Chapter 13: Zahina, Daughter of the Sacred Tree (1)

“A talking undead?!”

Hoffman exclaimed in shock and shot an arrow at the elf corpse.

Thud!

“Ugh!”

The arrow pierced the corpse with only the upper body remaining, and surprisingly, the half-body corpse groaned.

“Please don’t attack. I repeat, I am not undead.”

Words flowed from the corpse’s mouth again.

I raised my hand to stop Hoffman.

It was clearly not an ordinary corpse.

Or, it wasn’t a corpse at all.

“I… I was just pretending to be dead. I can’t harm you two in this state, so please wait a moment.”

Though the voice was rough, it was the voice of a living person.

“Are you really alive?”

I nodded at Hoffman’s surprised question.

At first glance, I was confused, but now I could clearly feel it.

The elf in front of me wasn’t dead.

Though only the upper body remained, half-buried in the ground, it was definitely alive.

I don’t know how it’s possible, but.

“Our race has superior recovery abilities compared to yours, so given time, we can fully recover from injuries like this.”

As if reading my mind, the elf, not a corpse, moved its mouth earnestly.

It was as she said.

Even to my eyes, I could see her healing little by little.

Under the tattered clothes, severed flesh was growing, and holes were being filled.

One arm had already grown to the elbow, and the other arm was starting to show beyond the shoulder.

Even the burst head was being filled in real-time.

It was an impossible recovery rate, even with a high-grade potion or a bishop’s prayer.

It was like the super-regeneration ability seen in superhero stories from my previous life.

Healing factor, was it?

It looked like the ability of that 4D hero in red clothes who ran around happily even with bullet holes all over his body.

“But the elf in our party died…”

Hoffman muttered after hearing the elf woman’s words.

The elf in our party didn’t just have ordinary wounds, and although he endured for a while even in a fatal situation, he died as Hoffman said.

“…So Faur died.”

Once again, without mentioning who, the elf guessed who we had been traveling with.

“This… this place is strange. Abilities are extremely weakened. Faur probably died because of that.”

Was that why the elf made such a fuss when dying?

But the woman in front of me is healing at an incredible speed?

“My recovery is slow too. Thanks to that, I was able to hide from the Demon King’s army.”

This is considered slow?!

I clicked my tongue at the absurd statement.

“If you’re alive, you shouldn’t be buried like that… I’ll dig you out.”

Hoffman seemed to believe that she was alive after hearing the elf’s words.

He approached the woman and tried to dig out the half-buried elf from the ground.

The woman hurriedly shouted at the sight, and I also stopped Hoffman.

“Ah, no!”

“I think it’s better to leave her as is. It seems she’s getting healing energy from the ground.”

Hoffman withdrew his hand at my words, and the woman sighed and looked at me with half-buried eyes.

“How did you know that?”

With mana being sucked in from the ground so visibly, how could I not know?

Come to think of it, was mana always this visible?

When we were in our world, it wasn’t this clearly visible…

After pondering for a moment, I shrugged.

There was nothing wrong with being able to see it clearly.

“I just thought so from observing the situation.”

However, there was no need to tell the other party that I could see mana.

I put my sword back on my waist and asked the elf woman.

“Looking at the situation, I don’t think a potion will help… How long will it take for you to recover?”

“The speed is increasing, so I think I’ll be able to move soon.”

Her legs were growing quickly too, so I thought she’d be able to walk soon as well.

The undead seemed to have all left, as the surroundings were quiet.

“There are no more enemies visible around, so we should be able to rest here for a while.”

I nodded and then spoke to Hoffman.

This place was a bloody battlefield where the hero had died, but except for the hero’s death, it wasn’t much different from the battlefield where we had fought the Demon King’s army.

“Is that so? Well then… I’ll rest a bit.”

Hoffman, looking perplexed, scratched his head and sat down on the ground.

Hoffman seemed to be extremely tired as well.

Well, what we had experienced in just one day was no ordinary matter.

Crossing the gate, engaging in battle during reconnaissance, getting injured by a landmine, and even witnessing the hero’s death – it was inevitable for both body and mind to be exhausted.

Unlike him, I was only mentally tired.

The body of a knight trained by war didn’t tire from just this much.

Instead of resting, I sat down on the ground and asked the elf.

“What exactly happened here?”

With an eyewitness to the scene present, I needed to hear how the hero had ended up dying here.

As we had just seen, the elf woman had no problem speaking even while recovering.

“Before I explain the situation, how did you know to come here for support, Sir Knight?”

She first asked me who I was.

It was an ordinary greeting and question, but not one that someone with only half a body would typically ask.

“I am Jansen Egger, a knight who came to find the hero’s party.”

However, I told her the truth about what had happened so far.

The gate had closed, and when the hero’s group didn’t return, it was thought that the hero had fallen into a trap, so our party was sent here.

“…All the forces that had crossed into this world have withdrawn. We saw the gate closing and came here to regroup with the hero.”

“I see. I understand. I am Zahina, daughter of the Sacred Tree, who joined the hero’s party today. I will also explain the situation so far.”

Her voice had become much smoother than before, probably because she had recovered more during our conversation.

It was a voice without inflection, but it was an extremely beautiful voice.

“After receiving word that the Demon King had been spotted, the Goddess’s hero set out for the gate with me and the party members…”

The hero’s group raced through the forest, following Zahina, the daughter of the Sacred Tree.

Although they didn’t receive separate guidance, Zahina didn’t slow her pace.

This was because she could sense the markings left by her clan.

Since she could find any place her clan had been, she didn’t need to search for the destination separately.

For this reason, she could cross the forest at an incredible speed.

It was difficult even for knights with mana to keep up, but the people following didn’t seem tired.

They chatted comfortably even while running.

“Couldn’t it be a trap?”

To the magician’s words, who was running with a fancy staff adorned with jewels,

“We still have to go. We don’t know how big this land is. If it’s as large as our continent, it won’t be easy to find the Demon King. We can’t not go just because it might be a trap.”

The hero calmly replied, and

“Even if it’s a trap, I’m sure we can overcome it with the hero and our group. The Goddess will protect us.”

The saint supported the hero’s words.

At the saint’s words, not only the two knights running together but even the magician who had first asked the question nodded.

Although he thought it might be a trap, the magician also trusted his party members, especially the hero.

He himself was the royal chief magician of the empire, the woman behind was a saint, and the two knights running with them were said to be among the top ten swordsmen in the empire.

And then, there was the hero.

Moreover, these people had come within a hair’s breadth of defeating the Demon King.

If the Demon King hadn’t fled, the war would have ended a month ago.

Even if what lay ahead was a trap, everyone in the party thought they could surely overcome it.

Except for the daughter of the Sacred Tree who had come to support the hero’s group.

The daughter of the Sacred Tree, Zahina, expressed doubt at the saint’s words.

“You all seem more confident than I thought. If it’s a trap, it could be quite dangerous.”

It was understandable for the daughter of the Sacred Tree, who came from another world, to be puzzled.

“But we had the hero…”

Hoffman responded to the elf’s doubt in a gloomy voice.

I nodded at Hoffman’s words as well.

As someone who remembered my past life, it was incomprehensible, but even I, a knight of the kingdom, had to agree with Hoffman’s words.

Everyone on the continent held the same belief.

That the hero bestowed by the Goddess would inevitably defeat the Demon King.

That’s why even when we fought the Demon King, the final goal of our strategy was to send the hero’s group to face the Demon King.

That’s how we had succeeded in driving away the Demon King.

“Anyway, the hero’s group followed behind me while having such conversations, and I continued to guide them. After running for quite some time and approaching the target point, the corrupted ones appeared.”

The expression of the half-corpse elf, which had been emotionless, twisted slightly.

“And the corrupted ones attacked us with weapons we had never seen before.”

Along with smoke, thunderous sounds rang out loudly.

Bang, ratatatatang, boom!

“What kind of attack… The barrier won’t last long!”

“The enemy is too far away for my prayers to reach!”

“Hold on. I’ll handle this!”

“We’ll move too!”

“They were strange weapons we had never seen before. We couldn’t gather our wits as endless tiny arrows, too small and fast to see, poured down from weapons.”

“The saint’s prayers couldn’t reach the corrupted ones due to the distance, and the magician was barely managing to spread a barrier to protect the saint.”

“The hero and knights stepped forward to defeat the corrupted ones, but everyone in the group seemed very surprised.”

Unfamiliar weapons lay on the ground scattered with bones.

“My goodness… Are these weapons from this world?”

“For undead to use such weapons… These are difficult to deal with.”

The saint asked with a surprised face, and the magician frowned as he examined the broken weapons.

The knights also looked around with serious expressions.

Unlike the serious party members, the hero tried to hand a potion to Zahina.

“You seemed hurt earlier…”

“I’m fine. All my injuries have healed.”

However, Zahina refused the potion offered by the hero.

“The attacks were concentrated on the hero’s group, so I only had minor scratches. If my injuries had been more severe, I would have realized something was strange then…”

The woman continued speaking in a voice that didn’t sound regretful at all.

“After the first battle, the hero and his group considered retreating, but in the end, they had no choice but to move forward. The target was right ahead, and undead kept swarming from all directions.”

“So, fighting the undead and arriving at our destination, we found not the Demon King, but countless undead gathered there.”

Seeing the undead, or rather the Demon King’s army, the saint sighed.

“It really was a trap.”

Seeing the weapons the undead were holding, the magician also shook his head.

“We’ll have to postpone capturing the Demon King to another opportunity.”

Everyone in the group responded to the hero’s solemn words that followed.

“Let’s break through. Let’s go back.”

“Yes!”

“Even then, it seemed like everyone thought we could return safely. In fact, if it had been the undead from the continent, I think we all could have made it back alive.”

I looked around.

In the open space that had turned into a wasteland, numerous sunken pits were visible.

“But what attacked us weren’t undead. Countless pieces of metal flying from far in the sky. Exploding metal pieces attacked us.”

As expected, the death of the hero’s group wasn’t due to the undead.

The weapons of this world.

Numerous bombs had killed them.