How to Live as a Knight After the Ending - Chapter 1
Only Noblemtl
Episode 1. Into the Game (1)
There is a game I used to enjoy playing.
A hardcore game set in a medieval fantasy setting.
My life’s work, which was notorious for its high difficulty and frustrated countless gamers.
The reason I say this is because I was possessed in that game.
That too, 500 years after the ending.
*
When I was young, I really liked games.
After school, I would run to the PC room with the money I had saved and live there.
Even now that I’m older and a young adult, my love of games is still the same.
However, much of the passion that was shown before has died down.
As I get caught up in work and life, I end up avoiding games that encourage excessive competition.
I didn’t even pay attention to the pay-to-win games that required me to press my buttons with my capital because I didn’t have enough money.
So, what I mostly played was single games.
The feeling of traveling through a fantasy world without competing with anyone was perfect for my weary mind.
Is it difficult? Rather, it was good because it gave me a sense of challenge.
Maybe that’s why I got into that game.
Weapons clashing in a vast plain.
A mysterious creature that crosses the sky.
Huge dungeons and kingdoms.
It was an open-world RPG game with a medieval fantasy background that brought together all that romance.
Gorgeous graphics, high difficulty, and an outstanding world view.
Even though I was a freshman in college, I would always play that game after work, even on weekends.
It was a game that was notorious for having such a high difficulty level that it frustrated countless gamers.
It was like pouring oil on my forgotten pride and spirit of challenge.
[Cleared the 99th ending.]
It has been completed 99 times from beginning to end.
I enjoyed it so much that I could say I really burned it.
I could have done more originally, but I couldn’t because the difficulty didn’t increase at all after the 99th time.
This game only has 99 rounds to go.
‘Is it really the end now?’
It was a game I was proud to call the game of my life, but it ended in the end.
Now that all the DLC is out, there will be no more additional patches and there’s really no other way than to wait for another sequel from the developer.
I sat back in my chair, thinking that the game I had played for a part of my life was over.
Inside the monitor, the 99th ending scroll was going up.
I would have skipped this scene because I had seen it so many times, but I left it because I thought it was the last one.
All white letters appeared on the black screen along with magnificent BGM.
And then a screen popped up.
[Would you like to play the next round?]
[YES/NO]
“what?”
I blurted out those words without realizing it.
I thought this game was like nothing happened after the 99th round, but there’s a next round?
Maybe it’s a bug or an error, because no one said anything like that existed.
But my hand holding the mouse was reaching for the YES button.
Click.
And the moment you move the cursor to the YES button and press it.
—!!!
My vision went completely black.
*
I opened my closed eyes.
The air was damp and the surroundings were very dark.
‘Where am I?’
I recalled the last sight I saw before I passed out.
Yeah. I was definitely trying to finish the game after seeing the 99th ending, but then the next play button popped up.
‘The moment I pressed it, I suddenly came to my senses… … .’
I slowly got up.
At first it was dark and I couldn’t see anything, but I gradually got used to it and started to see the inside.
As I was looking around, I felt a strange sensation in my body and looked down.
‘armor?’
The everyday clothes I was wearing had disappeared, and armor was taking their place.
That’s armor that a knight would wear.
But what was most surprising was that this armor looked so familiar to my eyes.
‘Isn’t this the armor that my game character started wearing?’
The game I was playing allowed me to choose my character’s ‘birth’.
[Wandering Knight] [Barbarian] [Wizard] [Cleric] [Thief] [Paladin] [Warlock] [Beggar].
There are a total of 8 births to choose from, each with different initial stats, skills, and equipment to wear.
Naturally, I chose the most classic [Wandering Knight].
Although I prefer melee characters, a knight with very stable attack, defense, and health seemed like a good choice for getting through this hardcore game.
Actually, that was true.
The armor I’m wearing is the armor that is given to me by default when I choose to be born as a knight.
It’s basic equipment, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad performance.
This game doesn’t have any equipment levels. Each piece of equipment has its own unique characteristics, but they aren’t enough to ruin the balance.
One of the advantages of this game was that it was possible to defeat the final boss with the iron sword given to you at the beginning. Of course, the problem was that the game was too difficult for that.
‘No, but more importantly, why am I wearing this?’
I looked around.
The interior of this dark space, which had become familiar by now, kept touching a part of my memory.
‘This sight. This composition. So familiar.’
Chapel of Trials.
This was the first tutorial section you experienced when you started the game.
How many times have I seen this and not known it?
A small but ornate temple carved into the interior of a cave.
The sight of the soft luminous stone emitting a bluish-green light is almost dreamlike.
Users who start the game for the first time are amazed by the sight inside, but soon start cursing.
This was because the difficulty level was insane right from the tutorial section boss.
I walked over to one wall and gently swept it with my hand.
The feel of stone chips rustling at your fingertips.
I sniffed the dust at the end and it smelled musty.
‘The sensations are all real. It’s not a dream.’
Naturally, my expression couldn’t help but become serious.
When I opened my eyes, I was in an environment that was very similar to a game. Even the armor I was wearing was that of a game character.
I don’t know why I am here.
But the most likely scenario is that he clicked the next episode button after watching it for the last time before passing out.
To be honest, it was really absurd, but I had no choice but to accept it since it was the reality that was happening before my eyes.
‘Let’s get moving first.’
As I continued to stay inside the dark and damp chapel, I began to feel like my mind was going to go crazy.
If you stay here, you’ll develop claustrophobia that you never had before.
I walked.
First of all, my top priority is to get out of this chapel as quickly as possible.
The armor was uncomfortable at first, but as I continued walking, my body gradually adapted to it and it actually felt comfortable.
Then, naturally, a thousand thoughts came to mind.
‘What happened to me? Did I really come to this world inside a game? If so, is my body now that of a character in a game?’
As I walked, the space in front of me opened up and a small circular stadium came into view.
I stopped walking.
If I remember correctly, this is the section where the tutorial boss appears.
As its reputation suggests, the game boasts insane difficulty, starting with the tutorial boss.
Commonly known as the newbie massacre zone.
Most newbies fail to get past this tutorial wall and end up collapsing.
Of course. This section wasn’t made to be broken in the first place.
It was an event-based section where you had to die to proceed to the next stage.
The tutorial boss is just a warning to those who are just starting out with the game.
-This game is this difficult, so no matter how hard it gets from here on out, it’s not our fault.
-So if you’re going to back out, quit the game here, leave, and get a refund.
It’s a truly tear-jerkingly kind warning.
Most people would take this warning humbly, but I was different.
At the end of a truly tearful try, I broke through the space I was supposed to die in to head on.
The indescribable pleasure I felt at that time was the biggest contributor to preventing me from giving up on this game.
‘But that only applies when it’s a game.’
If this is reality.
At that time, the game’s brutal difficulty level became a direct threat to my life.
There was a guy in the center of the circular arena.
A knight kneeling on one knee and bowing his head as if he were dead.
It was not a living knight, but a golem that moved automatically when the playable character entered this location.
However, for its unique and stylish dragon-shaped armor design and its wicked difficulty level, it received a lot of criticism and praise.
‘The problem is that that’s my opponent now.’
He’s lying down now, but if I remember correctly, when he gets up, he’ll be about 2.5 meters tall.
And the weapon is a halberd with a range of over 3 meters.
I examined the weapon on my waist.
A simple long sword. And hanging on his back is a medium-sized kite shield of reasonable size.
Since my equipment is reset every turn, all I am given is the basic equipment.
So, if you think about stability here, it was a shield.
There is a technique in this game called parrying.
A skill that swings the shield at the perfect timing for an enemy to attack, allowing it to not only deflect the attack but also bounce it back.
And this parrying was considered the strongest weapon for a wandering knight.
‘You can block an attack by casting parry at the right time.’
In the case of the tutorial boss, since you know all the patterns, there is nothing you can’t do if you are told to respond.
‘The problem is that it was possible because it was a game.’
In reality, it is impossible to deflect an attack by swinging a shield at the right time.
If you blindly trusted your shield and got split by a halberd, it wouldn’t be strange.
I took a deep breath.
I tried hard not to accept it, but now I had no choice but to admit it.
This is not a game.
The whole situation was real now.
But I couldn’t just stay here and die forever.
In the end, to get out of this chapel, I had to jump over that tutorial boss.
‘I have no choice but to go.’
I forced my fear aside and took a step forward.
Honestly, I’m scared.
If it were my usual self, I wouldn’t even think of taking such a risk.
But strangely, instead of feeling tense, my body became hot.
I don’t know why. I just vaguely feel that I’m much braver and more confident now than I usually am.
I held a shield in my left hand and a sword in my right.
It was the first weapon I ever held in my life, but it fit my hand strangely.
It felt like courage that I never had before was welling up inside me.
‘Okay. Let’s do it.’
I lowered my posture and glared at the tutorial boss.
The guy still remained still, on one knee.
Now he will soon raise his head, which had been bowed down, and his red eyes will begin to shine through the gaps in his helmet.
He raises his body with a thud and takes a stance, holding the halberd at his side.
I remember. That was the guy’s intro cutscene.
‘First, put a halberd next to the guy… … Huh?’
At that moment, I felt something strange.
The halberd that was supposed to be next to the tutorial boss was not there.
‘What? Why isn’t it there?’
It wasn’t that there wasn’t one. To be exact, there was something similar to a halberd’s handle on the side.
If you can call that thing, which is almost completely broken, a handle.
I looked closely at the tutorial boss status.
I didn’t know, but there was something strange about the guy’s condition.
The guy who should have raised his head by now was still as still as a mouse.
And I could immediately see why.
‘It’s broken, right?’