Chapter 187 – Re-Invasion (2)

The battle beyond the gate.

Without waiting, I jumped through the gate.

As I’ve said before, gates can always be destroyed.

Moreover, Yelena was currently maintaining the gate with her magic circle.

If the gate were destroyed in this situation, Yelena wouldn’t be unharmed.

We had to protect the gate first.

As I crossed the gate with a dizzying sensation, a cacophony of sounds assaulted my ears.

Boom! Crash! Screech!

“Agh! Help me!”

“Run away!”

Explosions, the screeching of undead.

The screams and shouts of people.

These were sounds I had heard too many times while fighting the demon army.

But to hear them here…

“Could it be that the gate was created in the wrong place?”

The coordinates for the gate were set at the house of Yelena’s master, Gustav, in the capital of Posen, a satellite state of the Empire.

It was a place far from the land where the Demon King’s dungeon was located, and even when the demon army invaded years ago, it hadn’t been captured.

But now, this chaos.

It seemed likely that the gate had been created in the wrong place.

Thinking this, I stepped out of the house.

It must have been an ordinary wooden house before, but now it was half-destroyed, so there was no need to use the door.

As I stepped through the broken wall, I saw a burning street and the shattered royal palace.

To have a house with a view of the palace, Yelena’s master, the battle mage Gustav, was much wealthier than I had imagined.

I had thought battle mages, living under the shadow of orthodox mages, wouldn’t be much different from us, but that wasn’t the case.

‘After all, battle mages are still mages.’

Well, unlike knights, mages had many ways to make money besides fighting.

They could sell ice cream using ice magic, or sell water in the desert. With dimensional magic, they could even run a delivery service, and if all else failed, they could put on firework shows.

‘No, no, this isn’t the time for such thoughts.’

The absurdity of the situation had me thinking nonsense.

It was just that what I was seeing now was hard to comprehend.

More than anything, the half-destroyed palace was one I recognized.

“Damn it, I’m not in the wrong place.”

I had been here before, so I remembered the palace.

Even though it was half-destroyed and billowing smoke, that palace was definitely the royal palace of Posen.

A satellite state of the Empire, located on the western border.

The reason the Empire hadn’t annexed this country was to use it as a buffer zone.

Now that buffer was being destroyed.

And by the demon army we had driven to another world.

No, it was that demon army.

The undead running through the streets weren’t skeletons, but moving corpses—zombies. And they were dressed in clothes different from those of the people of Ea.

The undead destroying the capital of Posen were all from Earth.

Zombies from Earth, wearing clothes with Chinese characters and English letters.

My fears had come true.

And in the worst possible way.

It seemed the Demon King, having seized the gate from Daejeon, had immediately poured a massive undead army into Ea.

“Even so, to have already reached Posen… Could it be that the Demon King is targeting the Empire?”

If not, there was no way the undead could have reached this place so quickly.

Kyaaak!

Even as I assessed the situation, the zombies running through the streets kept coming at me.

Unlike before, I didn’t unleash sword auras, but only dealt with the zombies that came at me.

It wasn’t because I was low on mana, tired, or exhausted.

If I carelessly dealt with the undead in a flashy manner, it could draw more of them here, and that would be a disaster.

One zombie, or even dozens or hundreds, wouldn’t be a problem, but even without activating my heightened senses or mana detection, I could tell that there were at least tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of zombies in this city.

No matter how much my skills had improved, I couldn’t handle such numbers.

Slash, slash.

While I methodically dealt with the zombies, the rest of the party members crossed the gate one by one.

Zahina came through, followed by Hoffmann, and then Yerim.

All three frowned at the surrounding situation but immediately got to work.

Yerim spread divine power to block the undead’s approach, and Zahina used her recovered high-level mage magic to clear the surrounding undead.

Mass slaughter was best handled with magic.

The streets were cleared in an instant.

Thanks to the divine power Yerim had spread, no more undead approached.

Of course, if there were elite undead like the Death Saint, they might notice and come, but I didn’t sense any such powerful undead in this city.

Now we had bought some time.

“Hold this place for a moment.”

I entrusted the rear to my party members and crossed the gate again.

Perhaps because I crossed the gate too quickly, it was several times more difficult than before.

The world swayed as if I were crossing the gate for the first time.

I kept my mana moving and barely managed to regain my senses.

“You shouldn’t cross the gate again so quickly! If you cross the gate before your body adapts to the new dimension, your body won’t be able to handle it!”

As soon as I regained my senses, I was met with Yelena’s scolding.

It was probably out of concern for me, but it was something I hadn’t heard before.

‘We must have gotten closer, right?’

Even though I was being scolded, I didn’t feel bad, which showed that the distance between me and the party members had definitely decreased.

“I’ll be careful. By the way, the gate was created correctly. It wasn’t made in the wrong place.”

“I know. The gate coordinates couldn’t have changed. Posen was attacked, right?”

“Yes. Just as we feared, this world is filled with undead.”

If it were a human army, it would have been impossible for them to reach Posen in such a short time, but the demon army was made up of undead who didn’t need to eat or rest.

Barriers or troops wouldn’t have been able to stop them.

The barriers would have been overcome by hills of undead, and human troops would have been swept away by the sheer numbers.

However, if the Empire had acted, it wouldn’t have been so easily overrun.

‘Could it have been a surprise attack?’

But the expeditionary force headquarters had successfully escaped.

The hero party had also safely crossed the gate.

There were things I didn’t understand, but now wasn’t the time to dwell on them.

“What should we do? The situation over there is different from what we expected.”

“Anyway, I need to stay here to maintain the gate. No matter what’s happening in Ea, I planned to stay here.”

Indeed, Yelena was right.

Even if everyone here crossed over to Ea, she had to stay.

“Then, Irene… She’ll stay with you.”

When I looked at Irene, she nodded.

She had followed us to become Yelena’s disciple.

There was no way she would go to Ea if Yelena stayed here.

After confirming Irene’s decision, I turned to the others.

“What do you all plan to do?”

The apprentice knights and priests gathered around the gate.

Originally, I had planned to send them all to Ea, but now that wasn’t possible.

When I explained the situation beyond the gate, they quickly made a decision.

“We’ll leave the priests needed to maintain the safe zone and the injured here.”

Originally, we had planned to send the injured and those with severed limbs that couldn’t be healed by divine power to Ea first, but now that wasn’t possible.

In fact, this place was safer.

“You said that since the gate has already been created, it doesn’t need to be maintained constantly, right?”

“Yes. We just need to activate the magic circle when necessary.”

“Then, open the gate only once a day at a set time.”

Doing so would reduce the chances of the enemy detecting the gate’s mana.

And when the gate wasn’t open, Yelena could focus on other tasks.

With her able to move, the priests maintaining the safe zone, and some apprentice knights guarding this place, the safe zone would be secure for a while.

The demon army and the Demon King would be focused on Ea and the Empire, and with the former hero undead party, who had been hunting down remnants of the expeditionary force, dealt with, there was no reason for the demon army to come here.

“If something goes wrong, abandon the gate and flee immediately. I’ll find a way to return, no matter what.”

But nothing was ever 100% safe. I told Yelena to flee if anything went wrong.

“Do you promise?”

At my words, Yelena smiled and asked.

As if joking, I drew my sword.

I held the sword with both hands and spoke to her.

“Yes. I swear on the name of Knight Jansen.”

Yelena was startled by the knight’s oath.

“No, you don’t need to go that far…”

It was understandable.

Even though the title of honorable knight had become hollow, a knight’s oath wasn’t something to be taken lightly.

It was a promise made with one’s life and honor on the line.

This was the second promise I had made to my party members.

“Then, I won’t worry. Even if you’re late, don’t push yourself too hard.”

Even if Yelena left and this gate disappeared, there was still a way to return to Earth.

There was another gate in Daejeon.

The gate that the Demon King had seized and the demon army was using.

In the worst-case scenario, I could use that gate to return.

Of course, it was a ridiculous method, but it wasn’t impossible.

I didn’t tell Yelena about this. If she knew, she might not flee in an emergency.

After making the promise with Yelena, I crossed the gate with the remaining priests and apprentice knights.

Yelena and Irene waved goodbye.

As I crossed the gate, I vowed to return.

Although I had given myself more time this time, it still wasn’t enough, and the world spun again.

Hoffmann caught my staggering body, but the others rolled on the ground and vomited as soon as they crossed the gate.

Priests and apprentice knights vomiting in a city filled with corpses.

Were they vomiting from gate sickness, or from the sight of the city filled with corpses?

After a while, those rolling on the ground regained their senses, and then I asked Zahina to hide the gate.

Rumble.

Zahina moved the earth to cover the half-destroyed mage’s house.

A small mound suddenly appearing in the royal capital’s residential area.

People would have found it strange, but now, there was no one around to be surprised.

This would at least hide it from view and conceal some of the mana.

Now, all we could do was hope it remained safe until we returned with the mages.

“Then, let’s head to the Empire.”

After confirming the half-destroyed palace, I decided to walk to the Empire.

There was a gate leading to the Empire in the Posen royal palace, but with the palace in ruins, it was unlikely the gate was still intact.

In the end, we had no choice but to walk to the Empire.

We headed to the Empire with the apprentice knights and priests.

As we left the capital and the kingdom, we had to fight many times.

We defeated the undead blocking our path, saved people, and gathered scattered soldiers.

If I were alone, I would have just saved the people and left, but with others, I couldn’t do that.

After a week of saving soldiers and people while heading west, our group, now nearly a thousand strong, arrived at the Empire’s border, filled with undead.