bit much.’
Still, it was the best Zahina could do since she couldn’t use her gun right now.
Now it was my turn to take care of the rest.
I caught up to the last undead in a single stride and sliced off its head.
Then, leaping up, I slammed my sword down on the undead with the iron pipe in its head.
-Pow!
The undead’s head was crushed, and the man looked at me in surprise.
Luckily, this man didn’t seem insane.
Satisfied that the man was safe, I looked around.
It was a modern city that I had never seen before in this life.
However, it was completely different from the city I had seen in my previous life.
Bodies lay in parks and burned-out apartments.
Abandoned cars and smashed storefronts filled the streets.
I sighed in disbelief at the altered cityscape.
“This is fucked up. I can’t believe this is what my lucky hometown looks like.”
The man looked at me in surprise.
Oops, my mistake!
In my excitement, I spoke in Korean.