Chapter 1

Chapter 1 — The Illegitimate Son of Westfalen (1)

“Young Master Eric, it’s time to wake up.”

A familiar voice pulled me out of a deep sleep.

I opened my eyes slightly and looked out the window.

It was still dim outside.

“Martin... it’s still dawn.”

“The tax collector is waiting. Please get up.”

I buried my face deeper into the soft cotton blanket, wanting to enjoy even a little more sleep.

“Let me sleep for another hour.”

“No. If they find out you departed late, you may be scolded.”

What kind of nonsense was that?

Even if I was an illegitimate son, who would dare scold the lord’s son?

“Don’t lie to me. Nobody’s going to say anything.”

“The Lord has already gone to his office. You can look out the window and confirm it yourself.”

I immediately shot upright.

“What? How old is the Lord already? Why does he have so little need for morning sleep?”

Damn it.

Everyone in this world was an early bird.

It had been nearly nineteen years since I reincarnated here, yet I still couldn’t get used to starting the day before the sun had even risen.

Grumbling, I crawled out of bed and stood up.

A maid immediately came over and began helping me change clothes.

Martin urged the young maid on.

“Hurry your hands. We don’t have much time.”

“I-I can’t reach.”

The short maid floundered helplessly.

The average height here was around ten centimeters shorter than in Korea, and at 185 centimeters, I was considered very tall.

I sighed and started putting on my clothes myself.

“Stop rushing her. What difference will a few seconds make?”

“We’re in a hurry. Please sit here.”

As soon as I sat on the chair Martin had prepared, the maid began vigorously brushing my hair.

“Ow, ow! Be gentle! Martin, tell her to stop pulling so hard.”

“Your hair looks like a bird’s nest. Please endure it for a moment.”

The guy treating me so casually was my personal knight.

He was the son of the former knight commander, and since we were the same age, we had been friends since childhood.

After roughly finishing my preparations, I walked out of the room and grumbled at him.

“I’m still the lord’s son, you know. Aren’t you treating me a little too casually?”

Martin snickered.

“You still don’t hold any official position.”

“Oh? Is that because you’re a senior knight now?”

Laughing, he took off the arming sword hanging from his waist and handed it to me.

“What? Don’t tell me I’m going alone.”

“We have regular mobilization training today. Since I’m a senior knight, I can’t skip it.”

I accepted the arming sword and fastened it to my belt.

Since it was a sword meant for a knight, it was quite heavy. I could feel the belt sagging under its weight.

“One knight and twelve soldiers will be assigned as your escort, so don’t worry and have a safe trip.”

“I’m not worried. I’m just saying it’ll be boring.”

I waved goodbye to Martin and hurried toward the administration building.

By the time I arrived, a line of cargo wagons was already waiting in front.

One of the officials noticed me and quickly approached.

“Young Master Eric, welcome. My name is Hans, the tax collector.”

“It’s been a while. How’s your mother? Is she still selling things at the market?”

Hans seemed delighted that I remembered him and laughed loudly.

“Hahaha! You remember! She’s doing well, all thanks to you, Young Master.”

“What do you mean, thanks to me?”

“It’s because you drove those thugs out of the market back then.”

“Did I do something like that?”

Hans looked upward as if searching through his memories.

“Was it about five years ago? You beat up all those bastards who were extorting stall fees. Have you already forgotten?”

“There were too many thugs to keep track of. Ugh. I was sick of them.”

“True. There used to be so many of them, and then they all disappeared...”

Hans then called over a slave and told him to prepare for immediate departure.

I hadn’t even had breakfast.

I hadn’t even had a cup of tea.

And now I had to get into a cargo wagon?

“What? We’re leaving right away?”

“This year’s harvest was abundant, so we need to move quickly.”

“Where are we going?”

“Zigen.”

“Argh!”

Zigen was in the middle of nowhere.

It was a rural area that took two nights and three days to reach by wagon, and it also served as the place where tax revenue from the surrounding villages was stored.

My task this time was to monitor the tax collector’s party.

There were so many officials who embezzled taxes or accepted bribes that whenever taxes were collected, someone from the lord’s family or extended family usually accompanied the officials.

“Why do they only give me jobs like this?”

“Don’t you usually spend most of your time playing around?”

“I do plenty of work here and there.”

“But none of it is official work for the administration.”

Whenever I had free time, I wandered around the territory helping residents deal with their complaints.

No one had ordered me to do it.

I had simply thought there was no point in staying trapped inside my residence doing nothing.

Before I knew it, I had been helping the residents for more than ten years.

“They’re going to kick me out after my coming-of-age ceremony anyway. They sure know how to work me hard until then.”

“They might not kick you out.”

“What use would they have for an illegitimate son?”

Hans stopped inspecting the wagon.

“If it were up to me, I’d put you in charge of the administration. You’re good at getting things done.”

I frowned.

Hans was a low-ranking official and a commoner.

If someone heard him questioning the decisions of nobles, he could get himself into serious trouble.

“Watch what you say. Birds hear words spoken during the day, and mice hear words spoken at night.”

“I apologize. But where does that proverb come from?”

“There’s a place like that. Life is comfortable there, but everyday life feels like a war.”

“Isn’t that contradictory? What a strange place.”

“Tell me about it.”

I jumped onto the cargo wagon, and Hans gave the signal for the entire convoy to depart.

Only one knight rode on horseback at the front.

Hans, the tax collector, the knight’s squire, the soldiers, and the slaves were divided among twelve cargo wagons.

When we returned to the lord’s castle, we would be traveling with even more wagons, all of them loaded with wheat.

I lay down on top of a sack of horse feed and stared at the sky.

A perfectly clear blue sky without even a speck of dust.

It was a kind of clarity I could never have seen in Korea during my previous life.

Then I glanced at something floating at the edge of my vision.

[Synchronization Rate: 99.6%]

It had slowly been increasing ever since I was born into this world.

Now, it was finally approaching one hundred percent.

There was no doubt that it was a message from the Hunter System.

However, I still had no idea what would happen once the synchronization finished.

It’d be nice if I awakened as a Hunter.

When I was three years old, I had already undergone an aptitude test using a magical tool.

According to the results, I had no talent for becoming either a knight or a mage.

That had more or less decided my future.

I was occasionally called around to learn how the administration worked, and once I became an adult, I would probably be assigned to some insignificant position somewhere.

Then all that would remain for me was a quiet life in the countryside.

But my previous life had been far too intense for me to live like a retired old man already.

If I could somehow regain the abilities from my previous life...

In my previous life, I had been an S-rank Hunter.

Every day, I fought fierce battles against monsters and villains.

I threw myself into those battles because of the status and responsibilities that came with being an S-rank Hunter.

And eventually, I lost my life in battle.

Back then, I thought my life had ended.

I never imagined I would be born again in another world.

It was the campsite on the second day of our journey.

I was sleeping inside my tent when a loud rumbling from my stomach suddenly woke me.

Grrrrrrumble—

Urgh! Did I eat something bad for dinner? This is bad. Really bad.

Holding my stomach, I hurried out of the tent.

Soon, I found the pit where all the waste from the campsite had been dumped.

I quickly lowered my pants and squatted over it.

Whew. That was close. I’ve never had stomach problems in my life. What the hell happened? And this smell is something else.

Grumbling about the first stomachache of my second life, I began walking back toward the campsite.

Then—

“Don’t let your guard down just because they look dead. Check every one of them and finish them off.”

“Yes, Captain.”

I heard a suspicious conversation from ahead.

My instincts immediately warned me of danger.

I quickly climbed up a tree and hid among the branches.

Looking down through the leaves, I saw the campsite below.

It seemed to have been attacked.

The knight, his squire, the soldiers, and even the slaves were all dead.

Is Hans dead too? No... was this even an attack in the first place? How did they kill everyone without making a single sound?

Then I heard the strangers talking again.

“Captain, the numbers don’t match. We’re missing one.”

“That can’t be. He said everyone ate it. That was the strongest poison we have. It can even kill an ogre. Count again.”

“I already counted twice.”

“Tch! Kill the slave who put the poison in the food. Then the total should be thirty-five.”

So these people had apparently ordered one of the slaves to poison the food.

Everyone who had eaten dinner had died from it.

I ate plenty too. Why am I still alive?

I was pretty sure I had eaten more than twice as much as most people.

Yet other than the stomachache, there was nothing wrong with my body.

For now, I decided to consider myself lucky.

Even a knight capable of using aura had died.

The fact that someone like me, who possessed no special abilities, had survived could only be called incredible luck.

Unless...

There was another explanation.

I stayed hidden in the tree and watched the strangers.

The ones wearing robes are mages. The others are trained soldiers. For now, I should observe what they’re doing before deciding how to act.

The strangers began loading the corpses onto the wagons they had brought with them.

Then they moved out.

I climbed down from the tree and followed from a distance.

At night, keeping up with moving wagons was easy enough even at a normal walking pace.

Eventually, I found a mountain stronghold.

The wooden fence surrounding it wasn’t particularly high.

I moved to higher ground, raised only my head above the ridge, and observed the inside.

The line of wagons entered the stronghold one after another.

Torches had been placed throughout the area, allowing me to clearly see what they were doing.

A huge hexagram magic circle had been drawn on the ground.

The strangers began placing the corpses inside it.

“Captain, we’ll begin the ritual.”

“What ritual? Don’t make it sound so creepy. You’re just chanting a magic spell.”

“...Anyway, we’re starting.”

Six mages wearing black robes stood at each point of the hexagram and began murmuring something.

A magic spell? What are they trying to do?

Soon, the magic circle began shining brightly.

Then one of the mages shouted.

“Rise!”

“Uuuaaaagh...”

One by one, the corpses began standing up.

Zombies.

So they were dark mages. Where did these bastards come from?

Dark magic itself wasn’t particularly forbidden across the entire continent.

However, it was difficult to find dark mages inside the Empire these days.

That was because the Church of the Sun God hunted them down and burned them all at the stake.

One of the dark mages pointed with his finger.

The zombies began walking in the direction of our former campsite.

I watched them and frowned.

Why are they doing something so pointless?

There were three things that didn’t make sense.

First, zombies weren’t useful military forces.

The zombies of this world weren’t infectious, and they moved slowly.

Any healthy adult could easily take down three or four of them.

Second, why specifically target the tax collector’s group?

If these people had attacked Zigen or one of the nearby villages instead, they could have created hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of zombies.

Third, they had abandoned the tax collector’s horses and cargo wagons.

They hadn’t stolen anything.

They had even brought separate wagons specifically to transport the corpses.

In other words, they deliberately avoided harming the villages and specifically turned only the tax collector’s party into zombies.

They’re trying to create some kind of pretext.

The question was—

What were they trying to achieve with it?

I had a suspicion.

But I was nothing more than the lord’s illegitimate son with no official position.

Making the final judgment was the lord’s responsibility.

I hurried back to the campsite and selected the three strongest horses.

“Hyah!”

First, I needed to report this to the lord’s castle.

The lord’s castle finally came into view.

The soldiers on top of the walls seemed to have noticed me approaching at high speed and began moving around busily.

In my current state, I probably looked like a messenger carrying urgent news.

They were likely preparing to open the gate.

I soon reached the eastern gate, pulled hard on the reins, and shouted.

“I am Eric, son of the Lord of Westfalen! I have an urgent matter to report to the Lord! Open the gate!”

“Young Master Eric? Ah! Please wait just a moment! Open the gate! Open the gate!”

The senior soldier apparently recognized my face and immediately ordered the gate opened.

Creeeeak—

A small side gate beside the eastern gate, just wide enough for a single horse to pass through, quickly opened.

“Thank you. Every moment counts. I’ll report directly to the Lord first.”

“Please hurry and—”

“Hyah!”

Without even waiting for him to finish, I kicked the horse into motion.