Chapter 12 – The Hero Dies (2)

Bang!

With the sound of gunfire, I felt a strong impact on the sword I had raised to the side.

It was gunfire.

“Get down on the ground!”

I shouted at Hoffman while simultaneously kicking off the ground.

Lowering my body, I threw myself in the direction the bullets came from, feeling another bullet graze past my ear.

Bang.

Another gunshot followed.

If I hadn’t known about guns or if I wasn’t a knight with keen senses, it would have been an accurate shot that would have hit me in the head.

That must be how the hero was taken down.

Not magic, but this long-range attack possible through gunpowder explosions – the hero’s group wouldn’t have known about it, so they had no choice but to be caught off guard.

Even if there was a trap set with the firepower of this world,

If they had known about the weapons of this world, the hero and his group wouldn’t have been helplessly defeated.

Fortunately, I was a knight familiar with the weapons of this world.

Bang.

As I ran through the bushes and trees while keeping low, the opponent couldn’t hit me.

With a knight’s movements in the gun’s blind spots, it wasn’t easy to hit me.

However, I couldn’t immediately reach where the bullets were coming from either.

The bullets were coming from a hill hundreds of meters away.

This was long-range sniping.

“Undead doing not just ordinary shooting, but sniping. Tsk tsk, what’s this world coming to…”

I had seen undead knights retaining their living abilities intact, but I never thought it would extend to sniping undead.

Feeling bullets whizzing past my ears, I could understand why the Demon King had crossed over to this world.

Thud, thud,

Fortunately, it seemed the Demon King wasn’t yet fully accustomed to this world’s weapons.

The sniping undead now wasn’t suitable as a trap for catching knights or soldiers coming to rescue the hero.

I quickly closed the distance with the sniper undead, then lunged diagonally and swung my sword.

As I swung my sword, I confirmed the sniper was indeed undead as expected.

A North Korean soldier’s corpse that looked like it hadn’t been dead for long.

His decaying face still retained habits from when he was alive – as I approached, he threw the sniper rifle he was using at me and tried to draw a pistol from his waist.

Unfortunately, there was no pistol at his waist.

Of course, even if he had a pistol, it would have been useless.

The undead fumbled at his waist before his head was severed by my swinging sword.

Of course, the sniper wasn’t alone there.

There was an assistant sniper undead and several other undead gathered together.

However, ordinary undead could do nothing against a knight who had approached so close.

The undead soldiers who tried to perform bayonet techniques with their guns were all swept away by my sword.

After smashing all the undead skulls, I looked at the headless undead still holding the sniper rifle.

He must have been quite a skilled sniper when alive.

“You prepared poorly. To face a knight, you should have prepared a machine gun instead of this sniper rifle.”

Or bombard with mortars and 155mm shells like when they caught the hero.

They concentrated enough firepower to change the terrain against the hero’s group, but only prepared such shoddy undead for the cleanup crew.

Well, this final trap probably wasn’t prepared by the Demon King.

Having already wiped out the hero’s group, the Demon King likely didn’t care about the aftermath.

The undead here must have been left behind by subordinates.

A trap where it would be good if someone was caught by these undead, but no problem if it failed.

“It’s like a kind of alarm signal, I guess?”

If that was the case, it was just the right deployment.

In any case, it was fortunate.

If the forces that killed the hero had remained, I would have had a hard time surviving too.

As I examined the smashed undead, I casually took the sniper’s gun as loot.

A sniper rifle that looked like a mix of the common AK-47 and a Soviet sniper rifle.

It was probably a sniper rifle modified by North Korea.

Compared to other guns that looked like they might explode while firing, this one seemed well-maintained, so it seemed okay to take one.

Plus, I could find two more magazines from the corpse.

There were no more enemies visible besides these undead. My senses and mana detection were quiet too.

I put the gun and magazines into my magic pouch and returned to where the hero had died.

Hoffman had remained prone the whole time. As expected of a veteran who survived war.

He had followed my order to get down well until now.

“It’s over.”

Hearing my words, he raised his head from the bushes.

Startled by the gunshots, he pressed his fingers to his ears several times as he got up.

“What was that just now?”

“This world’s weapon that killed the hero. Something like a rapid-fire crossbow.”

The sniper rifle would be angry at being compared to a crossbow, but.

As I spoke, I pointed at the guns lying on the ground.

The hero’s death wasn’t just because of guns, and guns were completely different from crossbows,

But for Hoffman who didn’t know about guns, this explanation was easy and convenient.

“But there’s no way the hero would die to mere crossbows…”

“It’s an unfamiliar weapon, and there wouldn’t have been just one of those. If hundreds or thousands of undead attacked with those weapons, even the hero would have had trouble defending.”

It didn’t seem like thousands of undead attacked simultaneously, but seeing the artillery impact marks on the ground, the firepower poured on the hero’s group must have been even greater.

A trap of mortar and 155mm artillery fire, and numerous machine guns.

If it was the Demon King’s trap, there would have been even more than that.

The conclusion was that the hero died here.

“If, if the hero has fallen, who will stop the Demon King? What if the Demon King invades again leading the undead that killed the hero?”

Was it the aftermath of potion addiction? Or did he believe in the hero even more than that?

Hoffman fell into confusion more than I expected.

He sat down on the ground and kept muttering while looking at the hero’s corpse.

I was at a loss.

Surely Hoffman wouldn’t become a burden too?

Now that the hero was dead, the plan to meet up with the hero and wait for the gate to open was completely scrapped.

We needed to come up with a new plan right away, but it would be difficult if the person I needed to plan with was losing his mind like this.

Fortunately, Hoffman regained his senses before long.

Before anything else, he arranged the hero’s corpse and set it on fire.

The hero’s funeral.

It was cremation.

The only funeral method left after the appearance of the Demon King of Death who raises the dead.

Of course, it didn’t seem likely that the hero who received divine power would be resurrected as undead, but as a soldier following the hero, he gave the hero a proper funeral.

There was no sense of danger around after the sniping undead either.

I did feel a strange presence nearby, but it didn’t feel dangerous, so I thought I could check it out after this funeral.

The dry grass, leaves, and cut branches quickly burned up the shattered hero’s corpse.

The funeral ended soon.

Hoffman put some of the ashes in his bag.

It was to properly bury the hero in a grave if we returned, but

These bones were also evidence that we had found the hero’s corpse.

The ashes with divine power remaining were sufficient evidence to confirm the hero’s death.

“What do we do now?”

Hoffman asked after finishing the cremation.

“We’ll have to hold out until the gate opens.”

While Hoffman was cremating the hero, I had been pondering what to do next.

We didn’t find the corpses of the hero’s companions except the hero, but we couldn’t go looking for them with just the two of us.

The hero’s companions were also great talents, but excluding the hero with divine power, they were just party members with better skills than others.

In fact, since the hero died here, his companions were unlikely to be alive.

The reason their corpses weren’t here was probably because the Demon King took them all away to process the bodies.

We could have a sliver of hope that they might be alive, but we couldn’t move based on such small hope.

No, whatever the reason, now that the hero was dead, there was no reason to care about the hero’s companions anymore.

We had to hide here as much as possible until the gate opened again.

“…I suppose so.”

Hoffman didn’t object to my words.

“Then which direction do you plan to go? We can’t stay here…”

“The Demon King left traces heading north, so we should go south.”

We couldn’t follow the Demon King while trying to hide.

Hoffman nodded at this reasonable suggestion.

Of course, my reason for wanting to go south wasn’t for such a rational reason.

Where we were standing was just north of the Korean military demarcation line.

Going up would be North Korea, and going down would be South Korea.

The reason I remained here was to go to that South – to go to South Korea.

* * *

“Then let’s depart.”

Was it thanks to resting during the funeral?

Hoffman seemed to have regained some energy.

There would still be aftereffects from the potion treatment, but the experienced soldier Hoffman didn’t show it.

Of course, I had already seen all the problems of his potion addiction,

As long as he could fight properly, that much was manageable.

“Wait, let me check one thing before we go.”

Hoffman looked at me with puzzled eyes as I closed my eyes.

The nagging feeling I had during the funeral became clearer.

I hadn’t felt that nagging sensation when we first arrived here.

It started to be felt little by little during the funeral, and now I could clearly sense something was there.

That feeling was like a living creature.

No, is it really alive?

It felt too quiet to be alive.

It was more similar to undead.

That feeling was coming from underground right now.

I looked at the shattered tree with only the lower nest remaining next to the clearing.

The feeling was coming from under that tree.

This sense had saved my life many times before, but this kind of sensation was a first.

A sensation different from undead, and different from living creatures.

Like a human-like tree, or an animal in hibernation.

But it wasn’t exactly like that either.

In the end, I had to check directly.

If I had felt it from when we arrived, I might have thought it was an animal hibernating out of season,

But clearly, I hadn’t felt anything at first.

So contrary to what I was sensing, I thought it was likely to be undead.

Only undead move again after death.

I approached the tree and cleared away the surrounding bushes.

As I cleared the bushes, I saw a half-buried corpse.

“A child of the World Tree?”

Hoffman’s eyes widened as he saw the corpse.

As he said, it was an elf corpse.

This time it wasn’t a male, but a female elf.

In any case, this female elf was certainly dead.

With half her head blown off and everything below the chest gone, buried on her side, there was no way she could be alive.

I sighed as I looked at the elf corpse.

“Is this what elf undead feel like?”

Since I had never seen elf undead before, I must have been confused.

I drew my sword.

Because I could feel vitality gradually emanating from the dead body.

Even if such a shattered corpse became undead, it wouldn’t be a big problem, but giving peaceful rest would be more desirable than becoming an undead with only the head remaining.

She must have been quite a high-ranking elf to have moved with the hero’s group. But being so shattered, she was no different from other corpses.

I clicked my tongue softly and was about to swing my sword.

At that moment.

Flash.

The corpse’s one remaining eye opened.

Then light returned to the pupil, and that eye looked straight at me.

Could it be, it’s already become undead?

I thought that, but I couldn’t swing my sword right away.

Because the eye looking straight at me was so clear.

At the same time, the corpse’s mouth opened.

And words spilled out of that mouth.

“I am not dead.”