Aiming to Become a Knight

I, Fia Ruud, am the youngest child of the Ruud knightly house.

They say I look just like my mother, who was beautiful, with red hair and golden eyes. But no one's ever called me beautiful. Weird.

Unfortunately, I seem to have inherited my mother's build, too. No matter how much I train, I never put on muscle and stay skinny. ...And flat-chested, too!

A knightly house is a family that owns land and ranks just below the nobility, with a knight appointed by the king as its head. If no knight is left to inherit the house, it is dissolved on the spot.

That's why all the children of knightly houses aim to become knights.

Of course, I was no exception. I'd wanted to become a knight ever since I was little.

However, being a knight isn't a profession just anyone can enter if they want to.

It's the most popular profession in the country, and the competition for the Knights' entrance exam is always terrifying—fifty to one, sometimes even a hundred to one.

Being appointed a knight means the country guarantees your status, and becoming one is considered a great honor. Though I imagine the ridiculously high salary has something to do with it, too.

A knight's job is to protect the royal palace, the royal family, and the country.

Specifically, they handle everything from maintaining public order at home and guarding the borders with neighboring countries to hunting down monsters when their numbers get too high.

In other words, the most important thing for a knight is swordsmanship.

As someone born into a knightly house, I understood that well.

So, knowing that, I trained like crazy from the time I was little.

Fortunately, there were plenty of knights on our land, and all my siblings were aiming to become knights, so I never lacked training partners.

Train, get tired, collapse, sleep, eat, train...

I repeated the same thing day after day without getting bored. It was tough, but fulfilling and fun.

But one day, I realized something.

Huh?

Come to think of it, I'd never won a mock battle against anyone.

Huh??

I'd lost to a new recruit who'd joined just three months ago??

Huhhhhh?

I was sure I'd stepped in at the perfect moment, so why had my sword been knocked away??

...That's right. I was appallingly untalented at swordsmanship.

Still, a lack of talent can be made up for to some extent with hard work.

It's not like I'm aiming to be the best knight in the country!

I just need to become one of the many knights appointed by the country!!

I don't know if it was admiration or sheer stubbornness, but around that time, I was driven by the thought, "I'll become a knight no matter what!!"

So even after realizing I had no talent, I kept training, and as a result, I think I got strong enough to at least make it into the lower ranks of the Knights. At least, that's what I think.

Meanwhile, my two older brothers and older sister all turned out to be wonderfully talented knights and left home.

I was only sad when my sister left.

The moment my brothers realized I wasn't any good with a sword, they lost interest in me and blatantly ignored me. So their leaving didn't change anything in my daily life.

As for Dad, he'd realized how useless I was long before my brothers did and had started to forget I even existed. So I didn't mind when he was away for long stretches as deputy commander of the Fourteenth Knight Order, protecting the western region.

In the end, for the past few years, every member of my family has been away, so none of them can judge how strong I am now.

That's why they disagree about my Coming-of-Age Ritual.

The Coming-of-Age Ritual is a simple ceremony performed when you turn about fifteen.

The task is to pick up a single stone, any kind, from anywhere.

The usual rule is to show the stone to a fortune-teller, who predicts your future based on its color and shape.

However, in our family, there's a special rule added to that.

If you don't intend to become a knight, the usual rules apply. But if you do intend to become a knight, you have to hunt a monster, bring back the magic stone inside it, and prove your strength.

A monster, of course, is an aggressive, highly powerful creature with a magic attribute, and it has a magic stone inside its body whose size is proportional to its strength.

Most live deep in the forest, and any human who encounters one is unlikely to get away unscathed.

That's why my sister told me not to fixate on becoming a knight and to bring back an ordinary stone instead.

My second-oldest brother said that, as the daughter of a knightly house, I should bring back a magic stone, even if it cost me my life.

My oldest brother stayed silent, since he didn't care.

Dad completely left the decision to me under the guise of respecting my opinion.

So, to pursue my dream of becoming a knight, I intend to bring back a magic stone.