Lancelot Lionheart. The finest knight in the kingdom. A legend, even as the world was ending. And me? Just his squire.
And since then, I've almost died seven times.
The first? A flock of wild crows nearly pecked my eyeballs out when the gate broke. Most embarrassing near-death experience by far.
The second? Stomped by a troll when we first met Fee.
The third? Almost skewered by a giant horned pig.
The fourth? Nearly wrapped up like a snack for the spiders in Rame's valley.
The fifth? Actually surviving the valley. Barely.
The sixth? Dissolving in a giant purple slime. I was sure I was a goner.
And the seventh? Right now. Because I was dying of exhaustion.
I lay spread-eagled on the cracked earth, my limbs heavier than stone. The adrenaline had finally drained, leaving nothing but ache, hunger, and the overwhelming urge to sleep for two years.
Someone nudged me. No—shoved me.
"Get up, Sir Kevin."
A shadow loomed over me, blocking out the midday sun. The 6th sun arc. Had I really been asleep for five hours?
"We need to scout for enemies. And supplies. And the cannon to put an end to the slime."
Sir Lancelot. The Pride of PrideFall. The man who had personally chosen me for this quest. The man I once dreamed of becoming.
I loved him. I hated him.
He was the greatest knight of our generation. The most efficient soldier. The Longsword Lancer.
And yet—he never stopped. Never slowed down. Never showed an ounce of exhaustion. Meanwhile, I could barely lift my arm.
I joined the military to protect the kingdom. To prove myself. To serve the royal family that gave us all a future.
But right now? I wasn't a knight. I was just another exhausted body trying to survive.
And every second we wasted out here, someone in the capital was dying.
I wanted to get up. I wanted to serve, to rescue, to keep moving.
But my body was too damn tired.
So I closed my eyes and let myself sink back into sleep. Maybe when I woke up, Lancelot would be gone. Maybe his voice was just another dream, a lingering echo of all the orders I'd been forced to follow.
Maybe the mission could wait.
A heavy sigh. Then, softly—
"Ah. I understand. I'm tired too."
The dirt next to my head crunched as Lance crouched down beside me. His voice held something I wasn't used to hearing from him. Frustration. Defeat. Hopelessness.
Sir Lancelot Lionheart.
The Pride of PrideFall.
The strongest knight in the kingdom.
And here he was. Here we were.
I knew Lance wasn't some superhuman warrior, some invincible hero. He was just a man. A man who had trained his body into something stronger than steel—but still just a man.
And right now, we were both tired.
The explosions had wiped out most of our rations. If we didn't find food, we'd starve before the slimes could kill us.
We had almost died too many times to count.
Fee was gone. The wolf was dead.
And I was starting to wonder if we were just delaying the inevitable.
But Lance kept pushing forward. He never let himself stop.
So what excuse did I have?
I opened my eyes, inhaled deep, and forced my aching limbs to move. Dirt and exhaustion clung to me, but I stood anyway.
Lance blinked. He actually looked surprised.
I gave him a crooked grin. "Affirmative, Lance. Let's find that cannon."
If Lancelot Lionheart could push everyone forward—
Then I, Kevin Rein, would push him when he ran out of strength.
That was my duty as a knight. As his squire.
"If you help someone over a wall, who's gonna pull you up when you need it?"
I heard that somewhere once. And maybe it was true.
Lance tilted his head slightly. "I don't know what you mean by that, Sir Kevin," he said, his voice shifting back into its usual formal tone, "but I appreciate your effort."
Then, with the smallest smirk—
"And always refer to me as Sir Lancelot."
"Oh, come on!" I groaned, rubbing the back of my neck. "We've been through hell together! You're telling me I still have to be formal?"
Lance exhaled through his nose, amused. "Ha. Not yet, Kevin."
Then he turned and strode toward the ruins of Orion, searching for supplies, searching for that damn cannon.
I watched his back as I followed.
How much had Lancelot Lionheart given up to become the Pride of PrideFall?
How many battles had he fought?
How many burdens did he carry?
How much blood was already on his hands?
And was this the same path I wanted to take?
. . .
"—Well, there's this bottle of beer! At least, I think that's what it is…" I called out toward the east, where Lancelot was cutting his way through what used to be someone's home, searching for anything edible. Or at least, anything that wouldn't kill us if we ate it.
Orion was a graveyard. A city stripped to its bones. The streets were littered with overturned carts, shattered windows, and the occasional puddle of green ooze clinging to walls like a parasite that refused to let go. The air was thick with the stench of stagnant decay.
But there were still signs of life.
A child's toy, left abandoned in the dirt.
A half-burned book, fluttering in the wind.
A set of footprints, too fresh to belong to the dead.
This was Orion. A thriving city turned into a ruin.
And if we didn't find that cannon, PrideFall would be next.
I sighed and examined the bottle in my hands. It was the only thing I'd found in a metal storage box, one of the few things the slime couldn't eat through. Everything else—**bread, vegetables, dried meats—**was gone. Dissolved into nothing. Those damn blobs were efficient. Too efficient.
"If only more people kept their food in metal containers," Lance muttered.
He stepped over a corpse—a woman, half-devoured. What was left of her was barely recognizable. I'd already thrown up earlier when we started scavenging, but at some point, you just… stop feeling.
Because if you mourned for every body, you wouldn't have the strength to keep moving.
I forced out a weak chuckle, gesturing to the half-eaten remains. "Good thing the others didn't come with us. No way in hell I'd want Meili or Hogan seeing this."
Though… Connie could probably handle it.
Still, I sighed. "Wouldn't hurt to have Hogan here, though. He's good at this kind of thing."
Lance didn't look up from the corpse. "We're knights, Kevin. We bear the burden so others don't have to." His tone was steady. Too steady. Like he was reciting a doctrine rather than speaking to me.
I wasn't sure if he was reprimanding me, agreeing with me, or just trying to convince himself of his own words.
Before I could think on it more, I heard it.
A faint scuffling sound.
I turned to my right just as something skittered out from behind a broken stool.
My stomach seized.
A spider.
Not as massive as the horse-sized nightmares in Rame's Valley, but still too big for my liking.
Lance barely reacted. A single swipe of his sword, and the thing split in half, spilling its guts on the stone floor.
I flinched. A little. Just a little.
Lance didn't comment, but I could feel his gaze flick toward me.
I cleared my throat. Forced a smirk. "A scavenger, huh?" I muttered, nudging its twitching corpse with my boot. "Guess we've got that in common."
Ever since we entered Orion, we weren't the only ones picking through the remains.
Scavengers.
Hogs, crows, stray spiders. Nothing that posed a real threat, but enough to remind us that the world wasn't empty.
That life always found a way to cling on. Even in a dying city.
And the others? They were back at camp with Hogan and Connie. Safe.
At least, I hoped so.
My stomach growled.
The half-eaten apple in my burlap sack wasn't cutting it, but that was all I had left. Lancelot was rationing our food—strictly. Said it was more important for the others to eat first, since they were "survivors," while we were "fighters." Very noble. Very chivalrous.
At the expense of my stomach.
"Keep looking, Kevin." Lance called from across the street, motioning for me to check out yet another abandoned house. The fifteenth one with no luck.
"We won't be able to carry the cannon to PrideFall if we starve to death on the way."
"Very encouraging," I muttered under my breath.
"What was that, Sir Kevin?"
"Coming, Sir Lancelot!" I shouted back, forcing some enthusiasm into my voice.