1. The Pledge
1. The Pledge
'Agh, my eyes!'
When the bombardment hit the isolated company, my vision went dark.
A few seconds later, another light bright enough to blind me shone directly into my eyes.
It was a little different from the electric lights I knew, but I just figured I was being operated on in some field hospital.
The first thing I looked for as soon as I woke up was my comrades.
If I had survived that bombardment, there was no reason the others could not have survived too.
"Aaaah."
Damn. My voice wouldn't come out.
Had I inhaled some kind of chemical weapon?
At least I had sensation in my limbs. That meant my arms and legs were intact.
But my limbs wouldn't move the way I wanted them to.
My nerves seemed fine, but either my bones or my ligaments were the problem.
I couldn't even hold my own head up.
I was pretty much fucked.
Guess I'd be spending half my life in a hospital bed. With that resignation, I looked around and saw an enormous palm covering me.
A woman I'd never seen before was holding my body cupped in her hand.
Only then did I realize.
Ah. I had been reincarnated.
I might have been someone with no religion who didn't believe in reincarnation, but I wasn't the type to deny the situation unfolding right in front of my eyes.
The first emotion I felt once I recognized it was reincarnation wasn't bewilderment—it was elation.
Even though my previous life was shitty, getting a second life still moved me beyond measure.
But that feeling didn't last long.
A jewel hovering and humming in the corner of the room I was born in, and winged little kids staring at me with wonder.
To anyone, it was proof this was a medieval fantasy world.
As if to confirm it, the animal-eared lady who'd received me was dressed in a maid uniform straight out of the Middle Ages.
It was obvious without even looking that screen entertainment barely existed in this barbaric fantasy world.
The Middle Ages!
The fucking, entertainment-free Middle Ages!
The savage Middle Ages where the ultimate content was chucking people into the Colosseum to watch a battle royale!
I cried my first cry heralding the birth of life, pouring frustration into it.
*
While my mood went into a vertical nosedive from heaven straight into the abyss, in stark contrast the people in the room erupted in cheers.
As I learned later, they had good reason.
When a newborn baby wouldn't cry and just lay there quietly with its eyes open, people assumed something was wrong, right?
Even when the trembling midwife placed the baby in its mother's arms, I did not react at all and only moved my eyes.
The people's reaction was dramatic.
My mother sobbed, forgetting the labor pains; the midwife clamped a hand over her mouth; and my father and the butler prayed, seeking the heavenly gods.
My mother, haggard from the aftereffects of labor, held me, unable to let go, and called my name over and over.
"Allen. Allen... my baby... please..."
Right after being born I couldn't understand what my mother was saying, so I just stared blankly, then the moment I recognized it was the Middle Ages, I burst out crying with perfect timing.
When I started wailing an hour after being held in my mother's arms, people cheered that a miracle had occurred.
My mother and father knelt right there and prayed to the goddess of life, and the servants praised it as a miracle born of maternal love.
That was how Allen Price, the miracle child, was born.
*
Forty-four years.
Forty years of my previous life and four years of this one, my total time alive.
According to what I'd found out over the past four years, this world wasn't the savage Middle Ages.
To be precise, the cultural forms and materials were still stuck in the medieval period, but the level of technology was no different from the modern era.
All paths led to the same destination.
Just as sufficiently advanced science was indistinguishable from magic, sufficiently advanced magic was indistinguishable from science.
In this world, while the cultural forms remained medieval, the standard of living was only slightly behind the modern era.
No, in some ways, it was even superior to the modern era.
I found this out in the second year of my reincarnation, the first time I looked out the window.
Something about the cut seemed to displease the gardener beyond the window, and he examined the severed branch from every angle.
Then he used magic to regrow the branch and pruned it again, over and over.
Up to that point, it was just ordinary medieval fantasy.
The next part was the issue.
He pulled a smartphone-like crystal from his pocket, contacted somewhere, and a truck from outside the mansion came and collected the leftover branches.
The moment I saw that, I was convinced that at the very least, this era wasn't the Middle Ages.
(As a bonus, once I realized that every single person carries a fireball around in their chest, I promptly installed basic manners.)
That discovery made me pick back up the dream I had abandoned the moment I was born.
And finally, the fourth year of my reincarnation.
My mother brought me to a theater to show me this world's "entertainment" for the first time.
To me, coming from modern society, a theater would be a little lacking in stimulation, but this being a fantasy world, it would surely deliver a fresh shock.
I sat in the audience, clutching my pounding heart.
Flash!
At the same moment, the stage lights came on.
'Oh. They used wizards on the lighting crew.'
In a world where a gardener used magic, there was nothing particularly new about that.
What was unusual was that changing the backdrops and props was also the wizards' job.
'Was the background illusion magic? They seemed to be creating the props in real time.'
Still, the special effects made it far more entertaining than the plays of my previous life.
Even if it was still a long way from a movie.
Still, I did gain something from watching the play.
One was that the class system wasn't as rigid as I'd thought.
I could tell from the fact that our party, who were nobles, and the commoners weren't seated separately, and that even when an actor openly insulted a noble, my mother showed no sign of discomfort.
The other was that every theme this era produced was mind-numbingly boring.
The expressiveness and appeal were decent enough, but the themes they brought were all just romance and religion, with nothing else, so it wasn't fun.
Not that it was poorly made, it just felt like my brain was lacking dopamine.
But that was fine.
If there isn't any, I can just make it myself, right?
I carefully tucked my dream of becoming an actor back into my heart and munched on the popcorn I had brought from home.
"Is it fun?"
A boy whose baby fat hadn't yet thinned out sat next to me and stole some popcorn to eat.
Leon Parma.
My milk-brother and the imperial prince of the Parma Empire.
He was the child my mother, who'd been academy classmates with the First Empress, had nursed with her own milk.
In a world where magic replaced science, I wondered how it made sense that even an Empress had no formula and had to rely on breastfeeding. After overhearing Mother and the Empress while Mother nursed us, however, I learned there was a magical reason.
In this world, during the nursing period, children who drank mana-rich breast milk accumulated mana faster than children who didn't, and that let them start that much more advantageously.
In other words, breast milk was no different from an elixir.
Thus, unless a family had so many children that breast milk ran short, breastfeeding was encouraged whenever possible. If they could, they hired a former wizard or knight as a wet nurse.
In that sense, it was only natural that my mother—a former magic tower master and the First Empress's closest friend—was chosen as the prince's wet nurse.
(For reference, Her Highness the Empress had plenty of mana, but her breasts were small.)
To me, Leon was no different from a brother.
I did have an older brother above me too, but compared to a brother who was always in the mansion's library, this kid sucking away at mother's milk beside me felt more like family.
At first, I'd tried to act as this child's big brother—we were the same age, but I was a reincarnator, after all.
But this kid was more mature than me, and before I knew it, I was the one leaning on him more.
Getting extra snacks using Leon's name, buying toys using Leon's name...
This outing was thanks to Leon, too.
For several months, every time I met Her Highness the Empress I'd been building up a narrative about how Leon kept whining from boredom.
Then, when I suggested we go watch a play for Leon's upcoming third birthday, she reserved a theater for us right away.
It was a truth that held even across worlds: aunts bought better presents than your own mother.
(I got scolded by my mother later.)
I poked Leon's popcorn-stuffed cheek and watched the stage.
A conventional story with conventional direction.
It was a play that fell far short compared to modern films, but it was still watchable.
It was a clichéd story about a holy knight who picked up a demon sword and fell to corruption, but the acting was excellent enough to draw me in.
And then the play's highlight unfolded.
*
KABOOM!
When the fallen holy knight—now one who should be called an apostate—swung his sword, the stage, which had been set as a castle, collapsed.
And the battlefield changed into a plaza prepared behind the stage.
Leon, seeing it for the first time, seemed startled, but from the way my mother and the escort personnel were enjoying the performance, it wasn't a stage accident—it was part of the production.
A production that destroyed the stage once every performance was a luxury possible only because this world was a fantasy.
Then the audience seating we were in gradually rose higher, transforming into a structure that looked down upon the plaza like a Colosseum.
'The scale of the production was something else.'
Three bonus points for the production using magic. That made nine out of ten.
As I was mentally racking up bonus points on the play's rating, the heretic and the man who was once his comrade clashed swords.
'The action was—'
Clang!
Incredibly realistic.
The two men's swords collided viciously, sending sparks flying.
They didn't stop there; they shot sword-auras and fired spells as if genuinely trying to kill each other.
Then came walking through the air without wires, magic without CGI, and sword aura wielded at will.
The sight forced an exclamation of admiration from me.
Thinking about it, a world where magic exists was a world where CG was reality.
A world where, instead of making a huge fuss with wires to realize flight magic no one had ever seen, you could simply fly.
It was a world of possibility, where any genre of film could be realized easily.
Once I thought of it that way, the stage looked different.
I raised my rating of the play to 9.5 and focused on the performance.
[Ludwig! Why are you doing this? You're not this kind of man!]
[Gail. My old comrade. I have finally opened my eyes. I have found the true god I must serve!]
Ludwig wore white armor, as befitted a former holy knight, but the armor was so covered in blood it was closer to reddish-brown than silver.
And the man named Gail fighting him was a typical knight, clad from head to toe in full plate armor.
At last, the two clashed.
At first, Gail had the upper hand, but once Ludwig entered his second phase, the momentum shifted.
Ludwig's armor turned black, and demonic wings unfurled from his back.
Gail managed to endure Ludwig's fierce onslaught with decent swordsmanship and body-strengthening, but he seemed outmatched by Ludwig, who had unleashed the demon's power.
Clang!
After narrowly dodging Ludwig's sword, Gail eventually took a hit to his helmet.
Thanks to the helmet, he avoided instant death, but the helmet was split apart by the blow, and blood seeped from Gail's forehead.
The moment his helmet fell to the ground, Leon and I sucked in a sharp breath, our eyes going wide.
Because inside that helmet was my father's face.
'What? My father was an actor?'
No wonder my mother always looked displeased whenever the maids squealed while watching television. There was a reason after all.
My father, playing Gail, swung his sword without hesitation even as wounds accumulated across his body.
Squelch!
And then my father's arm went flying through the air.
Not to be outdone, Father took out Ludwig's eye.
They were not slave gladiators in the Colosseum, so I frowned at the thought that they hardly needed to fight this brutally in a play.
Just as I was about to cover Leon's eyes, thinking this could not be good for a child's emotional development, Ludwig cast Heal on his eye and restored it.
[How can someone who has forsaken his god still wield divine power?]
[Is this not proof that I have found the true god!]
It seemed the actor playing Ludwig was a former holy knight in real life as well.
Seeing this, I understood why my father would go as far as losing an arm for the production.
In a world where you could heal even an eye, dealing with one severed arm was just a matter of bringing in a high-ranking priest after the performance for treatment.
That still didn't mean losing an arm could be treated as something trivial.
My father stanched the bleeding from his arm with practiced movements.
My mother watched him anxiously, but the fact that she didn't make a scene told me he'd been doing this since before I was born.
'I will give Father a hug when he gets back.'
The maximum filial piety a three-year-old child could manage was hugging and kissing.
I would repay him with greater filial piety later by studying hard and becoming a great actor once I was older.
Wondering if Leon might cry after seeing my father's arm severed, I looked at his face.
But contrary to my expectation, he was watching the stage with sparkling eyes.
When Father raised his sword one-handed, Leon apparently thought that looked cool too. He hid one arm behind his back and made little swishing motions with only the other.
'He was still too young to leave one arm behind in the new era.'
Before that, the thought crossed my mind—was it okay for a three-year-old kid to be watching this?—but seeing that even my mother didn't particularly stop it, I figured this must be normal.
Leon and I cheered for my father, watching as his second phase pushed Ludwig back.
And then—
Shnk.
My father's head fell.
"What the fuck?!"
"Wha' fuck?"
I quickly covered Leon's eyes.
*
Through an accident, I became part of a single-parent household in an instant.
I was speechless with shock and stared blankly at the stage.
The play went on.
My father's corpse was left abandoned on the stage, and the play went on.
I wanted to scream about what they thought a human life was, but when I realized not a single person in the audience took issue with it, I felt a chill.
I was even more speechless at my mother's composed attitude, as if she'd just watched a decent play.
I did not remember how the story proceeded after that.
My eyes were fixed on my father's corpse.
"What's wrong, Allen? Is the play boring?"
"Father..."
"What about Father?"
"Father is..."
I buried my face against my mother's ample chest and sobbed.
My mother held me warmly, patted my back, and waited until I calmed down.
And once I settled down somewhat, my mother looked at me with a smile.
The problem was that the corners of her mouth were trembling as if she was holding back laughter.
In the end, she couldn't hold it in, burst into peals of laughter, and even clapped.
"Hahaha! My son. What am I going to do with you, you're so adorable."
My mother laughed until tears welled in the corners of her eyes, then contacted someone.
"Yes. William. Where are you right now? Yes... yes. Could you just show your face in the audience seating, then? Ah, no. It's because of Allen. Yes~."
I was bewildered, not knowing why my mother was acting like that, when my father suddenly appeared behind me.
"Huh?"
My father's corpse was still on the stage.
But behind me too, my father was there, perfectly fine.
Flabbergasted, I just kept repeating "Huh? Huh?"
'What was this? A bug?'
After desperately putting my forty-three-year-old mind to work, I reached one conclusion.
"A doppelganger!!!"
My mother laughed until she could barely breathe.