Chapter 16 – Heading South (2)

I didn’t intend to immediately hand over the gun to the woman who reached out her hand,

But I had no choice but to give her the gun after hearing what the elf woman said next.

“You need to infuse mana into that small arrowhead, right?”

The elf woman handled the gun as if it were her own after receiving it.

From reassembling the magazine to zeroing in.

She remembered everything about how I handled firearms.

With some hope, I had her shoot the gun at the next undead we encountered.

“It’s similar to shooting an arrow. Once you’ve zeroed in, when the target is in the center of the scope, fix your body with mana and pull the trigger. Later, you’ll also need to consider things like wind and humidity depending on the distance…”

Bang!

Before I could finish speaking, the elf woman fired the gun.

The target was a half-decayed roe deer.

The sight of her aiming through the scope and shooting at the approaching undead was like a painting, and the result was even more impressive.

Thud!

The head of the roe deer, hundreds of meters away, exploded in an instant.

The charging undead fell forward.

Unlike when I had shattered its head and it kept moving, the undead hit by her bullet immediately stopped moving.

It was because she had infused mana into the bullet.

“You can infuse mana into guns… no, weapons from this world too.”

“It’s trickier than with arrows. But it seems possible.”

Zahina smiled for the first time as she looked at the fallen roe deer carcass.

She hugged the gun to her chest and said to me,

“With this weapon, I can be of help too, right?”

I thought she had no emotions because her expression never changed, but it seemed the elf woman had feelings too.

She must have thought she was burdening the people she traveled with because of her weakened abilities.

Her recovery ability was amazing, and her other abilities were helpful for survival, but it was true that her combat ability wasn’t great.

It seems she had been worrying about this in her own way.

When that worry was resolved, an expression appeared on her face for the first time.

Indeed, she was an elf unlike other elves.

In any case, it was as she said.

“If Zahina… can use weapons from this world, it would really be a great help…”

Being able to use ranged weapons against the undead was always helpful.

Moreover, this weapon was a powerful ranged weapon that could be procured from this world.

By the way, is it a racial trait? Being good at ranged weapons?

Although it was undead, that roe deer corpse was bounding towards us more energetically than when it was alive.

To headshot it in one go with a sniper rifle.

It seemed the elf race was similar to elves who are good at archery.

However, the elf woman shook her head at my question.

“That’s not it. Our race doesn’t have such traits. It’s just that I’m a nature mage, so I manipulated the air and wind currents to make this arrowhead fly where I wanted.”

So it wasn’t a racial trait, but this woman’s individual ability?

But to change the direction of a bullet, not an arrow.

It seemed that when mana was involved, science went out the window.

Anyway, it was an ability that would help us, so it didn’t matter whether it was a racial trait or an individual one.

There was just one problem left to solve.

“We’re almost out of bullets…”

After zeroing in and firing a few times myself, there were no magazines left.

It seemed we’d need to find more usable guns or bullets for this gun to make this woman useful.

But I wasn’t too worried.

If this was the ceasefire state of Korea that I knew, getting guns wouldn’t be too difficult.

So we headed south through the forest.

And once again, we found a path that people had traveled on.

There were no corpses visible on the mountain path we rediscovered.

Instead, as we continued walking along the path, we discovered houses where people lived.

Dilapidated old houses sparsely situated along the mountain path inside a valley.

They were proper remote mountain village houses, but I stopped in my tracks when I saw them.

It was because these were houses from my previous life that I was seeing for the first time in this life, not moving corpses or North Korean army trenches.

However, it seemed unlikely that we could expect the warmth of the countryside here.

Those trying to assert their territory were prowling around the houses.

Still, we couldn’t complain to them. Because there were no living people among those asserting their territory.

“It’s a dead village.”

Hoffman muttered softly as he looked down at the houses.

As he said, this village with a few houses strung along the mountain path was a village where only the dead remained.

The Demon King’s forces hadn’t descended upon this village, but it seemed everyone who had remained in the village had died.

Just like in that other world, the weak, the elderly, and babies who couldn’t overcome the disease died, and those dead ones killed others, turning the entire village into undead.

We had seen too many such villages while fighting the Demon King.

And we had purified all those villages.

“The weapons of this world are too loud, so it’s better not to use them here.”

Although we confirmed they were effective against the undead, guns were basically too loud.

If we used guns on the undead in such a remote area, we might attract even more undead.

Moreover, guns weren’t necessary to purify such a small undead village.

The elf nodded at my words, and I gave instructions to Hoffman while drawing my sword.

“Please watch the rear with Zahina.”

“Understood.”

To support a knight, it’s standard to have a platoon-sized unit backing them up, but we had no choice since there weren’t enough people.

A mountain soldier with mana and a child of the sacred tree were not much inferior to a platoon-sized force anyway.

I could make up for the rest by moving around more.

I ran down the mountain path leading downwards, sword in hand.

One step, two steps, as I gradually increased my speed, the first dilapidated house quickly approached.

I could see in detail the half-open door and wall stained dark red with dried blood, and the yellowed plants in the small vegetable garden on the opposite side of the road.

And even the elderly stumbling along the roadside.

When they were far away, they were moving slowly like elderly people of that age group,

But did both of them suddenly become young again?

As I got closer, they threw themselves at me.

With their half-crushed faces and rotten bodies.

Looking at the elderly couple running towards me, I muttered softly.

“May you rest in peace now.”

After leaving words of comfort, I swung my sword at the two undead rushing at me.

Slash, slash.

The mana-infused sword cut off the old man’s arm and severed his neck.

An ordinary undead whose neck was cut by a mana-infused sword couldn’t maintain its body.

The old man’s body collapsed.

Graaah!

His wife leaped out from behind the collapsing body.

The old woman’s disheveled white hair obscured my vision.

It must have been just luck, but a nice move.

However, I was also a knight who was considered an expert when it came to the undead.

I accepted the collapsing old man’s body and lay back.

The old woman’s hands brushed past above me as I lay back.

I swung my sword once more.

Slash.

The undead, with both arms and neck severed, rolled past me onto the ground.

The old woman undead never got up again.

I pushed away the headless undead covering my body, got up, and ran down the road.

As I passed by the next house, I sensed movement inside.

It seemed there were undead inside the house.

But I just pointed at the house with my finger and passed by.

It was because of other villagers running up from down the road.

Now that I had shown myself to the undead, all the remaining undead in this small village would have no choice but to come running.

If I didn’t quickly deal with the undead outside, it could become quite troublesome.

I went down the road, crushing the villagers coming towards me one by one.

Just like in my previous life, it seemed that all the people left in this mountain village were elderly.

There wasn’t a single young person among the undead rushing at me.

An old woman with her chest eaten away and an old man with his arm cut off.

Even an old person who seemed to have difficulty moving after losing one leg.

They all came at me as if they were young people.

But these ordinary undead were easier opponents than the skeleton soldiers I had fought to death against.

I knocked down the approaching elderly one after another.

After running down to the front of the last house like that, I stopped.

After stopping, I turned my head to check the road I had run down, and nine corpses were lying on the ground.

It looked as if a brutal group of bandits had raided the village.

When I first saw such a sight, it was so shocking that I vomited everything I had eaten, but now I just calmly looked at the scene.

I stood there and waited for a moment. Fortunately, no more undead came charging.

Then I sent a hand signal to Hoffman, who was waiting on the mountain path above, to search inside the houses.

As I watched Hoffman climb over the low wall of the house I had indicated, I slowly started to go back.

I walked along the road, maximizing my senses and examining the houses scattered along the way.

I didn’t sense any presence from houses other than the second one, but it was necessary to be careful in fights with the undead.

There were quite a few people who had died from careless mistakes.

Fortunately, until I returned to the second house, I didn’t sense any undead presence.

Some undead could hide their presence with magic or special techniques, but ordinary undead in such a rural area wouldn’t have such skills.

When I arrived in front of the second house like that, Hoffman came out of the half-open door.

“You’re back already?”

Hoffman looked at me with a surprised face.

“This was the only house where I sensed a presence.”

Hoffman made a perplexed expression at my words.

An expression of wondering whether to believe me or not.

It was natural for him to have such an expression, as ordinary soldiers like Hoffman would have checked each house without fail.

“I’m sorry. Because other knights also had difficulty noticing undead hidden inside houses…”

So it wasn’t just soldiers.

“Believe me. Perhaps because I’ve fought undead for so long, I’ve become quite good at detecting undead presence.”

Hoffman finally nodded at my words.

“If the Skeleton Slayer says so… I should believe you.”

Believing me because of my nickname, should I be grateful for the nickname?

“What was the undead inside?”

“It was a dog. Seeing that it was tied up, it seems to have been a pet dog.”

Hoffman told me about the undead inside.

I nodded.

It was a common occurrence.

It was common for pets to turn into undead.

“But this place really is a different world. There were many objects I’ve never seen before inside the house.”

I ignored his words and entered through the door he had come out of.

As I stepped inside the door, the scene of an ordinary countryside house came into view.

A small yard surrounded by walls, an old house and barn attached to the yard.

On one side of the yard was a cemented water tap area and a doghouse with a shattered undead dog tied up.

I crossed the yard, caught up in strange emotions.

“By the way, the undead you took down and that dog don’t seem to have been dead for long. The skeleton soldiers we saw when we went to look for the hero were clearly undead who had died long ago.”

Hoffman kept talking beside me, but I couldn’t pay attention to his words.

It was because this house, like the appearance of this village, was making me recall memories from my previous life.

Moreover, there was one more thing I needed to find in this house.

Fortunately, that object could be found right away.

Because the elf woman was standing on the wooden floor, staring intently at the object.

“It’s a picture of a beautiful woman. I wonder what she’s drinking? There seems to be writing below the picture.”

Zahina was mistaken about everything.

What she saw was not a picture but a photograph.

A photo of an actress holding a bottle of soju.

What was written below was not text but numbers.

What she was looking at was a calendar issued by a soju company.

A calendar splattered with blood.

I stared intently at the year on the calendar.