Chapter 48 – Bandits (3)

The wind Zahina summoned wasn’t strong enough to harm anyone.

It was just enough to knock people off their feet.

“Ahhh! What’s happening?!”

That was more than enough.

The people on the first floor, as well as those aiming their guns at me from the second floor, were all swept off their feet by the wind.

Inside the building, only the man who had been called the leader remained standing.

He clung to the railing, still aiming his gun at me despite the wind.

But he was too late.

The moment the wind started blowing, I had already launched myself toward the second floor where he stood.

Leaping over the second-floor railing, I landed behind him and drove my sword into his back.

*Thuck.*

The blade pierced through his heart without any resistance.

“Guh!”

The man coughed up blood and dropped his gun over the railing.

“What… is this…?”

He grimaced as he looked at the blade sticking out from his chest but then suddenly burst into laughter.

“Heh heh heh. You stabbed me with a sword? I won’t die from something like this. Look at me—I survived even after being shot!”

He turned his head to look at me.

As he brushed his hair back with his hand, I noticed a bullet hole in his forehead.

I couldn’t help but be shocked when I saw his face—not because of the bullet hole, but because his head had almost rotated a full 180 degrees.

“So you weren’t alive after all?”

“What are you talking about? I’m alive. Look, I’m bleeding. I can eat food, and I can enjoy women too.”

He pointed to his back, where blood was flowing from the wound.

“I’ve just become an immortal who can’t die.”

He grabbed the blade protruding from his chest and began moving toward the railing.

Blood poured out, and his wound worsened, but he didn’t seem to feel any pain.

As he moved, the sword slowly began to slide out of him.

“Once this sword is out, only a scar will remain, and everything will go back to normal. Aren’t you jealous?”

By pressing himself against the railing, most of the sword had already been pulled out of him.

I clicked my tongue as I watched him mock me.

The man I encountered on top of the car wall hadn’t mentioned anything like this.

He had just described them as ordinary bandits with guns.

“Heh heh heh. Even my subordinates didn’t know I could come back to life. I kept it a secret from them too.”

He leaned against the railing and spread his arms wide.

“My secret weapon! Look at them—they’re all trembling in fear!”

Just as he said, everyone who had fallen to the ground was staring up at him with terrified expressions.

The captured women and men, as well as his subordinates armed with guns, were all looking at him in horror.

“So now… let’s pull out this sword… Damn it! I can’t get it out!”

When I had stabbed him with my sword, he had been slightly away from the railing.

He must have thought that pressing against it would allow him to pull out the sword completely.

But there was no way I would let him pull it out so easily.

I had deliberately chosen not to decapitate him and instead drove my sword into his heart.

After seeing all those bloodstains in the parking lot and sensing the massive evil spirit dwelling inside him, I decided to change my approach with my swordplay—not for dealing with humans but for handling evil spirits and undead beings.

The man was indeed dead. 

It was just that the evil spirit possessing him had hidden that fact from everyone else. 

His captives and even his own subordinates believed he was alive because of the spirit’s power—and even he himself thought he was still alive. 

Now that people were seeing him for what he truly was, they were terrified because the illusion cast by the spirit had shattered. 

People were now seeing his real form—a corpse with a shattered skull and a body half-rotted away, impaled on a sword as it dangled over the railing. 

Ironically, though his brain was destroyed and his body decaying, beneath his rotten flesh lay a heart that was still beating. 

The heart had turned black and no longer pumped blood—it seemed to be circulating something else entirely. 

And embedded in that still-beating heart was my sword—the one through which I had poured all my mana. 

My sword was preventing that heart from continuing its unnatural movement. 

Thanks to that, the illusion created by the evil spirit had broken down, allowing everyone to see him for what he really was. 

But it wasn’t just the illusion that had shattered.

The terrified expressions on the men and women on the first floor were only possible because the evil spirit could no longer control them.

Some undead, especially those of the evil spirit variety, didn’t just die when you cut off their heads.

While this was true for most undead, dealing with evil spirit-type undead was best left to priests.

That’s why the hero’s party had a saintess, and why the hero, a knight blessed with holy power, could face the Demon King.

If our party had a priest, we could protect them while they dealt with the evil spirits.

But we didn’t have a priest in our party.

That didn’t mean we would just give up.

Without a priest, we simply had to use other methods.

The first method was to stab a sword into the heart that the evil spirit used as its core.

The spirit had hidden that core behind an illusion, but I could find it using my mana detection and senses.

After that, all I needed to do was disrupt the core with my mana and use something else in place of a priest’s blessing.

I pulled out a vial of holy water from my pocket.

“How many of these will I need?”

This wasn’t just any ordinary evil spirit.

While subduing it initially wasn’t too difficult, maintaining that suppression wasn’t easy.

My sword was consuming an enormous amount of mana at an alarming rate.

“I thought I brought plenty, but at this rate, I might run out before we even close the gate again.”

I bit off the cap of the holy water vial and poured it over my sword.

The holy water trickled down the blade and into the undead’s heart.

“What is this? What’s happening to my body? Ahh! It hurts! Why does it hurt?!”

The man who had been in shock at his body’s transformation screamed in agony as soon as the holy water reached his heart through the blade.

*Shriek! Shriek!*

It wasn’t just the man who screamed.

Black smoke began pouring out of his body.

It was visible even to others—a tangible manifestation of malice, an evil spirit.

The room echoed with its screams, and reality itself seemed to ripple and distort.

People clutched their ears and curled up on the floor, trembling in fear.

I continued pouring more holy water down the length of my sword.

As more holy water flowed along the blade, the once-black heart began to lose its color. It gradually turned white, as if it were turning to ash.

As the heart whitened, more malice poured out from within him in waves.

“No! Don’t leave me! Don’t go without me! We’re one and the same! Don’t stop talking! I’ll do anything you want! I killed so many for you! I made friends for you! No! Take me with you!”

As the malice—no, as the evil spirit—was expelled from him, the man clutched his heart and screamed in desperation.

But neither his screams nor the spirit’s cries lasted forever.

After using about ten vials of holy water, the undead’s heart had turned completely white.

No more malice seeped from his body, and his screams had ceased as well.

No—he wasn’t even an undead anymore at this point.

The corpse impaled by my sword hung limply over the railing, no longer moving.

I pulled my sword free from his body.

“This sword is becoming a problem. How much longer will it last?”

I clicked my tongue quietly as I inspected my blade. 

Though there were no visible cracks yet, it had significantly weakened. 

It wasn’t just from all the rough use over time—what really did it was having to endure that clash between evil spirit energy and holy water along its edge. 

At this rate, I’d have to repair my sword before even thinking about fixing my damaged gauntlet. 

While I was examining my sword, a desperate cry rang out beside me. 

“That zombie made me do it! Please spare me!”

“It doesn’t matter. Anyone who sides with undead against humans is an enemy—whether they’re human or not.”

Hoffman was finishing off the last man on the second floor. 

While I had been dealing with the undead possessed by an evil spirit, Hoffman had been taking care of his subordinates upstairs. 

Even while others were paralyzed by fear due to the evil spirit’s screams, he had continued killing enemies without hesitation. 

For some reason, he decided to respond to this last man’s plea. 

It wasn’t exactly what he wanted to hear—but it was surprisingly considerate for Hoffman. 

“What are you—Guh!”

As I heard him finish off that last man, I looked around at our surroundings. 

The building had changed dramatically from how it looked before. 

What had once appeared relatively clean now looked like it had been abandoned for decades. 

Old, dark, dreary… 

It now resembled a place where ghosts might appear at any moment.

“Looks like we won’t be sleeping here.”

The building had turned ominous due to the malice that had been released earlier.

Although the evil spirit that had possessed the man was destroyed, the remaining malice had returned to the rest area.

The malice left behind wouldn’t have the intelligence to actively attack humans like the spirit did, but it would certainly continue to corrupt and transform this rest area into a tainted space.

Given enough time, this rest area would turn into a labyrinth of corruption, making it dangerous for anyone to approach.

While Hoffman was finishing off the man’s subordinates, Zahina was already gathering the people on the first floor.

“We’re not safe yet. We need to get out of here quickly.”

It seemed she had also noticed how the rest area was changing.

Fortunately, those who had regained their senses were following Zahina’s instructions without hesitation.

As I watched them, Hoffman approached me.

“Are you alright? It looked like some of that malice flowed into your body earlier.”

I sighed at Hoffman’s words.

It was now visible even to others—malice was being absorbed into me.

That meant I had absorbed quite a bit of it.

On top of that, there was a bigger problem: my body was overflowing with energy.

It was undoubtedly due to the absorbed malice.

—

Rows of desks with monitors stretched out in every direction, and large screens covered the walls from top to bottom.

The screens displayed various scenes from different locations.

One screen showed a street filled with zombies, while another showed a horde of zombies overwhelming a military unit.

There was also footage of a dam with its floodgates destroyed and a massive octopus-like creature slithering across a highway with its tentacles.

Some of the footage appeared to be from CCTV or handheld cameras, but most looked like it had been captured from the sky.

In the center of this hellish array of scenes, the largest screen displayed an image of a rest area.

The rest area appeared abandoned for decades, with cars filling its parking lot as if they had been left there for years.

“That place looked fine just a little while ago, didn’t it?”

A soldier with four stars on his shoulder pointed at the screen and asked the officer next to him.

“Yes, sir. It changed like this shortly after the target entered.”

“The octopus that came out of the river… and now this… what in the world is going on?”

The general stared at the screen with a grave expression as his subordinate answered him.

At that moment, people began pouring out of the rest area on-screen.

Dozens of people emerged from the building alongside someone wearing knight’s armor and started heading southward.

“It looks like they managed to save some people.”

“Yes, sir. That place was occupied by a gang until just recently.”

“They stopped a flood by destroying a dam and rescued people from a gang hideout… They don’t seem like bad people.”

“But after they crossed the river, that monster appeared. And it’s still chasing them.”

The officer pointed at another screen showing the tentacled creature slithering down a road in pursuit of someone.

“Tsk. Looking at that thing makes them seem more like villains.”

“To be honest, sir, whether they’re villains or heroes doesn’t matter. They possess power far beyond any superhuman we know of, and they appeared just as suddenly as when zombies and undead first showed up.”

The general nodded at his subordinate’s words.

“You’re right. Regardless, there’s likely some connection here. Even if there isn’t, someone with powers like that could be invaluable for our defense. We need to bring them in.”

“It would’ve been nice if our forces stationed in Korea were still around.”

“There wasn’t much we could do back then. We couldn’t let our troops turn into zombies.”

Even as he spoke, the general clicked his tongue quietly in frustration.

“In any case, we’ve got approval from above. Send out a retrieval team immediately. We need to secure them before anyone else does.”

“Understood.”

After watching his subordinate leave, the four-star general—the Chief of Staff for Space Operations—turned his attention back to the satellite footage on-screen.

Many of those satellite images showed undead fighting against military forces around the world.

There were scenes of NATO soldiers battling zombies, Chinese troops fighting skeletons, and Mexican forces clashing with more zombies.

And here at U.S. Space Force Ground Control Center, they were providing satellite support for all these operations from space.