Chapter 190 – The Barrier (3)

Creak.

When the gates closed, I was left alone outside.

Of course, I was surrounded by torn-apart corpses and countless undead, but ordinary zombies couldn’t harm me anymore.

I waved at Zahina, who was watching me from the sky above the barrier, and instead of the closed gates, I leaped onto the walls.

Thud.

After kicking off the wall once, I landed on top of the barrier.

It was a twenty-meter-high wall, but with a single kick off the wall, I managed to get on top of it.

As I stood on the barrier, the soldiers and knights all turned to look at me.

The knights placed their hands on their chests in a gesture of respect, while the soldiers bowed their heads.

Seeing how their attitude toward me had changed, I couldn’t help but smile slightly. However, I maintained a calm expression, returned their greetings, and then immediately jumped down to the other side of the barrier.

As I descended, the refugees who had entered through the gates earlier rushed toward me.

They had been so tense, and now they were visibly relieved, their faces flushed and tears streaming down.

“Thank you.”

“We owe it to you, knight.”

“We’re alive because of you, knight.”

I waved off their gratitude casually.

It was a bit strange.

Not long ago, people wouldn’t have approached me like this.

It seemed that not only my party members but others also felt comfortable around me now.

‘Could it be that I’ve changed?’

In any case, it wasn’t a bad feeling.

Of course, their gratitude would likely be short-lived, and I didn’t expect anything from them. After all, I hadn’t done this for a reward.

I did it because I could.

Unlike before, when I had risked my life, this was just a minor inconvenience now.

As the soldiers guarding the gates and the nearly thousand refugees who had suddenly poured in crowded the courtyard, a bloodied figure appeared and silenced the chaos.

“What are you all doing! The battle isn’t over yet! Move quickly! Soldiers and knights, return to your posts! Refugees, head to the refugee camp beyond the barracks!”

The person who calmed the commotion with a single shout was an old man clad in blood-stained armor, wielding a greatsword.

However, if it weren’t for his white hair and wrinkled face, no one would have thought he was an old man.

He had a more robust build than me, and his entire body exuded an aura that made it clear to anyone that he was a formidable knight.

Moreover, as someone who could sense mana, I felt it more acutely than others.

‘He’s not intentionally releasing his aura.’

The aura people felt from the old man was simply the mana within him leaking out.

The mana within him was boiling like lava, so much so that it was natural for it to seep out as an aura.

Without realizing it, my hand moved to my sword.

The knight—no, the swordmaster—noticed my movement and immediately strode toward me.

“Hoh, it’s not because of my aura, is it? Did you sense my mana?”

The swordmaster stared at me intently as he spoke.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you. I am Egar, a knight.”

Instead of answering his question, I placed my hand on my chest and bowed to him.

“Do you know me?”

“I’ve never met you before, but I’ve heard of you. You must be the swordmaster guarding the western barrier of the empire.”

Even if I hadn’t heard of him, it would have been impossible not to recognize Marquis Maximilian von Kolbe.

There couldn’t be another muscular, elderly swordmaster like him.

“Hmm, I see.”

The Marquis nodded at my words, then tilted his head and glared at me.

“You seem to know me well, but why don’t I know you? A knight of your caliber should have made a name for himself by now.”

The Marquis’s question didn’t require an answer from me, as another swordmaster who had descended from the sky answered for me.

“That’s because they weren’t in Ea.”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

The Marquis raised an eyebrow at the middle-aged mage’s response, but the mage ignored him.

Instead, he greeted Zahina, who had descended with him.

“It’s been a long time, Zahina, the first daughter of the Sacred Tree.”

Zahina shook her head at the mage’s polite greeting.

“I can no longer be called the daughter of the Sacred Tree.”

“Ah, my apologies. I had heard about that… I made a mistake.”

The middle-aged mage looked embarrassed at Zahina’s response, and the Marquis furrowed his brow at the sudden turn of conversation.

“What on earth is going on here?”

“This woman… no, this lady is someone I know. So I think I have a rough idea of what happened.”

“So what happened?”

At the Marquis’s urging, the mage glanced around.

The gates were being reinforced, soldiers and people were moving about, and the blood-stained knights who had come with the Marquis were glancing at us.

“However, it seems the story will be long. Why don’t we move to a different location? Everyone seems tired, so it might be better to rest and talk.”

We all nodded at his suggestion.

The Marquis, having no objections, followed along.

“We’ve stirred things up enough this time, so there should be time to rest. Everyone, clean up and come to my room without delay.”

The refugees who had come with us were sent to the refugee camp behind the barrier, but we, along with the knights and priests, were given separate quarters in the barracks.

Fortunately, the quarters weren’t tents but wooden houses attached to the barrier.

They were hastily built and shabby, but at least there was a place to wash.

There were no shower facilities, just a large wooden tub filled with cold water, but that was enough.

Our party had a mage who could heat the water, and we also had toiletries brought from Earth.

After a quick bath, I was able to meet the Marquis and the command staff of the barrier in a clean state.

This time, my party members didn’t follow me.

Hoffman waved his hand as soon as I mentioned it, and Zahina and Yerim also shook their heads.

Zahina didn’t like such gatherings, but even Yerim refused.

It seemed that after the expeditionary force’s command and the hero’s party fled, she had developed a distaste for nobles and the empire.

This time, I met with the swordmaster Marquis, the mage, and the knights and military nobles alone.

As I entered the meeting room, the Marquis, still in his blood-stained armor, welcomed me from his seat at the head of the table.

“Welcome, Gate Knight.”

“Huh?”

“Didn’t you know? That’s your new, glorious nickname. It’s spreading like wildfire among the knights and soldiers.”

His welcome was oddly informing me of my new nickname.

‘Surely he’s not the one spreading it, is he?’

But he was a swordmaster and a Marquis, so he wouldn’t do something like that.

“It’s a cool nickname, so I told the knights to spread it around. Don’t forget that I’m the one who made it known when you hear it later.”

I had underestimated him.

I had thought that all swordmasters were dignified and proper because of Count Sponheim, but I was wrong.

There were crazy ones among them too.

And this one was a Marquis who held territory and guarded the empire’s western border.

I glanced at the nobles and knights around the Marquis.

They all had calm expressions.

As if this were normal and nothing out of the ordinary.

One of the nobles raised an eyebrow slightly, but he quickly wiped the expression off his face before the Marquis noticed.

It seemed that this wasn’t just directed at me but was the Marquis’s usual behavior.

‘Everyone’s rank and power are inferior to his, so no one dares to say anything.’

Fortunately, there was still someone among them who spoke plainly.

“We don’t have time to waste. Let’s cut the nonsense and hear the story first.”

It was the middle-aged mage sitting next to the Marquis.

The grand mage who had summoned lightning from the sky. He was also known as the Lightning Mage, one of the empire’s swordmasters.

“Alright, alright. So, tell us what happened.

That noblewoman, she’s no longer the daughter of the Sacred Tree, so can I call her a noblewoman now?

Anyway, I heard from Gunther that she’s the mage who went to another world with the late hero’s party to chase the Demon King.

She’s the only one who survived, and because of that, she was abandoned by her clan.

But they abandoned a mage like that? Are those nobles crazy?”

The Marquis, who had been doing well, suddenly went off on a tangent.

It was an uncharacteristic remark for a noble, but this time it didn’t sound strange.

The circumstances were different, but even now, I felt the same way.

She was fine with it, but I believed that one day, her clan would accept her for who she was.

If they didn’t change, I would make them change.

After reaffirming my resolve, I explained what had happened.

“My party and I were part of the expeditionary force sent to this world.

When our party was dispatched to another continent in that world on the expeditionary command’s orders, we heard that the command had been attacked.

We returned to the peninsula where the expeditionary force was stationed and learned that the command and the hero’s party had retreated.

We returned to Ea through a temporary gate with those who couldn’t retreat.”

In truth, there were countless events between those short sentences.

There were incredible achievements that an ordinary party couldn’t have accomplished, and we had survived places where survival seemed impossible.

But there was no need to bring up all those stories here.

After all, the expedition had failed, and the Demon King had invaded this world again.

In the end, we were just stragglers who had returned.

“Wait, you’re saying that the dispatch team that went to that world had a party with three swordmaster-level members? I’ve never heard of such a thing, and why did that dispatch team get wiped out like this?”

Of course, there were many reasons for this.

My party and I weren’t this strong from the beginning, and the main force fighting the Demon King and his army wasn’t the expeditionary force but the military of that world.

That world, Earth, was defeated, and its forces were turned into undead, so the small expeditionary force had no choice but to lose.

Of course, the expeditionary force fought desperately, but a rookie hero couldn’t kill the Demon King.

“Well, what’s done is done. More importantly, you’ve been fighting them all this time, so you must know how to deal with them, right?”

The Marquis didn’t want to hear more explanations.

After confirming our identities, he immediately asked about the enemy.

“Damn it, the numbers are ridiculous, but the real problem is that thunderous weapon. Even knights can’t easily block that. Is there any way to deal with it?”

It seemed that the expeditionary command and the hero’s party who had fled hadn’t properly explained the situation.

Then again, they were from Ea, so they wouldn’t have known much about guns.

The knights, soldiers, and even the Marquis here were the same.

Seeing the Marquis’s annoyed expression, I sighed inwardly.

“That’s not the only weapon from that world. It’ll take time to bring over heavier weapons, but there are stronger ones.”

At my words, the Marquis’s eyes widened.

“There’s a weapon stronger than that? And can those skeleton bastards use it?”

“Yes. It’s a weapon powerful enough to destroy this barrier. Anyone can use it, and it’s the weapon that killed the hero’s party.”

The Marquis had only faced rifles so far.

After that day, we stayed at the barrier with the knights and priests.

However, our time guarding the barrier with the Marquis didn’t last long.

A few days later, we received news that the southern barrier had fallen.

Machine guns, cannons, and self-propelled artillery.

The weapons that had killed the hero’s party had finally arrived at the barrier.