Chapter 17 – Mountain Village (1)

The year written on the calendar was 203x.

“What’s going on? Could it be that no time has passed since my previous life?”

The calendar indicated the year following the last one I remembered.

It had already been over 20 years since I was reborn and lived, but could this village have been destroyed decades ago?

However, the traces left in the house and the clothes worn by the villagers who had become undead didn’t seem to be more than a year old.

Then, it must mean that not more than two years had passed since the end of my previous life.

I couldn’t understand how this was possible, no matter how much I thought about it.

Was time flowing differently between the two dimensions?

Or had time in this world been stopped until now?

“In any case, I might be able to meet them again.”

I hadn’t expected it at all, but given this situation, I had to check.

The people who were close to me in my previous life. Some of them might still be alive.

Zahina looked at me with a puzzled expression.

She probably didn’t understand what I was saying.

Looking confused at my behavior, she pointed at the calendar and said,

“For letters, there’s too much repetition, and if they’re numbers… Although there’s a picture of a woman, could this possibly be some kind of calendar?”

Surprisingly, she guessed correctly that it was a calendar.

“It looks different from our calendars, but it probably is one.”

As a knight who hadn’t received much education, I didn’t know the details, but the calendars in our world were based on circular constellations.

Probably thanks to the development of magic and sorcery instead of science.

I wondered if it was the same in the elf country.

“We mark dates and seasons by the leaves forming and falling on the Mother Tree. But we also express the passing of days with numbers.”

It wasn’t the same.

Instead of constellations, they determined seasons by the appearance of trees – fitting for elves, children of the sacred tree.

“I think I understand the general rules, but we probably don’t have time to study this. It would be faster to find living people.”

That was correct.

And there was no need for research.

I already knew someone who could help.

After checking the calendar stopped in September, I looked around.

There was nothing special on the open-air wooden floor except for the hanging calendar.

Instead, various objects were scattered in the main room connected to the wooden floor.

A shattered TV lying around, a blanket covered in dried blood, scattered medicine. And an overturned telephone.

I entered the room and picked up the receiver of the old landline phone.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t hear any sound when I put it to my ear.

Seeing that the lights didn’t come on when I tried the wall switch, it seemed that the electricity itself was out.

Even when there’s no electricity in the house, a landline phone should still have a signal.

The fact that there was no signal at all suggested that electricity might be cut off in the entire region or country.

Since there was no electricity, there was no need to check the TV or other devices lying around.

If there had been a radio, we might have been able to get some information.

Unfortunately, no radio was in sight.

In the end, I picked up a note lying on the floor and left the room.

As I went out to the wooden floor, the elf woman who had been looking around said to me,

“You seemed to know how to handle unfamiliar objects, just like when you dealt with this world’s weapons earlier.”

She must have seen me touching various things in the room.

Indeed, my actions must have seemed strange enough to make her think that way.

Although it raised more suspicion, I brazenly lied again this time.

“I’m just trying various things in case something works. If I knew anything, there would have been some kind of response.”

Unlike when I fired the gun, this was a plausible excuse.

If such incidents kept piling up, it would become harder to believe, but I intended to keep insisting like this in the future.

After all, what could they do if I denied it?

There was a reason why I had taken on the role of this party’s leader.

After deflecting Zahina’s question like that, I continued to search the house.

I checked other rooms and went down from the wooden floor to inspect the kitchen on one side.

The reason I kept searching this house was that there was still something left to find.

After looking around the dusty kitchen, I opened the refrigerator inside.

“Ugh!”

I closed the refrigerator door in disgust.

The inside of the refrigerator looked like hell. The smell was no joke either.

“Should we check other houses too?”

Thinking that, I looked around the kitchen again and found what I wanted.

“Found it!”

A rice container with rice still in it was placed on one side of the kitchen.

A quick look showed no signs of rice weevils.

Moreover, I was able to find soy sauce, salt, and red pepper paste in the back of the kitchen.

Unfortunately, the kimchi in the jars had all gone bad, but finding rice alone was enough to be grateful for.

I swept the rice container and various seasonings into the space expansion bag.

After gathering all the usable items from the kitchen and going outside, I saw Hofmann coming out of the storage shed with a folding sickle in his hand.

When he saw me, he raised the sickle in his hand.

“Surprisingly, the farming tools in the shed were similar to ours. They seem to be well-refined, so for ordinary people who don’t use mana, the tools here would be much easier to use.”

The sickle he was holding was an ordinary factory-made sickle with a slight rust.

However, even such a sickle was much sturdier compared to the ordinary swords in our world.

Of course, it was no match for a knight’s sword processed to hold mana well, but it was good enough for Hofmann to be impressed and bring it out.

After searching the first house, we left the village.

Hofmann wanted to check other houses too, but I shook my head.

“Our goal is to survive until the gate opens again, so we need to get out of the Demon King’s territory as quickly as possible.”

If I didn’t know what was in the south, I would have moved cautiously as Hofmann suggested, but knowing what was in the south, I had no reason to stay in this village any longer.

Besides, I had already found the rice I wanted to eat right away.

Moreover, the thought that my acquaintances might be alive made me impatient.

At my words as the leader, our party left the village and came down to a place where a small stream was flowing.

The sun had passed overhead and was hanging in the middle of the sky. It was lunchtime.

I stopped the group in front of the stream.

“We’ve been walking and fighting, so let’s have lunch here.”

Normally, we would have skipped lunch, but after moving this much and fighting, it was reasonable to take a break and have a meal.

The party members seemed to have the same thought, as they stopped obediently at my words.

But the reason I stopped the two wasn’t just because I was hungry.

‘Rice! I need to eat rice!’

Thinking about the rice in my bag, I couldn’t hold back any longer.

“I’ll prepare this meal. I found a grain similar to what we eat in my hometown when we searched the house earlier.”

Order and formalities didn’t matter anymore.

It was rice I was eating for the first time in years.

I was confident I could eat it all even if it was full of rice weevils.

After making up an excuse to the two, I took out rice and cooking utensils from the space expansion bag and started cooking rice.

I took out firewood, lit a fire, and placed the rice cooker I had brought from the house earlier on top of it.

Then, I poured water into the pot, washed the rice in the stream water, and put it in to cook.

“I haven’t been on the continent for long, but this is a grain I haven’t seen before,” Zahina muttered as she watched me cook rice.

Hofmann also looked curiously at the rice soaked in water.

“I haven’t seen it either, but the continent is vast. I’ve heard that the southern regions have quite different dietary habits, so there might be grains I’ve never seen before.”

He looked at the folding sickle he had placed on a tree stump along with his sword.

“A grain similar to those on the continent. Like this sickle, there seem to be many things unexpectedly similar to our world here.”

My words were a lie, but Hofmann’s words weren’t wrong either.

Although the scientific technology and vegetation were different, when I thought about it again, our world and this world were too similar despite being different worlds, different planets.

The air and water, plants and animals, and even though there were no magical beasts, too many things were similar.

Among them, the most similar were humans.

Of course, humans in this world didn’t have mana, but other than that, they weren’t much different from humans on the continent.

I could testify to that, having lived in both worlds.

If there was a difference, it might be the elf sitting in front of me looking at the rice cooker.

‘Good thing I survived.’

Anyway, the rice I was eating for the first time in over 20 years was delicious.

Moreover, the taste of the garbage soup we used to eat with rice changed completely thanks to the seasonings and salt brought from the abandoned house.

“My goodness… How can it taste like this? What kind of drug did you put in the soup?”

“It’s a bit salty, but it tastes incredibly good to me too.”

Thanks to this, unlike the unfamiliar rice, the soup received tremendous praise from the two party members.

“I added some spices I found. The spices in this world seem to be quite effective.”

Eating unfamiliar food recklessly was dangerous, but neither the elf nor Hofmann were surprised by the mention of spices from this world.

After fighting the Demon King for years, we had become accustomed to eating any kind of food.

The same was true for the elves whose lands had been contaminated by the Demon King’s subordinates.

Basically, the places where we fought against the Demon King were full of miasma.

The food in those places was inevitably contaminated with miasma, so it was natural that we couldn’t be picky.

We had even eaten porridge tainted purple with miasma mixed with holy water.

After going through such hell and possessing mana, both Hofmann and I had sufficient resistance to bad food.

Moreover, elves were famous for not getting sick.

After everyone finished their meal and rested for a while, I took out the note I had brought from the searched house.

The note had blood stains and only part of it was visible due to the passage of time.

<I’m leaving this letter as the phone went dead after your last call saying you would come.

You’ll see when you get here, but it seems your mother and I can no longer wait for you.

If the phone had worked, I would have told you not to come. I’m worried you might have an accident on the way.

But you two are the children I trust, so you’ll be safe.

Your mother and I were very happy giving birth to you two, sending you to university, to the military, and marrying you off.

And…>

The middle part, which seemed to describe happy times, was no longer readable, and only the hastily written sentences at the bottom were legible.

<Your mother took her last breath a few minutes ago. Like the other villagers, your mother will probably move again soon.

And I feel my strength failing, so I’ll likely follow your mother soon.

Of course, that’s if the walls and doors that have been holding back the dead villagers hold out until then.

Either way, it seems we won’t be able to see you again in this world.

My sons. Jaemin and Jaeyeon.

For the first time, I want to tell you that your mother and I love you and have always been proud of you.

Please send our regards to your wives and our grandchildren as well.

March 14, 20xx.>

The note I picked up was a letter, or rather a will, from the grandfather who had died in that house to his children.

A letter filled with love for his children.

Moreover, it seems the old man didn’t lose his wit until the end.

Although it was something that tugged at the heartstrings…

I memorized the date on the letter and threw the note into the fire.

The letter was full of family affection, but the war had been too long for such a letter to move my heart.

I had brought this note simply to confirm the date when the village disappeared.

After our break, we repacked our bags and continued down the mountain path.

Soon after, we encountered a paved national road.

Abandoned cars standing here and there on the national road caught our eyes.