Chapter 1
I was reincarnated in a fantasy world.
A quiet ceiling.
An oil lamp, rather than an LED bulb, lit the room.
Silk and velvet clothes. The crude wooden dishes made it clear this place was less advanced than Earth.
Still, well... For a fantasy world, this has to be a wealthy family, right? Not bad for a reincarnation after I, an orphan with no one in the world, worked myself to death doing manual labor.
More than anything, there was one thing that convinced me I was nobility: my mother's beauty.
"My baby..."
The dazzling smile of the woman who was my biological mother. How could someone with a face like that not be a noble? My future dating prospects seemed pretty secure.
By the time I turned three, I'd climbed out of my crib and caught a glimpse of the world beyond my room. Even considering I was still a toddler, the place was enormous.
"Young Master!"
Mona, my nursemaid, hurried over and scooped me up. That was the end of my first adventure.
Looking back,
I shouldn't have dreamed of adventures back then.
If I'd known real adventures were 100% realistic mud pits, I could've spared myself all that trouble.
Year six.
Apparently, the family I'd been reincarnated into was a grand ducal house famous throughout the kingdom.
The Grand Duke of Dragonia. The legendary knight who slew an evil dragon and was drenched in its blood was the founder of the house. Apparently, the family had produced no fewer than four kings over the years.
For the record, this kingdom's king is elected.
By the time I turned eight, it seemed I was expected to learn swordsmanship as a future knight of the kingdom.
I was thrilled. A fantasy knight! Would I be able to unleash sword energy and coat my blade in aura, too?
I heard the person sent from the royal palace to teach me was Sir Gordik, a Grail Knight. I wondered what he was like.
Huh? A Grail Knight?
Year ten.
It hurts. It feels like my whole body is breaking apart.
I'd chosen the path of a knight, and every day I was getting beaten to a pulp by that macho bastard, Gordik.
Thanks to my status as the grand duke's heir, I'd managed to skip out on being a squire, which was great, but I still had to practice swordsmanship and learn to ride every single day.
Grail Knights... Right, they're basically the fantasy world's equivalent of Swordmasters.
The knights in this world were pretty different from the fantasy knights I'd imagined, but Grail Knights were monsters who were hardly even human.
To become one, you had to complete quests through training, become a knight of the kingdom, build up a record of military achievements and honor, be chosen by the Grail, and drink holy water. Something like that?
You had to be strong, honorable, and devout to become an otherworldly Swordmaster—a Grail Knight.
Damn it... I don't even believe in religion.
Year fourteen.
Every day was agony.
The grueling training was one thing. I could feel myself getting stronger with each passing day, so there was a sense of accomplishment. I could endure it.
The problem was etiquette and studying.
I was the eldest son and the leading candidate to become the next grand duke. Naturally, I had to learn everything required to take the position.
How to govern the people, how to administer the law, philosophical debates about justice and the law, how to treat ladies, and even the scriptures.
Apparently, countless gods existed in this world, and people offered tribute at the Pantheon and followed their teachings.
Gods, huh... That was pretty fantasy-like.
But I was told I had to earn the approval of some woman called the Goddess of Justice to be chosen by the Grail, wasn't I?
Year sixteen.
I was traveling the world.
What? You think sixteen is middle-school age? As it happens, in this world, that was considered adulthood.
The first requirement to become a Grail Knight was to set off on a pilgrimage, protect the kingdom's people, and complete honorable quests.
To get those quests, I was told I had to find the goddess's avatar. How was I supposed to find her?
I just had to roam around the whole kingdom and raise my honor as much as I could. Then she'd find me on her own. What a pain in the ass.
Year seventeen.
Today I chopped up some orcs. Those damn thickheaded, warmongering vermin. They were always invading the kingdom's borders and killing its people. If it weren't for them, the kingdom would enjoy an era of peace and prosperity.
I chopped up the orcs alongside Sir Gildus and Sir Antok, whom I'd met along the way, and Gunlar, the moving tree-man who guarded the forest.
"Thank you, Sir Knight! Thank you!"
"Tend to the wounded and rebuild the palisades. May the kingdom's sword and the goddess's grace be with you."
I was worried. The harvest was bountiful every year, and the taxes they paid reliably filled the kingdom's coffers, but this country had too many enemies.
There were too many nonhuman creatures around. I heard cultists were becoming more active these days, too.
Year twenty.
I met a goddess.
I'm not joking. It really happened. The gods truly existed.
Wasn't religion originally a means of enlightening and uniting the ignorant?
Heaven? The Hall of Honor? Banquets with the gods? Weren't those all made-up myths?
Sure, the current king had ruled the kingdom for 110 years, but I figured he must've been a Grail Knight who'd undergone some kind of transformation.
My own teacher, Sir Gordik, was a Grail Knight who'd turned ninety this year.
"Leon Dragonia, son of Ulfric Dragonia, Grand Duke of Dragonia. I hereby grant you a quest to prove your honor and devotion."
"I-I receive your command, Goddess!"
Four years into my training as a knight, I finally met the goddess's avatar. Lady Ariana truly existed!
I cut down orcs. I tore goblins apart. I purged hordes of evil cultists and defended the kingdom's territory.
It wasn't bad. In fact, it was great. Hearing my name called out with praise and admiration every time I increased my honor made me feel pretty proud of myself.
Sir Gildus, son of War Knight Galvat. Sir Antok, guardian of the mines. Gunlar, the treant who'd been barely two meters tall when I'd first met him, had grown into a five-meter tree giant.
I earned the Grail's recognition and became a Grail Knight.
Year twenty-seven.
I became the youngest War Knight.
It seemed that taking the head of an orc warlord and wiping out an entire barbarian nomadic tribe had done the trick.
Seriously, where did orcs keep having so many kids? Just when you thought they were gone, they'd come charging in with a horde of a hundred or two hundred thousand.
The first thing I did after becoming a War Knight, with independent authority to wage war and summon knights, was launch a campaign against the orcs.
I buried 700,000 of those damn green-skinned bastards, men, women, and children alike. That felt good.
Year thirty-five.
The honorable Fourteenth Lionheart King, living saint, and demigod, Arhen Majesty Lionheart, had passed away. It happened while he was battling a Great Demon summoned on the empire's frontier.
The orcs were bad enough, but now demons were causing trouble, too. Damn those imperial mages. I figured something like this would happen if they kept studying black magic in the name of their precious curiosity.
This is why people should believe in the gods and live devoutly.
They go around doing useless things in the name of human curiosity or the pursuit of truth, and then a Great Demon gets to carve up and devour a hundred thousand people.
That aside, we had to choose a Grail Knight to succeed the Lionheart King, who had died honorably while helping the empire avoid destruction.
"Grail Knight Leon Dragonia."
"Lady Ariana."
The goddess herself descended and chose me. Apparently, this was the first time in the kingdom's history that a goddess had descended in person, rather than choosing someone through the Grail.
I guess the honor of taking the Great Demon's head had counted for a lot.
It was an honorable path and a difficult position, but I couldn't disappoint the knights who followed me or the people of the kingdom.
I became the Grand Duke of Dragonia and the king of the Kingdom of Lionheart.
I received the holy relic Lionheart, bestowed by the goddess, and swore to protect the Grail. Then I took up the holy sword and holy spear and struck down the kingdom's enemies.
Year eighty.
A lot had happened in all that time.
There had been three great wars with the orcs, and some strange hunchbacked goblin had fully awakened and become a Great Demon.
I could've torn its mouth apart, but unfortunately, it escaped through a Demon Gate.
"Your Majesty, the empire's school of black magic is planning to go ahead with another experiment!"
Have those imperial bastards gone mad? What the hell is wrong with them lately?
The empire's lawlessness and lack of faith had reached their peak.
They'd even stopped attending the Pantheon's annual ceremonies, and fools who called themselves holy-independence advocates—claiming they wanted to free themselves from the gods—were running rampant.
It was all because they'd united with those northern heathens. They'd taken in those barbarian lowlifes because they were short on soldiers, and now they'd even adopted their religion.
In our Kingdom of Lionheart, those lowlifes would've spent their whole lives as wretched serfs and died like pigs. And now the empire was acting like it deserved praise for treating them like people.
Should I just launch a campaign against them already? They made me feel like I was stuck doing a group project with someone who kept sabotaging it.
Year ninety-eight.
The imperial bastards had finally gone and done it!
That emperor bastard, who was performing a secret sacrificial rite for cultists because he didn't want to die, had summoned the Lord of Chaos into the imperial capital!
The brat wasn't even seventy years old, but he wanted eternal life, so he committed suicide along with three million imperial citizens in the capital!
"Sigh..."
I gathered my knights and took up my holy sword, still stained with orc blood from last year.
Year 121.
The world was ending. I'd truly done everything I could.
On behalf of Ariana, the Goddess of Justice, I cut down demons, and I sent priests of Demera, the Goddess of Abundance, across the land to rebuild farmland.
Heto, god of iron and blacksmiths, provided armor and swords for the Grail Knights, while Petos, god of war and fire, descended before me and set the battlefield ablaze.
In the twenty-third year of the War of Gods and Demons, a war that began with the empire's blunder finally led to the destruction of the world.
"Lord Leon."
"Sir Arenne?"
He was the son of my comrade-in-arms, Sir Antok. He still had his father's youthful looks. As for me, thanks to the goddess's blessing, I looked little different from a hundred years ago.
"Take pride, Arenne. Your father died honorably and has gone to the banquet hall of the gods."
"Yes..."
I comforted the son of my dead friend, then looked at the soldiers and knights gazing back at me. This was the final battle... No, our last stand.
The sound of our enemies marching shook the earth, and chaotic emotions welled in their eyes.
Fear, dread, helplessness, despair.
Ah, my goddess.
Mistress of the Grail, who bestowed the Lionheart upon this unworthy creation and kindled a brilliant light in the holy sword.
Here, your lambs tremble in fear.
The women soothe their crying children, swallowing their tears,
The young men desperately cup in their hands the dying ember of resistance,
And the knights try to leave seeds of hope even in a blood-soaked wasteland.
But you, master of the holy sword, the holy spear, and the Grail.
I know that your first knight cannot stop the evil stretching beyond the horizon.
My goddess.
My goddess. What should this foolish knight do?
『Do as you will』
"..."
『My knight. My beloved and honorable knight. Your goddess will remain by your side until the very end.』
The goddess was with me.
We would surely meet our end, but it would be an honorable one.
"For the Goddess, for honor, for Lionheart!"
That winter of the year 121.
We fought a decisive battle against the ten million demons who covered the earth.
The barbarian serfs were spent as meat shields, while freeborn soldiers armed with spears and shields and the Knights of Glory fell honorably.
The Grail Knights, who annihilated demons until the very last moment, ascended one by one.
I alone, the agent of the Pantheon chosen by all the gods, slaughtered demons to the very end.
I tore apart countless Demon Lords and Great Demons, and made them witness the divinity of a Grail Knight.
Year 217.
Winter still hadn't ended.
Year 256.
I destroyed the last remaining Demon Gate. Hundreds of thousands of demons, with no way left to escape, stared at me with vacant eyes.
"You wretched, vile spawn of evil! You are now trapped in this world with me! I'll annihilate every last one of you!"
I wasn't the one who was trapped!
You bastards are the ones trapped here with me!
Year 300.
"Goodness, I've never seen a Gate like this before. Where on earth are we?"
"Stay alert, Hari. It's been thirteen years since the last unrankable Gate appeared. We don't know what might come out."
"I know... But what could possibly be in this world for its rating to be immeasurable?"
"Who knows... Maybe there's an upper-tier demon or something?"
"Don't say something so terrifying."
It was exactly 300 years after my reincarnation that I encountered people from Earth.