Return of the Apocalypse Knight

Chapter 15: South (1)

A quiet night passed, and morning came.

There were no birds chirping to wake us up.

No wonder.

There were no birds to be found, not with the Death Demon’s demonic energy still lingering in the air.

It was a feeling I’ve gotten over the years of fighting demons and undead.

The fight against the Demon King had killed many humans, but it had also destroyed the natural environment.

Where the demons and undead have taken up residence, it is inevitable that demonic energy will spread.

The grass and trees withered, and birds, animals, and monsters suffered and died, eventually becoming undead.

I don’t know the numbers, but the fight against the Demon King must have devastated a third of the continent.

“Dang, I never thought I’d see this after crossing over to the other world.”

Hoffman clicked his tongue as he looked at the gray haze that covered the fields just before sunrise.

I agreed with him.

The grayish morning fog we were seeing was no ordinary fog. It was a fog laced with death mana.

When people saw it, they should immediately pack up and flee.

Without mana, they couldn’t survive the death energy.

They didn’t have holy water on hand or access to priests like soldiers did.

“The Mist of Death. How many of my brothers and sisters have died in this fog…….”

Zahina looked at the mist, too, and frowned, uncharacteristically for her.

She threw out her hand, spraying mana into the air.

-Hwaahhhh.

A breeze centered on her made the fog that had been filling the area around us recede.

“No way, is this a safe zone?”

Hoffman gasped when he saw the clearing where the mist had receded.

It was a safe zone that could only be created by a bishop-level priest or saint.

He had heard that they were set up in the capital of the empire and a few other strongholds, but could it be that this cute girl had such power?

“It’s different. I merely generated wind and mana to temporarily push back the death mist. Besides, I couldn’t push it far because I’m weakened, and it will return to its original state as soon as I withdraw my mana.”

Hoffman was disappointed by her words, but I was surprised.

I hadn’t expected that what she’d done would have the same effect as a safe zone but it’s a kind of mobile safe zone.

It’s limited by the fact that we have to be next to her, and it’s a constant mana cost, but it’s an amazing ability.

It’s a power I’d pay tens of thousands of gold to have by my side if I didn’t have the mana.

Zahina seemed to be much more important than I thought.

What if I made a new ally?

Perhaps I hadn’t saved her for nothing.

Besides, if it was this effective here, where her powers were diminishing, how much more so in her own world?

Surely she wasn’t protecting an entire city or something?

Anyway, thanks to Zahina, it looked like we were going to have a restful breakfast.

Unlike last night, Hoffman was the one who prepared breakfast.

It wasn’t particularly different from yesterday.

It was brick bread and a soup that was more like a honey gruel with a few bits and pieces thrown in.

After a quick meal, we left the trench.

Looking around, Hoffman tapped the wall of our trench with a curious expression.

“It’s not magic and it doesn’t look like it’s hewn out of stone, but it’s a bit of a curious construction.”

That’s right, it’s a cement concrete trench.

At Hoffman’s words, Zahina placed her hand on the wall.

I could see mana flowing out of her hand and running down the wall.

It was amazing to see mana so clearly.

Was it because she was an elf from another world?

Or is it that the mana of this world is so visible?

It didn’t make sense, but it wasn’t a bad thing, so I decided to let it go, just like yesterday.

With my questions behind me, Zahina, who had been studying the wall, spoke up.

“These walls seem to be engineered from the earth, as do the weapons the undead had and the technology here seems to be more advanced than in your world, or ours.”

Despite what she said, the cement wall didn’t require much skill.

Rebar was embedded in them to make them stronger, and the abundance of limestone made it easy to use here.

“So, is this like a brick…….?”

I shrugged at Hoffman’s question.

It was a little different, but it wouldn’t hurt to understand it that way.

We got ready to move and left the trench, but we didn’t leave the trench right away.

I led the group to a clearing a short distance away from the trenches and pulled out the items I’d packed yesterday from my magic bag.

“Are you sure you can use that weapon?”

Hoffman asked in surprise when he saw what I had brought out.

“I didn’t pack it as a souvenir.”

“But, when I saw it last night, it looked pretty complicated…….I was really surprised you were able to take it apart and put it back together.”

I chambered a round in my gun as Hoffman rambled on.

As I told Hoffman, I hadn’t packed a good sniper rifle for nothing.

If I didn’t remember my past life, it would have been useless, but I was an ex-military veteran.

It’s a North Korean sniper rifle that I’ve never used, and I wasn’t exactly recognized for my marksmanship in my previous life but with no mages in the party, there was no reason not to use a useful ranged weapon.

Besides, now that I was a mana knight, I was likely to be better than I was in my previous life.

I focused my eyes on the scope and aimed the gun at a tree twenty meters away.

Then I paused, steadied myself with mana, and quietly pulled the trigger.

-Bang. Bang. Bang.

The bullets lined up just to the left of where I’d aimed.

Luckily, the bullets didn’t scatter in all directions, but instead clustered together to form a cluster.

This was enough to get a zero.

“You really can use that weapon,” Hoffman said as he watched me.

“You really were able to use that weapon.”

“Because I saw it in the fight.”

The truth was that I had used it in a previous life, but there was no point in telling the truth.

Hoffman continued to look at the gun in wonder.

“It’s a curious weapon again. It’s not even magical, and it shoots a small metal skewer much faster than an arrow…….If we had more of these, we could make an infinite number of powerful archers.”

Perhaps it was his long military career, but Hoffman’s speculation was sharp.

Guns are a weapon that, with a little training, can produce soldiers capable of ranged attacks.

The Demon King led an army of gun-wielding undead, besides, the marks on the Hero body suggested that he hadn’t just been shot.

Now that he was dead, I couldn’t help but worry about how to stop the demon king.

‘But it’s not like I can do anything.’

There’ll be another one.

All I can do is gather information about this world before the gate opens and pass it on to those who have crossed over.

‘And then I’ll find a way to get out of the army as quickly as possible.’

I had accumulated quite a bit of money in the meantime, and if I had my way, there would be ways to make more in the other world.

Gold and precious metals were common in both worlds.

In fact, if the Demon King hadn’t crossed over, I would have been much better off in this world, but now that he has, the world without priests is much more difficult to sustain than ours.

In fact, if the Demon King hadn’t come over, I wouldn’t have come here either, but for the sake of this world, it would have been much better if the Demon King hadn’t come over.

Damn it! If only the Hero could’ve killed the Demon King.

With that, we left the trench.

Unlike the boisterous Hoffman, the elf hadn’t spoken all morning, but she kept her eyes on the gun as I shot the sniper rifle.

She was obviously fascinated by this gunpowder gun.

* * *

I had used the excuse that we had to head south to avoid the Demon King and his legions, but in hindsight it was not an excuse, it was my destination from the start.

We didn’t encounter any undead, gun-toting soldiers of the demon king on our way south.

That didn’t mean the death energy had gone down, or that we didn’t see moving corpses.

However, this did not mean that the death energy had disappeared or that moving corpses were no longer visible.

As we headed south, we often encountered only one or two undead, but once we encountered a dozen.

The hills rolled away from the mountains and into the plains.

– Duddum

The skeletal undead lunged at us.

“Hound undead?”

“They’re small for hounds.”

Hoffman shook his head as I pointed to the rushing undead.

True, the charging undead were large, bony hounds that reached up to a man’s waist, but they seemed small to Hoffman, who had seen them on the continent.

Unlike the beasts of the continent, the animals here were considerably smaller due to the effects of mana.

Hoffman wasn’t wrong, as even an ordinary wild dog was larger than a wolf on the continent.

The bones that were running at us now could be considered young wild dogs in the other world.

There were quite a few undead hounds running at us, but Hoffman wasn’t nervous.

Naturally, I wasn’t nervous either, and instead of drawing my sword, I pulled my sniper rifle from my spatial expansion bag.

-Chuck.

Standing, I raised the gun, braced it against my shoulder, and pointed the muzzle at the head of the first undead hound in front of me.

I’d done plenty of work on the gun last night, and I’d zeroed it when I set out, so now it was time to put it to the test.

I steadied myself with mana and centered the scope on the undead’s head.

I held my breath and fired.

-BANG!

I heard the gunshot and saw the undead head shatter in my crosshairs.

As the head exploded, the undead lurched forward.

Okay!

I immediately moved my muzzle and aimed at the next undead.

-BANG!

-BANG!

I kept firing at the undead that kept running.

Then, I swung my sword at the ones that came closer.

As expected, they were nothing.

It was a fight that Hoffman and the elf didn’t need to help with.

Still, I couldn’t help but click my tongue as I looked at the fallen undead.

“Perhaps it’s because they’re ranged weapons, but even the weapons of this world are weak against the undead.”

Hoffman said as he returned from inspecting the undead whose heads had been crushed.

It was a shame.

I’d hoped it would help, but apparently guns don’t do much against the undead.

The first undead to be smashed in the head got back up and tried to run toward us while the ones with holes in their bodies didn’t even seem to feel the bullets.

They just staggered slightly in shock but their reactions were weaker than when they were hit by arrows.

Moreover, the bony undead simply let the bullets pass through their bones.

“I guess bullets don’t cut it.”

A good headshot might have some stopping power, but bullets that didn’t contain mana seemed to have a hard time stopping the undead.

“Even in my world, not many archers put mana in their arrows, and even fewer priests could bless them.”

Even in my world, weapons that didn’t contain mana couldn’t properly destroy the undead, so it would be difficult to destroy them with my ordinary bullets.

I couldn’t easily put mana into arrows, so it was impossible to put mana into these tiny bullets.

In the end, it seemed that guns were meant to be used against living animals and humans.

As I looked at the gun and lamented

“Do you mind if I try your weapon?”

The elf approached me and held out her hand.