Chapter 219 – The Old Soldier’s Fight  

“Good grief. So that’s the Demon King.”  

The colossal surge of mana, moving away from the hotel after leaping off the rooftop with his comrades, left Yelena’s group in shock.  

Though they lacked abilities like mana perception or extrasensory skills like Knight Eger, they could all still sense the overwhelming power of the Demon King.  

For an ordinary person, such intense mana would have been enough to stop their heart.  

“Still, we succeeded.”  

Despite experiencing the Demon King’s terrifying mana firsthand, Knight Eger and his companions had managed to lure him away.  

Now that the Demon King had left the building, it was Yelena’s group’s turn to act.  

However, one among them struggled to move like the others.  

“Ghk.”  

Even after the Demon King’s departure, Hofmann leaned against the wall, clutching his chest.  

“Are you alright?”  

“The Demon King… is even more terrifying than I imagined.”  

As Hofmann gasped for breath and forced himself to move, Yelena stopped him.  

“No, you can’t. You need to stay here. What’s affecting you isn’t just the Demon King’s mana—it’s also the residual fighting spirit and mana saturating this place. It’ll only get worse the higher we go. You won’t last.”  

“I… see.”  

Contrary to his worried expression, Hofmann nodded at Yelena’s words.  

“Understood. I’ll hold off anyone who tries to follow you up.”  

“Are you sure you’ll be okay?”  

At Seung-ah’s concerned question, Hofmann gave a wry smile.  

“If my body’s already like this, going further up would just make me dead weight. Luckily, this building isn’t a bad place for me to fight. Though, who knows? Maybe no one will even come in, and I’ll get to relax the whole time.”  

Despite his lighthearted tone, the others’ expressions remained grim.  

Thanks to Knight Eger’s group clearing the undead earlier, they’d made it this far without trouble, and the rooftop seemed within reach. But the path behind them wouldn’t be so easy.  

If the magic circle was disrupted, even if the Demon King was occupied with Eger’s group, other undead would surely come rushing in.  

But Hofmann wasn’t ignorant of that fact—and knowing that, no one could bring themselves to say anything more.  

They simply bowed their heads.  

“…We’re counting on you.”  

“Leave it to me.”  

With a confident pat on his chest, Hofmann stayed behind as Yelena, Irin, and Seung-ah began ascending the stairs again.  

Left alone, Hofmann rummaged through his pockets and pulled out two vials.  

One poison, one potion.  

He placed them by the window and gazed down at the ground below.  

—  

The two mages and the telekinetic reached the hotel rooftop soon after.  

As they stepped onto the rooftop, Yelena and Irin froze at the sight of the magic circle.  

“Good heavens… Was he maintaining this alone?”  

While Irin stood speechless, Yelena managed to stammer out,  

“Is it difficult for you too, Mage Yelena?”  

At Seung-ah’s question, Yelena bit her lip.  

“No!”  

Her eyes burned with determination as she stared at the magic circle and spoke firmly.  

“If we were trying to activate this circle like the Demon King and merge dimensions, no human mage—not even me—could do it. But dismantling it? That’s possible. No, with Irin’s help, it will be possible.”  

“Me?”  

Irin blinked in surprise, but Yelena ignored her and strode toward the circle.  

“Come on. I might not figure it out alone, but with a genius like you helping, we can do it.”  

“No, you’re the genius, Master. I’m still just a novice—I don’t even understand half of how this circle works!”  

“You’ve barely started learning magic. Of course you wouldn’t grasp it yet. The fact that you’ve pieced together even half is impressive.”  

“But you’ve already deciphered the whole thing! You’re the amazing one. I’ll just be in the way.”  

With a pout, Irin followed her master to the center of the rooftop, where the magic circle pulsed.  

Seung-ah, watching from behind, shook her head at the absurd banter between the two mages in such a dire situation.  

To her, they were both geniuses.  

Which was why Knight Eger had trusted them enough to lure the Demon King away.  

No matter what they said, these two would dismantle the magic circle.  

And until then, Seung-ah had to protect them.  

She sighed as she watched the two mages work.  

“Never thought I’d be part of saving the world.”  

She’d never imagined things would turn out like this.  

Just an ordinary woman hiding in her apartment after the world fell apart—until the Hero’s party passed by, undead monsters destroyed her home, and she awakened her powers.  

Now here she was.  

Not because she had some incredible ability like the mages or the Heroes fighting the Demon King, but because, like Hofmann, she had no other choice.  

But regardless of the reason, she was now fighting alongside the Heroes to save the world.  

“Well, if we don’t stop this, we’re all dead anyway. No helping it.”  

The day she left her home to follow these Heroes, she’d vowed never to hide again.  

No matter how it ended.  

And now, that end was in sight.  

“Didn’t expect it to be this flashy, though.”  

As she muttered to herself, the dormant magic circle began to move.  

Contrary to the mages’ earlier words, they’d already made progress.  

Grind… creak…  

Strange noises echoed as the circle activated, its influence spreading beyond the rooftop to the building’s exterior and the surrounding area.  

Seung-ah, observing the shifting magic, focused her telekinesis and levitated.  

Though flight magic was supposedly impossible here due to the rampant mana and fighting spirit, her ability was different—it relied solely on the mana within her body.  

“At times like this, this power’s pretty handy.”  

Her ability—an Awakener’s power—had been called simplistic and crude by mages.  

But in a place like this, where mana and fighting spirit ran wild, it was more reliable than magic.  

At the very least, her telekinesis still worked.  

She rose into the air, saturating the area with her power, and waited.  

Soon, undead came flying toward her.  

Undead birds, bats—and even a lich.  

“Damn it, a lich? One of them survived?”  

The lich, missing half its body, must have barely escaped the World Tree’s destruction.  

And the bats—those weren’t ordinary bats.  

“Vampires, wasn’t it?”  

The enemies Knight Eger and Zahina had fought before.  

Now, they and the half-destroyed lich were flying straight for her.  

A tough opponent.  

But she had to hold them off.  

The mages were too focused on dismantling the magic circle to help, and no one else was available.  

Knight Eger’s group was either still luring the Demon King or fighting him.  

Hofmann was inside the building, but she couldn’t call for him.  

Not just because of the ambient fighting spirit and mana, but because of the undead swarming the hotel.  

No liches among them, but hordes of zombies, skeletons, ghouls, flesh golems, and monsters were charging in.  

Far more than Hofmann could handle alone.  

But Seung-ah, already stretched thin, couldn’t help him either.  

“Hurry up…”  

She silently urged the mages and unleashed her telekinesis at the approaching undead.  

Crack!  

The birds’ bones shattered mid-flight, sending them crashing into each other.  

—  

As the battle raged in the sky, the magic circle continued shifting—this time, in the opposite direction of when the Demon King controlled it.  

Bit by bit, the lines at the outermost edges began to fade.  

The circle was being dismantled.  

Meanwhile, inside the hotel, another fight had begun.  

Just as the Heroes had scaled the building’s exterior to reach the rooftop, the undead now had to climb the stairs to get there.  

This meant larger undead couldn’t progress beyond the lower floors with high ceilings, while smaller ones moved at varying speeds depending on their type.  

By the time the undead reached the middle floors, they were forced into single file down the corridors.  

And waiting for them in the darkness was a former thief.  

Slash!  

A skeleton’s legs were severed mid-stride; zombies were bisected.  

The undead turned to pursue their attacker, but the former thief—Hofmann—melted back into the shadows.  

A former thief and mountain soldier, Hofmann moved through the hotel as if it were his own home.  

Using every staircase, hallway, room, emergency exit, and even bathrooms, he laid traps and ambushed the undead.  

The overflowing mana and fighting spirit in the air helped him—it masked his presence, making it harder for the undead to detect him in the darkness.  

Like this, Hofmann took down dozens of undead climbing the hotel.  

Zombies, skeletons, even flesh golems stitched together from multiple corpses.  

A miracle, really.  

For a half-baked Awakener—a former thief with just a faint sensitivity to mana—this shouldn’t have been possible.  

Even with the ambient energy aiding him and the undead distracted by their rush to the rooftop, Hofmann’s feat defied logic.  

“Cough… Ugh. Guess potions don’t work anymore.”  

Leaning against a windowsill, Hofmann spat blood onto the floor.  

A mouthful of crimson.  

Yet his expression was calm.  

He’d expected this. Prepared for it long ago.  

When had he started searching for a place to die?  

Was it when he’d forced himself to drink poison and potions again?  

Or when he realized his comrades were destined to fight the Demon King as Heroes?  

No matter. It didn’t matter now.  

Once he’d accepted that he didn’t belong in this party, he’d understood his role.  

Knight Eger—no, the Hero—had told him not to talk about clichés or fate.  

But Hofmann knew.  

This was the mission the gods had given him.  

That’s why they’d kept him alive until now.  

And he was satisfied. Happy, even.  

A potion-addicted former thief, fighting alongside the Heroes to save the world from the Demon King.  

“How envious my fallen comrades would be.”  

The thought almost made him laugh.  

“Cough… Too painful to even laugh.”  

Though his body was growing numb, the pain remained.  

A cruel irony.  

In the past, he’d have gulped down potions like mad.  

But now, even potions were useless.  

The Saintess’s healing wouldn’t help either.  

Yet, thinking of Yerim, he managed a smile despite the agony.  

A Saintess from another world… truly worth risking my life for.  

The mages were remarkable too, and the World Tree’s daughter—despite his teasing—was a good person.  

And the Hero.  

Though he often spouted nonsense, he’d shown Hofmann exactly what it meant to be chosen by the gods.  

The gods weren’t wrong.  

His time was almost up, but he’d hold this place until the end.  

And the Hero would defeat the Demon King.  

Swallowing another mouthful of blood, Hofmann forced himself up.  

More undead were coming.  

As long as he could still move, he’d keep fighting.  

“Let’s go.”  

He dragged his dying body forward.  

A limb missing, bones shattered, one leg barely functional.  

But after a glance out the window—where the magic circle was slowly disappearing—he charged at the enemy again.  

Hummm…  

Behind him, as he ran with a grin, the magic circle continued to fade.