Chapter 153 – Fortress Island (2)

Perhaps because it was an old castle, there was a secret passage leading underground inside the office.

The officer was fleeing through the wide-open secret passage.

As expected of an awakened with the ‘acceleration’ ability, his escape speed was incredibly fast, but he hadn’t yet escaped the range of my mana detection, which was far broader than his heightened senses.

I also jumped down into the hole in the floor that led to the secret passage.

As I ran through the underground passage, I heard gunfire above.

It wasn’t coming from one direction; both sides were shooting at each other.

It seemed the agents had made it to the surface.

With the agents joining the fray, there was nothing left to worry about on the island except for the officer I was pursuing.

Our party members were more than enough to handle the combat, and the agents would take care of the aftermath.

Now, all that was left was for me to catch the fleeing officer.

Indeed, an awakened specialized in ‘acceleration’ was exceptional in that one ability.

Even as a mana user, I couldn’t keep up with his speed.

But I didn’t give up and continued to chase him.

An awakened who relied solely on their ability without being a proper mana user couldn’t utilize mana effectively.

Moreover, since he likely didn’t try to increase his mana, he would naturally run out of mana to sustain his ability.

Therefore, it was clear that the fleeing officer would soon have to stop using ‘acceleration.’

A short while later, as I had predicted, the officer’s movements, as sensed through my mana detection, came to a halt.

He had run out of mana.

The underground passage was longer than expected, and we had almost crossed the island, arriving near the opposite side.

However, he ultimately couldn’t escape the island and stopped near the passage we had come up from.

Although an awakened with the ‘acceleration’ ability was fast, knights weren’t that much slower compared to awakened.

Soon after he stopped, I was able to catch up to him.

At the end of the passage, he stood behind an open iron door.

In front of the iron door, multiple layers of iron bars blocked the passage.

These iron bars were likely installed to keep out intruders.

It seemed he had dropped them to block me.

He must have noticed I wasn’t carrying a gun, so instead of closing the iron door, he had blocked the way with these iron bars.

Unfortunately for him, these iron bars were no more than paper to me.

He might buy a little time, but what could he do with just that?

However, it seemed I was mistaken.

The officer needed that brief moment.

Before I could cut through the iron bars, the officer pulled out a small signaling device from his pocket.

It was the same device I had seen in the tunnel—a detonator.

“Stop right there. If you move, I’ll detonate the bombs planted on the island.”

I clicked my tongue at his words.

‘My mistake. If he planted bombs in the tunnel, I should have realized he could have planted them on the island too…’

I had been too complacent after easily disarming the bombs in the tunnel.

It was hard to imagine someone planting bombs where they lived.

Living on top of bombs wasn’t something just anyone could do.

But this officer, no, the leader of this looter group, had done just that.

As expected, he wasn’t an ordinary man.

Could I cut through the iron bars and sever his wrist before the awakened with the ‘acceleration’ ability could react?

I wasn’t confident I could.

If my party members were here, we could have handled it without issue. I regretted splitting up the party to speed things up.

‘Well, when has anything ever gone according to plan?’

Still, the other party members were protected by Yelena’s shield, and Zahina would survive on her own, so I just had to make sure I didn’t get buried here.

Of course, the people on the island and the agents who followed would suffer from the bombs, but it was hard to worry about them in a situation where bombs were about to go off.

Honestly, the best outcome would be if the bombs didn’t detonate.

“I didn’t expect a federal government psychic to come after me so soon. I thought it would take longer to clean up, but I guess New York is an important city after all.”

He spoke to me while gunfire echoed in the background.

He seemed to think I was a psychic working for the U.S. government.

Well, since I came with government agents, his assumption wasn’t far off.

When I stopped moving, the man holding the detonator asked me, “You must be a psychic. If you surrender, will you work for the government?”

It wasn’t something I could decide. Nor did I want to.

Besides, Zahina was far away, making it difficult to understand what he was saying.

It had been a while since I had to understand English, so responding immediately was out of the question.

“…Guess not. In the end, I’ve only delayed the inevitable.”

Even though I hadn’t said anything, he seemed to have read my thoughts.

“Too bad. It didn’t go as I expected. I thought the U.S., no, the world, would fall apart, and we’d just survive as scattered groups… I guess New York’s location was the problem.”

He was definitely not just smart; he was figuring things out on his own even as I stood still.

I didn’t stop him from rambling.

Instead, I sharpened my senses and waited for him to let his guard down.

Just one moment, one single moment of opportunity was all I needed.

A moment to cut through the bars and sever his hand—that was all I needed.

For that reason, I heightened my senses, but something unexpected caught my attention.

A dark, gloomy mana flowing from behind the officer.

A sinister aura was approaching from the room behind where the officer stood.

Only then did I realize where we were.

Behind the iron bars and the iron door, in the stone chamber where the officer stood, there was a small window with iron bars embedded in the ceiling.

Considering the direction and distance of the underground passage we had come through, that room was beneath the fortress wall where I had taken out the guard when we first arrived on the island.

Back then, I had sensed the aura of a zombie, and it seemed that zombie was still active.

It seemed luck was on my side.

If things went well, the zombie might create an opening for me.

I expanded my senses, which had been focused on the officer, to survey the entire room.

And then, I sensed the zombie approaching from behind the officer.

But something felt off. The approaching zombie was different from any I had encountered before.

It wasn’t a ghoul or any other undead I knew.

It wasn’t a transformed dog or any other animal either. What was this?

Ah, it felt like a different species altogether.

As I pondered this, the zombie revealed itself behind the officer.

When I saw the zombie, my eyes widened. It was a zombie I had never seen before.

“Look at me! Where are you looking! Do you think I’ll fall for that? Damn it, to think I’d end up like this in the end. So, you’re saying I should just press this and end it all, huh?”

When I stared at the zombie with wide eyes, the officer shouted at me angrily.

Then, he tried to exert force on the detonator.

At that moment.

The zombie moved.

Kyaaaak!

With its long blonde hair fluttering, the zombie lunged at the officer like a shot.

And it bit into the back of his neck.

“Gah! What the hell!”

Blood splattered everywhere.

On the officer’s body, on the zombie’s body.

The zombie’s long ears were drenched in blood.

Though I was startled by the sudden appearance of the divine tree’s zombie offspring, I didn’t miss this opportunity.

Swish. Swish.

I swung my mana-infused sword, cutting through the multiple layers of iron bars in one go, then stepped forward and severed the officer’s wrist.

The detonator flew into the air along with his wrist.

I leaped and retrieved the detonator.

“Gah! You bitch! After all I did to take care of you!”

As I turned off the detonator, the stone chamber was filled with the officer’s screams mixed with pain.

The man seemed more furious about being attacked by the zombie he had imprisoned than the pain of losing his arm.

Amid the zombie’s roars and the man’s screams, he rolled on the ground with the zombie still biting his neck.

It seemed the fight would drag on longer than expected, so I decided to mediate.

I swung my sword, cutting off half of the zombie’s arms and severing the tendons in its legs.

For good measure, I also cut the tendons in the man’s legs.

Even though his hand was severed and he was being bitten by the zombie, he could still escape using his ‘acceleration’ ability.

I wasn’t about to make any more mistakes.

Fortunately, nothing unexpected happened this time.

“Gah. Stabbing a dying man with a sword. You’re a cruel one.”

With those words, the man began to transform into a ghoul.

Krrrr.

As his hair fell out and his skin burned away, revealing thickened muscles, I swung my sword once more.

Though the ghoul was on a different level than the zombie, with its tendons severed and just beginning to transform, it couldn’t evade my slow-moving sword.

The ghoul’s head was severed before it could fully transform, and its movements ceased.

Now, the only things moving in the room were the zombie, thrashing with half its limbs severed, and me.

By now, the gunfire had also stopped.

It seemed everything above had been dealt with.

Then, I felt a breeze behind me. It was Zahina.

She had finished clearing the outskirts as I had instructed and had come to find me.

“You’re here?”

“Is this dead one… the divine tree’s daughter? My kin?”

Instead of answering me, she looked at the thrashing, aura-contaminated figure on the ground.

She made an unreadable expression and asked me, “But why haven’t you finished it off?”

I scratched my head at Zahina’s words.

I had thought Zahina had become more human-like by now, but it seemed the logical, elf-like tendencies still remained.

Still, I had something to say.

“I wanted to check with Yerim. Just in case we can remove the aura.”

“She’s already a dead kin. Yerim couldn’t bring back the dead either.”

“Still, you never know.”

As Zahina said, exposing it to divine power would just turn it into a corpse, but even so, we might be able to learn something about the divine tree’s species.

Perhaps my thoughts weren’t too strange, as Zahina didn’t object.

I climbed out through the window in the ceiling where the iron bars were embedded.

Cutting through the iron bars with my sword and carrying the thrashing zombie up was a hassle, but compared to everything that had happened so far, it was an easy task.

When I came up, the island had been cleared as expected.

All the looters were dead.

There might have been some who surrendered before dying, but I didn’t ask.

This wasn’t a situation where we could take prisoners.

Instead, most of the civilians had survived.

The civilians, mostly young women, were clinging to the agents, crying.

They must have felt more familiar with the agents than with us strangers.

For that reason, we left the aftermath to them and gathered in one place.

We needed to examine the zombie I had brought.

Yerim carefully channeled divine energy, and the zombie twitched.

The result was as Zahina had predicted.

When exposed to divine energy, the zombie began to turn into a corpse.

And my prediction was also correct.

Just before it completely turned into a corpse, for a very brief moment, the divine tree’s daughter regained her senses.

She looked at me with clear eyes and asked, “My heart isn’t beating, and my thoughts aren’t connecting well. It feels like time is running out. What’s your question?”

Her words were fitting for a child of the divine tree, who valued rationality above all else.