Chapter 797

The fact that 742 was able to escape the Great Forest of Alvheim in just twenty days was the result of his own exceptional abilities, combined with a series of miraculous strokes of luck that exceeded his expectations.

The fairy he accidentally encountered while out for a stroll, who then suffered misfortune, happened to be a merchant who enjoyed collecting spoils from other races.

The core forces of Alvheim, the Guardians and Patrols, were concentrated on the northern and southern frontlines, leaving the pursuit squads chasing or blocking 742 mostly as weaklings who couldn’t even shoot Spirit Arrows.

And when he finally faced a Patrol after a long escape.

“Behold the result of your actions, inferior species. You were familiar with ‘this,’ weren’t you?”

Mocking him by saying all the livestock from the 4th Human Ranch had been slaughtered, the fairy threw a familiar head at him, and the anger that pushed him beyond his limits led him to a new realm.

If not for all that luck, 742 would never have escaped the Great Forest and stepped onto the grasslands.

—

“Lucky me, a snack just walked right in.”

The first beings the fifteen-year-old boy, who dreamed of freedom, encountered after escaping the fairies were large beasts walking on two legs.

A beastman with a dog’s head, feasting on the naked corpses of men and women. Seeing the predatory glint in its eyes, 742 silently drew his sword and charged.

“Gaaah! What the… who are you?!”

The beastman, the first he had ever encountered, was as ferocious as it looked, but fortunately, it wasn’t that strong.

At least, not compared to the current 742.

A fiery something coursing through his muscles and veins. 742 didn’t know what it was, but the blessing called the Power of Feats was elevating his body to a higher realm.

However—

‘What the hell is this monster? It won’t die no matter how much I slash it.’

The Steel Longsword 742 wielded couldn’t sever the beastman’s regenerative abilities, so the dog-headed beastman, though being sliced apart, kept screaming and struggling without dying.

‘…Doesn’t matter. If I keep slashing, it’ll die eventually.’

If it were truly immortal, it wouldn’t fear being cut. The fact that it tried to dodge his strikes was proof that the monster before him wasn’t invincible.

“Haaaah!”

742 deflected and dodged the beastman’s desperate attacks, repeatedly slicing through its fur-covered body.

“How… how can a hairless monkey have such power…? Could those rumors about knights be true…?”

The beastman, denying the reality of being overpowered by a human, finally collapsed when its strength gave out.

“Knight…?”

After cutting down the fallen beastman, 742 muttered the word it had spat out in its final moments.

Knight.

A word whose meaning he couldn’t grasp.

How could 742, who didn’t even know the beastman was called a beastman, understand that humans scattered across the continent resisting the tyranny of other races called themselves knights?

‘No, more importantly.’

For 742, the most important thing now wasn’t pondering the meaning of some obscure word. A question hundreds of times more critical had risen in his mind.

‘Surely, the entire land isn’t filled with monsters like this…?’

A chilling dawn breeze seeped into his chest, along with the foul stench of entrails from the corpses devoured by the beastman.

The longsword dripping with the beastman’s blood trembled in its owner’s uneasy grip.

—

Two months had passed since then.

For a boy who thought he knew everything but actually knew nothing, it was enough time to realize the truth of the world.

The blue grasslands he finally reached after escaping Alvheim’s Great Forest were not the land of freedom he had dreamed of.

‘Maybe you were right, 2067. There’s no freedom anywhere. Not in the forest, nor outside it.’

The land of freedom he sought was nothing more than the naive hope of a precocious child.

In this world, there was no freedom.

At least, not for humans.

‘Why do I, do we, have to live like this…? Why, just why…!’

Overwhelmed by emotions he couldn’t tell were despair or anger, 742 silently glared at the sky.

“Sir Knight, is something troubling you…?”

The voice of a middle-aged woman from behind interrupted the boy’s thoughts.

Her voice, clearly hesitant to address the fifteen-year-old boy, showed utmost respect as she bowed to the knight who had saved them.

“…It’s nothing.”

The boy shook his head and forced a smile. Showing his anxiety or anger would only lower their morale and help no one.

Two months had passed since he left Alvheim and entered the grasslands.

Fighting off beastmen and orcs that attacked at every turn, and unable to leave the survivors he found in the fields, the boy now had nearly a hundred humans gathered around him.

742 found them cumbersome but didn’t drive them away.

Perhaps because leaving behind those too weak to fight even a single beastman would mean they’d be hunted down and killed within days.

Or maybe because, unlike the compatriots in the pens who were little more than fairy livestock, these people were true ‘humans’ who lamented their plight.

Though he couldn’t quite understand the reason himself, 742 saved them, protected them, and lived with them.

Though the burden of being seen as some kind of savior was heavy, it was the first time the boy, who had lived in isolation, anger, and resentment, felt a sense of camaraderie and comfort.

“Sir Knight, did you sleep well?”

“Sir Knight, the foraging team found some precious fruits.”

“Knight Oppa! I made this for you!”

“Thank you for saving us, Sir Knight…!”

“Sir Knight! Teach us how to fight!”

Sir Knight…

Sir Knight…

Sir Knight…

The boy who escaped the fairies’ pens, wandering the grasslands in rags, had become their knight.

Along with the nickname given by the first family he saved—’Big Man.’

Even the family who gave him the nickname only called him ‘Sir Knight’ in his presence, but the boy liked the nickname so much he adopted it as his own name.

Karl Große.

That was the new name of the boy once called 742.

—

Excessive happiness doesn’t last long. Four months later, when the human group following the sixteen-year-old knight Karl had grown to three hundred,

“Toothless weaklings! There’s so many of them!”

“Kill all the ones with weapons! And the ones with beards too!”

The dominant race of the grasslands, the orcs, who shared the plains with the beastmen, came crashing in like a wave.

The situation Karl had feared. The orc warriors, unwilling to let the growing human group be, had finally found their base.

“Aaah!”

“Fight! Sir Knight is with us!”

“Evacuate the women!”

Screams, shouts, curses, and wails echoed like a cacophony.

Men wielding spears and swords were torn apart by orc blades and axes, children were trampled, and elders’ heads were ripped off.

Women fleeing the carnage were caught by orcs and pinned beneath them, and the hastily built shelters were set ablaze.

The human village, which had struggled to maintain peace, was instantly transformed into hell.

“Uwaaaaah!”

Their knight. Karl fought like a madman, screaming with boiling rage, but even he couldn’t stop the orc army that had come prepared.

In the hellscape where the men he had trained were reduced to chunks of meat, Karl, surrounded by orcs, burned through the Power of Feats coursing through his body and managed to take down three Orc Warlords… but that was his limit.

“You. Strong. So, kill you!”

Six spear tips pierced Karl’s body, now alone in the sea of blood.

“Guh…!”

A searing pain shook his mind. Karl, vomiting blood, staggered and fell.

‘No. I can’t fall here…!’

His vision darkened, and his senses blurred. Clenching his teeth, he tried to rise, but not a single finger moved. Death was beckoning him.

-Booooooom!

A faint horn sound echoed in his fading ears. Was it the horn of the Heavenly Palace the blue-eyed old man had spoken of?

Karl, with his fading consciousness, thought.

If the Heavenly Palace of the Warrior God truly existed, the moment he entered, he’d grab the god by the collar and punch him in the face.

How could a god sit there, acting high and mighty, while humans suffered like this below?

“Cavalry, charge formation—!”

Fortunately, it seemed the Warrior God wouldn’t be punched by the warrior he had invited.

“Kill all the green-skinned monsters! The god of sky and grace, Elpinel, protects us. We are her wrath and vengeance!”

The horn sound that brushed the ears of the dying Karl wasn’t the Valkyries of the Heavenly Palace calling him, but the horns of humans chasing the orc army.

A hundred humans on horseback. The Pure White Spears in their hands mercilessly pierced through the orc warriors’ formation.