Chapter 5 – Crossing the Gate

A large underground plaza with eerie patterns and broken sculptures.

“They really fought fiercely here.”

I looked around the damaged underground plaza with a surprised expression.

Walls shattered as if bombed, burned and swept floors, and piles of bones scattered like small hills everywhere.

The underground plaza where the Demon King had his final battle with the heroes had turned into ruins.

Of course, there must have been magic circles or artifacts set up by the Demon King here, but such items were not visible in this destroyed plaza.

Instead, the ruins before my eyes showed how intense the battle had been.

And it also revealed that the escaped Demon King was by no means weak.

In the center of the ruined underground plaza, a bizarre altar stood intact.

Woom. Woom. Woom.

A shining door floating in the air above that altar.

It was actually a magic circle, not a door, but to a mere knight like me, it looked like a door floating in the air.

A brightly glowing rectangular frame and the space rippling within it.

Entering that space would take us to another world.

Knights stood around the intact altar, and several mages were examining the altar and dimensional door.

Orthodox mages from the tower, wearing different clothes from our party’s mage.

Our party’s mage looked at the altar with curiosity but, uncharacteristically, did not approach the other mages.

The mages examining the altar and dimensional door also pretended not to see our mage.

I knew that combat mages and orthodox mages didn’t get along well, but I didn’t know it was this bad. Seeing it firsthand made me angry.

However, it wasn’t my place to interfere as a non-mage, so I could only look at our mage pitifully as he was ignored.

We must have been late, as the other advance parties that had gone down earlier were not visible.

“You can enter right away. You may feel a bit dizzy during the transition, but it will pass quickly. You can hear the rest after arriving on the other side. The heroes are waiting for you in that dimension.”

One of the mages approached and explained about crossing dimensions.

He looked at us with envious eyes as he spoke.

Like a scientist observing lab rats for a new discovery.

He seemed eager to join in himself.

That look in his eyes, sparkling as he watched us, was no different from the look our party’s mage had shown earlier.

They seemed to dislike each other, but in the end, they were both mages.

After the brief explanation, we climbed onto the altar, leaving behind the mage’s envy.

The rippling space floating in the air.

The fact that passing through there would take us to a completely different world still sent chills down my spine.

But as a knight, I couldn’t show it.

My crisis detection ability, honed over years of hard training, didn’t sense any immediate danger anyway.

The party members I glanced at while walking seemed no different from me.

Except for our combat mage whose eyes were red from staring at the dimensional door, everyone’s expressions were somewhat stiff.

Well, the elf had that face from the start, so maybe he should be excluded.

With my heart pounding, I climbed onto the altar with my party members and stepped into the rippling dimensional door.

And the world turned upside down.

Damn it. A little dizzy, he said?

This is worse than riding the Wolmi-do Viking after drinking heavily!

After a fantastic dimensional transition, I collapsed on the ground and dry heaved.

“My goodness, this feels more dizzying than drinking a full potion.”

The mountain soldier who had entered first was lying on the ground talking nonsense, and the combat mage next to him was properly vomiting face down.

“Ugh!”

Damn, the smell is making me want to throw up more.

On top of that, the shiny knight had thrust his sword into the ground and was leaning on it.

Amusingly, the place where the sword was stuck was hard rock.

He had infused the sword with mana and thrust it into the rock to avoid falling.

It was typical of a traditional nobleman doing something stupid for the sake of appearances.

However, the elf seemed fine, perhaps because he was already used to it from previous experience.

As he looked around, I was finally able to regain my senses.

Unlike the feeling of the world turning upside down, the dimensional transition seemed to have gone well.

Everyone looked unwell, but no one was left behind or injured.

The advance parties that had departed earlier also seemed to be safe.

After regaining my senses, I looked around.

Blue sky and high mountains.

A withered forest.

We had arrived in a forest within a valley surrounded by mountains.

A forest with yellowing leaves falling despite the warm weather.

It looked like the forests I had often seen in the early days of fighting the Demon King.

The trees back then eventually became twisted and withered after being tainted by death energy over time.

The forest before my eyes didn’t seem to have been affected much by death energy yet, looking more like a somewhat desolate autumn forest with dry leaves falling.

Like an autumn forest from my hometown…

“Maybe it’s because it’s a different world. The trees here look quite different from our continent. They seem a bit smaller too.”

While I was staring blankly at the forest, the mountain soldier, who had regained his senses, spoke as he looked around.

Unlike me, who felt like I had returned to my hometown, he seemed to find this forest unfamiliar.

Certainly, compared to the trees of Sorbia, no, our world, which grow over tens of meters in a short period, the trees before us looked quite small.

To use an analogy from my previous life, it was like the difference between the giant fir trees of Canada and the small trees of the country I lived in.

Unlike him, the reason this forest didn’t feel so unfamiliar to me was probably because it looked similar to the forests I had seen in my previous life.

Snapped out of it by the soldier’s words, I checked my body first.

Breathing was easy, and there was no strange smell.

My eyes didn’t hurt, and my skin didn’t tingle.

It just felt like entering an ordinary forest with good air.

After rolling around in places full of death energy for years, the air here actually seemed much better.

Contrary to all our worries, this world didn’t seem different from the world I used to live in.

Nevertheless, I immediately took out a bottle of holy water from my bag and drank it.

It seemed fine, but it’s better to be prepared.

Seeing me drink the holy water, my party members also took out their holy water and drank it.

As we were drinking the holy water, one of the people who had arrived earlier spoke up.

“You’re the last advance party, right? Now that everyone’s here, I’ll tell you what I’ve confirmed so far and what you need to do.”

Though it wasn’t a loud voice, it reached my ears as if he was speaking right next to me.

A delicate mana manipulation that carried his voice infused with mana to everyone’s ears.

It was an amazing skill, but not surprising.

The person who spoke was the hero who had made the Demon King flee.

Although he was the culprit who made the Demon King flee and brought me here, seeing him take the initiative like that made it difficult to openly curse at him.

Damn hero.

I clasped my hands behind my back and raised my middle finger.

There were about 40 people gathered in front of the glowing dimensional door floating in the air.

Among them, the advance party was about 20 people.

And the advance party was divided into 4 teams of about 5 people each, like our team.

The remaining 20 were the hero’s group, noble officers, mages, and soldiers who looked like officers.

As everyone’s attention focused, the hero stepped forward in front of the advance party and began the briefing.

“First of all, thank you all for volunteering as the advance party.”

It wasn’t volunteering, it was conscription.

It wasn’t the hero who gave the order, so there was no point in grumbling to him.

Damn headquarters, those noble b*st*rds.

As I cursed inwardly, the hero continued speaking.

“First, I’ll tell you what our group has confirmed here. Fortunately or unfortunately, there are also people, or rather intelligent humans, living here. In fact, since the Demon King fled here, that’s to be expected.”

It seemed the hero’s group, who had crossed over first, had found traces of people here.

They must have seen skeletons killed by the Demon King or resurrected because of him.

No one was surprised by the hero’s words that there were intelligent species here.

As the hero said, it was natural that intelligent humans were living here since the Demon King had crossed over.

The Demon King who fled to this world was the King of the Dead, the Death King who raised the dead again.

Unlike the automatically spreading death energy, the living beings directly raised from death by the Demon King were mostly of a certain size and possessed some intelligence.

Moreover, when corpses were resurrected, they retained their intelligence from before death, so humans were what the Demon King most often resurrected as undead.

The fact that the Demon King had fled here meant that there were many humans living in this world that he could use as corpses.

“Therefore, I ask for your caution when meeting the humans of this place. The children of the Divine Tree have come along to prepare for when we meet them. When you encounter the humans of this place, I ask that you follow the instructions of the children of the Divine Tree as much as possible.”

He’s saying to let the elf take charge when we meet the humans of this world…

I’m not sure if the elves, with their rock-bottom social skills, can handle it properly.

“Our goal is to eliminate the fleeing Demon King. Of course, I’m not saying you should capture the Demon King yourselves. We will definitely catch the Demon King this time.”

The hero seemed to have slipped in a joke, but it wasn’t funny at all.

No one else laughed either. Only his companions were laughing.

Seeing his companions laughing beside him, it seemed that ridiculous joke was due to the hero’s party members.

Not seeming to notice the awkward atmosphere, the hero continued speaking.

“Your job as the advance party is to track the traces of the Demon King who disappeared after crossing the dimensional door. In fact, among those participating in the advance party, there may be people who have received different instructions, but please don’t forget that finding the Demon King should be your priority.”

In any case, we were connected to another world.

The Demon King had lost to the hero and fled, so the bigwigs of each country who had been fighting the Demon King must be thinking a lot right now.

As the hero said, there was a good chance they had given other orders behind the scenes.

Could it be that our party’s shiny knight also joined for that reason?

I glanced at the shiny knight who was examining the blade he had thrust into the rock.

Unfortunately, Shiny seemed to have no thoughts at all.

“While you search the surroundings, we will set up an advance base in front of this dimensional door. If you find anything unusual, please let us know immediately.”

After the hero finished speaking, we scattered in all directions according to the operation plan set by the noble officers.

The operation to track down the Demon King who had fled to another dimension had begun.