Chapter 179 – The Second Safe Zone (2)

It was difficult to get a clear account of what had happened from the survivors.

After I defeated the burning skeletons and the party members rushed in to clean up the other undead, not only the apprentice knights but also the priests had collapsed.

Some were exhausted and fell asleep, while others were unconscious due to injuries.

We were busier than when we were fighting the undead.

Hoffman, the two mages, and I moved around to clear out the undead, while Yerim focused on healing the injured.

Irene, who still couldn’t use magic properly, assisted Yerim. By the time the day was over, people began to wake up one by one.

Since we had cleared the area the previous day, no more undead attacked today.

We had cleared out all the undead around the mountain, and it seemed that the skeletons we had seen yesterday were the last of the pursuers.

We were finally able to hear the survivors’ stories.

“At the end, the knights told us to flee with the priests. We escaped while protecting the priests.”

The young knights bit their lips as they spoke.

Most of them were around the same age as the new hero.

Late teens.

In Ea, they would have just become adults, but here on Earth, they were still considered teenagers.

These boys, wearing blood-stained armor, had been protecting the priests.

Yerim, who had seen them before, wore a complicated expression, but Irene, who was seeing them for the first time, was wide-eyed at the sight of her peers looking so rough.

If it had been me in my past life, I would have felt pity for them, but as a knight, I asked them something else.

“How many died on the way here?”

“About ten died on the way, and another ten died defending the safe zone.”

There were about ten apprentice knights in front of me.

They were the only ones who had survived.

It meant they had fought desperately, but it also meant that the undead chasing them weren’t that strong.

“Thanks to the knights and mages holding them off, there weren’t many undead chasing us.”

The words of the apprentice knight who spoke as their representative aligned with my thoughts.

‘The U.S. forces had a Death Knight following them, but only skeleton warriors followed this group.’

It could have been luck, but the Demon King’s army wasn’t made up of mindless undead.

They were the Demon King’s army, capable of setting traps to defeat humans.

The enemy was no different from a human army.

‘They must have thought eliminating the U.S. forces was more important than the priests and apprentice knights. And more importantly, they must have prioritized the Daejeon base, or rather, the Daejeon Gate.’

The Demon King’s army had destroyed the expeditionary force and the safe zone in Daejeon.

If they wanted, they could have sent proper pursuit forces to both locations.

The fact that they didn’t meant there was something important to do at the destroyed Daejeon base, and that could only mean one thing.

The gate in Daejeon.

The Demon King clearly wanted that gate.

“Attacking Pyongyang was the problem.”

The new hero’s party’s attack on Pyongyang had turned into a trap, ending in a disastrous failure.

They had barely escaped with their lives.

But the problem didn’t end there.

With the appearance of a new hero, the Demon King must have learned that a new gate had been created, and naturally, the Demon King’s army would have been searching for the new gate.

When you think about it, the distance from Pyongyang to Daejeon was just a stone’s throw away.

It was inevitable that they would be discovered.

“Everyone was too complacent.”

Not only the expeditionary force’s leadership but also I hadn’t thought that far ahead.

Of course, as a free knight, I had no reason to worry about such things, but looking at the current situation, it was clear that we had made a mistake.

As I was lost in these thoughts, I felt someone’s gaze on me.

The young knights were staring at me intently.

They were waiting for my words.

To these boys who had lost their comrades, were covered in blood, and still protected the priests, there was only one thing to say.

“You all did well. You followed the senior knights’ orders and protected the priests. You are fine knights.”

It was a straightforward acknowledgment that they had done their duty as knights.

“Thank you!”

At my words, the young knights’ eyes lit up, and they bowed their heads.

They were as happy as if they had received the highest praise.

Hiding my discomfort, I continued.

“Then, recover your strength as quickly as possible. We’ll need your strength going forward.”

“Understood.”

At my words, the young knights finally relaxed and began to prepare.

They assigned people to keep watch, helped the priests prepare food, and the rest began to tend to themselves.

I watched these loyal knights follow my orders and hid a bitter expression.

As someone who remembered my past life, the words I had just spoken were the ones I hated the most.

They were the words kings and nobles used to boost the morale of knights and their subjects, but in the end, they were just asking people to exert themselves for their sake.

I had stayed a free knight because I didn’t want to see that, and even now, I didn’t want to say those words to others.

But for these young knights who had grown up in such a world, there was no better praise.

Especially since it came from a knight of my caliber, their eyes couldn’t help but shine.

Watching the young knights move, I let out a small sigh.

“Is something worrying you?”

It was a sigh of self-reproach, but Yelena didn’t seem to think so.

Well, Yerim might have understood, but to Yelena, this conversation must have seemed perfectly normal.

Yerim was currently helping the priests prepare food with the other party members.

Fortunately, one of the surviving priests had a spatial expansion bag with food supplies, so preparing a meal didn’t seem too difficult.

The food ingredients carried by priests were notorious for being tasteless, but with Yerim and Irene around, they could use spices from this world to make it somewhat edible.

While the party members were helping with the meal preparations, Yelena stayed by my side instead of helping them, because she was a mage.

Of course, it was also because of the authority that came with being a mage, but more importantly, she was the disciple of a battle mage and had only studied magic in the tower.

Yelena had no talent for cooking.

Perhaps to avoid that situation, she asked me a question while glancing around outside the safe zone.

It wasn’t a particularly meaningful question, but since I had something to say, I answered her.

“I was thinking about what the Demon King would do after taking the gate.”

“……There’s only one thing, right?”

Since it was confirmed that the gate was the target, there was only one thing the Demon King would do next.

As we had heard on the submarine, the Demon King would undoubtedly use the undead army created in this world to invade Ea again.

“The question is whether the Allied Forces or the Empire know about this……”

The expeditionary force’s leadership had been too busy fleeing Daejeon.

They probably hadn’t heard that China had fallen, so they wouldn’t know that the Demon King was building an army.

Could they prepare to stop the Demon King’s attack?

Moreover, could the Empire and the various kingdoms, devastated by years of war, prepare to stop the Demon King?

No matter how much I racked my brain, I couldn’t think of a good outcome.

“Who knew things would turn out like this……”

When I first came to this world, I thought I’d leave the Demon King to the hero’s party and make some money to buy a small estate.

But now, my small goal had been achieved, yet it seemed like that success would become meaningless.

The way things were going was almost laughable.

On top of that, the bigger problem was that I couldn’t just sit back and not worry about Ea.

“I wish we could at least send word that an army is being prepared……”

It was ironic that I, who had just shaken my head at the apprentice knights, was now saying this, but it seemed I couldn’t help being a knight of Ea.

The thought that the Demon King’s army, which we had fought for years, would sweep through Ea again made it impossible not to worry.

In Ea, there were comrades who had survived and retired, as well as family and friends who had stayed behind.

Not the faint memories of my past life’s family, but the siblings and parents I had mixed feelings about.

They weren’t great nobles, nor had they treated me particularly well, but they had shown me parental love and sibling affection.

No, even if I hadn’t felt that love, it didn’t matter. They were my family.

When you think about it, the reason I had joined the expeditionary force as a free knight and fought the Demon King’s army for years was to protect my homeland and the family there.

As thoughts of love and family made my face flush, I wrapped my decision in practical terms.

‘If Ea falls, I won’t even be able to dream of an estate or territory.’

It was a very rational thought, but the problem was that I had no way to solve it.

That’s when Yelena spoke to me.

“There’s a way to send word…… No, to create a temporary gate.”

“Huh?”

When I looked at her in surprise, Yelena pointed at herself with her finger.

“I’m a spatial mage, after all.”

Ah, right.

She was a spatial mage.

A正统 spatial mage who had created a gate in New York.

But New York was different from here.

“In New York, Zahina and I had to cross over to the Land of the Divine Tree through a rift.”

We had been left behind on Earth because we needed a target, and we had crossed over to the Land of the Divine Tree through a rift to become targets ourselves.

But there was no rift here.

“Don’t tell me there’s a target in Ea?”

“Yes. When I was researching teleportation, I created one. I planted it in the house where I lived with my master.”

There was hope in her words. I quickly asked.

“So, can you create one now?”

“……It’s not about modifying a rift, so not immediately. We need quite a bit of material.”

If she said it was possible, then the materials must be available on Earth.

“What materials do we need?”

“We need a lot of gold…… But we have plenty of that. The problem is that we need a lot of gems to hold mana.”

At Yelena’s words, I quickly rummaged through my pouch.

I was sure I had put some gems in my pouch when I was in Daejeon.

Thanks to the massive gold ingots I had obtained later, I had half-forgotten about the gems, but I hadn’t thrown them away.

“Ah, here they are.”

Thankfully, the gems were still there.

I took them all out and showed them to her.

Diamonds, sapphires, jade, opals, pearls, amber, moonstones, and rubies.

Some were just ordinary stones here, unable to hold mana, but the rest were definitely gems that could hold mana.

“Will this be enough?”

When I handed her the large pouch filled with gems, Yelena looked at me with a bewildered expression.

“Are you a thief, not a knight?”

I had no excuse.

Everything I had done in this world was essentially theft.