What Is a Knight?
The question echoed in my mind as the world burned around me.
What is a knight? What is chivalry?
“Cough!”
Of course I wouldn’t know. I was just a fool chasing an empty dream. The battlefield stretched out like a sea of flames, soldiers writhing in the chaos of hell itself. This was the sight that greeted an idiot who had pursued a hollow fantasy.
“Ah… ugh… ah, aah…”
“If you’re done, get lost.”
“Aaaaaaaaagh!”
I watched with a bitter gaze as the young kingdom soldier turned tail and fled. He was far too young to be on this godforsaken battlefield…
But my fleeting sympathy vanished in an instant. A searing pain tore through me, and when I looked down, I saw the broken shaft of a pike piercing straight through my gut. For a kid that young, it was a pretty decent strike. Or maybe I had simply let my guard down.
If a military surgeon saw this wound, he’d probably just silently make the sign of the cross and offer a prayer. After years of rolling around battlefields like they were my own backyard, the reason I’d been brought down by a child’s blind thrust was simple.
It was because—
“Uwaaagh! It’s a knight!”
“The Crimson Flame Knight!”
—I had been distracted until the very end by that cursed word.
The moment I heard “knight,” my eyes had been drawn to her. And the instant I saw her, I was utterly captivated.
A knight.
A hero who could turn the tide of any battle.
She belonged to the damned kingdom’s side, of course, but a hero was still a hero to her own people. She crushed enemies, saved allies, and bore the morale of an entire army on nothing but her name.
Whoosh—!
That was what a knight was. The very flower of the battlefield.
If I could have become something like that—just once—I would have given anything. But it looked like this life wasn’t meant to be.
“Aaaaaagh!”
“…?”
For a split second, my eyes met those of the Crimson Flame Knight as she swung her sword. It was like watching a dance. Her blade traced a trajectory so beautiful I couldn’t look away, as if I’d been enchanted.
It was a shame my fellow imperial soldiers were falling, but if I could watch her dance just a little longer…
“Cough.”
“……”
The surroundings had gone quiet. At some point, within the roaring flames, only she and I remained.
The renowned Crimson Flame Knight and a mere foot soldier like me.
Only then did I finally murmur, as if in a trance.
“I… wanted to be… a knight…”
Thud.
That was my last will.
It echoed across the battlefield that would soon be nothing but ashes.