Chapter 2 – Free Knight Jansen Egger

I was born in a small baronial family in the Kingdom of Sorbia, one of several kingdoms in the southern part of the Empire.

Although we held a noble title, we were rural nobility with a tiny fief consisting of just a few small villages.

And I was the third son of the family, without inheritance rights.

Of course, life was better than for commoners with nothing, but our family was too small for siblings to fight over becoming the head of the household. Except for the eldest brother, the rest of us had to find our own way in life.

Otherwise, we could become secretaries begging for food from the eldest brother, become knights and gain independence, or be driven out of the fief to become commoners with a few coins given to us.

So I decided to become a free knight.

Thwack!

As I swung my sword, the skeleton charging at me with a rusty spear crumbled before me.

I pulled my sword out of the crumbled skull.

The blade was completely shattered.

“Damn, there’s not a single intact edge left. At this rate, it’s more of a club than a sword.”

As I clicked my tongue looking at the sword, the senior soldier following me said:

“You’ve been smashing them rather than slicing them all along anyway, sir. Besides, you said it’s easier to crush these bony fellows.”

Perhaps because we’ve been rolling around on this battlefield together, he spoke casually in a manner unbefitting a soldier.

In truth, it was because I had allowed him to speak to me that way.

“It is better to smash them since they have mana, but… it’s such a waste! I finally became a knight, only to get caught up in this war.”

If we were fighting humans, there might be something worth looting, but our opponents were rotting undead. There was nothing to gain except supplies.

And even those supplies were always a mess.

Seeing the equipment of the knight leading the vanguard in this state, one could easily imagine the condition of the rest of the unit.

“But now we can see the end, can’t we?”

“That’s why I’m just grumbling like this.”

I sighed as I looked at the skeletons overflowing the field.

The undead legion still seemed endless, but as the senior soldier said, the war was about to end now that the heroes had stormed the Demon King’s castle.

I decided to become a knight because of my talent.

Fortunately, as I grew up, I realized I had a talent for physical activities.

I endured the harsh training of the two knights in the fief and didn’t flinch when I went outside the castle for real combat experience.

Even when I killed a person for the first time, I was fine after vomiting once.

The knights also told me that I could definitely become a knight.

Fortunately, the lord and lady couldn’t ignore their talented youngest son, so when I came of age and left the fief, they provided me with proper weapons, armor, and even a horse.

Thanks to that, unlike others, I was able to leave the fief with proper equipment.

Now that I was equipped, all I had to do was travel the world as a free knight for a few years, build a reputation, and then find a fief that needed me.

It was difficult to maintain my equipment without a squire, but that was just a spoiled complaint compared to those who set out on their own with just a sword.

After leaving the fief, things seemed to be going according to plan.

As the two knights had acknowledged, my skills with full equipment were not inferior to other knights, and I gradually built up my reputation by helping merchant groups and participating in territorial battles.

As my reputation grew, I even received requests from knights and nobles asking me to come to their fiefs. It was time to choose a place to settle down.

But then, something absurd happened.

Someone called the Demon King appeared on this continent.

The Demon King, known as the King of Death, destroyed countries and wreaked havoc on the continent.

Because of this, all my plans to settle in a fief were blown away.

Although I had built a reputation as a free knight, it was all within the Kingdom of Sorbia.

If I fled to another kingdom to avoid the fight, I would be no different from a mere mercenary, let alone a knight.

Moreover, Sorbia was not the only place engulfed in war.

In the end, I had no choice but to go out and fight the undead along with other free knights.

The only consolation was that knights belonging to fiefs were also forced to fight.

In fact, it was an all-out war to prevent the fall of the kingdom, no, the continent. There was no knight who could avoid the fight.

So, I had to keep fighting against the Demon King’s minions, the piles of skeletons that poured out.

“If only I didn’t remember my past life unnecessarily, it wouldn’t have been this hard.”

I grumbled again as I blew away the head of an approaching skeleton with my battered sword blade.

“Pardon?”

The senior soldier asked, watching the skeleton head fly away.

I shook my head at the questioning soldier.

One day, while fighting against the Demon King, I remembered my past life.

There was nothing special about how I remembered my past life.

One day, while fighting against the Demon King’s army, I suddenly remembered.

The life before, the past life before being born into this world called the previous life.

Memories of a world different from this one, a world called Earth where science was developed instead of mana.

That situation written in the novels I had seen in my past life.

However, unlike those novels, I only remembered my past life.

It wasn’t a fantastical event where the personality of my past life mixed with or overwrote my current personality, but simply an addition of memories.

Or maybe this is enough of a novel-like story?

Anyway, since it was just a memory, there was no shock or confusion, and nothing like a change in personality occurred.

It’s just that the current life became frustrating due to the comfortable and clean past life that came to mind.

I just realized that everything in this world that I had taken for granted was inconvenient and filthy.

Moreover, after years of grappling with the undead, I wasn’t even able to maintain the poor hygiene of this world anymore.

It was clear that the majority of the numerous soldiers who were said to have died from curses while fighting the undead actually died due to poor hygiene.

If there had been enough priests, many would have survived…

But the priests had to fight the undead.

The divine power of priests and clerics was more effective against the undead than mana. In the battle against the Demon King, priests were more than combat mages.

I saw a beacon rising in the distance.

Red smoke.

It was a beacon rising from the direction of the Demon King’s castle, no, the Demon King’s dungeon, beyond the plains where the undead were gathering.

It was a signal that the hero’s party, which was a separate unit, had entered the dungeon.

That was fortunate. As planned, as expected of the hero chosen by God.

Now that the hero had entered the dungeon, we had to proceed to the next stage.

Buuuuu.

The headquarters must have seen the beacon too, as the sound of a horn came from the rear.

Crack.

After crushing the ribs of a fallen skeleton with my foot, I said to the senior soldier:

“We’re slowly retreating. Send the signal.”

“Understood.”

The old senior soldier gestured to the other soldiers.

I sighed as I looked at the soldier’s face.

A knight should have a squire to assist him, but I had this old soldier instead.

He claimed to be in his early thirties, but judging by his wrinkled face, he looked well over 40.

But it must be true that he was in his thirties.

There’s no way an ordinary soldier would live past 40 in a place like this.

At the senior soldier’s signal, the soldiers who had been helping me began to retreat.

The soldiers under my command.

Soldiers to block the skeletons I was cutting down.

“Retreat slowly!”

“Don’t rush in thinking you can kill them!”

“This is in front of the Demon King’s castle. We can’t defeat the undead with our power!”

“Leave it to the knight!”

At the senior soldier’s direction, the veteran soldiers shouted instructions, leading the new recruits.

Whether veterans or new recruits, they were soldiers who could barely stop the advance of a single skeleton even with several of them working together, but just blocking the movements of the skeletons was a great help.

It’s hard for a knight to run around catching scattered skeletons in all directions.

The soldier who had been responding to me all this time was the most senior among the soldiers.

It was a sigh-inducing situation, but it couldn’t be helped.

Still, at least as a free knight, I was given soldiers like this. Most ordinary mercenaries or conscripted soldiers had already become one of the undead attacking us.

In the Demon King’s land, filled with the energy of death and the Demon King’s morale, it was nearly impossible to remain an intact corpse.

Thanks to the priests’ blessings and holy water, we wouldn’t turn into undead while alive, but after death, it was hopeless.

The same was true for me, a knight.

If lucky, I might be fighting the heroes in the dungeon now as a death knight rather than an ordinary undead, but I had no intention of dying yet.

I couldn’t die here after finally remembering my past life.

I had to win this fight, become a fief knight, and set up a splendid manor.

A peaceful life of protecting the fief, eating delicious meals and drinking wine in a clean house where I could bathe every day in a bathroom I built, and have maids clean daily.

Although memories of games and entertainment from my past life came to mind, this kind of life would be satisfying enough.

As my soldiers and I retreated, other knights fighting the undead also began to fall back.

Knights and soldiers retreating while blocking the undead that filled the field.

The undead, with their morale boosted, charged at us excitedly, but we gritted our teeth and slowly retreated.

The casualties increased as we retreated, but we couldn’t run away.

We had to lure and tie down the undead here until the heroes defeated the Demon King.

We were the main force attacking the Demon King’s army and the decoy unit supporting the hero’s party as a separate unit.

Well, for a decoy unit, we were the allied forces that gathered the power of the continent.

In the end, it was the hero’s job to defeat the King of Death, the Arch Lich.

Actually, when I recalled my past life, I wondered if I might be the hero I had seen in novels from my previous life.

But reality was different.

The god of this world chose a hero and his companions that I didn’t know, and bestowed divine power upon that hero.

He smashed the Demon King’s subordinates, the liches, and defeated the death knights.

Thanks to the hero’s party, we were able to raise the flag of counterattack, and finally march to the front of the Demon King’s dungeon like this.

Many died on the way here.

Countless soldiers, knights, and mages died, and I heard that even some of the hero’s companions had died.

Still, we didn’t stop because there was hope.

It was the same now.

As we retreated, knights and soldiers died.

The soldiers who helped me died one by one, and I could no longer hear the voice of the senior soldier.

Could it be that the battle would only end after the entire allied forces had died?

Just as I had that thought.

Thud.

The charging skeletons stopped in their tracks.

And they collapsed.

Rumble rumble rumble.

Not just the skeleton in front of me, but the ones beside and behind as well.

The undead that filled the field fell one after another.

And they all turned into dirt and dust.

It was a majestic sight.

I looked around with blank eyes.

The only ones standing sparsely were knights.

Almost no remaining soldiers were visible.

The soldiers had not survived.

Many knights were also missing.

The imperial knight who boasted about his drinking capacity, the knight from the neighboring kingdom who said he would get married when he returned, none of them were to be seen.

Still, it was fortunate.

They would be able to rest in peace now.

Wooah!

We won!

The surviving knights cried, laughed, and shouted.

The battle was over.

In the end, the heroes had killed the Demon King.

Now that all the undead moved by the Demon King’s power were dead, the continent would be at peace.

And I would have the comfortable manor I dreamed of.

Tears welled up suddenly.

I wiped my wet eyes and looked towards the Demon King’s dungeon.

Just like in the novels I had read, the hero had saved the world.

Buuuuu.

The sound of a horn rang out long.

The sound signaling the end of the battle.

We turned around with grateful hearts.

It was time to go home now.

However, the next day.

We heard shocking news from the hero’s party who had escaped from the dungeon.

The news that the Demon King had not died but escaped.

The Demon King had fled to another world through a gate he had created long ago.

That gate was still open, and the allied forces decided to send a pursuit team.

Damn it, deployment to another world.

The military service just never seemed to end.