Chapter 40 – Mermaid (2)

I knew that heading south was far more dangerous than going west to Guri City.

Of course, going west wasn’t guaranteed to be safe either.

Entering Seoul, a metropolis where countless people had lived, was an extremely dangerous endeavor.

It was impossible to know how many undead remained there now.

However, following the Demon King’s Army southward was far more dangerous.

Even before encountering the Demon King’s Army, there would surely be undead left behind by them, just like before.

Even without the Demon King’s Army deliberately leaving them behind, the miasma left by passing undead hordes had created numerous undead.

The half-human, half-fish creatures climbing up the bridge pillars now were exactly such undead.

Special undead that couldn’t be created by ordinary miasma.

Unlike ordinary zombies or skeletons, these ‘corpse mermaids’ were tricky opponents.

The corpse mermaids were clinging to the massive pillars touching the water, crawling up towards the bridge.

Fish-like faces and scale-covered bodies, along with webbed hands and feet.

They were completely different from the ‘Little Mermaid’ I had seen in my previous life – they were dead fish-human hybrids.

Above the pillars where the corpse mermaids were climbing, the Misa Bridge was in complete chaos.

As soon as the corpse mermaids started climbing the pillars, the zombies on the bridge began moving toward us.

Zombies sprinting across the bridge packed with cars.

Watching them run between abandoned vehicles and jump across car roofs reminded me of movies from my previous life.

While in that other world, I hadn’t thought much of zombies, but seeing a scene similar to those movies was both novel and chilling.

We didn’t stop despite seeing the approaching zombies.

After quickly crossing the ramp onto the bridge, we each used our weapons to hold back the approaching enemies.

Zahina was the first to use her weapon.

Bang!

A gunshot rang out from behind, and a corpse mermaid climbing onto the bridge fell into the river.

Zahina had hit the head of a corpse mermaid hundreds of meters away while running with her sniper rifle.

It was an unbelievable display of marksmanship.

This level of skill could easily win a gold medal at the Olympics.

‘Though the Olympics probably won’t be held for a while.’

Bang! Bang!

The gunshots continued.

Every time a corpse mermaid tried to climb onto the bridge, Zahina would shoot it back into the river.

Swoosh! Swoosh!

Following Zahina, Hoffman also began his attack.

Hoffman fired his crossbow at the approaching zombies.

Zombies running on top of cars tumbled to the ground when hit by arrows.

Though arrows without mana couldn’t completely stop the zombies, they were enough to temporarily bind their movements.

Instead of the fallen zombies, we ran across the car roofs.

When we got onto the bridge, Hoffman’s arrows and Zahina’s shooting prevented the undead from getting near us.

With no undead approaching, there was no need for me to use my sword.

However, the time when undead couldn’t approach didn’t last long.

Hoffman quickly ran out of arrows he couldn’t retrieve, and Zahina’s shooting alone couldn’t stop the corpse mermaids continuously climbing onto the bridge.

When we had crossed about a quarter of the bridge, finally a zombie blocked my path.

As I raised my sword, hundreds of zombies and dozens of corpse mermaids were suddenly blocking our way.

Even seeing that sight, I didn’t stop walking.

And I swung my sword with all my might at the zombie blocking my path.

Thud!

The zombie hit by my sword was knocked sideways.

The zombie, thrown not just a few meters but over ten meters, flew over the bridge’s edge.

The zombie was knocked away rather than cut because I had struck it with the flat of my blade.

Even with mana infused, since I hit it with the flat side, the zombie that fell under the bridge would be fine.

If it had landed on ground, its body might have been too shattered to move, but falling into water meant the zombie would sink without major damage.

If it had been a normal river or pond below, the zombie would surely have walked out of the water intact.

But below this bridge was the Han River, teeming with corpse mermaids.

I continued swinging my sword while running forward.

Thud! Thud!

Like swinging a baseball bat, I knocked away approaching zombies one after another.

The zombies flew through the air in succession.

Sometimes their bodies would twist in midair and limbs would break, but all the zombies I launched fell into the river.

Even I thought it was impressive striking.

While I was launching zombies, Zahina kept the corpse mermaids at bay with her sniper rifle.

Bang! Bang!

Each time Zahina’s bullets hit, the corpse mermaids writhed from the impact that shattered their scales.

Unfortunately, Zahina’s bullets couldn’t bring down the corpse mermaids.

While mana-infused bullets could take down zombies and skeletons, the corpse mermaids’ scales blocked Zahina’s bullets.

The scales that were hit shattered, and the corpse mermaids screamed in pain, but the bullets couldn’t penetrate the scales.

Even the corpse mermaids that fell from the bridge pillars earlier seemed to have fallen from the impact rather than being shot.

Though the effectiveness was lower than expected, it still bought us enough time.

Time to throw enough zombies into the river.

The zombies I threw into the river couldn’t interfere with our crossing.

They wouldn’t be able to climb out of the river and block our path before we crossed the bridge.

But that wasn’t the reason I threw them into the river.

If that were the reason, it would have been better to just cut them down with my sword.

Throwing them into the river was actually more difficult than cutting them with the sword.

In fact, the reason for throwing zombies into the river was because of the corpse mermaids.

As mentioned before, corpse mermaids were undead created from the fusion of fish, people who died in water, and drowned corpses.

Corpse mermaids liked to increase their numbers, and when there were no living people nearby, they would drag other undead, especially zombies, into the water to increase their numbers.

Thanks to this, zombies weren’t visible around rivers or pools where corpse mermaids existed, which was how people in that world detected their presence.

Seeing this, people developed a method for crossing rivers and lakes infested with corpse mermaids.

They would capture as many zombies as possible and offer them as food to the corpse mermaids before crossing.

Of course, the zombies thrown as food would increase the number of corpse mermaids in the rivers and lakes people crossed, but nobody fighting the Demon King’s Army worried about such future consequences.

It was the same now.

With dozens or hundreds of zombies pouring into their river, the corpse mermaids wouldn’t pay attention to the humans on the bridge.

As expected, when the zombies poured into the water, the corpse mermaids stopped climbing onto the bridge.

The only corpse mermaids on the bridge now were those that had climbed up initially.

While continuing to throw zombies, I dealt with the approaching corpse mermaids one by one.

The corpse mermaids’ scales looked like they might block even my sword to some extent, but there was no reason to wrestle with the scales.

I thrust my sword into the approaching corpse mermaid’s head.

When I stabbed through where Zahina’s bullets had shattered the scales, the corpse mermaid returned to being just rotten fish.

With their heads pierced, the corpse mermaids completely lost any human-like qualities.

Now they were just dead fish that resembled human forms.

After dealing with all the corpse mermaids that had climbed onto the bridge, crossing the rest of the bridge wasn’t difficult.

Everything went according to plan.

Thanks to experience from that world, we could avoid danger each time.

Should I be grateful for having fought the Demon King’s Army in this case?

I sighed at the sudden random thought.

Being grateful for the war with the Demon King’s Army? It was nonsense.

If it weren’t for the Demon King, I would surely be spending happy times at my estate by now. Yet here I was thinking about gratitude.

Was I going crazy from fighting for too long?

Perhaps because the fighting had become easier, while I was lost in thought, Hoffman’s voice reached me.

“Look below! Something’s wrong with the river!”

True to his mountain soldier nature, Hoffman hadn’t stopped monitoring our surroundings even after running out of arrows.

He had been constantly checking for zombies we might have missed inside or under cars, and for corpse mermaids climbing onto the bridge.

That’s why he was the first to notice something strange about the river.

When he shouted, we had almost crossed the bridge, and there were hardly any zombies left.

Both Zahina and I leaned against the railing to look down.

As Hoffman said, the river was acting strangely.

Under the bridge, the surface of the Han River was bubbling up with foam.

From the middle of the bridge to where I stood, the entire river surface beneath the bridge was boiling.

The water was churning like it was boiling, with numerous bubbles rising and black smoke bursting out from the popped bubbles.

The black smoke was gradually covering the surface.

“That smoke…”

“Must be solidified miasma.”

The visible black smoke filled with mana that I knew was nothing but solidified miasma.

A dense black fog that had formed from a multitude of miasmas, visible even to ordinary people.

There was only one reason for such solidified miasma to appear suddenly.

“Solidified miasma appearing to this extent… Could it be that a high-level undead is being created under the river?”

As I knew, Hoffman also understood.

“But there’s no reason for a high-level undead to be created suddenly. I’ve never heard of high-level undead being created from corpse mermaids.”

I had neither seen nor heard of such a thing, but now it seemed I understood the reason.

“…Maybe we dropped too many.”

It seemed we had given them too much food.

In that other world, feeding zombies to corpse mermaids would be just a few or at most a few dozen.

However, the zombies we had thrown into the water now were all the ones on the bridge, exceeding hundreds.

It seemed they had eaten too much and burst.

Since they were already dead, it didn’t matter if they burst, and thanks to that, a higher existence seemed to be forming.

“Under the river water… This is troublesome.”

Like how you need to take down a combining robot during its transformation, high-level undead needed to be taken down before they were fully formed.

But since it was being created in the water, we couldn’t reach it.

“There’s nothing we can do.”

I muttered to myself and stepped away from the railing.

Since we couldn’t intervene now, there was only one remaining option.

“Let’s run before it emerges Everyone, run!”

We didn’t know what kind of creature would emerge, but we couldn’t handle it here.

Therefore, we had no choice but to run.

It would be a disaster for the people living around the Han River (in the apartments), but we couldn’t sacrifice our lives for them.

I started running across the bridge with the party members.

Fortunately, we managed to cross the bridge before the monster emerged.

We didn’t stop running even after crossing the bridge.

We ran until the river was out of sight and soon found ourselves entering a city called Hanam.

Meanwhile, a monster emerged from the Han River and started chasing us, but we were unaware of it.