Habsburg

On the tournament grounds, black horsehair fluttered in the wind.

Iron hooves trampled the soft grass, churning up great clods of earth.

Wearing a barrel helm with only a narrow slit for vision, the knight, clad in chainmail and a black surcoat, charged a straw dummy acting as a target while mounted on a black Nisaan warhorse from Gaul.

He tucked a heavy white beechwood lance under his arm, forming a standard right-angled triangle with his arm and torso.

This posture provided a stable fulcrum for the lance and was the couched lance charge tactic that almost every knight in the world today had to master.

The lance in his hand was of solid construction, thin at the front and thick at the back, and extremely cumbersome; it was widely used in jousting tournaments, but because of its brittle texture, it broke easily.

The first charge.

The lance struck with precision, its metal tip piercing the straw dummy's chest, and the immense impact sent the entire dummy flying into mid-air.

The knight held the dummy aloft, gave a horizontal sweep, and shook it off.

He then discarded the heavy lance and spurred his horse forward, nimbly drawing two short spears from a weapon rack as he galloped past.

As he turned his horse to charge again, the knight held the spear backhanded, raised it above his head, and drove it downward, pinning it precisely into the neck of a straw dummy.

This was often the weakest point in an enemy's armor.

As the warhorse swept across the wide tournament grounds, the knight drew the other short spear backhanded, channeled his strength through his entire body, and hurled it fiercely.

Unfortunately, this one missed.

The short spear embedded itself in the mud beside the straw dummy.

Lothar removed the heavy barrel helm from his head, revealing a young, heroic face.

He set the helm casually on a round table on the tournament grounds, lifted a clay jug filled with fresh water, and took a deep gulp, forcibly suppressing the heat brought on by the intense exercise.

He looked at his attribute panel, wiped the sweat dripping from his temples, and felt a sense of relief.

After a week of rehabilitative training, he had successfully increased both his strength and stamina by one point.

He had also fully adapted to the combat skills honed by the original owner of this body through years of knightly training.

Whether it was the common light or heavy lances, short spears, shields, and hand-and-a-half swords, or the more niche maces, flails, and hand axes, he could use them all with proficiency.

As a knight dedicated to combat, he was fully qualified, though he had yet to receive a title.

Lothar was a transmigrator.

In his previous life, he had been the owner of a game company, and while working overtime with his employees to develop a game, he had unfortunately died suddenly and transmigrated into this era.

He had replaced Lothar von Habsburg, the second son of a Germanic noble who had fallen from his horse during training and lapsed into a coma after hitting a stone.

After waking up, he had initially thought he had transmigrated into the Middle Ages, known in history as the Dark Ages.

But after fully integrating the original owner's memories, he realized that this place was absolutely not the same Middle Ages he knew from his past life.

For instance, the Imperial Emperor of the Greater Germania, Henry von Hohenstaufen, had hired a witch as a royal advisor last winter and conscripted tens of thousands of serfs to gather in Augsburg, Swabia, to build a tower exclusive to witches, inviting witches from all over to move in.

That wasn't even the most absurd part; the King of Albion, the famous Richard the Lionheart, had actually married a witch as his wife and appointed her as the kingdom's Minister of Finance.

In his past life, such a thing would have been impossible in the church-dominated Middle Ages.

In this world, the relationship between witches and the Church did not seem as tense as it had been in his past life—at least, that was how it appeared on the surface.

Name: Lothar von Habsburg

Title: None

Occupation: Noble

Affiliation: Greater Germania, County of Argau (Lower Burgundy, not the Duchy of Burgundy).

Retinue: None

Strength: 9 (The average attribute for a normal adult male is 5)

Agility: 7

Stamina: 8

Endurance: 8

Spirit: 10

Talent: Two Lives (Having fused two souls, you are born with twice the spirit of an ordinary person; spirit cap permanently +5).

Skills: None

The system was called "Yesterday's Battleship Tower Defense System," originating from a knock-off tower defense game he had been working on day and night, without sleep or rest, just before he transmigrated.

The game's content was nothing new; simply put, it involved summoning various hero characters through card draws to defend and strengthen one's territory against waves of enemy attacks.

But the problem was, this game started with a territory!

And Lothar currently didn't even have a nominal title, let alone a territory, so there was no way to activate the system.

Therefore, he had yet to draw a single card.

After training, Lothar returned to his room in the castle.

With the help of a maid, he took off his surcoat and chainmail, changed into a light linen shirt, and headed straight to the castle tower.

This castle is known as "Eagle Fortress," transliterated as "Habsburg," which is also the origin of their family name.

In Gaul and Germania, prefixes like "de" and "von" are placed before surnames, meaning "from," representing a noble origin with a fiefdom.

"Eagle Fortress" is a sturdy mountain castle with a perilous terrain; provided the food reserves are sufficient, it would be difficult for even a massive army to breach.

Lothar stroked the protrusions on the parapet, feeling the cool mountain breeze, and felt a sense of melancholy.

In his past life, even a working-class person could live in an air-conditioned room that was warm in winter and cool in summer, possessing soft mattresses and twenty-four-hour running water.

Yet in this era, even the nobility lived lives that were far from satisfactory.

Especially the Germanic noble, who were more martial and accustomed to living in castles rather than rural manors; their living conditions could be described as harsh.

Damp and dark.

Rats and fleas.

Commonplace.

After all, in this era, the military significance of a castle far outweighed its residential purpose; the primary consideration was always sturdiness rather than comfort.

Heavy footsteps echoed from beneath the tower.

A soldier wearing a nasal helm and a surcoat said in a low voice, "Young Master Lothar, the Lord requests your presence; it is time for lunch."

"Mm, I understand."

Lothar nodded and followed him straight to the castle's main hall.

The soldiers of Eagle Fortress were all standing troops, unlike the peasant soldiers who were only conscripted during wartime and farmed the fields in peacetime; they were professional soldiers, and there were only about a hundred of them in the entire Eagle Fortress.

In times of war, they would form the core of the army alongside the knight under the Count, equivalent to the "personal guards" of an Eastern general.

Walking into the hall of the castle's main building, the most striking sight was the three shields hanging on the gray wall at the end of the stone vaulted ceiling, where a tapestry was draped.

On the left was the yellow shield with three black lions, in the center was the yellow shield with a black single-headed eagle, and on the right was the yellow shield with a red rampant lion.

The former represented the Hohenstaufen family, to which the Imperial Emperor Henry VI, whom Count Werner served, belonged; the center represented the Holy Roman Empire; and only the one on the far right represented the Habsburg family to which Lothar belonged.

On the long table beneath the shields, the maid had already laid out the dishes.

Lothar's father, Count Werner, had already taken his seat with his elder brother, Otto; as for his mother, Lady Elise, she had passed away from illness a year ago.

Seeing Lothar, Count Werner nodded slightly, signaling him with his eyes to take his seat.

He was a man of few words.

His cheekbones were high, his eye sockets deeply recessed, and he wore long brown hair and a beard, with a deep scar on his cheek; in terms of appearance, he was far from handsome.

But his sons, whether the eldest son Otto or the second son Lothar, were both dashing.

Seeing him sit down, Count Werner raised his hand before him, drawing a cross from top to bottom and left to right.

"Thank you, Heavenly Father, for bestowing this food upon us, and we pray that You may also grant food to those who are poor and destitute. In the name of the Father, Amen."

After finishing the prayer, Count Werner signaled for the two to begin.

Today's dishes were quite rich; the main course was goat meat stewed with carrots and potatoes, with side dishes of roasted quail, fruit pie, and a basket of white bread made from fine wheat flour.

The tableware was silver with intricate patterns; it was said to be one of the spoils of war that Count Werner brought back when he participated in the Crusades in his youth. Otherwise, in a backwater like Argao, it would have been impossible to scrape together a set of daily-use silver tableware, let alone have extras for banquets.

ps: 1. The worldview of this book is fictional. Some characters, families, and countries have prototypes, but please do not treat it as historical research. For example, Count Werner is a character from the early 11th century, and it is clear that there were no barrel helms in this era, and the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire was not the Hohenstaufen family, but the Salian family.

It must be emphasized: this book is in the fantasy category, not the history channel!

ps: 2. As everyone knows, there were three Burgundies in the Middle Ages. The Lower Burgundy where the Habsburgs were located is not the Burgundy of Gaul, but is located within the territory of modern-day Switzerland.

ps: 3. Most characters in this book have their "baptismal names" omitted.