Chapter 106
Rat-a-tat-tat!
"Run!"
“Kyaaaah—!”
“Grrr!”
"Aaaah!"
We were being chased.
Immediately after leaving Upsquare Shopping Mall, monsters came pouring out from the alleys and between the commercial buildings on all sides, accompanied by the sound of footsteps.
Splish! Splish!
They were monsters made up of beasts that looked as though they had been drenched in water.
I didn't know why they had suddenly come pouring out, but there was only one thing we could do right now.
"Uuugh!"
“Monsters—!”
“Run no matter what! Support anyone who can't run and head straight for the station!”
I tightened my grip on the spear slung over my shoulder and shouted.
If we tried to fight clumsily on the ground while escorting this many people, the casualties would be disastrous.
So there was only one goal.
'Run to the train!'
“Clear away the obstacles ahead!”
Thud—!
The golem moved its massive body surprisingly quickly, taking the lead and clearing away the obstacles in our path.
The drones floating overhead occasionally turned around and fired suppressive shots, slowing the monsters chasing us.
The dead monsters served as speed bumps, but only for a moment.
"Aaaah!"
"Huff, huff...!"
The pharmacist and I supported the screaming patients as we desperately ran toward the tracks.
Nabi had also abandoned her usual playfulness, grabbing the siblings with both hands and sprinting.
Every so often, she glared back at the monsters pursuing us.
Perhaps the vines understood what Nabi intended, because vines stretching out from the ground formed small loops and made themselves into obstacles.
"Khek!"
The monsters following us caught their ankles on the vines and fell, causing them to collapse one after another like dominoes.
Thanks to that, we opened up quite a bit of distance between us and the monsters.
"Open!"
Sssrrk— Thud—!
At my command, the doors of the waiting train opened, and the breathless survivors hurriedly poured inside.
After helping everyone else board until the very end, I leaped into the train, and the thick doors shut firmly with a hiss of escaping air.
“Haaah, haaah...”
“W-we're really safe if we stay in here, right? There are monsters swarming outside...!”
The patients sat on the floor and continued staring anxiously outside, but Ha-seon and I remained relatively calm after entering the train.
We knew how durable the train was.
Anyone who made it inside was safe.
Instead of answering, I headed toward the cab.
The monsters surging toward the train like a wave appeared on the camera.
Monsters were everywhere.
"...Did a dungeon break open?"
But there was no need to be afraid.
Once they were inside the train, it didn't matter whether hundreds or thousands of monsters came rushing at us.
"Let's upgrade the ballista first."
I had vowed to upgrade it after firing it myself earlier and nearly blowing off the snake beastkin's head. That time had come.
Vrrrrm—!
When I selected the upgrade, the train began to vibrate.
I poured the intermediate mana stones and materials I had stockpiled in the storage room into the crafting process without holding back.
[Upgrading the ballista.]
[The Artisan's Touch is applied.]
[The upgrade applies automatic loading and automatic mode.]
[The Artisan's Touch adds a function that retrieves fired arrows with a certain probability and fires them again.]
The upgrade was complete in just a few seconds.
Before the tide of monsters could draw any closer beyond the gigantic windshield in front of the cab, I activated the automatic modes for the missiles and ballista.
The missile turret and ballista immediately locked onto the monsters and began turning.
Puff—! Boom!
First, the missile turret atop the train spewed black smoke.
Dozens of missiles shot into the sky all at once.
The missiles fell in arcs and landed precisely in the middle of the swarming monsters.
KWA-AAANG—!
A storm of flames erupted with a thunderous explosion.
"...That smell."
The smell of the monsters' bones burning drifted faintly all the way here.
At the same time, the upgraded ballista began moving at a terrifying speed, as though it had a motor attached, and started spewing steel arrows.
Fwoosh—! Whssh! Thwack!
Gigantic steel arrows flew out at half-second intervals, tearing the monsters' bodies apart from head to foot.
Blood and chunks of flesh sprayed in all directions like fountains wherever the arrows passed.
I watched the spectacle while mass-producing steel arrows at the same time.
“Eek...!”
“What's happening?!”
The explosions and violent shaking reached all the way inside the train, startling the survivors in the passenger car into screams.
"Huh..."
Those who looked out the windows gaped with their mouths hanging open, then let out short, stunned breaths as though they couldn't believe their eyes.
Every time a tremendous roar rang out, fragments of monsters shot into the air.
Just then, my brow furrowed as I watched the screen.
The train's firepower was so overwhelming that a group of monsters terrified by the missiles and arrows began bypassing the train and spilling toward downtown Ulsan.
If they flowed in that direction, the Ulsan safe zone would be in danger.
Fortunately, there was a way to deal with them.
Click.
I quickly turned on the monster lure.
Sound waves said to grate on monsters' nerves spread outward.
The effect appeared immediately.
The monsters that had been heading toward the safe zone all stopped, then sharply changed direction toward the train.
“Grrr—!”
As even more monsters gathered, dozens began forcing their way through the gaps in the bombardment.
At last, those monsters slammed into the front and sides of the train.
They pounded and scratched the train's outer walls mercilessly with their sharp claws and teeth.
Thump, thump!
"Ugh...!"
"W-what do we do? What if the windows break...?"
The moment the pharmacist and the patients came face-to-face with the drooling faces of the monsters right outside the windows, they trembled and backed away from the glass.
The fear that the thin windows might shatter at any moment was plain on their faces.
But no matter how much the monsters scratched with their claws, they couldn't leave even a single mark on the train or its windows.
“They can make it this far even through that barrage?”
With my arms folded, I calmly leaned back in the cab seat and watched the situation outside.
"...Come to think of it—"
I stood up and opened the cab door a little, and the monsters came rushing in.
Even Ha-seon, whose expression had remained calm throughout our time inside the train, panicked at my action, but the monsters couldn't enter without my permission, even if the door was open.
"Take that."
I thrust my spear through the narrow opening.
The monsters trying to squeeze through the small gap were impaled on the spear and knocked away.
The missiles and ballista were busy, so I cleared away the ones that approached from close range myself like this.
Five minutes later.
Fsssh—
"...Is it over?"
The firing sounds that had continued around the train stopped, and the view outside was filled with black smoke.
I had also just dealt with the monsters that came close using my spear and the crusher at the front of the train.
Perhaps because of the hot smoke, the air conditioner inside the train came on.
As the monsters were gradually cleared away, we decided to properly start making potions.
“Hoo... Ms. Ha-seon, please pick some herbs from the cultivation machine.”
“Yes!”
After asking Ha-seon, I brought over water and mana stones.
"Will this be enough?"
"I think we'll have to try it."
Ha-seon brought over a handful of freshly harvested herbs from the cultivation machine.
The ingredients were simple.
An intermediate mana stone, the herbs the elf had given us, and clean water.
The problem was—
"...The proportions, I suppose?"
Back in the otherworldly town, the elf had made a potion by chewing a mana stone with its teeth.
If I remembered correctly, the elf hadn't used much water.
It had almost seemed as though the elf had used saliva instead of water.
Recalling the scene, I took a mana stone in my hand.
Crunch—!
“Whoa, why won't this break?”
As its name contained the character for stone, a mana stone was simply a lump of rock.
I had assumed it would be easy because the elf had crushed one with its teeth, but—
"...Does the elf have unusually strong teeth?"
Grinding it into a fine powder with nothing but my grip was more difficult than I had expected.
Still, thanks to my Strength skill, I somehow managed it.
I put the powder into a bowl, then added the torn-up herbs in a one-to-one ratio for the time being.
I added a little water and crushed the ingredients together by hand to make the potion.
The mana stone dissolved in the water more easily than I had expected.
Perhaps a little personal touch would make a difference.
"Huh?"
Then blue light began leaking from the potion.
It was the light that appeared when the Artisan's Touch was applied.
So it applied to potions too.
I bottled the green liquid, which gave off a faint blue glow, and immediately distributed it to the patients.
“Everyone, take a sip.”
The pharmacist accepted the potion with half suspicion and half hope, then gave each patient a sip.
The patients hesitated at first because it was a glowing green liquid, but they had already seen so many incredible things that they trusted me and drank it all down.
I did my best to keep a calm expression, but—
'Will it really work? Were the herb and mana stone proportions all right? Why didn't I ask the elf about the potion ratio?'
I was just as anxious inside.
There was no visible change in the patients immediately after they drank it.
Unlike a cut, this was a situation where their insides had to be healed.
Then, a few minutes later, people cautiously began describing the changes they felt, one by one.
“Huh? I think my chest feels less tight...”
“I think my cough has stopped too...”
"My head doesn't feel hot."
No one was certain, but most of them felt that they had somehow improved.
The pharmacist took a thermometer from her pocket and began checking the temperature of the female patient who had had the highest fever.
"36.8 degrees. Her fever really went down..."
"R-really?"
"Ohhh...!"
Just as everyone marveled at her return to a normal temperature—
A commotion rose outside.
‘Did more monsters come?’
I frowned and checked outside the window, then soon made an incredulous expression.
The source of the commotion wasn't monsters.
The guards from the safe zone who had stopped our group earlier and the survivors inside the safe zone had come rushing over in a crowd.
"...They came because they heard the commotion."
Whether they had been drawn by the black smoke or the explosions,
they were stunned by the surrounding ruins, where the missile and arrow barrage had literally devastated the landscape, the corpses of the monsters, and my train standing in the middle of it all.
Swish, scrape.
Several people quietly set the weapons they had been carrying on the ground, as though they had made an agreement beforehand.
Then they pulled smartphones from their pockets and began taking pictures of the train and its surroundings.
"Look at that cratered ground."
"So that was the sound of the missiles..."
"Hey, shit, shouldn't we avoid gathering together like this?"
I could almost hear the sound of a ghost story about me being uploaded to the Survivor Gallery already.
"...This worked out perfectly."
The pharmacist slowly stood up.
She intended to go apologize to them.
When I opened the train door at the woman's request, the pharmacist took the lead, saying she would go out alone and apologize.
But the patients and others who had regained their strength after drinking the potion followed behind her.
“We'll go with you, pharmacist. Let's go out and apologize together.”
"Yes. This happened because of us..."
In the end, everyone went out together, and the pharmacist's group apologized to the people from the safe zone.
After hearing the circumstances, the people from the safe zone nodded, saying they hadn't known about it. Though they seemed a little hurt, a heartwarming reconciliation was underway.
Although they kept their distance because we couldn't yet say that the patients had been completely cured, seeing that their fevers had gone down, time would probably tell.
‘Hmm, that's a relief.’
Just as I was leaning back in the cab seat and contentedly watching the scene unfold—
Tap, tap—
“Hm?”
The golem urgently tugged at my sleeve with one of its large pincers.
“What is it? Is it Donggeuli again? All right. Your supplement—”
Instead of answering, the golem pointed with its steel foot beyond the front windshield, toward the distant tracks.
My gaze followed the tip of its finger.
And my pupils instantly widened.
On the tracks, I spotted a golden creature standing blankly with a large cloth-wrapped bundle slung over its shoulder.
"It's a golden goblin."
Perhaps it had been drawn here by the monster lure, but a golden-glowing goblin was staring toward us.