Living with a Greatsword Is a Dream and a Romance
The mercenary guild had grown quiet after most of the mercenaries left. Only the administrative staff remained inside the building.
“Hmm, something feels off.”
Under normal circumstances, I would have joined the column and gone to smash some undead. But my instincts were screaming at me not to.
‘It seems my sixth sense improves along with my physical stats.’
The physical stat raised every aspect of the body’s overall capabilities—including the sixth sense known as intuition.
‘It keeps bothering me. I’m sure something’s about to happen, but it’s so frustrating.’
Following my gut, I had stayed out of the column, but the growing unease made my head spin.
‘How could undead possibly invade the Mana Spring?’
To reach deep underground, they would have had to dig tunnels. And undead didn’t possess that kind of intelligence. Which meant someone was commanding them.
‘Did a necromancer launch this invasion to seize the Mana Spring?’
The Mana Spring was a treasure even necromancers coveted. If one was truly after it, there had to be more to the plan.
‘Maybe the undead attacking the Mana Spring are just a smokescreen.’
They could launch a large-scale assault while everyone’s eyes were on the Mana Spring, assassinate key figures, or burn supply depots. The possibilities were endless.
‘For now, I should watch how things develop. If something happens, there’ll be an uproar nearby.’
For example, someone bursting in and shouting that it was an emergency…
“E-emergency!”
Bang!
A guard kicked open the mercenary guild’s door and rushed inside.
“Huh…? Are there really this few people left in the mercenary guild?”
“Everyone’s headed toward the mines. They said there’s trouble at the Mana Spring. Most of the mercenaries rushed over there.”
“Aaaargh…! Damn it!”
The guard looked utterly despairing. From his uniform, he was clearly one of the wall sentries.
“That uniform—you’re a wall sentry, right? Did something happen on the walls?”
“Right now, a massive army has appeared beyond the walls. It looks like an enormous number of monsters are preparing to invade!”
That was serious trouble.
“How many guards are left? Have you contacted the knight order?”
“There are no knights left in the city. Seventy percent of the guard force has been pulled to the mines as well.”
The remaining guards had probably been left behind to maintain minimal public order in the city.
“This is really bad.”
A massive army was invading, and there were no troops to stop them? It was the same as handing them a spoon and saying, “Please enjoy us at your leisure.”
“Can’t we pull any personnel back from the mines?”
“That seems difficult too. The report says undead are pouring out endlessly.”
Undead were surging without end from the holes the enemy had dug. The procession showed no sign of stopping.
“On top of that, all the priests have gone there as well, so receiving medical support will be nearly impossible.”
There was nothing to be done about that. Priests lost their minds the moment they saw a walking corpse.
“Then there’s really no other support at all?”
“We came to the mercenary guild as our last lifeline…”
The situation was spiraling into complete chaos. No—more accurately, the invader’s strategy was working perfectly.
‘Just having a competent enemy commander is enough to crush our army’s morale.’
To break through this crisis, they would need unexpected reinforcements or the appearance of an overwhelmingly powerful being capable of flipping the entire board. The odds were extremely low, but they could still hope, couldn’t they?
‘Should I take the Night Mercenary Band and flee under cover of darkness?’
I had operated in Dorua for quite a long time, but I didn’t have any deep attachments. After all, the smart move with natural disasters was to avoid them rather than confront them, right?
While I was pondering what to do, I realized something important.
‘I… always think about running away in situations like this.’
Even after awakening the cheat trait called the System, a person’s fundamental nature didn’t change so easily.
‘The knight I dreamed of becoming isn’t like this.’
The knight I admired never tolerated injustice and never gave up, no matter how impossible the situation seemed.
‘He protected the weak and upheld the code of chivalry.’
A knight was someone who lived by all those virtues and called them honor.
“You there. Can you take me up to the walls?”
The walls were a restricted area off-limits to unauthorized personnel. Approaching without permission could result in punishment.
“…I can take you, but are you sure? The enemy forces are no joke.”
He seemed worried that my morale might break.
“It’s fine. I have no intention of running or hiding.”
If you want to break my conviction, bring a Master.
‘Black Shadow Armor, deploy.’
Auto-equipping magic plate armor
Automatic cleaning, weight reduction, noise reduction, self-repair functions included.
Hard black armor enveloped my entire body. With this armor, there was nothing in the world I needed to fear.
“A-are you a knight?”
He looked startled by the sight of me donning the Black Shadow Armor. There was no need to be that surprised.
“Just an aspiring one.”
“…For an aspiring knight, that armor looks far too impressive.”
“Remember this well. Money is always right.”
“Is it really okay for a knight to say something like that?”
“I told you, I’m just an aspiring knight. Besides, even knights need money to survive, don’t they?”
There were knights with money, but there were no knights without it. It was a time-honored maxim passed down through the knightly profession.
There is a saying that an army is a group that produces nothing and only consumes. An army that moves solely to destroy, kill, or conquer is a walking legion of consumption. I wholeheartedly agree with that statement for ten whole minutes.
“Still, this is too much…”
Before heading up to the walls, I stopped by the supply depot. To face a large army, various supplies were essential.
“This… the spear shaft is rotten.”
I had tried to gather multiple spears for throwing, but more than half of the shafts were decayed.
“The arrows don’t even match the recorded quantity.”
Who knew where they had been sold off to, but the arrow count was completely off. Even the bowstrings were loose.
“There are barely any swords either.”
This was clearly defense procurement corruption. The guard supply depot of a city housing tens of thousands of people was in this state?
“Just how much did they embezzle?”
Even someone like me who didn’t know the internal affairs well could see this was blatant corruption. If it looked this bad to me, others must have noticed long ago. Once the city’s situation stabilized, I’d have to report it immediately.
“I had no idea it was this bad either. The wall sentries use a different supply depot…”
Right. What fault could this sentry have? Subordinates had no choice but to obey their superiors’ orders.
For now, I gathered every usable weapon I could find. If we couldn’t stop the army anyway, the city would fall. Taking everything wouldn’t make any difference.
“This is beyond imagination…”
When I climbed onto the walls, I saw countless monster legions. Strangely, the core of the army consisted of goblins.
“That’s…”
At the head of the monster army, a goblin riding in a red palanquin caught my eye.
“Goblin Lord.”
It seemed the Goblin Lord, who had taken the first hit from me, was furious.
‘Then the undead that targeted the Mana Spring—are they basically the ones I created?’
Who would have thought my actions would come back like this through the butterfly effect?
‘I should probably reflect on this.’
Still, I had no regrets. That Goblin Lord had been scheduled for subjugation anyway. If not for Belkan’s destruction, a subjugation force would have already been formed to hunt him down.
“Monsters and humans can never coexist.”
I loosened the tension in my body.
“So in a way, everything turning out like this might be fate.”
I scanned left and right along the walls. The sentries gripped their weapons with tense expressions.
“Archers! Nock your arrows!”
“Barricade the walls as much as possible! Even if the monster army charges, defend with your lives!”
“Send the civilians back to their homes! Tell them not to come outside under any circumstances!”
Since Dorua’s underground was a magic stone mine, they couldn’t build underground bunkers. Therefore, the best way to evacuate people was to lock them inside their houses.
“Bring boiling water!”
“Can we… really stop that?”
“Hey! Rookie, get a grip! If you don’t want to die here, pick up a weapon!”
What appeared to be squad leaders were rousing the sentries’ spirits. As veterans with some experience under their belts, they were performing their duties properly even in this crisis.
“They’re almost in range.”
The monster army that had been advancing slowly was now close enough to be visible to the naked eye.
“Let’s test the waters a bit.”
I pulled a spear out of my inventory. It was one of the defective goods from the supply depot.
“Still, it should hold up for at least one throw.”
I gripped the spear shaft with the strength of 30 physical stats.
Creak—!
The shaft screamed as if it would shatter at any moment under the tremendous force.
“As expected, I should aim for the head first.”
I stepped forward with my left foot and twisted my body to the right.
Boom—!
The wall shook from the stomp.
“Take this.”
Shweeeeee—!
The spear flew at nearly the speed of sound, aimed straight for the Goblin Lord’s head.
“I can’t let you target the king from the very start.”
Clang—!
The flying spear was blocked by a scimitar-like weapon.
“Heavy.”
Ziggler frowned as he looked at the weapon screaming from the powerful vibration. As long as he stood as the Goblin Lord’s shadow, no assassination attempt on his master would ever succeed.
“Whoa, did that hobgoblin just use Aura?”
I had only obtained it after awakening my trait, yet a monster had already mastered it? For a moment, I was struck with a dizzying sense of relative deprivation.