Chapter 72: Killed It
As Walfred walked toward the zombies.
Sienna watched his retreating back as he left the barricade, her face full of confusion.
He looked far too confident for it to be a bluff.
Watching that sight, she recalled the moment he’d first introduced himself as Walfred.
’I was sure he was lying.’
And she couldn’t help it.
The Walfred mentioned in the community was presumed to be a light-attribute S-rank hunter. But the man who’d introduced himself as Walfred was frost-attribute.
So she hadn’t believed him.
’And yet...’
The instant she saw what unfolded next.
Sienna felt her judgment start to waver.
"Wh-what is that?"
"...I didn’t just imagine that, did I?"
"The zombies aren’t attacking?"
The sight of him strolling leisurely through hundreds of zombies as if out for a walk. Faced with a scene she couldn’t believe even as she watched it, everyone, Sienna included, was stunned.
A while later, Walfred disappeared from view.
And a barrage of questions poured out of the hunters.
"Boss, what is that guy, really?!"
"I-is he really Walfred? For real?"
"..."
But Mitchell kept his silence.
A moment ago he’d have confidently called the man a fake impersonating Walfred, but after what he’d just witnessed, the words caught in his throat before he knew it.
As that silence dragged on.
Kugugugung! Krakakaka!
A tremendous quake suddenly hammered the corridor.
Hazy dust rained down as if the corridor might collapse at any second, and the fluorescent lights, long since dark, clattered to the floor one after another.
The epicenter of the tremors was where the Corpse Lord stood.
Sienna’s eyes went wide.
’No way, is he really...?’
Is he fighting the Corpse Lord by himself?
The tremors were violent enough to make her think so. At that, the hunters jostled with one another, straining to observe the depths of the corridor through their binoculars.
"You see anything?"
"...No, not a thing."
The spot where the Corpse Lord was presumed to be was a good distance from the barricade. So there was no way to tell what was happening deeper inside.
In the end, all they could do was wait. As the booming and the tremors repeated, the only thing passing was anxious time.
"What in the world is going on in there... Huh!"
The face of a hunter who’d been scanning the front through his binoculars hardened in an instant. At the alarming reaction, Mitchell immediately spoke up.
"What is it? What’s wrong?"
"Z-zombies...!"
"What about the zombies?"
"The zombies are coming! This way!"
The instant those words left his mouth.
The zombie horde that had been standing motionless deep in the corridor suddenly began charging toward the defensive line.
An unexpected situation.
Recognizing how urgent things had become, Mitchell screwed up his face and shouted.
"Prepare for battle!"
At Mitchell’s roar, the hunters readied themselves and hurriedly took cover behind the barricade.
But they couldn’t hide their fear.
"Damn it! Why are they suddenly doing this?!"
"D-don’t tell me that guy failed?"
"Damn it, I knew it! He just provoked the Corpse Lord and now we’ve got this mess...!"
Just as everyone sank into despair, picturing the worst-case scenario, Sienna, watching the zombies’ movements, suddenly felt a strange sense of wrongness.
’The zombies’ formation... it’s fallen apart?’
Just this morning, the zombies had moved like well-trained soldiers. But now, their movements were different from back then.
Because they didn’t look like they were acting under the Corpse Lord’s command, but rather moving on nothing but blind hatred and rage toward the living.
The moment she realized that.
Kraboooom!
An explosion suddenly erupted from the rear.
Then a dozen or so massive icicles came flying like artillery shells and crashed down on the zombies and ghouls.
Pa-ba-ba-bak! Crunch! Krrrk!
The icicles’ power was terrifying.
Not content with pulping the zombies’ torsos, they ground the ghouls to a mush as well.
A path stained with blood and chunks of flesh opened up across the battlefield that had been packed with hundreds of zombies. Just as everyone was staring at it blankly.
"...Launch."
A cold voice settled over them.
Then the zombies’ heads exploded all at once.
In the gap, a few ghouls lying in ambush lunged for the opening, but they were all cleaved in half by a strike that split the air.
Krrrunch! Splooorch!
It was nothing short of a one-sided massacre.
Before long, the shrieks the zombies let out gradually faded. A little more time passed, and the surroundings had fallen into total stillness.
A silence so complete no one dared even breathe.
Then.
Thud!
Footsteps sounded from deep in the corridor.
Along with the steadily growing footsteps, a man soon emerged. Caked from head to toe in the rotten blood and flesh of corpses.
It was Walfred.
"..."
Walfred walked forward with two ice axes hanging at his sides. The closer he came, the more they felt a vicious cold so sharp it stung the skin.
Gulp.
Was it because they were overwhelmed by the sight?
Or because they were frozen stiff by the cold?
Mitchell and the hunters simply stood rooted in place, quietly swallowing dry. The first to regain his composure among them was Mitchell.
"Th-the Corpse Lord...?"
"Killed it."
Walfred answered, wiping away the blood plastered all over his face with his sleeve. Mitchell and Sienna, on the other hand, had faces full of disbelief.
"...You exterminated the Corpse Lord?"
"Already?"
The two of them couldn’t believe what Walfred was saying.
It felt like less than thirty minutes had passed.
In this short a time, he’d exterminated a B-rank Elite, and on his own at that? In response to their doubt, Walfred pointed at the corridor behind him and said:
"If you don’t believe me, go check for yourselves."
At those words, the hunters who’d been reading the mood ran into the corridor where the Corpse Lord had been.
A moment later, they came back, eyes so wide they looked about to pop out of their heads.
"I-it’s true!"
"The Corpse Lord, it’s dead!"
"...!?"
Mitchell and Sienna wore stunned expressions.
The two of them, as if they wouldn’t be satisfied until they saw it with their own eyes, rushed headlong into the corridor.
And a while later.
When the two returned, they stared blankly at Walfred with a look in their eyes utterly changed from before.
"You really, a-all by yourself..."
"H-how...?"
The eyes of the two fixed on Walfred held only two emotions.
Shock. And awe.
Facing the two of them, Walfred quietly shrugged his shoulders.
"That’s what I kept telling you."
That I’m Walfred.
The moment those words bored into her ears, Sienna had no choice but to accept it. That the man standing before her really was the Walfred.
Because in the metropolitan area, where there wasn’t a single S-rank hunter, the only person who could pull off something like this, based on all the information gathered so far, was Walfred.
As that silence stretched on.
"...Thank you."
Mitchell was the first to break it.