Chapter 25 – Apartment Complex (1)

Whoosh.

We burned the soldier who committed suicide.

The smoke spread over the ammunition depot into the sky.

Sorry to the dead soldier, but we couldn’t bury him in the ground.

The Demon King’s magic could turn corpses into undead.

So we burned the soldier along with other bodies.

Watching the flickering flames, Zahina asked me:

“I understand why you two didn’t stop the suicide, but why did he kill himself? If I had injected mana, he could have stayed sane for quite a while…”

Though they look similar, are elves different from humans?

She rationally understood why Hoffman and I didn’t stop the suicide, but couldn’t grasp why he killed himself.

“The mental shock was too great. He went mad because he couldn’t handle that shock, and if he was forcibly brought back to his senses from that state, it would have been even harder to endure.”

In our world, Ea, there were many soldiers who couldn’t endure and committed suicide after fighting the undead.

Fighting the undead and the Demon King’s army was completely different from ordinary wars between humans.

It wasn’t for nothing that the capable mountain soldier Hoffman became addicted to potions.

If anything, the reason I was fine was probably because I had been fighting for years as a free knight before battling the Demon King’s army.

No, maybe I wasn’t fine.

Even with my explanation, Zahina didn’t seem to understand.

It didn’t matter. I didn’t think I could make an elf understand anyway.

I just answered because she wanted an answer.

Leaving the burning flames behind, we returned to the ammunition depot.

We gathered the remaining ammunition and weapons from the now-ownerless depot.

We opened wooden crates and put the metal ammo cans inside into space expansion pouches.

Thousands of rifle rounds, dozens of grenades and claymores, mines, and grenade launcher rounds.

Though the depot was nearly empty, it was enough for us and Zahina to use.

We also took the K2 rifle the dead soldier was holding, the K1 rifles left in the depot, an overheated machine gun with a bent barrel, and spare machine gun barrels.

No grenade launcher was visible. If there was one, we could have achieved similar effects to mana with firepower.

It was regrettable, but unavoidable.

We were already lucky to have obtained this many weapons and ammunition.

Zahina, who seemed troubled by the soldier’s suicide, appeared somewhat satisfied now that we had replenished our empty ammunition and weapons.

Was that big one we took down the last?

Though there had been a big fight, no more undead appeared before us.

Either all the ordinary undead had returned to dust due to the battle between the Demon King’s army and this unit,

Or the other undead may have moved south, caught up in the Demon King’s army pushing down from the north.

Either way, it was a blessing that we didn’t have to encounter undead for now.

We left the base and continued moving along the national highway leading south or west.

“There aren’t many undead left here either. At this rate, it seems like all the undead were either caught up in or dragged away by the Demon King’s army, rather than due to battle.”

As Hoffman said, there weren’t many humanoid undead – zombies – visible on the highway.

Just some undead left wearing seatbelts abandoned in cars, and a few wandering the highway with broken legs or for other reasons.

Bang! Bang!

Even with the sound of Zahina’s gunshots, not many undead rushed at us.

We didn’t reduce noise as much as before to conserve mana, but hardly any undead came.

“Isn’t this good for us? As long as we don’t encounter the Demon King’s army that went south, we’ll be in much less danger.”

Hoffman and I nodded at Zahina’s words.

She was right.

One way or another, we were encountering fewer undead.

However, Hoffman’s and my expressions weren’t bright after assessing the situation.

The fact that the Demon King’s army had taken the undead contaminated by magic meant there was likely a subordinate of the Demon King in that army who could turn ordinary zombies into skeletons or worse undead.

“Does this mean the one leading the Demon King’s army that went south isn’t just anyone?”

If it was someone who could turn ordinary undead into the Demon King’s army, they were likely to be a named figure.

‘A named one, huh.’

Come to think of it, it was the Demon King’s subordinate who had taken the northern lands and Manchuria.

A subordinate of the Demon King who made the Demon King’s army occupy an area larger than one country, and held that territory until the Demon King arrived.

It must be someone at least at the Four Heavenly Kings level, so the one leading the Demon King’s army south would be a named figure under them.

‘A named one leading the Demon King’s army and a horde of undead… We absolutely must not go anywhere near there.’

If we didn’t want to experience that terrible battle again, we shouldn’t even set foot in that direction.

“We’re just a reconnaissance team after all.”

Hoffman seemed to be thinking the same thing.

I met Hoffman’s eyes, and we nodded at each other.

Though the Demon King’s army had taken the humanoid undead, our movement wasn’t very fast since there were still some undead around.

We kept walking, dealing with the occasional undead that popped out.

As we continued walking southwest, the houses along the road gradually increased.

No intact houses were visible.

We saw houses with broken windows, smashed doors, collapsed walls, and burned structures.

Unlike the mountain village we first encountered, this place seemed to have been swept through entirely by the Demon King’s army.

Unlike ordinary undead who don’t touch buildings, the Demon King’s army didn’t leave houses where people lived alone.

The Demon King’s army was the Demon King’s force that destroyed human civilization.

After confirming that even the relatively intact houses had nothing left, we ignored the surrounding houses and kept walking until we could see the city.

We set up camp in a somewhat intact house before sunset, and only saw the city the next day.

The morning meal on the day we saw the city was a poor man’s “gundaeria*” – dry bread from our world spread with strawberry jam we got from the ammunition depot.

T/N- Gundaeria is korean military’s burger

Though it was hard bread with military strawberry jam, the two preferred this gundaeria over the rice I made on the first day.

Those rice-ignorant fools.

After finishing our meal, we set out again, and in less than an hour, we saw tall buildings jutting out beyond the highway.

High and orderly buildings completely different from the houses we had seen so far.

Hoffman and Zahina were quite amazed at the sight of those buildings.

They were completely different from the houses we had seen before.

But unlike them, I felt like I had returned home once again.

The buildings visible beyond the highway were high-rise apartment complexes.

The sign on the highway read [Namyangju City].

We had finally arrived in a city.

A satellite city adjacent to Seoul, at that.

“There are too many obstacles and undead.”

Upon reaching the city, we could no longer move along the highway.

The road entering the city was packed with cars.

Moreover, hundreds of undead could be seen wandering between the cars.

It would be difficult to move through those tightly packed cars while killing hundreds of undead.

Besides, now that we had reached the city, there was no reason to keep moving along the highway.

“Let’s go through the forest attached to the road.”

It was closer to a park with walking paths than a forest, but it was easier to explain it as a forest to the two.

There were undead in the park as well.

Undead could be sensed wandering in the forest attached to the park, but compared to the undead crowding the highway, it was practically nothing.

There were so few that we could cross the park without being detected by the undead there.

Zahina was disappointed she couldn’t shoot her gun, but if we fired here, the undead on the road would surely come rushing.

As we quietly crossed the park like that, we saw people instead of undead.

Two middle-aged men in worn clothes, lying prone on a low hill.

We stopped immediately, but at that moment, the movement of the undead wandering the park changed.

“We’ve been spotted.”

The place the undead ran to wasn’t us, but towards the two men lying on the hill.

They looked like weak zombies with rotting flesh, but the two men wouldn’t see it that way.

Before we could decide what to do, the men moved first.

One person immediately stood up and ran towards the forest behind, while the other remained in place, preparing to fight the approaching zombies.

“Are they evacuating?”

I shook my head at Zahina’s words.

“No. He’s running away.”

Looking at the state of the man who moved first, he was clearly abandoning the other man and fleeing.

Moreover, judging by the direction he moved, he was definitely using the other man as bait.

From the appearance of the two people lying down, it seemed they had come out to scout, like us, though on a different scale.

That meant the two belonged somewhere, and there was a group of survivors nearby.

We hadn’t met any proper survivors until now, so it was time to start a civilized encounter.

“Silently.”

I gave instructions to the two and ran forward.

The person who fled first was already out of sight, hidden by the hill.

Four undead were rushing towards the remaining person.

The lead undead had already arrived in front of him.

‘Am I a bit late?’

I was worried I might have to use holy water and potions, but surprisingly, the remaining man accurately stabbed the undead in the head with the iron pipe he was holding, stopping it.

We were lucky.

Two more undead arrived in front of the man before I could reach him, but I wasn’t worried.

It wasn’t just me moving.

Whoosh!

The next moment, I felt mana moving from behind, and the second undead burst into flames.

It was Zahina’s spell.

Though not as powerful as a mage’s fire magic, it was enough to stop the decaying undead.

At the same time, an arrow imbued with mana brushed past me.

Thud!

The arrow lodged in the head of the third undead, and it immediately collapsed.

‘Imbuing an arrow with mana. Did Zahina help?’

If mana could be put into bullets, it could certainly be put into someone else’s arrows.

However, putting mana into someone else’s weapon wasn’t an easy task.

‘Seems quite strenuous.’

Still, since it was difficult to use guns now, it was the best method available to Zahina.

Now it was my turn to handle the rest.

I caught up to the last undead in one step and beheaded it.

Then, I leaped up with all my might and swung my sword down at the undead with the iron pipe stuck in its head.

Thwack!

The undead’s head was crushed, and the man looked at me with a surprised face.

Fortunately, this man didn’t seem to be insane.

After confirming the man was safe, I looked around.

The modern city I was seeing for the first time in this life.

However, that city was completely different from the cities I had seen in my previous life.

A park with corpses strewn about and scorched apartment buildings.

Abandoned cars filling the roads and smashed shopping districts.

I couldn’t help but sigh at the changed cityscape.

“Damn it. To think the hometown I luckily returned to would end up like this.”

The man looked at me with a surprised face.

Oops, a mistake!

It seems I had spoken in Korean, caught up in my emotions.