I woke up with a headache, the kind you get when you sleep a little too
much, but when I got up, I couldn't believe my eyes on what I was seeing.
"Damn, what is this place...?"
I'm pretty sure I was taking a shower in my own house right before I lost
consciousness.
I didn't know how, but now I'm in some sort of hills as far as I can see.
I can't even remember why I lost consciousness. Everything was so sudden.
"Achoo! Moreover, I'm still all naked here! This is the worst. I will die
from cold if I'm not careful."
Shivering in the chilly wind, I climbed the hill in front of me to try to get a
grasp of the situation.
I figured that I would eventually see something if I went high enough, but
what I found there was again went beyond my imagination.
"Are they filming a movie or something? But I don't see any studio
equipment."
A few hundred meters in front of the hill I was on, two groups of people
were clashing like a battle in a major TV drama.
There was a mixture of shouting, yelling, and screaming, and there was no
other word to describe it than war.
"No, that can't be. ... Are they really doing that fight?"
The scene was so fierce that I was a little lost in thought.
But I managed to understand that it was not safe to go on like this, so I
looked around to see what I should do.
"Nope, I'm not going to that battle. At the very least, not practically naked.
Now, where should I get some...that looks like a good place."
Luckily, I found what looked like the remains of a battle at the bottom of
the hill.
As far as I could see, there were dozens of dead bodies lying around.
I grasped the ruins of this battlefield, and from there, I was able to find out
to some extent what kind of people are fighting what.
For the moment, I still believed that this was a dream, as all of it felt so
surreal.
But when I touched one of the rotting corpses, I immediately knew that this
was a reality.
For now, I need to survive this.
"Still, I have to be careful in choose which armor to wear. I might change it
depending on which side will win."
Barefoot, I headed there, watching my step.
"I don't like the idea of stealing from the dead, but ... I'm sorry. May
your soul rest in peace."
I put my hands together in prayer for a moment, then went through their
clothes to see what I could find.
"Again, I'm truly sorry for stealing, but... I promise I will put it in good
use. Come to think of it, a normal person would throw up at this point."
Fortunately or unfortunately, I had worked in a livestock slaughterhouse
before.
I had developed a high tolerance for blood because of that, but the strange
atmosphere still made me feel sick. Th is cha pte r trans la tion is made p
ossi ble by sta bb ing with a s yr inge tr ansl at ion s. che ck up -to -d ate
tran sl ations on my Wor dpres s site .
"–!! Fuck. Hey, don't look at me like that. I thought you were alive and
about to jump on me there! Damn, this is way too different from poultry. I
think I'm going to shit my pants! Not that I have any!"
As a "revenge", I "borrowed" a pair of shoes from the man whose eyes had
gone wide open. Of course, to pay respects, I closed down his eyelids
afterward.
I also tried to avoid eye contact with the other corpses as much as possible
as I scavenged for anything I could use.
"Oddly, despite being a "medieval war", the ratio of men to women was
about 50/50. Thanks to that, there's not much to scavenge."
Muttering to myself to provide a distraction, I gathered up the clothes I was
able to get, and about ten or so minutes, I managed to get myself some
fairly decent clothing. For a soldier of a war-torn era, that is.
In the meantime, I also put on some light leather armor over it. It was pretty
bloodstained, but safety first.
"What the hell are these guys fighting? Are they...animals? No, they're
too big for that."
Finally graduating from nudity, I looked at the corpses of the "beings" the
soldiers were fighting.
"It" was about a meter and twenty centimeters tall. It also had greenish skin
with a short single horn sticking out of its forehead. It wore a crude
waistcoat and nearby its hand was a club, probably used as its weapon.
There were some differences between the individuals, but they were
generally the same kind of beasts...if they are still classified as one.
"It's not costume or anything. What the hell are these people?"
I'm not going to lie, the horrible battlefield and the creepy creatures made
me want to throw up, but I don't have time to crouch and vomit.
Something in my mind is telling me that I must somehow get to the army I
saw earlier to help me.
"For the sake of my safety, please win. I don't want to run around later
against such beings."
I returned to the first hill and observed the battle.
A little time had passed since then, but the battle was still going on.
Thankfully, the battle situation seemed to be favoring the human side.
"Good, keep it up, keep it up...No, something came out of those
beasts...they're huge...Giants?!"
It seemed to be going smoothly until about ten big humanoid figures behind
the little green people began to move.
They seemed to be about three meters long, and they overtook the more
miniature ones and closed in on the human army.
One of the giants swung their clubs, and a soldier wearing heavy armor was
blown away.
But the humans already saw this and responded with their cavalry from the
back of the line.
"Oh, wow. More and more spears are getting stuck in the giants. I was
worried about what was going to happen for a while, but...."
With the entrance of the cavalry, the giants were defeated one by one, and
after the final one was struck down, their side broke apart and began to flee.
The humans then hunted down and killed the fleeing enemy. It was as
thorough as exterminating pests.
When there were only humans left alive, they raised a battle cry in the end.
Phew, they managed to save the day. Now I'll just have to sneak in there
and mix up with them.
They were probably so excited after the battle that they would overlook that
one unknown face was in the mix.
From there, I quickly decided to move inconspicuously and try to join the
army.
.
.
.
"Good, good, they don't seem to have noticed me."
The crowd was still a little hot and buzzing from the battle when I arrived.
I used a broken spear I found nearby as a walking stick to blend in as an
injured soldier and tried to listen in.
I first tried to read the situation from the conversations of the nearby
soldiers.
"Thank the heavens that things went well in the battle today."
"It was a bit of a mess when the Ogres came out, but I guess Luke boy's
cavalry going out did the trick."
"Hey, say Count Luke Krall here. If he hears you speaking to him like that,
he'll kill you."
"Oh, right. He's got a bad temper...."
Apparently, the cavalry I just saw belonged to a man named Count Luke.
But count...so he is a nobleman?
As I was thinking this, I suddenly felt a tap on my shoulder.
I hurriedly turned around and saw a man of about thirty years old with a
stout appearance looking at me. If you ar e a ble to re ad this me ss age, you
are re adi ng from an un autho rized agg reg ate sit e. Re ad a t my Wo rdPr
ess to supp ort me and m y tra ns lation s.
"Oi, you. You have quite an unfamiliar face there. Whose unit are you
from?"
"Y-unit? Uhh..."
Oh, crud, why didn't I think about that?
There was no way I was going to tell them it was Count Luke's troops. That
thing was cavalry, and I'm in the infantry.
As I stammered, the man's face grew grim.
"Hmm? Wait, you're injured. We take care of the wounded over there.
Better patch yourself first."
"Oh, I see. Thank you very much!"
I bowed my head and walked in the direction the man pointed.
The stains of blood and the marks on my leather armor seemed to have
given him the wrong idea.
I went to where he told me to go and blended in with the wounded soldiers
who had gathered there.
Here and there, I could hear voices writhing in pain and the soldiers
responding to them.
"I am a stranger here, but they probably won't be suspicious of me because
they'll think I'm from another unit."
As I finally calmed down and caught my breath, the army went and started
to retreat.
The wounded soldiers were put on several wagons and started to move after
the army.
Of course, I too was included in one of those wagons.
At that time, the man sitting next to me spoke to me.
"Hey, I haven't seen you around before. Are you a new recruit?"
"Y-yes, I am."
"Ooh, and here I thought you're a refugee who has escaped from
somewhere, looking at your age."
"A~hahaha. Cough, cough."
Despite my nervous laughter as an opening line , I was able to ask several
information from the man while adding some coughs to emphasize my
"miserable state".
It seems that the beings they were fighting earlier were called monsters, the
smaller ones being goblins and the larger ones being ogres. And the city
we're going to is called Krasland.
"So you got beaten up unconscious by the goblins and got left behind by the
troops!?"
"Y-yeah, it was my first time in the field, so I was kind of sidelined."
"Well, it's a lucky thing you survived, as luck is the most important thing to
a soldier!"
As we were chatting while I was gathering information, someone riding on
a horse approached behind the carriage.
The one riding on the horse was a woman. She looked to be about twenty
years old.
However, when the man next to me noticed her, he hardened his expression.
"That's a noble. What brings her here?"
The sound of his voice seemed that I should be wary.
Likewise, the air in the carriage hardens.
But the other side didn't seem to notice it, and with a nimble movement, she
moved down from the horse and got into the carriage.
"I'm Baroness Lucy Finlay. I've heard that you have one of my men here.
Where is he?"
That was the first encounter between me, Yuushin Sanada, and the noble
commander – Lucy Finlay.