Return of the Apocalypse Knight

Chapter 2: Jansen Eger, Free Knight

I was born to a small barony in the Kingdom of Sorvia, one of the many kingdoms in the south of the Empire.

I was a noble with a title, but a rural noble with a small estate consisting of a few small villages.

And I was the third son of a family with no right of succession.

Sure, it was better than being a commoner with nothing, but it was a small family where it was hard for brothers to compete with each other for the title of lord, so all but the oldest brother had to find their own way in life.

The brothers had two choices: become scribes to make ends meet, or become knights and strike out on their own.

Either that, or become a commoner and be kicked out of the estate with a paltry sum of money.

So I decided to become a free knight.

-Pow!

I swung my sword, and a skeleton running toward me with a rusty spear collapsed in front of me.

I pulled out the sword embedded in the skeleton’s head.

The blade was shattered and broken.

“Damn, now I don’t have a single intact blade. That makes it a club, not a sword.”

As I clicked my tongue at the sight of the sword, the senior soldier following behind me spoke.

“You were going to beat them up instead of cutting them off anyway. And since they were just bones, you said it would be easier to just break them.”

He spoke with the ease of a soldier, perhaps because we had shared this battlefield together.

Actually, it was because I took him at his word.

“It would be better to just destroy it since I have mana……What a waste! I finally became a knight, and now I’m caught up in this war.”

If I were fighting people, I would have seen some way to make money, but my opponents were rotten undead. There was nothing I could get out of it other than supplies.

And supplies always suck.

The state of the troops was pretty much self-explanatory given the state of the knight’s equipment at the head of the line.

“Still, there’s no end in sight now, is there?”

“So, that’s why you keep grumbling like this.”

I sighed, looking at the skeletons spilling over the field.

There was still no end in sight for the undead legions, but nevertheless, the heroes had entered the Demon King’s castle, and as the senior soldier said, it was time for the war to end.

I decided to become a knight because of my talents.

Fortunately, as I grew up, I discovered that I had a talent for using my body.

I was able to withstand the harsh training of the two knights in the manor, and I didn’t tremble when I went outside the castle to face real combat.

The first time I killed a man, I vomited profusely and recovered.

The knights told me that I was good enough to be a knight.

Fortunately, the lord and lady of the manor, unable to turn their backs on their talented youngest son, provided me with proper weapons, armor, and a horse when I left the manor as an adult.

Thus, unlike many others, I was able to leave the estate properly armed.

Armed, I could now spend a few years traveling the world as a free knight, making a name for myself and claiming the lands I needed.

The lack of squire made it difficult to manage my arsenal, but it was a small price to pay compared to those who became independent with a single sword.

Once I left the manor, things seemed to go as I had hoped.

As both knights admitted, my skills as a fully equipped knight were second to none, and I grew in reputation as I helped out the top and jumped into territorial battles.

As my reputation grew, I began to receive requests from knights and nobles to come to their estates, and I could choose where to settle.

But then a strange thing happened.

A being called the Demon King has appeared on this continent.

Called the King of Death, he toppled nations and wreaked havoc on the continent.

All of my plans to settle in the land were blown away by the winds.

I have a reputation as a free knight, but it was earned in the kingdom of Sorvia.

If I fled to another kingdom to escape the fighting, I would be little more than a mercenary than a knight.

Besides, Sorvia wasn’t the only kingdom caught up in the war.

I was forced to join other free knights in fighting the undead.

What was not so unfair was that the knights belonging to the territory also had to fight together.

It was an all-out war to prevent the destruction of a kingdom, or even a continent. There was no way any knight would avoid the fight.

As it was, I continued to fight against the piles of skeletons.

“If only I hadn’t been so uselessly remembering my past life.”

I grumbled again, blasting an oncoming skeleton in the head with my crushed blade.

“What?”

The senior soldier asked, watching the skull head fly away.

I looked at the questioning soldier and shook my head.

One day while I was battling the Demon King army, I remembered my previous life.

It wasn’t because of anything special that I remembered my previous life.

It was just a random memory that came to me one day while I was fighting the demon army.

A life before I was born into this world, a life called a past life.

It was a memory of a world different from this one, a world called Earth, a world without mana but with advanced science.

A situation described in the novels I had read in my previous life, except, unlike those novels, I remembered my past life.

It wasn’t some fantastical thing where the personality of my previous life was merged with or overwritten by my current personality, it was just a normal addition of memories.

No, that was fiction enough.

Anyway, there was no shock, no confusion, no personality change, because it was just a memory.

It’s just that I remembered my previous life, which was easy and clean, and it made my current life frustrating.

I just realized that everything in this world that I had taken for granted was uncomfortable and unclean.

And now that I’ve spent years brawling with the undead, I couldn’t even keep up with the shoddy hygiene of this world.

Of the countless soldiers who died from the curse while fighting the undead, it was clear that most died from poor hygiene.

If only there were enough priests, many would have lived…….

However, priests had to fight the undead.

The priests’ and priestesses’ powers were more than mana, they were effective against the undead. In battles against demons, priests were more effective fighters than mages.

In the distance, I could see a bonfire rising.

Red smoke.

It was coming from the direction of the Demon Castle, or rather, the Demon Dungeon, across the plain from where the undead were swarming.

It was a signal that a group of warriors from the special force had entered the dungeon.

I was relieved. It was as planned, a hero chosen by the gods.

Now that he had entered the dungeon, we had to proceed to the next step.

-Pooh-pooh.

The command center must have seen the flame, because a horn sounded from the rear.

-Kwajik.

I crushed the ribs of a skeleton on the ground with my foot, then turned to the senior soldier.

“We’re falling back. Give the signal.”

“Roger that.”

The old senior soldier gestured to the others.

I looked at the soldier’s face and sighed.

A knight should have a squire to help him, and here I was, having an old soldier.

He said he was in his early thirties, but his wrinkled face told me he was well past forty.

But he had to be thirty.

There’s no way a normal soldier would live past 40 in a place like this.

At a signal from the senior soldier, the men who had been helping me began to fall back.

The soldiers under my command were keeping the skeletons I was spilling at bay.

“Back off slowly!”

“Don’t rush in with the intention of killing!”

“We are in front of the Demon City. We can’t defeat the undead with our own strength!”

“Leave it to the knight!”

The senior soldiers shouted at the top of their lungs and led the recruits.

It took a group of soldiers, old and new, to stop a single skeleton from advancing, but even stopping the skeletons in their tracks was a great help.

It’s hard for a knight to run around and try to catch skeletons scattered in all directions.

The soldier who had been riding beside me all this time was the best of the best.

I sighed, but it was the only thing I could do.

Most of the common mercenaries and conscripts had already become one of the undead attacking us.

It was impossible to be an intact corpse in a land of demons, filled with death and demonic energy.

The priest’s blessing and holy water would keep them from turning undead while I was alive, but not after death.

That was the same for me, a knight.

If I was lucky, I would be a Death Knight instead of an ordinary undead, and I might be fighting the hero party in a dungeon right now, but I had no intention of dying just yet.

At best, I remembered my previous life, and I couldn’t die here.

After I won the battle, I was to become a knight of the manor and decorate the manor house.

A peaceful life of bathing and washing, having a clean house with maids to clean it every day, eating delicious meals and drinking wine, and defending the manor.

It would be enough to satisfy me, though I remembered the games and entertainment of my former life.

As I and my soldiers fell back, the other knights fighting the undead began to fall back as well.

The undead filled the clearing, and the knights and soldiers retreated to stand in their way.

The undead, now energized, charged with glee, but we grind our teeth and slowly backed away.

As we retreated, the damage grew worse, but we could not escape.

We had to lure and tie down the undead here until the heroes could defeat the Demon King.

We were the main force attacking the demon army, a manned force to support a separate wing, called the Champions.

Well, a manned force, but a coalition of continental powers.

In the end, it was up to the Hero to defeat the King of Death, Ark Reach.

In fact, when I remembered my past life, I thought I might be the hero I had seen in the novels of my previous life but the reality was different.

The god of this world had chosen a hero and his companions whom I did not know, and bestowed upon him the power of the gods.

He smashed the Demon King minions, the lich, and felled the death knights.

Thanks to him, we were able to raise the banner of counterattack and march to the front of the demon’s dungeon.

Many have died on the way here.

Soldiers, knights, and mages alike have died in great numbers, and I’ve even heard reports of dead among our ranks.

Still, we did not stop, for there was hope.

It was the same now.

As we fell back, knights died, soldiers died.

One by one, the men who had helped me died, and I could no longer hear the voice of the senior soldier.

Will the fight over before all the allies are dead?

That’s when it suddenly occurred to me.

-thud.

The skeletons stopped running then they collapsed.

-Crunch.

The skeletons in front of me, the skeletons beside me, the skeletons behind me, one after another, the undead fell across the field and then they all turned to dust.

It was a majestic sight.

I looked around in a daze and the only people standing were the knights.

I could barely see the remaining soldiers.

The soldiers had not survived.

Even among the knights, many were gone.

The knights of the Empire and the knights of the neighboring kingdoms, none of them were there.

Still, it was a good thing.

They could rest in peace.

-Woohoo!

-We won!

The surviving knights cried, laughed, and shouted.

The battle was over.

In the end, the heroes had slain the Demon King.

Now that all the undead powered by the Demon King are dead, the continent will be at peace and I’ll have the comfortable manor I’ve always dreamed of.

Tears welled up in my eyes.

I wiped the wetness from my eyes and looked toward the demon’s dungeon.

Just like in the novels, a hero had saved the world.

-Pooh-pooh.

A long blast of a horn sounded.

The battle was over.

We turned around with grateful hearts.

It was time to go home.

But the next day we heard a shocking tale from the Hero Party who had exited the dungeon.

The Demon King had escaped death.

He had escaped to another world through a gate he had created long ago.

The gate was still open, and the Alliance had decided to send a force in pursuit.

Damn it, being sent to another world.

My military service is not over.