Surviving as a Knight in a Trash Game

Crackle, crackle.

The sound of well-dried firewood burning echoed through the surroundings, and the man camping by the bonfire pulled the blanket up over his head in the chilly wind.

In the forest with no trace of people nearby, the man lay alone, sleeping without a care. Around the time the two moons in the sky began to disappear, the man stirred and got up.

Continental Year 1380, the Gloster Empire was founded as the first unified empire of knights’ lands that had long been scattered.

Those who survived the bloody struggle thought they could now enjoy the privileges of the survivors.

But peace was short-lived.

Those who had charged forward with only the goal of continental unification in mind became like mad horses with no destination once it was achieved, and the class system quickly turned into an insurmountable barrier.

The ambition of those who sought new opportunities, and the power of those starved by greed, found no outlet in the already unified continent and were suppressed.

Eventually, their enormous desires turned toward the sea. After a long and dangerous voyage, they discovered a new continent, later named the Eastern Continent.

The Essus Order claimed that the ancient holy land of the gods lay in the Eastern Continent, further fueling the West Continent’s desire to expand into the East.

Thus began the Holy War.

Some participated in the war for a chance at social elevation or a reversal of fortune, others held the aspiration of reclaiming the sacred land of the god they truly believed in, and still others sought a new life on the new continent.

And so, as the procession of the holy war moved eastward, the Western Continent gradually lost its vitality.

Continental Year 1403.

The great emperor who first unified the Western Continent suddenly passed away without naming a successor.

“Today too, it’s fulfilling the conditions of a trash game to the letter….”

As soon as the man sat up, he clicked his tongue in annoyance at the translucent window that appeared before his eyes.

It had already been 15 years since he fell into this world, yet this prologue window still popped up without warning and couldn’t even be skipped.

It wasn’t called a crap game or a failure of a game for nothing.

The emperor’s sudden death shook the foundation of the unified empire. The imperial princes and princesses lost their lives one after another for various reasons, and the few who survived scattered across the continent, joining existing forces or forming their own in search of a way to survive.

Knights who once drew their swords for justice and honor began stabbing others in the back for gold coins.

Countless people ended up seated on thrones instead of horseback, commanding others with their fingertips instead of swords.

It was an age of chaos, filled with the wails of the old, the screams of women, and the cries of children.

It was then that a certain knight appeared.

…

The man ignored the translucent window that wouldn’t disappear until it had said all it had to say, and moved his body.

He tossed the rest of the dry firewood into the bonfire he had tended during the night and hung his canteen above it.

***

A wooden palisade surrounded the outskirts of the village, and at its center, a quiet inner castle, a church, and various facilities were clustered together.

On top of a dark brown horse, so deep in color it looked almost black, a man was riding into the center of a typical medieval manor.

The man wore a chainmail armor with a surcoat worn by knights over it. A few longswords hung from his saddle.

Both his clothes and the swords were well-maintained but showed signs of use—evidence of countless battles he had gone through.

He frowned slightly at the filth scattered along the streets, then relaxed his expression.

“This must be the place.”

The man’s dry voice matched well with his slightly crooked posture in the saddle.

The horse he rode was a size and a half larger than average, its powerful muscles clearly defined.

Both the horse and the man looked somewhat weary, likely from a long journey.

The man stopped in front of an inn.

Creeeak.

The door creaked, likely from lack of oiling, as the man stepped inside. As typical of an inn in such a rural domain, small groups of people were gathered around worn tables.

Ssssh.

The eyes of the people turned toward the man.

Given the nature of a manor that revolved around its center, it was rare for outsiders or unfamiliar faces to show up at the inn. Naturally, people became wary of new faces.

“You must’ve come from far away?”

The innkeeper greeted him with a tone of mild disinterest. The man simply nodded in response and immediately placed an order.

“Roast chicken. And a cold... beer.”

“Roast chicken and beer, coming up.”

After a moment, the server returned with warm roast chicken.

The man tore into the meat and nodded to himself. Compared to the inn in the city he had last visited, this one wasn’t bad.

Gulp.

As he drank the beer, the man furrowed his brow.

As if to say, this isn’t it.

“It’s lukewarm again….”

Just as the man muttered those words—

Bang!

The door to the inn was thrown open roughly.

Everyone looked toward the door, one hinge now dangling, then quickly turned their heads back to their tables.

“I heard there’s a knight named Karl here?”

A large man entered through the hanging door, wearing leather armor and wielding a massive axe. About ten other burly men with crude weapons followed him inside.

“That’s Jackson’s gang….”

“I heard that Karl is a knight. How’d he end up tangled with guys like that?”

“The guards won’t touch anything related to Jackson anyway…”

From the whispers shared among the people in the tavern, it seemed they were a well-known gang of thugs in the area.

They threw a man bound tightly in rope to the floor.

“Well then, speak up. Which one of them is your master?”

The man, tied up and thrown to the floor, had already been beaten to the point where his face was badly swollen.

“Still clinging to pride just because you’re a knight’s squire? But you know…”

The large man with the axe slung over his shoulder squatted down in front of the swollen squire.

“Why’d you suddenly become mute? Just earlier, you were jabbering on about how your master would pay your ransom once he showed up, weren’t you?”

The body of the squire flinched at the man’s words.

“Should I just cut your throat right here? Get up and go find this Karl bastard.”

As the axe was raised high, the squire on the ground struggled and got up.

“Sir Karl! I’m going to die. Sancho is dying here!”

The man who had entered the inn first, Karl, focused only on the food before him, not responding to the squire’s desperate cries.

“Sir Karl! After all the time I spent serving you, how can you do this?! How will you sleep at night if you just let me die?”

“Yeah.”

The dry and slightly annoyed response from the man made Sancho blink in disbelief.

“What the… seriously…”

Sancho turned his head and gave the axe-wielding man a sheepish grin.

“You screwing with me right now? We came all this way because you said your master could pay your ransom, and now this?”

“Uh… well, Sir Karl certainly has the means to pay. But, I never actually said he would pay…”

…

Jackson’s arm, holding the axe, swelled as if it were about to burst. Then his foot shot straight toward Sancho’s abdomen.

Thud!

With a heavy blow, Sancho rolled across the floor, several tables shattered and flew in all directions.

Gulp.

Sancho’s master, Karl, remained completely unfazed and continued focusing on the roast chicken in front of him.

“It’s starting to smell gamey…”

Karl frowned at the chicken, which hadn’t been properly prepared to remove the odor, then looked at the beer with an even darker expression. The way he looked didn’t match the situation in the slightest.

“Hey, that idiot over there says you’re the knight he serves. You need to pay the ransom. That’s why we brought him here alive.”

In a rural domain, Jackson was a thug who walked a fine line—either a local brute with influence or a bandit moving in and out of the territory.

At best, one could optimistically assume he was a mercenary under contract with the lord.

In this world, the title of “knight” spanned both extremes:

There were noble knights of such high birth you’d hardly dare meet their eyes; there were holy knights who gained power and gold through endless battles in the deserts of the Eastern Continent; and then there were pitiful free knights—riding old horses, wearing rusty iron armor, and claiming knighthood with nothing but an iron sword and arrogance.

Gulp.

Karl paid no attention to what Jackson said and focused solely on his meal and beer.

“You’re seriously going to let this slide?”

“….”

“Didn’t you hear me? That squire rolling on the ground over there—”

“No.”

“What?”

“He’s not a squire.”

At Karl’s short, quiet reply, Jackson couldn’t contain his boiling rage and kicked out without hesitation.

Crash!

Tables and food were overturned with a single kick from Jackson.

“Always like this…”

It was a dog-eat-dog world. A world where the illiteracy rate had to be around 95%. A place where swords and fists came before words. And where that wasn’t even considered a crime.

Karl had, to some degree, adapted to this world.

“What the hell are you babbling about?”

“You flipped the table. So you pay for the meal.”

“You bastard!”

Thwack!

A loud impact mixed with the sickening sound of a jaw collapsing rang out. The man’s fist, having struck Jackson’s chin upward, hung frozen in midair.

Everyone froze at the stunning sight—including all of Jackson’s men present.

“…Oh no, this is bad.”

As the fight began, the man called Sancho quietly crawled along the floor and hid in a corner of the inn.

A few quick-witted others followed Sancho’s lead and took cover throughout the inn.

They didn’t want to get involved, but they couldn’t ignore such rare entertainment that broke the monotony of their daily lives.

It was a place where rough and ignorant people gathered for drinks, food, and camaraderie.

An inn, a tavern, and at the same time, a makeshift arena—its tables and chairs rarely lasted long. That was simply how those who’d lived in such places for decades survived.

“You’re not coming? If I go to you, it’ll hurt more.”

Despite his oddly indifferent tone, Jackson’s men couldn’t approach and only flinched.

Karl, as if wasting time annoyed him, strode forward and swung his fists.

His lazily hanging left hand never even rose above his waist until all ten of Jackson’s men had collapsed.

Karl walked up to the last man he knocked down, with an air that said he would never leave a job half-done.

Judging by his expression and posture, this one seemed to be the second-in-command.

“S-sorry… I didn’t recognize you as a knight… please forgive me…”

Smack!

Karl’s boot heel crashed into the man’s mouth, shattering his teeth in chunks. With the job finished, Karl’s expression turned blank.

“Innkeeper?”

“Y-yes!”

In a manor system like this, innkeepers were usually free commoners with some wealth.

“Do you have a bath?”

“Ah, yes! We even have a tub.”

Even if the tub was just a barely-human-sized wooden barrel filled with lukewarm water, that was considered a luxury in this world.

“Excellent. I’ll take a room, too.”

After the fight, Karl began searching through the belongings of the collapsed Jackson gang members one by one.

Then, out of nowhere, Sancho emerged from wherever he had been hiding and began rummaging through the gang members’ belongings like lightning.

“Sir Karl, about the payment you promised?”

It was hard to believe this was the same man who had been wailing for his life just moments earlier.

Sancho stood before Karl and held out his hand.

“If you hand them over to the authorities and collect the bounty, I’ll give you thirty percent.”

“You really do dump all the dirty work on me.”

“I already know you skimmed quite a bit on the way here. Move before I check your pockets.”

“I’ll be right back!”

Karl quietly turned his body.

Meanwhile, Sancho began tying up the fallen men, comparing their faces one by one with the wanted posters he pulled from his coat.

His rope-tying speed was faster than expected—he clearly wasn’t new to this.

“Here.”

Karl turned back and flicked a coin toward the innkeeper.

The innkeeper, realizing this unexpected windfall, bowed and gave his thanks with the coin clutched tightly in his hands.

“I’ll get it ready right away, sir knight!”

A little later, Karl went up to his room.

Having lived in this world for over a decade, his modern sensibilities had dulled, and to him, the room seemed decent enough.

At least the straw mattress didn’t reek with warmth and rot.

“Sir knight, the bath is ready.”

Karl moved to the bathroom and dipped into the prepared water.

The innkeeper had clearly put effort into it—the heated water soothed Karl’s body, stiff from days of camping outdoors.

“This is nice…”

The warm bath made him momentarily forget where he was.

He looked out the window and saw two moons in the sky—something he’d seen for over ten years now.

When he emerged from the bath, his body was covered in numerous scars.

Cuts from swords, spears, axes—wounds whose origin was hard to even guess. They told the story of the life he had lived.

However, the quality of the clothes he wore over his body—his tunic, short pants, and boots—declared clearly that he was no commoner.

“Hoo…”

Steam rose from Karl’s well-trained body as he stood up after the bath.

***

At the break of dawn, someone was swinging a sword in the inn’s yard.

The trajectory of the sword slicing through the air never wavered even once.

The calm, refined breaths he inhaled and exhaled through his nose spoke volumes about how long Karl had trained.

Before long, Karl, now fully armored, was running, ducking, jumping, squatting, and standing—performing a variety of physical exercises in a constant rhythm.

After three hours of training, Karl finally sheathed his sword.

[Stamina has increased.]

Just when he was feeling alive through physical movement, the message window popped up and ruined his mood.

His motivation gone, Karl set the sword down—and that’s when he heard footsteps approaching.

“Now I see why the Jackson gang got taken down. They’re strong enough to threaten a dozen guards, and they were slippery—we couldn’t catch them for weeks. Looks like their luck ran out yesterday.”

The man approaching Karl wore chainmail and a surcoat—he was a knight.

“Not much of a talker, I see? I’ll introduce myself first. I’m Roberto, a vassal knight of the Tennesse Domain.”

He didn’t seem to be of noble birth—he had no surname.

Likely a commoner who had proven his skill and earned knighthood.

Even his physique alone showed signs of intense training.

“Do you have business with me?”

Karl’s blunt tone didn’t faze Roberto in the slightest.

“Our young lady wishes to see you, Sir Karl.”