Hey, You, You Son of a Bitch, You Crazy Bastard
I stared at the endless waves of foreign invaders and simply thrust my spear forward. Shunk.
“Gaaah!”
Thud!
Before I knew it, I’d found a rhythm. Thrust. Shunk. A beat later, the invader’s groan. Then the long whoooosh and thud. A small, twisted sense of fun had taken root.
Down below the wall, the corpses of the invaders were building a brand-new moat. Blood smeared my eyes, blurring the view, but I didn’t have the luxury of wiping it away. One second of distraction here could cost me my head. This was the Lasthy Wall, after all—the very edge of the Northern Grand Duchy.
‘Why the hell do I have to do this shit!’
I twisted the spear buried in an invader’s solar plexus and grumbled inwardly. Annoyingly enough, I had transmigrated into a romance fantasy novel. The title was The Rose that Blooms to be Broken. If I didn’t know the story, I could’ve just gone with the flow. Knowing made it ten times more irritating.
It was a tragic romance fantasy about noble ladies and their families locked in vicious power struggles over the position of Crown Princess of the Clania Empire. The original female lead—an illegitimate daughter of a count—was forced into the fray, only to swear revenge after her friend was killed by the schemes of the Northern Grand Duke’s daughter. A tear-jerking tale of true love and justice triumphing in the midst of misery.
Fuck that. None of that crap has anything to do with me.
The original plot was completely useless to me. The timing of my transmigration had been utterly screwed from the start. The story began in the first chapter with the ten-year-old illegitimate heroine being abused—meaning I’d arrived a full ten years before the main events. And my identity? I wasn’t even a plausible supporting character like the count’s son or a knight. I didn’t even have a name.
“Hey! Thrust properly, you bastard!”
“You son of a bitch! Raise that spear!”
“Look at this crazy fucker! You wanna die?!”
Exactly. I was nothing more than a nameless, run-of-the-mill soldier of the Northern Grand Duchy—the guy everyone called “hey, you, you son of a bitch, you crazy bastard.” The lowest-grade consumable who didn’t even have the luxury of receiving a proper name from anyone. That was me.
Boooom—!
The impact slamming into the wall snapped me back to reality. I clenched my teeth and readjusted my grip on the spear. With cold indifference, I drove the weapon into the invaders crawling up the wall below. Stab, twist, pull. I continued the simple, repetitive task.
“Gaaaah!”
Yet another invader whose gut had been skewered by my spear screamed as he plummeted. I caught my breath and stared at the tip of my weapon for a moment.
‘…I’m tougher than I thought.’
One month. That was how long I’d survived in this hell. Repeatedly stabbing with the spear had taught me one thing: I was surprisingly skilled with a weapon and disgustingly tenacious.
A vague description from the original novel about the soldiers at the northern wall floated into my mind.
A single Wall Soldier is strong enough to face ten Southern Soldiers. They are the ones who silently endure the northern calamities that would require the Empire’s full strength to stop.
It seemed that description applied to me as well. I hadn’t received any special opportunities, but after desperately struggling just to survive, my body had somehow become perfectly optimized for this battlefield.
Whether this was inside a romance fantasy novel or the Northern Grand Duchy ruled by Gareth von Arteta—the father of Veronica von Arteta, who would later awaken as the villainess—didn’t matter. First, I had to live.
The driving force that let me endure a month of stabbing invaders day after day was simple.
Just survive. That was the only thought I had.
Time flowed on like that, and before I knew it, a full year had passed.
“Goddamn it! There’s no end to these bastards!”
I spat curses at the pouring onslaught and thrust my spear far more violently than I had a year ago. Shunk. Shunk! I pierced two throats in quick succession, but before I could even catch my breath, new enemies were already climbing the wall.
A year earlier, I had been at the very edge of the wall—the most remote position. But after a year of stabbing like a madman and surviving like a cockroach, I must have stood out. In a place where the soldier hierarchy wasn’t strictly defined, position was status. At some point, I had moved to the center of the wall—dangerously close to the command center.
The problem was that being near command meant the enemy’s attacks were focused here. Fuck! It was several times harder than when I’d fought from the outskirts right after transmigrating.
‘The upside is that I can overhear the war situation since I’m close to command…’
According to the latest rumors, the war would be over soon. Which meant the cornered invaders were launching an all-out final desperate assault. My position had improved, but the workload had only gotten worse—an absolutely shitty reality that made me laugh bitterly.
“Die, you barbarian bastards!”
The shout from the soldier beside me fired me up as well. I swung my spear with a roar.
Swoosh!
The spear blade sliced through the air, spraying a mist of blood. Just as I was panting heavily and searching for my next target, a forgotten detail from the original novel flashed through my mind.
‘Wait. The war is ending soon. The villainess Veronica’s father is Grand Duke Gareth.’
The trigger that caused the villainess Veronica von Arteta to go off the rails in the original story was her father’s death. The Grand Duke had died during the war at the northern wall while Veronica was still young. His younger brother—the Uncle—then inherited the title, and that was when her tragedy began.
Sweat slicked the hand gripping my spear.
‘The war is about to end, so why is the Grand Duke still alive?’
It wasn’t as if I had done anything spectacular to change history. I had simply done my best as a nameless soldier, stabbing away with my spear.
“Do not lower your spears! Protect our land!”
Yet the Grand Duke was still alive and commanding. Which meant he would soon die—killed by the assassin sent by his own brother.
The battle had reached its climax. Covered in blood and gasping for air, I glanced toward the command center. I could see Gareth von Arteta passionately directing the troops from behind.
I desperately dredged up the original novel’s setting I vaguely remembered. The Grand Duke’s assassination. Who was the assassin again?
‘The newly appointed knight sent from the capital to the wall under the pretext of gaining experience—sent by the Grand Duke’s younger brother, the Uncle!’
I couldn’t recall his face at all. There was no way an extra villain in a romance fantasy would get a detailed physical description. But I remembered his role perfectly.
The standard of the Arteta family—a flag depicting a howling wolf. The flag bearer who carried it.
In the original novel, the scene of the Grand Duke’s death and that flag crashing to the ground had been portrayed with great solemnity.
My eyes frantically scanned the area around the command center. They immediately locked onto a knight standing right behind the Grand Duke, holding the wolf flag.
His hand trembled slightly—then released the flagpole entirely.
Swoosh—
The massive flag fluttered as it began to fall. The signal for the assassination. He had already freed both hands for the deed.
A dagger appeared from within the knight’s coat.
“You son of a—!”
I hurled the spear I was holding to the ground.
“What the hell are you doing?!”
“Hey! Get back in position!”
The surrounding knights and soldiers shouted in confusion, but nothing reached my ears. I sprinted toward the command center. It was already too late; I had to close the distance even by a single step.
The assassin’s dagger was already hurtling toward the Grand Duke’s back.
‘Ah, fuck!’
I had zero intention of risking my life to save him. My original plan had been to just shout a warning and throw a spear to draw attention. But after rolling around this damned Lasthy Wall for a year, it seemed my body had become that of a loyal soldier of the Grand Duke’s house. My body moved before my head could think.
I threw myself forward, blocking the space behind the Grand Duke.
Shunk—!
“Ugh…”
I had suffered every kind of injury imaginable over the past year thanks to the invaders. But this was the first time I felt this kind of pain. The sensation of a lump of iron being driven deep into my lung. A blow close to instant death coursed through me.
My breath caught. Hot blood gushed from my mouth. My vision rapidly darkened as I collapsed to the ground. The surrounding noise grew distant.
“Damn it, I failed!”
“Catch him! He’s trying to throw himself off the wall!”
“We lost him! It’s nighttime and visibility is—”
Chaotic shouts echoed around me. And within my fading consciousness, I heard a desperate voice.
“Save him! Save this man! He is the benefactor who saved my life! Use any means necessary and save him at once!”
With those words as my last, I closed my eyes.
Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.
…So noisy.
I barely managed to lift my heavy eyelids. My blurry vision gradually cleared. Blue sky. Fluttering military tents. I was lying on something like a makeshift bed. Wait—on a bed? Even if it was a camp bed, why was it outside…?
“Proud warriors of the North! We have done it! The long, long war against the barbarians has ended in our victory!”
A resonant voice rang out from a platform. It was Gareth von Arteta.
‘What the hell? Why am I listening to this as a patient out in the open?’
I rolled my eyes, trying to grasp the situation. It seemed to be the plaza behind the wall after the war’s end. A noisy celebration of victory with a merit award ceremony underway. I really wanted to complain about dragging a patient out to an outdoor event like this, but the sharp pain in my chest and the surrounding cheers made me shut my mouth. Conserving energy was the smart move.
At that moment, the medic standing guard beside my bed noticed me and shouted in shock.
“Y-Your Grace! He’s awake! The hero who saved the Grand Duke—Sir Bale has opened his eyes!”
…Who?
Bale? I was the one who saved the Grand Duke, and I was the one who woke up. But who the hell was Bale? Had some nearby knight stolen the credit because I was just a lowly soldier?
“What?!”
Thump thump thump thump.
Before my confusion could even settle, the Grand Duke—who had been giving a speech on the platform—came running like a madman, his cloak flapping wildly. He dropped to his knees beside my bed with a thud and grabbed both my hands.
Tears welled up in his eyes.
“You’re awake, Sir Bale! Heaven has helped us!”
Bale.
Only then did I realize it. The nameless soldier 1. The guy who had spent a year being called “hey, you, son of a bitch, crazy bastard.” I had finally received a name for saving the Grand Duke’s life. And not just any name—a rather respectable title: Sir Bale.
The reward was sweet. However…
After the merit ceremony ended, I sat rattling inside a carriage headed for the Grand Duke’s residence. More precisely, I had been half-forcibly placed inside the Grand Duke’s personal carriage.
“Are you uncomfortable anywhere, Bale? Has your wound not reopened?”
Gareth von Arteta asked with intense persistence as he pulled the blanket over my knees higher.
“Ah, yes. I’m fine, Your Grace.”
“Your Grace? From now on, call me Brother. It is only natural to show such courtesy to the savior of my life.”
The Grand Duke smiled warmly and patted my shoulder.
I was grateful for the repayment of kindness, but…
I smiled awkwardly and turned my gaze out the window.
‘A grown man being this obsessed with me feels incredibly weird.’
I had survived a brush with death and gained a proper name. An ultra-fast promotion in status from soldier 1 to Sir Bale. But the unexpected affection and obsession from the Grand Duke was a little—no, extremely burdensome.
The carriage rattled on toward the Arteta Grand Duke’s residence. In my first year after transmigration, I had no idea how my future would unfold.