Return of the Apocalypse Knight

Chapter 23: The Soldier Left Behind (1)

In front of the ammunition depot door, behind the cover of a stack of sandbags, a soldier saluted me.

In front of him lay a machine gun with a bent barrel, white smoke billowing from the barrel and his hands.

As you can see from the way he saluted me, the soldier was insane.

The smoke from his hand must be from the burns he got from touching the barrel.

It must have hurt like hell, but the soldier’s expression didn’t show it.

He ignored the burn on his hand and continued to speak to me.

“Private Kang Hyun-woo, I guarded the ammunition depot until reinforcements arrived!”

How could he say that to a blond knight in plate armor?

What does that soldier think I look like?

Crazy, yes, but not likely to shoot, so I called out to my party, who were hiding outside the clearing.

On my signal, Hoffman approached, cautiously looking around, followed by Zahina, who strolled toward me.

“……there is one survivor, the rest of the platoon below the platoon leader are dead!”

As Zahina approached, I pointed to the soldier who continued to talk furiously.

“I hope you understand what he’s saying.”

The truth was, I understood just fine now, but I couldn’t let the two of them know that.

Someday I might have to tell someone about my past, but for now, I had to keep it hidden.

Even though I was part of the party, I couldn’t trust them yet.

And even if I did, I might not be able to tell them.

I’m sure they’re still suspicious, but I’ll keep it that way until we part ways.

Anyway, we were people who would part ways once the gate opened again.

“I see.”

At my words, the cute woman sprinkled mana.

Neither the soldiers of this world nor Hoffman noticed, but I could feel the mana flowing from her.

‘So, something’s different now that I’m here.’

I certainly didn’t feel this much mana on the other side.

I kept shrugging it off as a good thing, but I’d have to find out why later, when I had time.

The mana flowed from Zahina to Hoffman, the soldier, and me.

It coursed through their bodies and into their heads.

Because I saw the mana, I thought I might be able to reject it, if I was good enough but there was no reason or need to.

I accepted Zahina’s mana as it flooded my mind.

“I have waited for reinforcements for a really long time. If you look at what I have protected during that time, even Lieutenant… … no, Captain… … no, Sir, you will know it!”

I accepted Zahina’s mana, and nothing changed.

I understood the soldier’s words anyway.

Hoffman, however, did not.

He understood the soldier’s words, and then clicked his tongue.

“I think he’s vaguely insane…….Better than completely insane.”

It was not uncommon for soldiers to lose their minds during war.

It was even more common in a war against the Demon King of Death.

Hoffman had seen this kind of insanity many times himself.

It was better than being completely insane, as Hoffman had said, but insane anyway, and he was just a burden.

I looked at Zahina.

She’d said she’d take care of it, so it was her turn to step up.

As I stared, Zahina walked over to the soldier.

Unaware of her approach, the soldier continued to talk about the fight.

Zahina stood in front of the talking soldier and pulled down his saluting hand.

A soldier with a bad taste and an elf trying to cure him was a sight to behold, but neither Hoffman nor I were the kind of people who would buy into it.

We were both somewhat insane ourselves.

Once again, I could feel mana flowing from Zahina’s hand.

It seeped into the soldier’s head, and his voice grew quieter.

“I’ve been working so, so hard………….”

He stopped speaking, and stared at Zahina in disbelief.

After a moment, the light returned to the soldier’s dazed eyes.

Then he cried out in pain.

“Ow! It hurts! Shit! It hurts!”

When he came back to his senses, the pain was the first thing he felt.

I had to pull out my potion, but even Zahina could heal a burn like that.

As Zahina’s mana seeped into the soldier’s hand, the reddened skin slowly returned to its normal color.

“Uhhh, that doesn’t hurt. Who are you?”

The soldier stared at his hand in disbelief, then lifted his head to look at Zahina.

He stared at her in bewilderment, then his mouth dropped open when he saw her ears.

“Uh, uh, an elf. There’s an elf!”

I could almost hear him saying it.

I almost said the same thing when I first saw them.

Moreover, with Zahina’s beauty, which was exceptional among the ears, it was impossible not to hear the word elf.

The soldier blushed at the sight of Zahina, then seemed to recognize me and Hoffman standing behind him.

“Well, there’s a knight and a ranger. You can’t be…….I’ve been dimension-hopping?”

Dimensional travel, is that genre still in vogue?

“Either that, or I died in battle, or I’m hallucinating…….”

The soldier looked from me to Hoffman to Zahina, then back to me, and mumbled something in a daze.

I think she must have woken him up, but he didn’t seem to be okay either.

Anyway, I figured I could hear the story.

I stood next to Zahina and asked him.

“Can you hear what happened?”

I spoke in Imperial, but the soldier understood me.

“All of a sudden, zombies came pouring down from the North, and……. What? It’s not a hallucination, it’s not dimensional travel, what are you people, it can’t be cosplay.”

Is this because he came to his senses?

Maybe we should let them know who we are before we explain.

I looked around.

We were in front of a vacant lot with a bunch of dead bodies. Not exactly the place to talk.

Maybe we should go somewhere where we could talk.

“Is there somewhere we can sit down? I think we’re going to have a long talk.”

At my words, the soldier looked around the clearing and pointed behind him, toward the ammunition dump.

“Well, if you’d like to go to where I’ve been…….”

Okay.

We got where we wanted to go without a fight.

We were invited into the ammo bunker by the soldier.

As he led us through, he looked at Zahina with a puzzled look on his face.

“You don’t have to keep holding…….”

Zahina shook her head.

“I can’t let go.”

“What? No, if you suddenly talk like that…….”

Was he imagining the number of children he would have after marriage?

By the look on the soldier’s face, he was definitely delusional.

But, alas, it wasn’t for that reason.

Mana continued to flow from Zahina’s hand.

“If I let go, you’ll go crazy again.”

She didn’t even bother to turn around.

At Zahina’s words, the soldier stared blankly at her hand.

“Ah…….I see, that’s right, I’ve been crazy all this time.”

The soldier looked at Zahina with a confused expression.

“You didn’t cure me, did you?”

“No, no. I’m just stopping it. Your soul is already broken, and it can’t be cured.”

There were cold words, without the slightest bit of consideration and Hoffman scratched his arm in frustration.

“Haha. Is that true? That’s so merciless, it’s almost believable.”

He was better, but the soldier didn’t look normal, he still looked like something was broken.

We followed him into the ammo bay and as expected, the armory was a mess.

The ammunition and guns that should have been piled high were nowhere to be seen, and the trash that the soldier would have left behind took their place.

No wonder.

In order to rally the troops and move out of the unit, the weapons and ammunition in the magazine would have to be unloaded,

In order for the soldier to survive, he would have left trash in it.

More than that, the trash piled up inside the magazine suggests that the soldier must have brought a lot of combat rations with him when he fled the magazine.

Pvt. Kang Hyun-woo?

I clicked my tongue as I watched the soldier clean up the trash on the floor.

I felt sorry for the soldier’s condition.

He must not have been an ordinary soldier, given that he hid in the armory with food while his unit was being wiped out.

It was a pity that it had come to this.

“It’s not my house, but please take a seat, everyone.”

We took our seats just inside the entrance to the ammo bay.

Fortunately, there were plenty of ammo boxes left, so we didn’t have to sit on the floor.

Once we were all seated, I spoke first.

“We are the people from the other world who came through the gate after the Demon King.”

The soldier’s eyes turned strange at my words.

I wondered if he didn’t believe me.

Whether he believed me or not, I told him our side of the story.

That we were from another world, that the demon king had crossed over from another world, and that we had followed him.

We told him everything, except for the part about the slain hero.

In truth, it wasn’t something I would tell a stranger from another world, but I didn’t mind telling this one.

After all, he wouldn’t remember any of it when we left.

When I finished, the soldier looked at us with a blank stare.

“That’s a hard story to believe.”

He was right, it was unbelievable to anyone on this side of the world but there was no other explanation.

Funnily enough, telling the truth was the most plausible explanation.

The soldier was probably thinking the same thing I was.

“But I’ve seen a knight kill a giant zombie with a glowing sword, and I’ve seen an elf heal me like this, so it’s hard not to believe.”

He was right, he had seen it with his own eyes.

“Seeing as how you speak differently, you must have a different language, right?”

Besides, he’d fought the undead and zombies himself, so he had reason to believe me.

Sighing, the soldier looked at the hand Zahina held, then at me.

“If what you say is true, you want me to tell you about the state of the world, don’t you?”

The soldier was right.

Sure, I’d gathered information from various sources, but I’d never heard it from someone who was still alive.

What’s more, this unit had actually organized itself and fought against the demon army.

It was a well-organized unit, which meant that we might be able to get a different story from a soldier than we would from a normal person.

If we’re lucky, we might hear about a surviving military unit or government agency.

To be honest, I didn’t care if I didn’t.

I’d already accomplished my goal of coming to this military base.

I looked around the ammo dump.

Crates of ammunition were scattered everywhere.

Even if the armory was nearly empty, there were still weapons and ammunition left over.

There was a machine gun with a bent barrel and a box of ammunition left over from the soldier.

There was more than enough ammunition and weapons here for Zahina.