Chapter 1

Chapter 1 - One Who Understands Three Worlds (1)

South Korean soldier Eugene was granted a second life after dying in the line of duty.

It was a place where everything differed from Earth. He was born as the son of a witch in a world where knights, magicians, and fairies sang.

Even here, witches were persecuted beings, but Eugene's childhood was not miserable.

The fear evoked by the name 'witch', and the benefits her herbalism brought to the village. The two struck a proper balance.

Had either been lacking, the mother and son would have been forced to continue a painful wandering life.

Eugene also had a large physique and was a strongman born with divine strength, so the village boys couldn't act territorial around him.

"Hey, newbie! If you moved here, you need an initiation... Huh?"

Everyone's jaws dropped at the sight of Eugene walking with logs the size of his own height resting on each shoulder.

An axe was embedded in one of the logs, buried so deeply that the iron head had completely vanished from sight.

Since they all had experience chopping firewood, they knew exactly how incredible that strength was. It seemed even Samson's father, a professional woodcutter, couldn't do the same.

"Coming through."

"U-Uh, yeah."

Even the older neighborhood boys didn't dare pick a fight and quietly stepped aside.

Although not wealthy, the mother and son lived a peaceful life. Compared to the abundance provided by the civilization of his previous life, many things were inferior, but Eugene was happy.

However, that good childhood didn't last long. His mother passed away from an illness.

The one who took in the boy with nowhere to turn was Priest Godfrey from the village monastery.

That monastery worshiped the Lord God faith. It once dominated the entire continent, but now it had greatly declined, pushed out by competing factions.

Believing in only one God and rejecting all other mysteries as wicked idols, there was immense backlash against taking in a witch's son.

Her medicine worked incredibly well, so they had endured her for the sake of the villagers despite considering her an eyesore. But to take in her son?!

"It is a filthy bloodline! How can we allow such a wicked thing into the sacred monastery?"

"We are going through difficult times. In times like these, we must unite with true faith. We must distance ourselves from impurity."

Amidst everyone's opposition, only Godfrey defended Eugene.

"The child is innocent, is he not? Please, let us show some mercy."

"Sir Godfrey..."

Godfrey was a famous knight who devoted himself to the monastery in his old age.

For a knight, his faith was decent, his reputation was outstanding, and he saved the monastery's face by stepping up whenever the village needed martial power.

"I will not let him disturb the brethren's religious life. I will take full responsibility and manage him personally from start to finish."

When the sword of the monastery spoke to such an extent, they could not refuse. Thus, permission was granted for him to stay only until the day Eugene turned twenty.

Several winters passed since then, and the promised deadline was approaching.

In three days, Eugene would have to leave the monastery.

* * *

"Thank you for everything you have bestowed upon me."

The fully grown Eugene considered Godfrey as his benefactor.

Beyond knightly training, he even arranged for a priest he was close with to teach Eugene how to read and write. Above all, Eugene was immensely grateful for the affection Godfrey showed him as a godfather.

In his previous life, Eugene had been an orphan.

If he had tasted a mother's love for the first time from his witch mother here, he was able to feel a father's love from Godfrey.

"Do you hold no resentment about leaving as if you are being chased out?"

"Not at all. I have no interest in becoming a priest."

Eugene loathed living a stoic life bound by commandments. Especially if it was an already ruined religious order.

"You thought well. I don't want you to become the lapdog of those narrow-minded fools either."

Godfrey pointed outside the monastery.

"Go out into the world. Wealth, glory, love. Things you can grasp in your hands are scattered in abundance out there. You just need to reach out and harvest them."

"That doesn't seem like appropriate encouragement coming from a priest?"

Eugene made a subtle expression.

"That is advice from a former knight, not a priest."

"Aren't you overestimating me?"

"You have that much capability. Are you doubting my intuition?"

"I am not. Aren't you the person with the best intuition in the world?"

Eugene looked into Godfrey's cloudy eyes.

The Blind Knight, Godfrey.

He was congenitally blind, but instead possessed extremely developed hearing and touch.

Even among the blind to have such cases, Godfrey was uniquely exceptional.

He dodged incoming arrows and spears without seeing them. By catching even the sound of his opponent's muscles moving right in front of him, he could predict where they would attack.

With that mysterious ability, he even earned the reputation as the Prophetic Knight.

"The clear-eyed blind fools of the monastery do not know your true worth."

There was one fact that everyone misunderstood. Godfrey taking Eugene in the past wasn't simply out of compassion.

"I remember the first time I met you."

At that time, Eugene was digging his mother's grave.

Even if she had provided good medicine, a witch was a witch. Not a single adult in the village stepped forward to help.

Digging a grave was a difficult task even for an adult, and being buried without a funeral was a tragic affair.

Godfrey sought Eugene out with the thought of helping him himself.

And thus, upon that first meeting in the quiet forest, the veteran knight was overwhelmed.

Thwack!

Thump!

Every time the boy swung the shovel, the ground was excavated with immense momentum.

An ordinary knight would have been surprised by the speed of the shovel and the amount of dirt, but the blind knight focused on something else.

'What a monster.'

The harmony of the muscles he heard every time Eugene's limbs moved. It was like the growl of a sleeping dragon.

Compared to any squire or knight he had encountered so far, it was an extraordinarily special resonance.

'His heart is calm too.'

The boy's heart maintained a steady beat.

Neither the labor of digging a grave nor the fear of being left alone in a harsh world after losing his mother could shake that small heart.

Rather, it was Godfrey himself who lost his composure.

Thud.

The aging retired knight placed a hand on his left chest.

'I covet him. I want to mold this young tiger cub with my own hands.'

He felt the fighting spirit of a knight, which he had buried beneath his religious life, begin to boil over.

Godfrey sat quietly and appreciated the timbre created by the boy's muscles. All he did was recite a prayer and offer flowers at the very end.

-Will you not come with me? I shall give you food, shelter, and a future as a knight.

Nod.

Eugene accepted the offer. That was the truth behind his adoption in the past.

"When do you plan to leave?"

"I will leave as soon as I retrieve my mother's belongings."

"The monastery won't hand them over so easily."

When Eugene was taken into the monastery, the belongings from the cabin where the mother and son lived were also moved there.

Some of those items were classified as the products of a witch and remained sealed away in the monastery's storehouse.

"I can't just leave empty-handed, can I?"

"It doesn't seem like they would be particularly valuable items, though."

"Money is not the issue."

His mother's research journals and travelogues were treasures far more precious than money to Eugene.

Fragments of memories left behind by his only blood relative in a world where everything was unfamiliar. He absolutely didn't want to leave them behind.

"So that's why you accepted the monastery's request right as you were about to leave."

"Yes."

The monastery requested Eugene, who was approaching adulthood, to exterminate a large wild boar that had been terrorizing the village.

Just as a soldier on the brink of discharge had nothing to fear, to Eugene, who was packing his bags to leave, it was something he could easily ignore.

However, he could not help but be tempted by the promise that they would return his mother's belongings once he completed the task.

"I will come with you."

"It is something I can do alone."

"Isn't it essentially a graduation ceremony for my disciple? At least let me observe."

"Understood."

A short while later, having finished their preparations, the two left the monastery.

"You must never underestimate a wild boar."

"I know. Looking at the depth of the footprints, it was no joke."

To Eugene's eyes, the target easily surpassed 200 kilograms at the very least.

Even with Earth's hunting rifles, it was a weight class one could not let their guard down against, so it was no different from a disaster for the farmers here, whose only weapons were bamboo spears and farming tools.

"Look over there. Seems like they're off to catch that monster."

"Not a monster, a wild boar."

"But they say it's as big as a monster? Samson saw the top of the cliff at night, and he said there was a wild boar the size of a house."

"Is this your first time hearing his bragging?"

The farmers murmured as they looked at the two.

Dangerous predators distinguished from common beasts like wild dogs, wolves, wild boars, and bears. The people here grouped such creatures together and called them monsters.

An elderly herbalist approached Godfrey and Eugene, respectfully taking off his hat.

"Thank you for your hard work."

"Thank you."

Eugene replied on behalf of the taciturn Godfrey.

This time, a middle-aged man approached and pleaded with his hands clasped together.

"They say Gamba's mushroom field was ruined because of that damn wild boar. Who knows what other damage will occur if we just leave it alone. I have no shame in asking this, but please, I beg of you!"

"I shall do my best."

He showed no hesitation in speaking non-honorifically to anyone, whether they were middle-aged or elderly. That was the very first thing he was corrected on the moment he became Godfrey's squire.

The villagers probably found it more comfortable that way too. Eugene, who would soon become a knight, was an existence that mere backcountry farmers could not treat lightly.

"Greetings, Sir Knights!"

A shepherd repairing the village fence greeted them cheerfully.

"I'd be happier if you called me Priest. I've chosen faith over the sword now."

"I'm also just a squire who hasn't been knighted yet. Knight is too grand a title."

Seeing the modesty of the master and disciple, the shepherd lightly tapped his own lips.

"Phew, this ignorant fellow made a mistake. Haven't you two saved the village more than just a couple of times? It's just that you both feel like knights from a fairy tale."

It was not an empty pleasantry.

Being a village on the frontier of the continent, and one bordering deep mountains at that, threats large and small always came knocking.

The village's name was Kingdom's End, as it laid at the very edge of successive kingdoms. Despite its grandiose ring, it was a featureless place, though its population was quite large.

Whenever an incident requiring martial prowess occurred, Godfrey would take Eugene along to solve it, using it as an opportunity for knightly training.

Occasionally, they would share the meat of hunted beasts with the village. Doing so, it was inevitable for popularity to sprout where there was none.

When the stately and fully grown Eugene walked alongside the highly seasoned Godfrey, to the ignorant farmers, they looked like a picture-perfect scene.

"You don't know how sorry I was that we couldn't help you with anything when your mother passed away."

"It couldn't be helped. Everyone has their own circumstances."

This village was ruled by a monastery, not by knights or a lord. Therefore, ownership of the forest and mill was also exercised by the priests.

Eugene completely understood that the powerless villagers had to walk on eggshells.

Accompanied by the shepherd's send-off, they crossed the village boundary, and massive trees revealed themselves.

Dense forests lay to the west and north. Walk just a hundred paces west, and the canopy grew so thick the sky was blotted out. The north wasn't quite as dense, but towering mountain ranges loomed over it.

Such places were common in this world. There were far more places untouched by the light of civilization than those that were.

Even stepping just a little beyond one's familiar territory invited unidentifiable cries, footprints, and gloomy gazes to cling to you.

"I have one thing I am curious about."

"What is it?"

"If it were you, Master, you could have easily joined a distinguished noble family and become a swordmaster."

"I've even received offers from the royal family."

"..."

Eugene marveled inwardly once more.

"Then why on earth did you volunteer for penance by entering a monastery in your later years?"

His master diligently participated in his religious life, but he was not consumed by fanaticism like the other priests of the Lord God faith.

To Eugene's eyes, it seemed Godfrey prayed while looking towards something else entirely—neither the abbot's sermons nor the scriptures.

"You know the reason I was able to become a knight despite being blind, don't you?"

"Yes. In exchange for lacking vision, your other senses became sharpened. Especially your hearing."

"Indeed, I've devoted my entire life to training and sharpening my senses."

Godfrey tapped his eyelids lightly with his index finger.

"With my eyes like this, I couldn't get stronger by training like everyone else."

"I suppose so."

"In spring, I listened closely to the melting snow and the sprouts emerging from the earth. In summer, I distinguished the unique cries of thousands of insects, and in autumn, the falling leaves. In winter, I focused on the sound of the world freezing over."

"There must not be a single knight in the world who trains like you, Master."

In this world, the method by which knights tempered themselves was simply to ignorantly swing swords and run around.

No one doubted that suffering while drenched in sweat, draining one's stamina, and tearing one's muscles to shreds was the path of a knight.

However, Godfrey's method of training was infinitely closer to meditation. Perhaps thanks to that, he had easily adapted to monastery life despite living his entire life as a knight.

"As I focused and focused on my hearing like that, one day, I heard something different. Something I had never heard before in my life."

"Is it like a new realm of the sword? Like the sword speaking to you?"

Eugene asked, recalling the martial arts novels he had read on Earth.

"Are you making a joke right now?"

"Well, yes."

Eugene mumbled sheepishly.

Godfrey stopped and looked up at the sky.

"I heard the voice of God."

That was the reason he had taken refuge in the monastery in his later years.

"It felt as if the sins I had accumulated so far were being forgiven. But I could never hear that voice again afterwards. I wondered if I could find a way here at the monastery, but all I'm left with is disappointment. They are the ones further from the voice of God than mere farmers."

Godfrey turned his face toward the receding monastery.

More precisely, towards the priests residing within it—those he had long since ceased calling 'brothers'.

"Out of so many monasteries, why did you have to choose this one?"

"The voice of God came from this direction. Furthermore, they went beyond devout and were maniacs crazy about faith, so I thought they might know something more."

Godfrey smiled faintly and stroked Eugene's head.

"Above all else, haven't I found a precious bond by coming here?"

Because his disciple had already shot past him in height, Godfrey had to reach up.

Eugene, who had been quietly accepting the pat, opened his mouth.

"Are you perhaps thinking of leaving the monastery too, Master?"

"You quick-witted brat."

Godfrey withdrew his hand.

"Leaving me aside, the priests wouldn't be very happy if you left, Master."

"They brought it upon themselves, so who can they blame?"

The priests of the Lord God faith, whose influence waned day by day, were frantic to increase their followers.

Both Eugene and Godfrey frowned at their unscrupulous, tyrannical behavior.

Tweeet-!

At that moment, a whistle could be heard from afar. It was a clear, beautiful tone that wrapped around the ears.

Within it lay a sense of gladness, along with an earnest desire for them to look her way. It was like a letter written through whistling.

"Homi! Don't rush, take your time!"

Despite Eugene's shout, the girl dashing down the mountain slope didn't slow her pace.

She was in her late teens, standing tall for a woman. In stark contrast, she possessed an adorable face akin to a forest fairy. Yet, there was an unmistakable raw, wild nature to her impression.

Homi was a herbalist and hunter who had settled in the cabin where Eugene and his mother used to live.

"A squire's squire, indeed."

"Please don't tease."

Eugene glared playfully at his master, who was chuckling heartily.

Just as Godfrey had taken in Eugene, Homi was a girl that Eugene had taken in.

The age gap between them was only two years, so rather than master and servant, it felt much closer to that of siblings.