Chapter 41 – Fall (1)

People living here might not understand, but there was no reason more appropriate for heading south than to get away from the Demon Lord.

There were Demon Lord’s forces in the south, though it was unclear how far they had advanced, but they couldn’t be more dangerous than the Demon Lord himself.

Moreover, the allied forces waiting for the gate to open in that other world would surely want to be as far away from the Demon Lord as possible.

So there was no need to further explain to the two of them why we were heading south.

Of course, my reason for heading south wasn’t to avoid the Demon Lord.

It was because I wanted to visit the place where I lived in my previous life, and I wanted to check on the situation of the acquaintances I knew in that life.

After confirming that, I had no intention of revealing my past self to them or doing anything for them.

After all, in this life, I had no connection to them. With different appearances and ways of thinking, there was no way we could be related.

Yet, heading south was just a thought of “since I can go now, let’s go and see.”

For whatever reason, since I had come to the Earth of my previous life, I had to check it out no matter what.

As I continued that train of thought, I eventually let out a sigh.

‘How many times am I going to make excuses…’

Seeing myself making excuses every time, I knew all too well how pathetic I looked right now.

Yet, I couldn’t stop searching for traces of my previous life.

“Even if it’s ugly, I guess there are things you can’t help.”

At my muttering, my party members looked at me with puzzled expressions.

After crossing Misa Bridge, we moved in the opposite direction instead of heading west towards Seoul along the riverside road.

We had decided to take Misa Bridge, which continued upstream on the south side of the river.

We had already decided the day before to move along Misa Bridge.

The previous day, with a traffic map spread out, Hoffman had chosen the route to take after crossing the bridge.

“If we don’t want to enter the city, we should move along the road close to the river.”

The road he pointed to was Misa Bridge on the south side of the river, leading upstream of the Han River, a road that passed through the outskirts of Hanam City.

I couldn’t help but sigh at the thought of having come southeast so far only to go southwest again, but there was no other way.

The only other options were to go through Hanam City or move west along the Han River towards Seoul.

We had been moving towards the city, Seoul, to gather information so far, but from what we confirmed at the first survivor gathering we met, the city full of buildings was hell itself.

We had experienced enough in the commercial district of Namyangju to know how many undead were in the urban area.

As we had experienced, I could avoid a normal zombie horde on my own, but even as a knight, it was difficult for me to defeat the entire horde or penetrate through the city amidst the zombies.

To avoid getting caught up along the way, we had to stay as far away from the city as possible.

Since Hanam City was attached to the river, we ultimately had to move along the road close to the riverside.

Fortunately, Misa Bridge wasn’t too close to the river, so we didn’t have to worry about corpse mermaids.

Perhaps because it was a new town, residential-commercial complexes and apartment complexes continued on the west side of the road along the riverside.

On the opposite side of the road, the Han River could be seen in the distance, and parks and lakes were situated between the road and the Han River.

On this road that divided nature and the city in half, numerous cars were abandoned.

“There are many carriages, no, cars on this road.”

By now, even Hoffman could distinguish between carriages and cars.

He still couldn’t understand how cars moved without magic or pulling animals, but at least he knew they weren’t called carriages.

“Just like the cars abandoned on the bridge, these must be the cars left behind by people trying to go south.”

The fact that so many cars were abandoned meant that just as many undead were created.

There were hardly any undead, zombies visible on the street.

It wasn’t like corpse mermaids had dragged them away since there was some distance from the river, yet their numbers were too few.

“All the bloodstains lead towards the buildings.”

That question was answered by Hoffman, the former thief and mountain soldier.

Although he couldn’t play the role of an archer for a while since his arrows had fallen off the bridge, Hoffman kept proving his usefulness like this.

Indeed, even without arrows, he was a very useful soldier.

At Hoffman’s words, I looked at the residential-commercial complexes lined up along the road.

“So they all flocked to the urban area…”

It wasn’t incomprehensible.

Since the undead’s purpose was to seek out living people, it was natural for them to head towards the urban area.

If the road had been in the center of the urban area, it might have been different, but with parks, lakes, and the Han River beyond on the other side of the road, they had no choice but to flock to one side.

There were more abandoned cars than expected, which was troublesome, but it seemed we had chosen the road well.

Thanks to this, we were able to move quickly, defeating the few remaining zombies.

After passing several blocks like this, we encountered the first moving product of civilization.

“Weeeeee! You people walking on the road! Look over here for a moment!”

Along with the sound of a siren, a person’s loud voice mixed with a mechanical sound was heard.

It was the sound of a loudspeaker, which I was hearing for the first time since my previous life.

The sound came from the upper part of a residential-commercial complex building.

Surprised, I looked up to see someone holding out a loudspeaker from a window on the upper floor of that building.

“That’s an incredibly loud voice. It sounds strange for something using mana…”

“It’s probably using a machine called a loudspeaker.”

Zahina explained what kind of object it was in response to Hoffman’s comment.

To think she learned what a loudspeaker was in just two days…

I couldn’t help but be amazed at Zahina’s speed of knowledge acquisition.

More than that, a loudspeaker out of nowhere?

Judging by the lack of wires, it seemed to be a portable loudspeaker… Did the battery last until now?

As we looked at it with puzzled expressions, another voice was heard.

“There are no fighters in our house, only women and the weak! Please help us!”

The voice coming from the loudspeaker was a woman’s voice.

Perhaps the claim that there were only the weak and women wasn’t a lie.

Even if it was a lie, it didn’t matter. I had no intention of going to save them anyway.

Although using a loudspeaker was novel, it was just an ordinary rescue request.

Like my indifferent expression, my party members also turned their heads.

We had heard rescue requests to the point of disgust even in that other world.

We had helped before, but we had ignored them more often.

If it wasn’t dangerous for me and not too difficult, I would help, but this wasn’t such a situation.

There was no telling how many undead were gathered near that building, and saving just those people wouldn’t solve anything.

If we had intended to save them, there would have been no reason to leave the apartment in the first place.

“There are kids here too! Please give us some food!”

“We have food left in our house! If you escort us, we’ll share the food with you!”

“There’s a house with leftover food? Which unit is it?”

As expected, windows opened, and people shouted.

Various pleas, incantations, and even fights among themselves.

The sight of people struggling to survive caught my eye.

Perhaps the Demon Lord’s forces hadn’t swept through here, as there were still people left even though it wasn’t that high-rise.

If this many people were alive in this building, there must be more people in other buildings.

There were still many people alive in the city.

We couldn’t just ignore those people and save only the woman’s house who had shouted through the loudspeaker.

In that case, we had no choice but to ignore them and go our way.

“Let’s go quickly. The noise might attract the undead.”

At Hoffman’s words, we started moving.

As we ignored them and moved on, people’s shouts turned into screams.

“Don’t go! You can’t just leave!”

“Save us! At least the children!”

“I’ll curse you! Don’t you have children of your own?”

Curses against us, along with the sound of the loudspeaker, struck our ears.

It had been a while since I heard such curses.

In the early stages of the war when we were pushed back by the Demon Lord’s forces, we heard these curses every day.

Everyone cursed the knights and soldiers who abandoned them and fled.

People pleaded, begged, complained, then poured curses on us, and in the end, they gave up on life.

I thought I had gotten used to hearing it so much, but hearing it again, it still wasn’t a pleasant sound.

Still, both Hoffman and I were able to move on without showing a strained expression.

The surprising one was Zahina.

She followed us with an expressionless face.

Unlike other elves, I thought she enjoyed helping people… To think she wouldn’t say anything even in this situation.

It seemed her character was different from what I had thought.

As we moved, people’s shouts continued.

Surely, they should have stopped by now.

Were there no people passing by in the meantime?

Their reactions were excessive for people just passing by.

We found out why everyone was making such a fuss through the continuing shouts.

“We have to stop them! They are people who can fight zombies! They are the only ones who can save us!”

The woman who had first shouted through the loudspeaker used it again to shout to everyone.

From her words, we understood why people were making a fuss about us.

Seeing us easily killing the undead as we passed along the road, they had all started to have hope in us.

For people trapped in their homes with no choice but to die, it was the first hope thrown at them.

Unlike the people in the Namyangju apartment who had managed to survive so far, the people here were dying day by day.

They might have dreamed of us getting them food, gathering people, and creating a survivor group like the Namyangju apartment.

Of course, they might not have thought that far and just wanted to grasp at a single lifeline.

However, that hope was only possible if we listened to them.

We, who had things to do, couldn’t fulfill that hope.

Suppressing the slightly rising feeling of guilt, I was about to keep moving.

Amidst the shouts of stopping us, a strange remark was heard.

“Damn it, I didn’t want to do this!”

Along with a cry that sounded like a lament, the sound of something falling to the ground was heard.

Thud!

Hearing the sound, I let out a sigh.

There was no need to turn my head to check.

I knew what had fallen.

What had fallen now was a dead person. A corpse.

I didn’t know if it was a corpse that had already turned into a zombie or a corpse before turning into one, but a single corpse had fallen to the ground.

In the end, someone had thrown a corpse from inside the house to the outside.

If it was a corpse that had been kept in the house until now, it must have been a family member or someone close.

In the end, people had given up on their loved ones in order to survive.

“Now that it’s come to this, throw out all the corpses in the house. Shouldn’t the living survive?”

“No! You can’t abandon Mom!”

“Move! Your mom is dead! This is just a monster’s corpse!”

A voice urging others was heard, followed by the sound of a family arguing.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

More corpses fell.

“Now the zombies will flock to the corpses! Quickly come inside the building! Otherwise, you’ll be trapped and killed by the zombies!”

The loudspeaker was heard again, and I stopped in my tracks, staring at the fallen corpses.

It was the first time I had seen such a f*cked up sight since watching the villagers flock to the village cemetery, dig up their dead family members’ corpses, and burn them.