(TL/N: The lords of the fortresses were generally knights, that’s why they are addressed usually as Sir.)
“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”
Arsene raced through the forest screaming.
He was scratched by thorn bushes and cut his face and legs on sharp leaves as he ran recklessly without following the road, but he couldn’t care less.
Three horned wolves were running while growling from behind.
The moment they catch him, he will get bitten by the horned wolves’ teeth and his whole body will be torn apart.
“I’m gonna die!”
Excited by the smell of blood, the flock of horned wolves did not get tired and maintained their speed despite running for quite a long time.
Fortunately, Arsene’s running speed itself was a little bit faster, so he was keeping a distance, but the difference wasn’t overwhelming enough to run away completely.
There was no chance of escaping in the first place as it kept smelling of blood.
So far, he’s been maintaining his stamina, but he wasn’t sure how much longer he could run.
Whether it was because of his magical powers or his superhuman strength in times of crisis, he was able to sprint much longer than an ordinary person, but his breathing was close to the limit.
In at least one minute, he will run out of stamina and come to a standstill.
A blue wave spread out in front of Arsene, who was running wildly.
It was the Tyren River that he had only heard of.
Even at a glance, the river was tens of meters wide and the current was so fast that he wouldn’t even manage to swim.
‘Damn it! Now of all times!’
Arsene immediately turned right and ran along the riverside.
However, he felt his feet gradually slowing down as if he had sandbags tied to his legs.
As the horned wolves’ panting was getting closer and closer.
Suddenly, water splashed from the river and something popped out.
Shaaaaah!
With a noise that sounded like a snake’s inflated hissing several times, a legged killer whale jumped out of the river and caught a horned wolf that was chasing Arsene.
Truly, it could only be described as a legged killer whale.
The killer whale opened its large mouth and bit the horned wolf in the middle, using its two front legs to press down on the other two.
It seemed that those bitten and caught under its front legs were dead or fainted, as they didn’t even move.
“…Ah.”
Arsene, who met the blue eyes of the killer whale, exclaimed unknowingly.
After several seconds of looking in each other’s eyes, the killer whale, which seemed to have lost interest, went back into the river silently.
Together with the three horned wolves that he caught.
“I survived…”
Only then did Arsene, whose legs gave in and collapsed, crawled off the riverside on his knees.
Even if the killer whale had just eaten and didn’t attack, he didn’t want to stick to the place where his kind or an equivalent predator might pop out.
He spent some time leaning against the tree and wondering if he should thank the killer whale for getting rid of the horned wolves, or if he should thank Leha for sending the killer whale.
He caught his breath and as strength returned to his legs, he patted his butt and stood up.
First, he had to figure out where he was.
‘Should I continue my way west?’
Originally, he believed that he would come out if he went west from the fortress, but the information became meaningless because he was chased by a pack of horned wolves and ran everywhere.
What do you do when you can’t tell if your current location is north or south of the route you were originally going to?
After a brief thought, Arsene took a new route from the river.
He thought that he would eventually come to a city if he kept going upstream along the river.
‘My goal was to reach a city anyway.’
Arsene sat down near a brook that had branched out of the river to wash himself.
The scratches and cuts from the leaves and thorns were stinging, but it was much better than drawing monsters with the smell of blood.
Fortunately, his healing ability has improved as well, so the shallow cuts and scratches were almost healed. His left arm, which had been bitten hard, didn’t fully heal, but the bleeding stopped and a thin crust appeared on top.
“It’s almost like a cheat.”
His strength, his speed, and his stamina improved, his resistance to poisons increased, and he even had a light regeneration ability.
That’s why many people in the fortress wanted to be knights.
It was not until Arsene gained his mana that he felt that Sir Lenock wasn’t as easy as he had thought in the past.
Arsene thought he was just a middle-aged man who was always wandering around drinking, but he’s trained his mana and combat skills for much longer than that.
In addition, the fierce beasts he met outside were also the kind of beasts Sir Lenock usually hunted.
The last killer whale, though, may have been a different story.
In that sense, he couldn’t even imagine what had happened to Sir Lenock and his sons.
He went hunting and met a strong beast and died? Or did he die fighting the marauders on his return? Maybe he didn’t die, but just didn’t come back from the hunt?
In fact, while he was preparing to leave the fortress, he hoped that Sir Lenock would return.
Of course, it wasn’t something like the affection for his father, who didn’t even care about him, it was because of a very realistic reason.
If Sir Lenock had returned, Arsene would have been the most likely successor to Sir Lenock, rather than one of the illegitimate bastards.
Perhaps he could have pulled out all the teeth of Philus, who was treating him like a bug.
He could have learned how to use the power of mana properly and how to fight.
But waiting for Sir Lenock, who might not even return from a dangerous place like the empty fortress, was too risky.
‘Now, let’s go somewhere.’
Arsene, keeping a distance of about 20 meters from the river, embarked on a journey that might take days.
“I’ve arrived…”
Four days later, Arsene was finally able to see the world’s “territory” for the first time in his life.
There was a huge amount of land in the territory that was incomparable to the fortress, and brown soil stretched beyond the horizon.
Green wheat fields, corn, and other crops that were not yet ripe were being cultivated.
Now, just looking down at the scenery from the top of a hill, Arsene thought that it was like a completely different world from the fortress where he was born and raised.
It looked like a pastoral and peaceful country farm.
The scale of the fortress, located far away, was also different. Maybe it could accommodate thousands to tens of thousands?
‘The vegetables we buy at our fortress come from this place.’
As he walked down the hill and looked at the border, he heard a horn coming from far away.
Looking back, two soldiers on top of a two-legged lizard-like mount were running armed with spears.
Its speed was so fast that it was comparable to the speed at which Arsene was sprinting.
In other words, it also means that it is similar to the speed at which a horned wolf runs.
“Stop! What the fu*k are you doing!?”
“Just move and we’ll blow a hole in your head, you tramp!”
When the soldiers, who stopped on Arsene’s left and right sides, pointed their spears, he calmly put his hand on the sword and took a step back.
He had already thought about how to deal with the soldiers.
If Arsene hadn’t been a knight, he would not have claimed an aristocratic status that he could not prove, but if he could prove it, there was no reason to bend.
As Sir Lenock had done to his retainers in the past, he tried to imitate his overbearing attitude to the fullest extent possible.
“I am Arsene, the son of Lenock. My father is Sir Lenock, the Sir of the Krata in the east, and even though I have not been ordained, I am still a knight, so be polite.”
“…knight?”
As the soldier’s face was falling, he turned his eyes and looked up and down at Arsene.
He fought and ran away several times without washing properly and changing his clothes for four days, so his appearance was no different from that of a beggar, but he was so confident that the guard could not judge recklessly.
In addition, the clothes were tattered from top to shoe, and it was a pretty luxurious material.
At least it was different from what ordinary people usually wear.
The older soldier, who appears to be a senior among the two, asked with an ambiguous look.
“Um… so, can you prove it?”
Arsene, who thought he nearly believed him after using honorifics instead of informal speech, laughed inside.
“See for yourself.”
Arsene went straight to a tree nearby and smashed it using all his might with his fist.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t break it down at once because he was a little weak, but when he hit it four more times, a scene was created, in which something that could be called a log if it got a little thicker, was broken down.
Arsene lifted up the tree he had smashed, looking at the guards whose eyes were wide open, perhaps astonished by the power of a small child.
It was a result that could never be made unless he was a knight.
The soldiers quickly got off the ground. Even though he was young, they didn’t have the guts to have a conversation with a knight.
“Does this prove it?”
“Of course it does! Your name is…”
“Arsene. Arsene son of Lenock.”
Arsene, who looked at the now completely low-key soldier, threw the tree he was holding next to him.
He held it because he shouldn’t show them a weak side, but he felt burdened to keep holding it, because it was tiring.
He was worried that the rank of the knights might fall due to the large size of the territory, but fortunately, it worked as well as Arsene expected.
Sir Lenock, the only knight of the fortress, reigned almost like a living god over people, so this treatment would be appropriate.
“May I call you Sir Arsene?”
“I’m still not… Well, call me whatever you want. I’ve come to visit the territory. Can you call a superior who has the authority to allow me to enter?”
“Please wait a moment. Panto! Tell the administrator right now! Tell him that a young knight is here!”
“All right, Sir!”
The old soldier, who saw his subordinate running quickly toward the fortress, smiled a little obsequiously and nodded.
“I sincerely apologize for the rudeness a while ago. Because of the work we do, I sometimes get a little sensitive. I just…”
“You mean insulting me by calling me a tramp?”
The embarrassed look on his face said, “I didn’t do it,” but the soldier didn’t say it out loud.
As soon as he realized that Arsene was a knight, he was quick enough to show respect, and apparently, they were the same age.
“Okay. I’m not in a good mood right now, and it’s not a big deal because I was dressed like this. Just talk to the administrator, please.”
“Of course. Knight-nim is not only strong at a young age, but also smart!”
Arsene, who smirked as if he was dumbfounded by his flattery, looked at the fortress with his arms crossed.
The old soldier stopped talking nonsense and bowed his head, perhaps understanding that he did not want to talk more.
After a while, the soldier who had gone before came back with a few other riders.
Most of the riders looked like soldiers, except two of them, who were a middle-aged man with a bulging belly and a giant armed with full-body armor.
Considering the size of the mount, he seemed to be at least 2 meters high.
Feeling a strange pressure emanating from his body, Arsene had an intuition that he was a knight.
As he saw nothing in the past when he saw Sir Lenock, it seemed that only the knights could feel it.
A middle-aged man got off the ride and greeted him with a respectful expression.
“My name is Rude, the second executive officer of the Beluan Territory! The knight… where… is he?”
Seeing that there were only two older soldiers and Arsene, the administrator looked confused for a moment.
Arsene changed his attitude and spoke in the most polite tone possible.
“Nice to meet you, executive officer Rude. This is Arsene, son of Lenock. I am the knight you are looking for.”
Arsene could read the thought from the administrator’s face, ‘What kind of nonsense is this?’