Chapter 71 – Demon King’s Army (2)

The back alley I wanted to go to wasn’t far from the archery range.

Actually, it wasn’t anything special despite being called a back alley.

It was just a narrow alley behind a street of bars in the old downtown.

A dirty alley lined with antique shops, pawnshops, and houses where people with ruined lives lived.

It was a rundown alley that strangely hadn’t been redeveloped until I died.

Even after the world ended, this place hadn’t changed much from my previous life.

Old walls and scattered trash, broken windows and torn posters.

It was exactly as I remembered from my previous life.

The only differences were that instead of vomit stains, dark red bloodstains were caked on the walls, and zombified homeless people greeted us instead of sleeping ones.

We put down all approaching zombies before entering the alley.

Entering the narrow alley, Hoffman and Zahina looked around curiously at the back alley they’d never seen before.

Though ruined, all they’d seen so far were modern apartments and large buildings, so this place similar to streets from their world must have seemed interesting.

But Yerim, who knew this place, frowned and asked me.

“You said we’re looking for gold and jewels. Why are we here?”

Zahina and Hoffman seemed to share Yerim’s thoughts.

Both stopped sightseeing and looked at me.

“First, let me confirm if what I thought is right.”

This time, instead of making excuses, I delayed answering.

It was too much to keep glossing over with excuses.

Especially, it was difficult to make up excuses other than my previous life for coming here.

If it was empty, I could just say I was mistaken, but if things were as I thought, I needed to consider telling party members my secret.

Unhappy with my answer, Yerim pointed at the pawnshop and antique shop visible in the middle of the alley.

“I don’t know why there’s an antique shop in a place like this, but you’re not thinking of robbing that antique shop or the pawnshop behind it, right?”

She spoke to us in a strong tone, as if explaining harsh reality to ignorant people.

“In your world, antique shops might have ancient artifacts with magic, or pawnshops might have soul-imbued swords pawned by knights, but here there’ll be at most phones or car keys.”

However, Yerim’s words lost their force at Hoffman’s rebuttal.

“The antique shops and pawnshops in my city didn’t have magical artifacts either. Mostly just old candlesticks and dented shields.”

“That’s a lie! It’s a fantasy world! How can antique shops be just antique shops!”

Yerim, who was going to explain reality, was frustrated by the cold reality of the fantasy world.

She asked again with an uncomprehending expression.

“If antique shops and pawnshops don’t have magic items, where do you get magic items?”

“I heard mages trade at magic towers, and nobles get them through private deals or auctions… So ordinary people rarely see magical items. Even among knights, not many have magical equipment.”

At Hoffman’s words, Yerim pointed at my waist.

“Our knight has a magic pouch though.”

Hoffman glanced at my waist and nodded.

“This is my first time seeing a knight with a magic pouch too.”

Seeing Yerim’s eyes sparkle, it seemed she might develop some big misunderstanding if left alone.

I told her the truth.

“I bought one with money saved over a lifetime, and received another from a mage.”

I finished speaking and stopped walking.

Where I stopped was in front of the pawnshop Yerim mentioned.

When I actually stopped at the pawnshop, Yerim looked at me with an expression that said she had much to say but would hold back for now.

I entered the pawnshop through the broken window.

The inside of the pawnshop was a mess.

As Yerim said, the pawnshop that had been full of useless items was now in complete disarray.

The shelves were smashed, and all the collateral items that should have been on them were broken.

At this rate, the items inside wouldn’t fetch even a penny.

Though it was as Yerim predicted, her expression had changed from earlier when she entered with us.

Yerim looked around the pawnshop and spoke with a serious face.

“This place looks like a battlefield.”

Hoffman nodded at Yerim’s words.

“If not a war, there was definitely intense fighting here. But the battle traces are a bit strange…”

While Hoffman looked around carefully, Zahina approached the wall and pointed to a mark.

“These are bullet marks. I heard people in this country couldn’t own guns…”

“Found bullets too.”

Hoffman picked up a bullet from the floor.

“Was there a gunfight? Since it’s a back alley pawnshop, was the owner some kind of thug?”

The pawnshop’s owner wasn’t just thug-like, but probably a former or current gangster.

Hoffman, examining the traces, pointed to the back of the pawnshop.

“The battle traces continue inside.”

He explained what happened while pointing out marks on the floor and walls.

“Seems people fought each other here first, then zombies came after hearing gunshots, leading to another fight where people were pushed inside.”

Though he hadn’t properly shown his skills until now, he lived up to his reputation as a mountain soldier who could determine a monster’s pregnancy from a single footprint.

Yerim looked at Hoffman with an impressed expression.

“Wow, you were just like a thief from fantasy novels. As expected, Hoffman wasn’t an ordinary soldier.”

At Yerim’s praise, Hoffman instead sighed.

“A thief? I quit that long ago…”

I moved toward the back of the pawnshop.

Past the shattered partition, entering a short corridor covered in bloodstains, a rotting stench overwhelmed us.

“The smell is terrible.”

As Yerim wrinkled her face and covered her nose, I taught her how to block smells by moving mana right there.

The other two blocked the smell on their own without my instruction.

After Yerim could no longer smell it, we moved forward again.

Past the corridor was a small room.

There lay shattered corpses.

Bodies that had stopped after becoming zombies and those who died as humans.

Over 10 corpses were strewn about the room.

“They really were thugs with guns. Did they all die fighting the undead?”

Yerim asked me in a nasally voice seeing the room’s state.

As she said, among the human corpses, four seemed to have fought with steel pipes or axes, but two had guns.

They were a suit-wearing man with a pistol and a tattooed man with a Russian rifle.

Though hard to recognize after time had passed since death, I could identify the two men.

Both were people I’d seen 2 years ago in this world, in my previous life.

‘Didn’t expect both to come. Even if one came, thought it would just be one side…’

I went up to the corpses and looked down at the decaying connections from my previous life.

In my previous life I had been quite afraid of these two, but now they both lay as corpses before me.

“These two seem to have fought each other first. There’s a grazing bullet wound on the tattooed one’s leg.”

Hoffman pointed to the tattooed man’s leg.

I nodded at Hoffman’s words.

“Well, those two wouldn’t have gotten along peacefully in this situation.”

“Did you know them?”

Yerim asked me with a puzzled face.

I didn’t answer her question.

Instead, I walked to the open iron door in one corner of the room.

The bookshelf that would have blocked it originally lay fallen on the floor, and the iron door welcomed us wide open.

Beyond the iron door was a stairway leading down.

Though wide open now, this iron door led to a hidden basement.

I went down the stairs.

With no lights on, it got darker as I descended, but with mana, nothing hindered me.

As colors gradually disappeared around me and I reached the bottom of the stairs, the world appeared in black and white.

Yerim’s voice came from above.

“Don’t you have a flashlight? I can’t see in the dark!”

I wondered why they weren’t coming down right away – it was because of Yerim.

Since we couldn’t leave Yerim alone upstairs, they seemed to be looking for a way to come down together.

Instead of waiting for them to come down, I examined the basement first.

Contrary to expectations, the basement was set up like a private luxury bar.

One wall was lined with wine and premium liquors, luxury sofas and tables stood in the center, and a large TV hung on the wall in front.

Up to here it was an ordinary private party room, but there was one difference here.

Opposite the TV wall, instead of a wall there was a massive vault door.

It was a vault door large enough for a person to enter.

The vault door was tightly closed.

And from inside that tightly closed vault door came knocking sounds.

Thud, thud, thud, thud,

Sounds coming in a steady rhythm.

It would have been scary if I didn’t know, but I’d heard such sounds many times before.

“Don’t know why there’s an undead in there, but that undead probably won’t be any help?”

It would be nice if it opened the door from inside, but an undead wouldn’t do that.

I could only make a troubled expression at the vault door that was larger than expected.

I thought there would be a vault, but hadn’t expected one this large.

Moreover, being locked like this…

“Can I do it?”

After checking the vault door and wall, I took out a sword from my pouch.

Not the sword I’d been using until now, but a greatsword several times thicker.

The greatsword was as tall as me.

A massive greatsword unusable against ordinary undead.

That’s why I hadn’t taken it out until now.

Indeed, the time to take out this greatsword wasn’t when fighting such undead.

It was a sword for destroying castle gates, and crushing golems.

Plus, it was useful for piercing thick iron doors.

I took a deep breath.

And pushed the mana inside my body.

Mana moving quickly along the mana circuits.

As expected, the size and movement of mana had changed since coming to this world.

This much should be doable.

I pushed the rapidly moving mana into the sword.

Woooong.

The sword trembled and began to glow.

Mana continued flowing into the sword, breaking through resistance.

The sword trembled more and more violently.

‘Surely it won’t shatter?’

If it were made entirely of mithril, I wouldn’t need to worry about that, but this sword contained only a tiny amount of mithril.

Even that made the price insanely high and scary to use, could it really not withstand even this much?

‘No! Then it’ll be a loss!’

Though I didn’t know how much was in this vault, I might take a loss if I messed up.

Woong.

A moment later, I swung the trembling sword.

Thunk.

The sword deeply embedded in the wall beside the vault door.

Though the wall beside the vault door was also made of iron, fortunately it wasn’t as thick as the door.

I slowly pulled the sword downward.

As the sword moved, the iron wall gradually split.

The splitting wall looked like it was being melted by a torch.

After cutting the wall for a while like that, I could see the undead knocking on the vault door.

The undead knocking on the door was a middle-aged man in a suit.

And he was someone I knew.

“So it was the president.”

He was the president of the company I worked at in my previous life.