-Zombie Bus
It was a strange coincidence.
We only got into the car and set off after the tour bus carrying the zombies had left.
But after driving a little while, we saw the tour bus up ahead in the distance, and from then on we ended up continuing down the same road behind it.
“This makes it look like we’re following the zombie bus, doesn’t it?”
“Right. Where are the zombies going? Are they heading into town?”
We were planning to go into town first to get a feel for the atmosphere, then stop by a mart and buy various supplies.
It wasn’t far from Dodamsambong to town, but following the zombies’ bus the whole way made me feel a little strange.
Like the gait of zombies, the tour bus was moving slowly, barely picking up speed. There was no need to draw attention by forcing an overtake, so I simply drove slowly as well.
In any case, it was a narrow local road that wound along the river, so it wasn’t easy to speed up.
“Oh! It’s turning off that way.”
Not long after we entered town, the tour bus finally turned onto a different road from the one we were taking. It was heading in the direction of Gosu Cave.
“I was worried the zombies might cause some kind of trouble in town, but thankfully they’re going somewhere else.”
I said as I drove toward the town center.
“Where do you think they’re going?”
Gil asked, turning his head to look at the tour bus as it grew farther away.
“For now, it’s in the direction of Gosu Cave... but who knows what their destination is.”
“Gosu Cave is a tourist attraction, isn’t it? They were at Dodamsambong earlier too. Maybe they really are zombies who came sightseeing? They’re riding a tour bus, after all.”
Cheon Danbi said something oddly innocent, unlike her.
“I don’t think that’s it. Zombies who came sightseeing wouldn’t be that out of it.”
“I guess so. They’re definitely being controlled.”
“Should I put tracking magic on the bus?”
Gil seemed extremely interested in the zombies’ whereabouts. It looked like he couldn’t stop worrying about them.
“No, don’t. There’s no need to leave traces of us on the zombies for no reason. Don’t forget that we currently have a black mage hostage loaded in the trunk.”
“Yes. That’s true.”
When I cut him off firmly, Gil immediately accepted it, though he somehow seemed a little disappointed.
But rescuing the zombies was not our current priority.
As long as the zombies weren’t immediately doing anything, there was something we had to do first.
Since it occurred to me, I extended detection toward the trunk. Na Sanhaegyeong was still quiet, as if he hadn’t woken up yet.
We slowly drove around town, looking for a mart.
When we passed the traditional market, I noticed quite a few zombies. However, unlike the zombies from earlier, these were ordinary zombies.
“I guess a lot of zombies live in Danyang?”
Gil turned his attention to the zombies again.
“I didn’t know either. In any case, zombies wouldn’t only be in Seoul.”
“But the zombies here don’t seem to be homeless. They’re working, aren’t they?”
“You’re right. That is a little unusual.”
Unexpectedly, the zombies here were working. They were carrying goods or cleaning inside the market.
I had thought the locals were indifferent to the zombies, but apparently that wasn’t all there was to it.
Since this was the countryside, the way other races lived might differ from Seoul, but something about it left an unpleasant feeling.
‘There also seem to be an unusually large number of zombies. This is strange.’
I had the thought that the black mages might be using zombies in various ways, but there was no way to confirm it right now.
Aside from that, there was nothing particular about the atmosphere in town.
No especially suspicious people stood out, and I didn’t sense the gray aura of a black mage.
We found a mart, bought and loaded up food supplies, then left town.
“I should cast invisibility magic on the car again now.”
When we left town and entered a quiet road, I said that while pulling the car over near the roadside bushes.
“Where are we going now?”
Cheon Danbi asked.
“For now, I’m going to visit the cave I mentioned at the beginning.”
If black mages had been openly roaming around town, I would have reconsidered, but since there had been no particular movement, I decided to go to the cave as I had first planned.
I didn’t know whether it could be used as an interrogation site, but in any case, it felt like there was something near the cave. Otherwise, the memories of my previous life wouldn’t have suddenly come back so vividly.
“Aha, that secret cave? But do we have to be careful? Do you think the Magic Tower is nearby?”
“I do have a hunch there’s something over there.”
“Then I’ll drive again from here. You have a lot to pay attention to, don’t you, Mr. Mage? Something might suddenly appear and we might have to fight.”
“Are you sure? Aren’t you tired?”
“I’m not tired. And I like driving.”
At Cheon Danbi’s kind offer, I decided to hand her the wheel.
After casting invisibility magic on the car and rearranging our seats, we set off.
“Which way should I go?”
“Head toward Gosu Cave, the direction the zombie bus went earlier. Pass Gosu Cave, keep going along that road, and when a fork comes up, I’ll tell you.”
“Okay.”
Cheon Danbi hadn’t just said she liked driving for no reason. Even though it was a narrow local road, she began increasing the car’s speed.
“Whoa, whoa. Slow down. There’s no hurry.”
“I just wanted to drive fast for a bit. Thanks to the invisibility magic, other people can’t see our car now, so it’s fine to go a little fast, isn’t it?”
“Fine. Do as you like. Just don’t get us into an accident.”
In the blink of an eye, we passed the Gosu Cave tourist site and were speeding toward Sobaeksan.
That was when another tour bus came into view up ahead.
“Huh? Isn’t that the zombie bus? What the heck? No, why have they only made it this far?”
Cheon Danbi hurriedly slowed the car.
Even so, the distance between us and the tour bus kept shrinking. Seeing it up close, there was no doubt. Its shape and color were definitely the same zombie bus from earlier.
We had spent quite a bit of time looking around town and stopping by the mart, so I hadn’t expected to run into the zombie bus again here.
And on top of that, it was continuing down the same road as us.
“It’s going incredibly slowly.”
“Exactly. Well, if it’s crawling along like that, I guess it makes sense that it didn’t get far.”
Gil and Cheon Danbi said as they stared intently at the zombie bus.
“Where on earth is it going?”
Feeling inexplicably tense, I muttered a word as well.
“Could it be going to the Magic Tower?”
“I don’t know. In any case, don’t overtake it. Just follow slowly. There’s a fork a little farther on, and we’ll turn off there, so let’s wait until then.”
“Got it.”
Cheon Danbi looked as if she was itching to speed up, but she obediently followed my words and kept a distance from the bus.
At last, the fork appeared.
But by coincidence, the zombie bus headed in the direction we were going.
“Mm. We have to go that way too.”
“That way? Then we have to keep following the zombie bus?”
“We do.”
Cheon Danbi let out a deep sigh.
The zombie bus was moving even more slowly than before. It couldn’t be helped, since the road was becoming an increasingly deep mountain path. It was so narrow that it looked precarious for a bus to pass through.
Perhaps because we had moved away from the tourist area, even the pensions we had occasionally seen were no longer visible. Naturally, there were no villages where people lived either.
The farther we went, the more it felt like we were deep in the mountains.
“What is this place...? It does look exactly like the sort of scenery where a secret cave would be.”
“The terrain is unique too, right? Since it’s Paleozoic terrain, it has a primitive feel.”
“It really doesn’t look like scenery from our country. It feels unfamiliar. But why are the zombies taking a bus this deep into the mountains?”
The surrounding scenery drew our attention, so each of us said something.
Even then, Gil didn’t forget his interest in the zombies.
Since earlier, I had been extending detection magic while cloaking my mana in stealth, examining the surroundings.
However, although the surrounding scenery was eerie enough that it would feel fitting for the Magic Tower to be around here, unexpectedly, there was no place where gray aura was thickly spread.
The only mana flowing out was from the bus carrying the zombies.
“Right. Why would they go into the mountains where there’s nothing?”
Cheon Danbi agreed with Gil.
“Rather than there being nothing, it may be that it’s well hidden. We don’t know when something might appear, so don’t let your guard down.”
I answered. There was no way there was nothing here.
The zombies couldn’t be on their way to hike Sobaeksan.
There was undoubtedly a Magic Tower or some facility created by black mages somewhere around here.
“If it’s hidden well enough that even you can’t notice it, Mr. Mage, then it must be extremely well hidden.”
“If it’s the Magic Tower, the black mages’ stronghold, that would make sense.”
Although it wasn’t yet time for the sun to set, the mountain road was already dim.
Only the zombie bus and our car were traveling down the mountain road, with no houses, no people, and no other cars in sight.
The feeling grew stranger and stranger.
Then, suddenly, I clearly sensed a gray aura from up ahead.
Like water mist rushing in from a valley in an instant, the gray aura wrapped around us and covered us.
“Ah! What is this?”
“Mana all of a sudden! What is this place?”
Cheon Danbi and Gil let out exclamations like screams.
As if we had crossed some unseen boundary without realizing it, the scenery before our eyes had changed in an instant.
“Quietly stop the car.”
At my words, Cheon Danbi hurriedly stopped the car.
The bus carrying the zombies was coming to a stop up ahead. And before it, things that had not been visible at all just moments ago were revealing themselves.
It seemed they had set up a boundary with something similar to invisibility magic and concealed the area from sight, and we had apparently crossed it.
Perhaps because we had followed the zombie bus, we crossed the boundary without restriction, and thanks to the invisibility magic cast on the car, we hadn’t been discovered.
A wide, flat clearing had been prepared in the forest, and several buildings stood there.
A long concrete building looked at first glance like a factory. Beside it were a few houses that looked like mountain cabins, and there were also several flimsy temporary structures that seemed to have been made by placing container boxes there.
Behind the buildings, several vinyl greenhouses could be seen.
“Is this the Magic Tower?”
Gil asked in a trembling voice.
“It’s too shoddy and unimpressive to be the Magic Tower, isn’t it? Rather than that, doesn’t it look more like a laboratory or a factory?”
“A laboratory? A factory? Then could this be where they experimented on Vanaheim’s Golden Apple?”
“It might be.”
Cheon Danbi quickly understood what I meant.
I suspected the same thing.
A place where they conducted experiments on black mages, separate from the experiments being carried out at the Vanaheim Research Institute or Kim Seonho’s mansion.
And I was thinking those zombies might be test subjects as well.
Among the things I had heard from Ren, there had been a story like that, and among the rumors circulating in the Daejeon area, there had also been talk about apples.
The place said to be somewhere in Chungcheongbuk-do. It was right here.
“What do we do now? Should we go back out?”
Cheon Danbi asked, looking around.
“It was over there. The place where the undisclosed cave was.”
I raised my hand and pointed toward the greenhouses as I spoke.