HTSAADK 01

A Way to Live as a Disaster-Class Knight: Episode 001

1. Monstrous Strength

I was reborn in a fantasy world.
It was a world where getting by in life was very difficult.
Unlike the modern era where one could live off instant noodles with government assistance just by breathing, this was different.
In the distant, ancient past, they say there were many mystical and special things.
Nowadays, it was an ordinary fantasy world where such things were hard to find.
Actually, this was something a crazy mercenary who passed through the village a while ago had spouted.
Nonsense about dragons that swallow the sun, giants that topple mountain ranges, and the like.
He wasn’t using metaphorical expressions; he was a genuinely insane mercenary. His mental state looked quite dangerous, and one day he suddenly disappeared without a trace.

Actually, the mercenary isn’t important.
This world wasn’t easygoing enough to get lost in such trivial musings.
The medieval fantasy world was a harsh environment where you had to run until your feet were drenched in sweat just to barely secure the day’s sustenance.
Being born into a poor lumberjack family made it especially severe. I grew up digging up tree roots, searching for edible bugs, picking up and eating whatever I could find.

The amusing thing was that despite the insufficient nutrition, my body grew rapidly.
Contrary to modern common sense, even within meager nutrition, I developed solid muscles and astonishing physical abilities.
It was a shame I wasn’t born into a noble family, but I was satisfied nonetheless.
A sturdy body, warm-hearted parents, and village friends who were a bit rude but could somewhat understand each other.
Though calling it a village was ambiguous—it was an illegal slash-and-burn farming settlement—this place was a precious home to me.
For me, who was an orphan in the modern world, having a family was an utmost joy.
My parents in this medieval fantasy world were good people.
Though my father would chase me with an axe when I disobeyed, even that was a small happiness to me.

I wished every day would be like today.
Even though I knew my physical abilities overwhelmed ordinary people, the reason I stayed in the village instead of leaving was clearly because of that.
I loved the peaceful daily life.
I loved my parents.
I loved the rude village friends.
I loved the neighbors.
That was everything.
I just wished every day would be like today.

But it seems the gods sometimes give utterly shitty trials even to those who don’t want them.
On a certain summer day when I turned 19, the age of adulthood by medieval fantasy standards.
Having chosen the path of a lumberjack, rejecting the expectations around me to become a mercenary or a noble’s private soldier, I returned as usual after logging.
The village I arrived at, dragging two logs behind me, was engulfed in flames under the night sky.
Amidst the collapsed, burning wooden palisades and blazing houses, I saw bandits who had finished slaughtering the residents.

At that time, I think emotion definitely overrode reason.
The moment I regained my senses, I had flung aside the logs I was dragging, leaped over the village fence with an axe in one hand.

Kwaaaaang-
A sonic boom erupted from my fingertips as I swung the axe, and the bandits’ heads burst open one by one.
Without a moment’s hesitation, I crushed every head my hand reached.
Wet and hot blood splattered on my face and upper body, but I felt no guilt or pleasure from the killing.
With an attitude close to indifference, I killed the bandits as if chopping wood.

“S-son of a bitch! It’s a monster! A monster!”
“Whoever sees it would think a troll appeared! He’s just a slightly big human, you idiot bastard! Just surround him! Shoot him with arrows and kill him!”

That’s when I first realized.
I knew my body was sturdy, but that it was monstrously sturdy to that extent… I truly realized it for the first time in my life then.
The hands of the bandits surrounding me released bowstrings, and in that moment, adding a bit of exaggeration, a rain of arrows poured down as if to blanket the village.
But.

Thud- thud-
Though their archery was high-level for bandits, their arrows couldn’t pierce my skin.
They had the power to pierce thin steel plating, but the arrowheads that touched my skin instead bent as if warped and were all deflected.

I don’t know what I was thinking then, but I picked up one arrow that had fallen to the ground.
Then…
Assuming the posture I’d once seen on TV, from an Olympic javelin event, I threw it just like that.

Paang-
The air exploded.
The arrow that left my hand pierced straight through the chest of one bandit who was still dazed and confused.
But perhaps that wasn’t enough; it pierced right through the leather armor he was wearing and then through the bodies of the bandits positioned behind him as well.
With one strike, three bandits fell, holes the size of fists pierced through their chests.
And the arrow that skewered the bandits embedded itself into a rock located further back with a thunderous roar.
So deep that only the fletching was visible.

The bandits, who had been making stupid expressions, faltered and stepped back upon seeing the arrow embedded in the rock, its fletching trembling faintly.
“K-knight? Damn it, there was no word of a knight being here!”
“What nonsense are you spouting! What knight in an illegal slash-and-burn village! He’s just a bit stronger than an average…”
“Do you think that’s possible with an ordinary human’s strength?! It’s a mana user’s power! A knight, I’m telling you! You idiot bastard!”
“I-it’s a wandering knight! A wandering knight!”
“R-run away!”

The bandits, without delay, threw down the things they had looted from the village, even abandoning the weapons they valued like their lives, and began to flee.
The moment the word ‘knight’ came out, they lost all will to fight.
They scattered in all directions, not even daring to think of opposing. They were guys who knew how to save their lives. Judging by the skill in how they scattered in all directions.

Instead of chasing them, I took a low, steadying breath.
Reason still didn’t exist for me at that moment, but the intense instinct that I shouldn’t let those bastards get away was still intact.

Paang- Paaang-

Paaang-

I picked up arrows fallen on the ground and threw them straight at the bandits.
Two, sometimes three at a time, fell with each throw, dying as human skewers.
Dust kicked up from the motion of picking up and throwing arrows from the ground obscured my vision, but…

Kwaaang-
The moment I exerted force and stamped the ground, a powerful wind pressure erupted from where I had planted my foot, blowing away all the dust in the area.
I began gifting arrows again to the bandits who were staring at me with horrified expressions, spewing curses.

“Kwaaaaaaaah!”

“……Ugh!”

“S-spare me! Damn it! I beg you, spare me!”
“K-knight, please have mercy… Ah, I’ll live honestly from now on. So please!”

Bandits dying with their abdomens pierced while running, bandits dying with their throats torn, bandits whose heads exploded while spewing curses out of fear.
Even bandits who had lost the will to flee and were begging for their lives.

“…Phew.”

By the time I regained my senses, all the bandits who had raided the village were dead, turned into corpses.
The sad thing was that amidst them, I could also see the figures of the villagers killed by the bandits.
They were all dead.
In that brief moment while I was out logging.
“…”
I forced my trembling footsteps to move. Crossing the village, I saw the best-constructed wooden building in the village.
It was my house.
The door had been smashed by the bandits.
Inside, I saw the bodies of my parents, who had taken their own lives before the bandits could get to them.
There was no miracle.
My warm-hearted parents, my slightly rude friends, the villagers who were busy looking after their own interests but still exuded a distinctly human scent…
All of them, every single one, were dead.

I gathered and buried the bodies of my parents and the villagers.
It didn’t take long.
My body, which had even deflected arrows, had grown slightly stronger from the previous night’s battle.
I hadn’t confirmed it with my eyes, but I knew it was an undeniable fact.
After gathering the corpses, digging the earth, and making tombstones, dawn had ended.
I had buried over a hundred villagers alone, but I showed no sign of fatigue.
I placed a single flower I had plucked from the mountain in front of my parents’ grave, then turned my back.
My parents were dead.
All the villagers had returned to the earth.
The village that was my home had all burned in the fires set by the bandits, leaving only black ashes.

Suddenly, something my mother had said before I became a lumberjack flashed through my mind.
“…She told me to leave the village and see the wider world, didn’t she.”

I gave a bitter smile, then threw the axe I was holding to the ground.
Though late, I decided to try following my parents’ wish.
What use was it now that nothing remained? But I needed to make a reason, even if just that.
The living needed a reason to live.