Civil War – Lan Gaston
Sweat pours down from my body as I frantically swing my sword.
What is this?
Although my consciousness was blank, my swordsmanship, which I had practiced countless times so that my body moved before my head, unfolded naturally like water.
Oh this.
The sound of sweaty clothes and fast-moving bodies is accompanied by the sound of a fierce sword strike as if the air is being torn apart.
Is it a memory of the knighthood ceremony?
Immediately following the sharp sound of metal hitting metal, a tingling sensation crawled up my hand and up my arm.
And the moment I recognized that, the me in the dream and my consciousness overlapped.
After clashing swords a few times, they naturally widened their distance, and those around them who were watching the scene with bated breath erupted in gasps.
“Oooh….”
“Who is that guy? “Your skills are amazing.”
“What is a mercenary’s son? You are the same age as Marquis So. “How can a commoner with no roots be like that…”
The gazes of all the people gathered in the family’s dance hall turned into a burden as the exclamations and words they spoke out without thinking about it weighed down on my shoulders.
Suffering from the pressure and shortness of breath, I glared at the person standing in front of me.
Ran. A boy from an unheard of commoner background and the son of a mercenary.
The contrast between my trembling sword and the sword rising and falling calmly with my breathing only added to the confusion in my mind.
This is a swordsmanship that he learned from knights under the strict orders of the marquis from the age of 6, when he could not even properly hold a sword.
But you can’t defeat someone who didn’t even receive proper training as a knight!
How on earth can this happen?
The boy standing across from me, holding out his sword, is himself full of surprise.
Instead, it burned a thousand dollars inside me, and I felt dizzy with anger and embarrassment.
It was the sound of clicking my tongue that brought me to my senses, where my thoughts were swirling in confusion.
“Tsk-”
A voice came from the head of the table that clearly penetrated my ears even amid countless whispers.
father. Marquis Hubert de Lafayette.
A war hero who created the Marquis de Lafayette from a knight through his overwhelming inaction and bravery.
And the one who is called the strongest knight in the kingdom.
That person is looking down at me, who is struggling with a commoner boy.
His pitiful gaze felt like it was piercing my back like an arrow, and it coldly swept over my feverish body along with the sweat running down my spine.
It’s not like they’ve worked hard to look like this!
The impatience welling up in my chest pushed me back and I jumped in once again.
“Aaaah!”
Even when I heard him shouting out his breath, it was closer to a scream.
As he kicks the ground and quickly closes the distance and swings his sword, a metallic scream rings out and shock hits his arm.
The sword that I threw out with all my might as I sprinted at full speed was blocked very easily.
The opponent is extremely defensive, but clearly reads the sword’s trajectory and responds by catching and dodging it.
To someone who is not familiar with swords, it may seem like they are engaging in an equal battle.
However, there is no way the so-called knights would not know that I am inferior.
Even if I used all the sword techniques I had honed so far, including straight attacks and trickery, I could not see any way to break through that defense.
It was also obvious why the opponent did not attack at all even though there was this much of a gap.
Because I am the son of a marquis.
He couldn’t blatantly defeat the Marquis’ son in front of the Marquis, or he couldn’t lose to him clumsily, so he was only consistent in his defense.
My teeth naturally gritted at that pitiful consideration and behavior.
The marquis and his vassals looked at this scene with disappointment, their arms growing numb from the fatigue of the series of sword strikes.
It was all too heavy to bear.
The fishy scent of blood spread from my hard-bitten lip and lingered in my mouth.
As the son of a marquis, the best knight in the Kingdom of Francia, all kinds of expectations followed me from a very young age.
The Marquis may have been great as a knight, but he was not a good father.
He wanted me to follow in his footsteps and become the best knight in the kingdom, and to meet his expectations, I had to endure harsh training from a young age.
There was no way I would have endured that pain to end like this just to see this result!
But the moment I was about to jump in again, a cold voice stopped me.
“stop.”
The other person withdrew his sword as if he had been waiting for those words, and I turned my head shakily to look at the head of the table.
The Marquis’ cold, pitiful gaze pierced my heart like a knife.
“That’s enough.”
To see this pitiful sight.
The words the Marquis didn’t say out loud followed him like an auditory hallucination.
With the retainers looking at me with sadness and pity.
…A mother with tears in her eyes.
That ended up making me explode.
“Not yet, not yet!”
I didn’t even realize what I was screaming at.
I raised my sword and infused it with magic.
“Marquis Soso!”
I saw Ran, who had raised the sword, startled when she saw my sword glowing faintly with magical power.
Mana management, which can be considered the basic qualification of a knight, is not something that can be learned naturally simply by having a talent for swordsmanship.
No matter how good a swordsman he is, he cannot block a sword loaded with mana with just a piece of iron.
The Knight’s Festival is a competition to showcase the talents of even those who have not received formal training as a knight.
Naturally, the rule that the use of mana was also prohibited did not come to mind.
At this moment, it didn’t even cross my mind that the opponent who couldn’t stop this could get seriously hurt.
I don’t want to throw away my childhood, where I spent my whole life under pressure and harsh guidance, so I’m just struggling desperately to show my worth in any way possible.
But right after that, my sword exploded and shattered with a terrible sound, as if metal was screaming.
The fragments of the shattered sword scratched and cut me here and there, but I didn’t even feel the pain.
My frantically shaking vision reached the dagger lying intact among the fragments without even the shape of the sword remaining, and then turned to the owner who had thrown it.
“…You piece of trash.”
This was the impression of his father, the Marquis, on the pathetic struggles shown by his 14-year-old son.
–
“Oh shit.”
I opened my eyes with a curse.
I had a shitty dream that was the worst moment of my life.
“Little Marquis? Anything could happen…”
When I saw the face of my escort, Lan Gaston, looking at me with worried eyes, I felt embarrassed and covered my eyes with my hands.
We are moving to Montpellier to find the princess.
When Baron Dumont told me that I was going out while there was a plague, he grabbed me by the back of my neck and pretended to faint, trying to stop me, but since securing the princess was more important than anything else, I pushed ahead.
However, bringing along a bodyguard would only make it more dangerous in a plague situation, and more than anything, if the city was blockaded and the Marquis was seen leaving the city, it would be obvious what the marquis’s subjects would misunderstand.
So, the two of them secretly left the city together with Gaston, who volunteered to be their escort, saying he couldn’t let me go alone.
Anyway, both of us have enough skills to protect ourselves, and this one moves much faster.
The midnight sky is completely dark, and there is silence everywhere except for the sound of the bonfire burning.
I trembled for a moment, thinking about the worst dark experience in my life, and then answered while trying to keep my composure as much as possible.
“No, it’s nothing.”
If you think about it, Lan, who was given the name ‘Lord Gaston’, did nothing wrong.
It’s just that the Marquis, the kingdom’s strongest knight, is a corpse other than his pride. But it’s also a coincidence that Ran competed in the Knight’s Festival in the same year as me, and it’s also a coincidence that Ran, who learned swordsmanship over his shoulder from his well-established mercenary father, only appears once in a hundred years. He was just a genius in swordsmanship.
That damn thing happened anyway.
Due to the combination of that misfortune, I suffered from feelings of self-destruction and helplessness for a very long time.
But if I think about it, it might be that bad luck that made me who I am today.
I watched Gaston putting kindling into the campfire for a moment, then opened my mouth.
“I’m sorry sir.”
“yes?”
I did it out of desperation at the time, but if it weren’t for the Marquis, I might have seriously injured or killed Gaston.
Moreover, the Marquis, who was very angry at the knighthood, had Gaston, who defeated me, imprisoned in the estate with me in the name of my guard knight. Even though he was a commoner, a knight with amazing talent was buried, even though he could not be moderated.
As a result, Gaston’s name was not even properly known, and I remained the shame of an aristocrat who was defeated by a commoner whom I had never heard of.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t know what you’re saying….”
“I’m just sorry for many things.”
Gaston, who was bigger than me, absentmindedly scratched his chin where his beard had grown.
Before returning, I also had a victim mentality toward Gaston, so I was reluctant to talk to him properly.
Nevertheless, he remained as my knight until the end and died fighting on the battlefield.
I should have apologized and expressed my gratitude a long time ago. But since he probably couldn’t understand what I was saying right now, I said something else instead.
“…Thank you for following me even though there was a plague going around.”
“I am the Marquis Minor’s escort knight. Of course we have to follow it.”
I laughed at Gaston’s blunt answer. Isn’t the son of a mercenary, who was said to have no fundamentals, much more knight-like than the great ‘Blue Knight’?
“Sir, let’s shift now. “Get some rest.”
“It’s okay, Marquis So. A little more…”
“It’s not even a day or two anyway, so take a break. “If it seemed like the Marquis would sleep alone, I would have brought more attendants with him.”
“…I’m sorry then.”
Gaston no longer complained about my words and lay down covered in a blanket.
I did as he was doing, examining the campfire, lost in thought, then glanced at the gas canister lying there.
An unlucky knight who, despite being a commoner, had amazing talent and remained loyal until the end, but died without receiving any reward.
I quietly recited my promise and resolution to him.
“I’ll make sure your loyalty is rewarded this time.”
If I had not met Gaston and lost in the knighthood, would I, who grew up winning and winning, have become a person like the Marquis?
If so.
Even at the moment when I was defeated by the revolutionary army and driven to the guillotine, I may not have been able to accept the mistakes of the kingdom and the nobility, but instead I hated the revolutionary army that killed me and was sharpening my blade for revenge.
If there is a being called God, there is no way he would have sent me back just to avoid my own death. There must be a reason why it is me among the many nobles of Franzia.
When I first came back, I was upset that he had died and was treated no differently than the marquis and other nobles I despised. All I could think about was struggling to avoid that fate.
However, I have already changed quite a few things and gained connections with many people.
I know of royal families and nobles who are driving this land to destruction through their greed for the throne and vested interests, unaware of the existence of demons who drink the blood and pus of the collapsing kingdom and shed scorn.
I know all that, but I can’t just sit there passively waiting for my time.
In the end, the two princes who eat away at this ruined kingdom must fall along with the kingdom of handsome knights who only pay lip service to fame.
Even as they rot and crumble, they struggle to deny reality, before the stench flowing from their corpses drives everyone into hatred and madness, causing even innocent people to burn.
–
When I arrived in Montpellier despite my determination, I had to wander around for several days.
“What do you say, Marquis So?”
“They left a long time ago.”
After coming out of the private house, I answered with a frown on my face.
Unlike the Marquis, who procured a small amount of necessary medicine and food and issued a lockdown order, the local lord did not respond properly, and there was a time when the devastated residents begged for mercy and a big problem almost occurred.
When we left the Marquis’ Territory, we brought a lot of food with us, but no matter how much money we gave, there was no place to get food, so now we’re running out of food.
“Tsk, that’s not easy.”
Gaston and I both walk around with our faces covered, and there are very few residents outside the village, so we have little contact.
Still, it would be a disaster if one of us were unlucky enough to catch the plague.
I looked at the pits where the victims of the plague had been burned.
Still, there are certainly relatively few victims of the epidemic in this area.
Among the villages we passed by, there were corpses covered in flies lying on the roadside, and there were places that looked like ruins because no one was walking around.
The most serious problem now is that
the residents around here praise the princess as a saint and are basically uncooperative.
We tried all sorts of things, including trying to reassure her that we had no intention of harming her, and even threatening her with our noble authority.
However, at most, as reported by the upper Aquitaine authorities, the princess wears clothes that cover her entire body and a veil, moves with an escort, and usually stops at private homes where the sick are at night to treat them before leaving.
Even a few days after arriving in this area, I was convinced.
“…It seems like they are avoiding us.”
The loyal knight Gaston also let out a rare sigh.
It must be difficult for a guard knight to have a man named the Marquis So drag him out, saying that it is the most important thing, and to chase after a saint or something in the midst of a plague.
To be honest, even I am at a loss.
We are going around asking the residents about the princess’s whereabouts, and since the residents are much more cooperative with the princess than we are, tracking her is bound to be difficult.
First of all, it is clear that the princess is mainly active at night. Because most of the testimonies are consistent. So what do you do during the day? Are you sleeping? Are you hiding?
I thought that the damn Holy Church had mistakenly accused a woman who was praised as a saint of being a witch, but now I see that it wasn’t entirely groundless.
Honestly, if she wasn’t going around treating the sick, she would cover her whole body with a veil and only be active at night, so she would easily be mistaken for a witch.
In the end, Gaston and I looked at each other, sighed deeply, and got ready to camp.
–
I was watching Gaston putting kindling into the bonfire as I relaxed my sore body from the long camping trip.
Seeing Gaston with a rare, happy face filled with anticipation made me smile.
In the end, when I almost ran out of food, I decided to hunt.
What are you going to do with the bow? Use it in times like this!
Originally, hunting on someone else’s territory without permission was a serious crime, but that was only a commoner’s standard. Besides, the lord is stuck in the mansion anyway and won’t come out, so what’s the point?
The sight of a whole roasted wild boar hanging over a bonfire, giving off a very appetizing scent and dripping with oil, makes me feel enriched.
If you feast on meat, the fatigue accumulated from moving around at night to increase your chances of encountering the damn nocturnal princess will go away.
But the fun was short-lived.
Both Gaston and I reached for the swords we had put down.
As we were alert, footsteps came closer through the forest.
The person who finally emerged from the forest was wearing a cloak that a traveler would normally wear.
His body is not very large, and you can see the long robes he wears under the hem of his cloak.
However, he wore a hood attached to his cloak, and that was not enough, he also wore a veil underneath and gloves on his hands.
what is this. Totally ‘I’m suspicious!’ That’s what you’re wearing.
…uh? for a moment.
“Excuse me?”
As soon as the girl’s clear voice could be heard, a growling sound came from the other side.
There was silence, and the girl who looked too suspicious to be praised as a saint began to panic.
“I’m really, really sorry and embarrassed to meet you for the first time, but could you please share a little food with me?”
I was so dumbfounded by the incredibly shy voice that I felt all strength drain from my body.
Oh damn. I should have tried to lure him out with something to eat while he was going through all that hard work.
?
