Do you know why the undead bite people? Because it’s a blessing. I’m undead myself, so I would know.
✦ ✦ ✦
The story began back when I was alive.
“Oh, did I wake you, Holy Knight? I’m sorry.”
As the warmth surrounding me faded away, I opened my eyes to see the one who had just apologized to me. She was a red-haired woman who had just gotten out of bed and placed her feet on the ground. When we’d first met the night before, she’d told me her name was Tory. She was thin, but that was primarily due to the village’s food situation rather than deliberate self-restraint.
Sitting up, I finally responded. “It’s fine.”
“Do you want breakfast?”
“Sorry for making you do all this for me.”
“What are you talking about? If anything, I’m not doing enough.”
The night before, there had still been some distance between us after I’d saved her from a monster. But it seemed that overnight, she’d relaxed a bit and lowered her guard as she was starting to open up. My squad had been dispatched to a village when I’d heard about a young woman who hadn’t returned from gathering herbs, so I’d rushed ahead on my own and managed to rescue her before it was too late.
After I’d linked back up with my squad, we had confirmed that the monster was dead and secured the area. Then I’d had an idea. Tory had entered the forest alone because of the village’s need for food, and what kind of man ignored a woman in need? I had to get them something decent to eat. The problem was, the meat from the monster that had attacked Tory wasn’t really edible.
There existed a mysterious power in this world called mana. Certain individuals could utilize mana to perform miraculous techniques known as magic, and creatures that had been heavily affected by mana were known as monsters and couldn’t be eaten. So I had gone to hunt an ordinary bear instead. And to ensure she wasn’t the target of the other villagers’ envy, I’d decided to treat the entire village.
In the end, the villagers had gotten full stomachs and the peace of mind knowing they didn’t have to worry about monsters anymore. Everything had worked out perfectly. On top of that, I had earned the gratitude of the beautiful Tory and spent the night with her. I seemed to recall my commander complaining to me about something, but I had a habit of letting anything a man said go in one ear and out the other. So, oh well. It probably wasn’t important.
“Holy Knight?” Tory looked at me quizzically.
I had been so lost in thought that I’d completely forgotten to respond. “All right, guess I’ll take you up on that.” I scanned the room as I answered, and found my clothes on the floor. As I was getting dressed, I noticed a mirror in Tory’s room and saw my own sleepy face reflected in it—black hair, black eyes, a toned body, but with only a minimal amount of muscle. I was covered from head to toe in countless scars, but that wasn’t really unusual. Most had come from missions and training, but a good number of them dated back to when I’d been young too.
As an orphan, I had no clue what my parents looked like, but according to the old man who’d raised me in the slums, my mom had been a prostitute, and the guy who had gotten her pregnant had been a foreign traveler. My hair color, the color of my eyes, and even my unimpressive physique were probably all from my dad. Because of that, I’d had my fair share of issues growing up. Bigger kids always beat the crap out of me in fights. If my dad had been tall, handsome, blond-haired, and blue-eyed, life probably would’ve been easier, but it is what it is. No use worrying about what you don’t have. You’ve just gotta make do with what you’ve got.
Once I finished getting dressed, I realized I couldn’t find my weapon. “Hey, have you seen my sword?” I called out to Tory, who had gone to the kitchen.
“Your sword? I don’t know... Oh, did you check under the bed?”
“Under the bed...” I checked, and sure enough, there it was. I couldn’t remember how it got there. It was possible I’d just thrown it on the floor and one of us had accidentally kicked it under the bed, but who could say. Some people care a lot about their swords, but I wasn’t one of them. To me, they were just tools.
Obsessing over a sword would just make you get pointlessly attached to it. As far as I was concerned, it didn’t matter if you had the world’s most powerful holy sword. If the job requires it, you should be ready to discard it at all times. There was once a guy who had gotten so bent out of shape in the middle of battle because the sword his father had given him broke that he’d ended up getting himself killed. If he hadn’t obsessed over it so much, he might still be alive. Maintenance was important, but at the end of the day, you had to remember that tool was a tool. That was the trick to surviving as a holy knight—a soldier who mainly dealt in slaying monsters. I picked up my sword, hung it at my hip, and headed to the living room.
“Come to think of it, what happened to the other holy knights?” Tory asked.
“Uh, I think I heard they were staying at the village chief’s place.”
Be they monsters, undead, golems, or dragons, those known as holy knights were dispatched to deal with anything out of the ordinary. I was one of them. Our five-person squad, including my adoptive father and adoptive brother, had taken on this mission the day before. I vaguely remembered my brother saying something about staying at the village chief’s house before Tory had invited me to stay with her, but I didn’t really care.