Consumed by the chaos of battle, the village was awash in a sea of flames.
Enemy soldiers sped through the blaze on horseback, eviscerating any villagers unlucky enough to be in their path as they fled...
Just kidding. That only happens in fantasy stories.
For starters, I wasn’t a fresh-faced fifteen-year-old hero-to-be, but a bearded, twenty-five-year-old farmer. I simply learned that this country was at war from the bulletins posted on the village’s public announcement board.
Speaking of faces, mine wasn’t that of the character I had played in Golden Dawn. Since I was a living, breathing person rather than pixels in a game, my hair grew, and so did my beard. I didn’t have anything adroitly sharp and bladed like a razor, so I would keep it from getting too unruly with a knife. I doubted my countenance was very flattering, all things considered.
I was a burly, tanned mountain man—okay, maybe I didn’t exactly have the muscle mass to be appropriately “burly,” but you know what I meant. My long, black hair, weathered by years of the harsh sunlight common in the highlands, stretched all the way down my back, so I kept it tied with a simple cord.
To be clear, I didn’t actually have a tan from the sun—I just happened to be born with skin that was that color naturally. I got the feeling that my skin color was relatively rare in this world. I’d heard this kind of complexion being described as “olive” in my past life, and that seemed appropriate.
My eyes were olive as well—a dark, muted green coloring my irises. That being said, I hadn’t ever had the opportunity to look in a proper mirror, so I wasn’t too sure about the rest of my face. Besides, everyone knows looks don’t make the man, yeah?
As for my burly frame, well...the goal was to bulk up and get some muscle on these bones of mine, but my circumstances had never allowed me to get the proper nutrition to actually pull that off. Oh well. It’s not like a craftsman needs a lot of muscle anyway.
My height was more or less average. Not too tall, not too short, but just right. Nothing remarkable. And that pretty much summed up my current appearance in this reincarnated life.
The village square was full of people crowding around the public bulletin board. As an aside, this board had been built just a scant five years ago. Had it been erected before then, I would’ve realized everything was written in Japanese in this world much earlier. However, the board itself was a pointless expenditure in a village full of illiterate farmers—I should’ve just been happy that it had been put up at all.
As I neared the crowd and set my vegetable burden down at my feet, I called out to an acquaintance. “What’s with the grim look, Arowa? Bad news?”
He whipped his head around. “Oh, Kariya...”
Arowa was the blacksmith’s son and one of the few people I would call a friend. We’d grown up together. The creases on his brow deepened as he said my name. “Yeah, conscription. Some soldiers arrived earlier and gave a speech about it. Looks like things came to a head with our neighbors, and our liege lord is planning on supporting the war effort.”
I digested the news for a moment. “No way,” I groaned.
The lord of these lands was happy to leave monsters unculled and let them loiter about, but he was always exacting when it came to tax collection. He took about forty percent of our harvests, though I had no idea if that was steep or not. I wasn’t much of a political sim enthusiast in my last life.
The villagers were engaged in hushed conversations as they looked up at the posting on the board that’d been written in glyphs they couldn’t even read. They kept glancing in my direction too.
I sighed.
Arowa smiled bitterly and clapped a hand on my shoulder. “It’s a damn shame, Kariya. If you’d just left the village a little earlier, you wouldn’t have gotten dragged into this mess.”
I gave him a lighthearted grunt in agreement as I read through the announcement. It explained that, in alliance with the Raghion Empire, our country of Tiuccia was going to war with its neighboring country, Khrasiel. Raghion was the strongest of the three Central Nations, which was entirely unsurprising considering it had a lofty title like “the Empire” even in Golden Dawn.
Seven people, able-bodied men between the ages of fifteen and forty-five, were to be drafted from our little village. That meant one of every three men in the prime of their lives. I had no idea if that was a lot or not.
While they were in the service, arms and equipment would be provided, and they would also be fed and paid. However, the men would be responsible for any expenses accrued during the journey to the designated rendezvous town.
There were large-scale player-versus-player war events in Golden Dawn too. I had once joined one as logistical support, but it hadn’t been very fun, so I’d skipped those types of events after that.
Anyway, being conscripted meant that we’d basically be joining the war as E-tier NPCs. In the game, “NPC” was short for “non-playable character.” Unlike player-controlled characters (similarly shortened to “PC”), NPCs were characters in the game that behaved automatically according to their programming.
So, we were to be at the same level as those NPCs: bottom-of-the-barrel fighters that would serve as target practice.
Hmm. Push comes to shove, I guess I could just desert in the heat of battle.
Apparently, deserters were given the death penalty, but even if I were caught, I could just say I’d gotten separated from the main forces.
Occupied with contingency plans, I remained deep in thought for a moment. I turned to Arowa. “I’ll speak with the chief,” I said, but then I remembered the vegetables at my feet. “Oh, and here—take these. I won’t be eating them either way.”
He stared at me in surprise. “Are you planning on volunteering?”
I nodded. “Yeah,” I said. “I can’t claim I’ll become a war hero or anything, but at least I’m good at running.”
I set off for the village chief’s home. The surrounding villagers backed away, giving me a wide berth as if they wanted nothing to do with me. Ever since my engagement with the village chief’s daughter had been broken off eight years ago, they’d treated me like a tumor to be excised.
The chief’s daughter had been an old friend of mine as well, and she’d left for a live-in job in the village at the foot of the mountains. In the end, she had never come back.
I wasn’t all that sad about it. Even though we had promised to wait for each other, I knew she wouldn’t keep her end of it. My old life had taught me that those particular words weren’t worth much.
Besides, I could understand her parents wanting a better life for her—marriage to even a moderately moneyed individual would be far better than becoming the bride of a dirt-poor farmer.
I could be mature about this—guess I’m not an old crusty fart for nothing, yeah? Adding up my past and my current lives, I was at least fifty-four years old combined. But...eh. I couldn’t count my former life, not really. I was pretty sure my mental age was sprightly and youthful, influenced by my tender visage. Maybe.
The chief was overjoyed that I was offering myself up as a volunteer for the draft instead of simply putting the village behind me. I also informed him that I didn’t plan on ever coming back here, even once the war ended.
Relief washed over his face. He handed me a pittance of a travel stipend and sent me on my way.
It would probably take hours for them to select the other six men to send off to war, so I decided to head for the rendezvous ahead of them and take in the sights as I traveled.
Yeah. This’ll be like going for a fun jaunt.
Even though war was on the horizon and I was going to have to deal with it, I was reacting to being drafted like I was heading on a school field trip. It wasn’t just bravado either. Being a transmigrator, I apparently had retained some skills from my character, so my combat proficiency was higher than that of the average NPC in this world.
The highest tier an NPC could be placed in was B. My combat proficiency had also been ranked at a B, despite the fact that I had played a crafting job. Because of that, I figured I could hold my own in a fight against the average person.
Oh, but if I were up against another transmigrator, I’d definitely be toast. If there were an SSS-tier combat specialist among the enemy ranks? I’d be dead before I even moved. That “Godslayer” title was no joke, after all.
In the best of circumstances, my detachment and I would be instantly defeated. And in the worst... Never mind. It’s not a good idea to think about bad things—some people would say that’d trip a flag.
I bid farewell to some longtime acquaintances whom my grandparents and I had known. Then, I set out on the road, leaving behind the village that had raised me.