The Black Knight Returns to the Graveyard City
A female knight wielding a greatsword is the ultimate dream and romance.
In medieval fantasy, mercenaries shoulder one of the great pillars of brute force. They inevitably appear wherever blood must flow. And in this damned medieval fantasy world, strength is not a choice but a necessity.
This place never changes.
Soldiers and mercenaries lay scattered across the streets, bleeding and groaning. Every one of them nursed a grievous wound that left them teetering on death’s edge.
This is just daily life in this city.
Dorua, the southernmost fortress city of the Shell Kingdom. It stood as the front line against the monster hordes surging from the south every single day.
I never imagined I’d return here.
People called Dorua a massive graveyard. Dozens died each day, so the nickname had stuck naturally.
I wonder if that person is still alive.
I remembered the severe leg injury he’d suffered when we last parted.
I’ll find out when I see him.
Deep within the city’s twisting alleys stood the guild hall for mercenaries. Most of the men lounging inside bore scars across their faces.
Been a while.
The sign creaked in the wind, the railings were half-rotted, and the door was covered in rust. I slammed my boot into that rusted door with everything I had.
BANG—!
“You bastards! Look at the state of this guild! What a fucking disgrace!”
The moment I burst inside shouting, the grim-faced mercenaries turned hostile glares my way. They seemed to be trying to figure out which lunatic had just smashed their door.
“Wait… is that who I think it is? The crazy greatsword-obsessed madwoman herself?”
“Who are you calling a madwoman?!”
The tension crackled like it might explode into a brawl at any second, but no fight broke out. Once the mercenaries recognized me, they greeted me like an old war buddy.
“This place really hasn’t changed at all, has it?”
“Mercenaries aren’t supposed to change easily! Stubbornness is our whole identity!”
“What does the building have to do with the mercenaries? I told you before—you need to remodel this dump.”
I dropped into a chair at the counter. A burly man slid a mug of beer toward me.
“Welcome back.”
“I never thought I’d return to this hellhole. Here’s money for the door.”
“I was planning to replace it soon anyway, so I’ll accept it gratefully. But why did you come back? You swore you’d never set foot in this place again.”
“That was the plan. I have no idea how I managed to escape this city, but the problem is that I awakened.”
“…Awakened, huh. So your return is connected to that after all.”
“As expected of the boss. All that experience really shows.”
The man I was speaking with was the leader of the mercenary company I’d belonged to for five years.
Night Mercenary Group
One of the top five most powerful mercenary bands in Dorua. A small but elite group of veterans who always returned alive from the front lines. I had once been one of them.
“So, are you rejoining the company?”
“No, that’s not why I’m here. I just stopped by to see some familiar faces now that I’m back.”
The reason I’d returned to Dorua wasn’t to earn money. It was to hunt monsters and level up. Of course, if the monsters I killed had bounties on them, that would be a different story.
“You’re planning to work alone, then? That sounds dangerous.”
“Don’t worry. I’m not the same person I was before.”
I hadn’t come back to this city on a whim.
Name: Nix
Level: 5
Body Stat: 5
Mind Stat: 5
Aura Stat: 5
Remaining Stat Points: 0
Traits: None. You are an ordinary human, aren’t you? Please put in some effort.
I had slaughtered every monster I saw on my way to the city. Most of them had been small fry, but that was more than enough to raise my level.
All stats at 5.
It looked pathetic on paper, but that was only for people who didn’t understand. Right now I was five times stronger than I had been before my awakening. Each point in Body Stat equaled my entire physical ability from before I awakened.
“…There isn’t much visible change, but your presence is completely different. What exactly have you been doing all this time?”
The leader’s years of experience hadn’t dulled his instincts. He had sensed the shift in my aura immediately.
“You’ve always had an eye for people, boss. That sharp gaze of yours hasn’t changed a bit.”
“In this line of work, you need good eyes.”
“Sometimes I really envy the way you can just—”
BANG—!
A section of the guild wall exploded, sending dust flying everywhere.
“Nix! Is it true that Nix is back?!”
That annoying bastard’s here.
“That guy’s still alive?”
“You know how tough he is.”
I did. I knew it all too well, and that was the problem.
“Ooh! You really have returned! Nix, my dear!”
“You really are still alive, Liman.”
“I endured the trials of adversity just to see you again! And now that you’ve returned as well, it must mean you missed me too—”
“Nope. I didn’t.”
The man flexing his ridiculous muscles and giving me those heavy bedroom eyes was Liman. He served as the assault captain for the Kaedes Mercenary Group, a band of slaughterers based in Dorua. He was also an incurable flirt and a massive pain in the ass.
“Hehe, no need to be shy.”
“Please stop talking in that greasy tone, you womanizing bastard.”
The way he clung to me every time we met was disgusting. And because I still remembered being a man in my previous life, it was starting to make me genuinely murderous.
“Liman, we can talk later. First pay for the wall you just destroyed.”
“Ooh! My dear old friend! The living legend of the Night Mercenary Group, Marco!”
“I’m not your friend.”
“Don’t be like that. You’re loaded with cash. Can’t you just let something this small slide?”
“Having money and paying for damage you caused are two different things.”
The sharp exchange between them began. Liman with his sly, greasy grin and Marco with his stony expression. I opened my inventory, pulled out some popcorn, and started munching while I watched the show.
Crunch, crunch.
In the end Liman backed down first.
“Doesn’t seem like today’s my lucky day. I’ll take my leave. See you next time, Nix.”
“Do me a favor and never appear in front of me again.”
Ugh. I was definitely going to need to sprinkle some salt later to ward off the bad vibes.
After a brief but warm reunion with my old mercenary friends, I unpacked my things at a nearby inn. From now on I planned to visit the guild every day, pick up requests, and slaughter monsters.
Might as well start with some simple requests.
The very next day I headed to the guild and looked over the available jobs.
“Goblin nest subjugation, sewer leech and frogman extermination, orc hunting, and so on.”
They were all minor requests, but the kind that would become huge headaches if left alone. Goblins had insane reproductive rates—if you saw a few, a whole nest had probably already formed. Leeches and frogmen polluted the water supply, so any sighting in the sewers required immediate elimination. The only problem was that nobody wanted to go into the sewers.
“The real issue is the orcs.”
They couldn’t match goblins in breeding speed, but orcs still multiplied rapidly and possessed considerable strength. It usually took three healthy adult men to handle a single one.
“Actually, orcs aren’t that big a problem. They’ve always been here,” Marco said as he walked over.
“We have solid countermeasures for orcs since they’re a constant threat. The real problem lies elsewhere. You saw all those groaning mercenaries on your way in, right?”
I had. It was a common sight in Dorua.
“Those wounds weren’t caused by blades. It’s poison.”
Poison?
“There have always been monsters that use poison.”
A little antidote or holy water should have been enough to handle it.
“It’s a bit more complicated than that.”
According to Marco, a massive swamp had begun forming in the far south. It had already been a month since it first appeared.
“A swamp appeared overnight? Did some high-ranking monster show up?”
That still didn’t make sense. No matter how powerful a monster was, it couldn’t transform the surrounding environment on that scale. Besides, I had never even heard of a monster that created swamps.
“The kingdom’s magic tower has apparently sent investigators because of it. The White Tower, was it?”
“Those obsessive neat-freaks?”
I’d heard they almost never ventured outside. What in the world was going on?
“Maybe the swamp has something to do with the White Tower? Otherwise there’s no way they’d come out like this.”
“Don’t say that where anyone can hear you. The moment the White Tower hears it, you’ll be drowning in trouble.”
“I know. I know exactly how narrow-minded those people are.”
If you were asked to name the most insular organizations in the world, the White Tower would always rank near the top.
“What did the White Tower say?”
“Who knows. It’s a situation they’ve never seen before, so they didn’t have much to report. They did say they’d prioritize making antidotes first if possible.”
“Do you think they’ll actually make them?”
“Don’t underestimate them. Their detoxification magic is incredible. Some say it rivals the holy arts of the priests.”
Was that so? For all their narrow-mindedness, it seemed their abilities were genuinely impressive. Typical mages.
“Excuse me for a moment.”
At that moment, unfamiliar figures entered the guild. They wore white robes and strange mask-like contraptions that looked like gas masks. The whole ensemble looked utterly ridiculous.
“…What business do the mages of the White Tower have here?”
They were exactly the White Tower mages we had just been talking about. Speak of the devil. What a ridiculous coincidence.
“We came to issue a request to capable mercenaries. And one piece of advice—clean this building. It looks like it could spread disease.”
The venom that flew from their mouths the moment they arrived made me sigh. No wonder they had so many enemies.