Chapter 11 – The Hero Dies (1)

I left the knight behind and ran north.

Boom, crash.

The roars of the undead and explosions echoed behind me.

Were there more landmines left?

In truth, the path I was running wasn’t safe from mines either, but I had to rely on luck.

Fortunately, I didn’t step on any mines while escaping the suspected minefield.

Thanks to Knight Leopold and the mines doing their best behind me, the pursuing undead were no longer visible.

I continued running north for a while, practically carrying Hoffman, even after the explosion sounds and undead cries faded.

After running several kilometers like that, I finally set Hoffman down on the ground.

When I stopped, Hoffman sat down and panted heavily. Though he hadn’t run himself, he must have been exhausted from being carried on my shoulder while wounded.

Luckily, all of Hoffman’s wounds seemed to be healed.

Skin with only faint red traces remaining.

As expected, the potion’s effects were remarkable.

A potion with absolute effectiveness for external injuries.

A miraculous medicine that repairs at an incredible speed unless completely severed or the body part is entirely gone.

While other things couldn’t compare to items from my past life, potions were far beyond modern pharmaceuticals.

However, even these amazing potions weren’t without issues.

The biggest problem was the potion addiction afflicting Hoffman and many soldiers before me,

But there were other minor issues as well.

One of them was the hunger phenomenon after potion absorption.

The potion restored lost flesh, but it didn’t create something from nothing.

What the potion did was take materials from other parts of the body to repair damaged flesh.

That’s why there was a limit to how much recovery potions could do, and using potions multiple times could even cause the body to collapse.

Hoffman was now in that state of hunger.

Unlike his healed body, he was emaciated, with bloodshot eyes and drool at the corners of his mouth as he rummaged through his bag.

His large bag contained salted meat wrapped in cloth, apparently prepared for times like this.

He chewed and swallowed the meat without properly removing the cloth.

Like a reanimated corpse, a zombie craving flesh.

It was an unpleasant sight, but having seen it before, I could watch calmly.

After inhaling all the meat in his bag, he patted his protruding belly.

“I survived again. As rumored, sticking close to you, Sir Knight, was the right choice.”

Despite eagerly inhaling the meat, his emaciated body remained unchanged.

Knights and mages could forcibly convert ingested food into energy using mana, but Hoffman, who could only sense mana, had to digest like ordinary people to recover his body.

For now, he had only suppressed his appetite through overeating, his depleted stamina unchanged.

“Still, it might have been better for you if I had died… But I ended up surviving.”

Was he feeling better now? He was spouting nonsense.

“Earlier, when there was a problem, you said if only one person remained, they should hide instead of searching for the hero. Someone like me could probably hold out until the gate reopens if I just hide… It would be much easier for you, Sir Knight.”

Indeed, the drug-addicted soldier knew my other nickname well.

The nickname ‘Survivor’.

That nickname was given not only because I held out for a long time at the forefront while fighting the Demon King,

But because I survived to the end no matter what mission was carried out.

In fact, the reason I survived was due to my special survival ability, a sense that detected crisis situations in advance.

Anyway, the nickname ‘Survivor’ was whispered behind my back after seeing me return alone from numerous missions.

Moreover, what Hoffman just said wasn’t actually nonsense.

The mage had said something similar before we left.

He said that for reinforcements to return to our dimension, there needed to be a marker planted in this world.

Of course, it was probably an exaggeration, but the implication was that at least one of us needed to be alive to recreate the gate.

However, I had no intention of doing as Hoffman suggested.

“Even if I’m alone, I’ll search for the hero.”

At the very least, I needed to confirm whether the hero was dead or alive.

It would be extremely troublesome if I hid only to find out the hero was perfectly fine when the gate reopened.

Not only the Imperial Count who had earnestly implored me before leaving, but countless nobles who had hitched their wagons to the hero would try to devour me.

I needed to at least confirm the hero’s survival before deciding what to do next.

“Oh my… Then we’ll have to move.”

Hoffman sighed at my words.

The soldier looked like he really didn’t want to move, but his expression wasn’t as bad as it appeared.

It was because he had confirmed that I wouldn’t kill him.

The nonsense he had spouted earlier was ultimately to test me.

Although we could no longer receive accurate guidance since the elf navigator had died,

We still knew the general direction, so there was no problem in finding our way.

However, it was difficult to move as quickly as before.

Hoffman had to check for traces one by one as we moved.

Since Hoffman’s stamina had dropped anyway, we tracked the hero’s group at walking speed.

While Hoffman checked for traces of the hero’s group, I heightened my senses to check for dangers in the surroundings,

Moving like that for a while, we finally discovered traces left by the hero’s group.

A fire scene with lingering heat, as if a large fireball had fallen, and numerous burned and broken undead.

Seeing the traces of intense battle, it seemed the hero’s group had fought far more undead than us.

“Even so, these traces are a bit strange. No matter how many undead there were, these traces look like the hero’s group struggled.”

As Hoffman said, the scattered traces everywhere were not of the hero’s group crushing the undead, but of a fierce melee where they clashed back and forth.

There were no signs of higher-level entities in the traces, yet such marks remained.

Hoffman had reason to be puzzled.

“Could there have been a lich among the undead that attacked? There are also traces that look like the mage blocked ranged attacks with a shield.”

We had heard the Demon King had crossed over to this world to avoid the hero, but neither we nor the mages knew exactly when the Demon King first crossed over.

We couldn’t tell if it was a month ago when he fled from the heroes, or if he had crossed over much earlier.

If he had crossed over in advance, the Demon King could have sent a skeletal mage lich to this dimension.

However, I knew that the one who made the ranged attack was not a lich.

The enemy whose powerful ranged attack the hero group’s mage had to block with a shield.

It must have been an ordinary undead, a zombie.

It wasn’t a magic attack, nor was it an arrow.

I looked at the zombie corpse with its head blown off rolling to one side.

A corpse in military uniform, dead not long ago.

That corpse, wearing the uniform of the northern soldiers I had seen in my past life, the People’s Army uniform, was tightly gripping a rifle.

This wasn’t the only fallen rifle.

Rifles of the North Korean army were scattered in the hands of corpses strewn about and around them.

“Undead that fire guns…”

It was an absurd idea, but not impossible.

Among the undead we had fought so far, there were quite a few who wielded swords or spears, and some of them used skills from when they were alive.

Further on, there were death knights who could use mana and mages like liches.

Considering that, undead firing guns was certainly possible.

However, it would take time. More time than a month.

“It seems the Demon King has been here for quite a while.”

For undead to be able to shoot guns, the Demon King would need to know enough about this world.

It was as the mages had said.

The gate was the Demon King’s trap.

The hero’s group had fought gun-wielding undead here.

The traces of fierce battle continued afterwards.

Did the hero’s group perhaps see the Demon King here?

Despite the continued attacks from the undead, the hero’s group pressed on northward.

The battle traces became increasingly rough, and dark stains that looked like blood spilled by the hero’s group were found.

However, no stragglers from the hero’s group were visible anywhere.

Were they still fighting?

But no sounds of battle could be heard.

Moreover, no undead were visible either.

Had the heroes dealt with all the undead? Or had the undead left after finishing their task?

Thinking such thoughts, we moved along the traces for a while, until we finally found not traces, but the hero.

No, the hero’s corpse.

The place where the hero’s corpse lay was inside a large pit.

A place that looked like there had been a tremendous explosion not long ago.

Shattered undead and zombies were visible around, and the trees beside the pit were riddled with holes.

And in the large pit lay the naked hero.

The hero’s body was full of holes, with arms, legs, and head severed, abdomen and chest split open with intestines spilling out.

It looked as if someone had taken out their anger on the corpse of a serial killer.

I stood blankly staring at the corpse.

I had thought the hero might lose, but I never expected to find him as a corpse.

But thinking about it a bit more, I could understand why the hero was abandoned like this.

The hero was a holy knight chosen by God. An undead couldn’t be made from the corpse of the holy knight hero.

After confirming the hero’s corpse, I looked around the surroundings.

Even heightening my senses and spreading mana detection, no living beings could be felt.

The corpses of the hero’s companions were not visible either.

However, it didn’t seem likely that his companions would have left behind the desecrated corpse of the hero.

In the end, the hero’s group must have been defeated here by the Demon King or the Demon King’s undead.

“Did the Demon King take the other hero companions?”

Or did he take their corpses?

Seeing that the hero’s armor and sword were not visible either, it seemed they had taken those as well.

“Im-impossible! The hero can’t be dead!”

Hoffman’s muttering could be heard.

Unlike me, it seemed Hoffman had believed the hero would be alive.

Well, unlike me who remembered my past life, to ordinary people of the continent, the hero would be a living faith itself.

I had thought similarly when hearing stories of the hero before remembering my past life.

However, now that the hero was dead, we needed to decide what to do next.

No, before that,

I needed to eliminate the sense of crisis tickling my nape.

I looked in the direction my senses were pointing and saw a glint of light in the distant undergrowth.

And then, a gunshot.

Bang!

I raised my sword at the same time.