Chapter 18 – Mountain Village (2)

Seeing the paved national highway brought back memories, just like when I first saw the remote village earlier.

It must be because I recalled my past life.

Of course, the highway before me was different from the ones I saw in my previous life.

Abandoned cars were scattered sparsely on the road, and dried bloodstains painted various spots along the way.

It felt like watching a scene from an apocalyptic movie.

However, there were no decaying corpses lying on the ground.

Instead, what I saw were the dead moving about with rotting bodies – zombies I had only seen in novels and movies in my past life.

“What a strange road, not made of stone. And those things on the road look like iron carriages, but I don’t see anywhere to tie animals or magical beasts to pull them…”

Hoffman looked around the winding national highway along the mountainside with a curious expression.

Though her expression remained unchanged, Zahina was also scanning the road and abandoned vehicles.

“That’s…”

I forcibly stopped myself from reflexively answering.

Fortunately, the two didn’t seem to hear, but I couldn’t help but stiffen my expression.

‘This is troublesome…’

It was turning out to be much harder to pretend not to know than I thought.

In novels I read in my past life, they always made it seem so easy to hide such knowledge.

In the end, it seemed that was only possible in fiction.

This wasn’t the first time, and at this rate, it wouldn’t be long before these two discovered that I knew about this world.

I managed to relax my expression before speaking to them.

“Let’s go in the direction of the setting sun.”

I set our course westward, where the afternoon sun was pointing.

There was a half-broken sign hanging over the westbound highway that read “To Seoul”.

After discovering the national highway, we continued moving southwest along it.

Although we were traveling on the flat asphalt highway, we unfortunately couldn’t cover much distance before sunset.

This was due to the dead, the zombies, wandering on and around the highway.

There weren’t many, perhaps because there were no houses nearby, but they were still a nuisance.

Seeing zombies even without houses around, they must have come from the stopped cars or from some unknown nearby village.

Looking at the abandoned cars made me tired of walking.

It would raise more suspicion from my party members, but seeing the abandoned cars made me want to check them out.

However, unfortunately, all of their batteries were dead, so they wouldn’t start.

I had no idea how to get a car with a dead battery moving. If I could use the internet, I might have been able to find a way, but if phones didn’t work, there was no way the internet would.

In the end, we had to walk on our own two feet.

My secret was kept safe.

After walking for quite some time, we could see the sky behind us tinged with the sunset.

It was the second sunset I had seen since coming to this world.

Undead were rushing towards us into that beautiful sunset.

Kraaak!

Judging by their screams, these were zombies that still had vocal cords intact.

Unlike the voices of living creatures, only sharp sounds like air leaking could be heard from the charging undead.

Half air, half sound, you could say.

The undead charging like that fell over in front of me one after another, just as they had been doing all afternoon.

Slash, slash.

Even undead had to fall when their necks were cut and their waists and limbs flew off.

Unlike the skeleton soldiers that moved with only bones remaining through the Demon King’s power, what was attacking now were the dead who moved due to a curse – zombies.

They often had more strength than skeleton soldiers because flesh and muscle remained, but relying on flesh and muscle made them easier to take down.

Of course, there were undead that climbed over abandoned cars to attack or suddenly reached out from under cars while I was dealing with the others, but-

Thwack!

An undead climbing over a car was hit by Hoffman’s arrow and rolled off the roof.

“There’s an undead under the carriage on the left!”

The elf woman Zahina warned me in advance about an undead hiding under a car.

Naturally, I was able to deal with the undead Hoffman knocked down and the one hiding under the car without facing any danger.

“I’m sorry. If I had more arrows to spare, I could have been of more help.”

Hoffman apologized while retrieving arrows embedded in the undead heads after we cleared out a group of them.

“It’s fine. You’re already quite helpful.”

I waved my hand at Hoffman.

To be honest, the level of support with arrows wasn’t a big help to me, but I was grateful for even this much assistance from someone who wasn’t a knight or mage.

Moreover, since he could at least perceive mana to some extent, he was able to do the cleanup on curse-tainted undead like he was doing now.

Hoffman was going around to each undead I had cut down, stabbing their hearts with his sword and cutting off their heads.

The undead he finished off in this way stopped their twitching movements.

Of course, if holy water was sprinkled or a priest offered prayers, they would all turn to dust in one go.

Even without that, I could clean up the battlefield like Hoffman was doing, but cleaning up the battlefield was a very tedious task.

In fact, if we’re talking about not being helpful, the elf woman was worse than Hoffman.

Since getting on the national highway, she had been taking on the role of alerting us to the positions of undead from the rear.

She was holding the sniper rifle we had acquired earlier, but that gun couldn’t be used now.

The sound of gunfire was a problem, but the reason she couldn’t use the gun was the same as Hoffman’s –

There were no more bullets.

‘Should we raid an armory before going to Seoul?’

I had that thought briefly, but quickly dismissed it.

I couldn’t know if the military bases from my past life were still in the same places,

And if there had been fighting at a military base, it was hard to imagine how many undead might have been created.

Moreover, as unlikely as it sounds, the military base could have survived.

Getting ammunition from an intact military base would be an even more difficult task.

In the end, I decided to move towards Seoul as originally planned.

We should be able to find guns and ammunition at police stations, substations, or local precincts.

To be honest, I had noticed the undead under the car before she alerted me.

But I didn’t plan on letting on that I knew in the future either.

That elf woman was surprisingly stubborn about these things.

She seemed to have a personality that couldn’t stand having nothing to do, like when she insisted on using an unfamiliar gun.

If that was the case, I had no choice but to let her think she had something to do.

Moreover, having cross-verification wasn’t a bad thing.

But the biggest reason I kept quiet was to hide my abilities.

A leader needs to know the abilities of party members, but there’s no need for party members to know the leader’s abilities.

As we dealt with the undead and headed west, we were able to obtain various items.

Various objects loaded in abandoned cars and wallets taken from corpses’ pockets.

Looking at the items in the cars, they weren’t belongings of ordinary travelers.

Hastily packed travel bags and valuables.

They were refugees’ belongings.

Most of the abandoned cars were from the west. They were all cars that had fled from Uijeongbu or Seoul.

I swept all the items into my space expansion bag, except for spoiled food.

It had been a long time since I’d seen objects from my past life. I wanted to examine each one, but I couldn’t do that on the wide open highway.

There was also a lot of cash in the cars.

It seemed to be cash people had grabbed when fleeing.

They must have taken cash instead since cards wouldn’t work.

These bills would likely be useless.

As I was sweeping up items like that, I also came across IDs in wallets.

I quickly put away most of the IDs, but two remained in my hand.

It was because of the names written on the IDs.

<Kim Jae-min>, <Kim Jae-yeon>.

These were the names written on the note found in the house in the village.

The names of the children written at the end of the letter left by the old man.

The surname wasn’t written in the letter, but they must be the same people.

The same names were written on IDs taken from undead that had attacked together.

I gave a bitter smile looking at the IDs.

I hadn’t expected the old man’s sons to come running to find him.

Did the sons rush here to save their father? Or did they come to the old man’s place to take refuge?

Either way, contrary to my expectations, the two sons seemed to be very filial.

The two of them were different from me, for whom the past life felt like just a memory.

I’m also heading to where I lived in my past life, but my circumstances are different from these two sons who became undead here.

Unlike the filial sons, I didn’t feel such impulses towards my family and friends from my past life.

The reason I’m rushing there now isn’t to save past connections,

But because I needed to confirm whether my memories were incorrect.

Similarly, seeing the villages and landscapes I saw in my past life evoked strange emotions, but that was all.

It seems I went a bit mad during the war.

Fortunately, we found lodging with a roof before sunset.

It was a common gas station and rest stop attached to the highway.

The gas station wasn’t different from the ones I saw often in my past life.

There were no signs of explosions or fires like in zombie movies.

The rest stop next door wasn’t a grand one like on expressways, but a small restaurant-cum-store with “rest stop” in the name, like on other national highways.

However, this rest stop looked different from the ones I saw in my past life.

The entrance and windows of the rest stop were boarded up with planks.

And there were decaying corpses lying around the rest stop.

Of course, there weren’t no moving undead around the rest stop at all, but there had clearly been a fight with the undead at this rest stop.

“Could it be… Are there still survivors left?”

I was about to shake my head at Hoffman’s words, but Zahina spoke first.

“There’s a small… life force inside that building.”

It was strange.

My senses weren’t picking up anything…

After coming to this world my senses had become much keener, but were they not working this time?

I thought my senses were useless since I had them, but that wasn’t the case.

Hurray for cross-verification.

With a high chance of survivors being present, there was only one thing to do.

“How many undead in the vicinity?”

“Four. Three in front, one behind the building.”

Zahina’s words matched my senses.

Strange. There’s no problem detecting undead.

Thinking that, I drew my sword.

“Hoffman, I need your support.”

“Understood.”

While Hoffman kept the other undead in check with arrows, I dealt with the undead one by one.

The three undead in front of the rest stop and the one scratching at the wall behind it.

It didn’t take more than a few minutes to deal with them all.

After dealing with all the undead like that, we went to the boarded-up rest stop door.

“There are no more undead nearby.”

My senses weren’t picking up any more undead either.

I signaled to the two before calling out towards the blocked door.

“Is anyone inside?”

It would be better in Korean, but with the two watching, I had no choice but to shout in the Imperial language.

Even in the Imperial language, if there were people they would respond somehow.

If people answered, with the elf here, there wouldn’t be any problems after that.

However, I couldn’t expect an answer.

The nail marks on the rest stop door looked quite old.

But it seems my thoughts were wrong this time too.

“C-Could it be… living people?”

A small voice was heard from inside the kitchen.

It wasn’t the Imperial language.

It was Korean, which I was hearing for the first time in decades.