On the tournament field, a black mane fluttered in the wind.
Iron hooves struck the soft grass, kicking up great clods of mud.
A knight wearing a Bucket Helm, with only a narrow slit at eye level for vision, was clad in chainmail beneath a black surcoat. Mounted on a black Nisaan warhorse from Gaul, he charged a straw dummy serving as a target.
He tucked a heavy white beechwood lance beneath his arm, forming a standard right triangle with his arm and body.
This posture provided the lance with a stable fulcrum and was the couched-lance charge technique that nearly every knight in the world had to master.
The lance in his hand was solid, thin at the front and thick at the rear, exceedingly heavy, and widely used in jousting tournaments. However, its brittle material made it prone to breaking.
First charge.
The lance struck with precision. Its metal tip pierced through the dummy's chest, and the tremendous impact sent the entire straw figure flying into the air.
The knight held the dummy aloft, swung it through the air, and shook it loose.
He then discarded the heavy lance and galloped onward. As he passed the weapon rack beside the field, he deftly drew out two short spears.
When he wheeled his horse around for another charge, the knight gripped a spear in reverse, raised it above his head, and drove it down, pinning it precisely through a straw dummy's neck.
That was often the weak point in an enemy's armor.
The warhorse swept across the broad tournament field. The knight drew the other short spear in reverse, gathered strength through his entire body, and hurled it viciously.
Unfortunately, the strike missed.
The short spear sank into the muddy ground beside the straw dummy.
Lothar removed the heavy Bucket Helm from his head, revealing a handsome, spirited young face.
He casually set the helm on a round table in the tournament field, lifted a ceramic jug filled with water, and gulped it down. Only then did he forcibly suppress the heat brought on by his vigorous exercise.
He looked at the status panel before him, wiped the sweat running down his temple, and felt somewhat gratified.
After a week of restorative training, he had successfully raised both his strength and stamina by one point.
He had also fully adapted to the fighting skills that the body's original owner had developed through years of knightly training.
Whether it was the commonly used light and heavy lances, short spears, shields, and bastard swords, or the relatively uncommon one-handed hammers, flails, and hand axes, he could wield them all proficiently.
As a knight dedicated to combat, he was already fully qualified. It was only a pity that he had yet to be formally dubbed.
Lothar was a transmigrator.
In his previous life, he had been the owner of a game company. One night, while working overtime with his employees to develop a game, he had unfortunately died from sudden cardiac death and transmigrated to this era.
He had replaced Lothar von Habsburg, the second son of a Germanic noble, who had fallen from his warhorse during training, struck a rock, and lapsed into unconsciousness.
After awakening, he had initially believed that he had arrived in the Middle Ages recorded in history, the era known as the Dark Ages.
But after fully merging with the original owner's memories, he realized that this place was absolutely nothing like the Middle Ages he had known in his previous life.
For example, Henry von Hohenstaufen, the Imperial Emperor of the Greater Germania Empire to the north, had hired a Witch as a royal adviser last winter. He had also conscripted more than ten thousand serfs and gathered them in Augsburg, Swabia, intending to build a tower exclusively for Witches and invite Witches from every region to reside there.
That was not even the most outrageous part. The King of Albion, the famed Richard the Lionheart, had actually married a Witch and appointed her Chancellor of the Exchequer for the entire kingdom.
Such a thing would have been utterly impossible in the Middle Ages of his previous life, where religious authority reigned supreme.
In this world, the relationship between Witches and the Church did not seem as tense as it had been in his previous life—at least on the surface.
Name: Lothar von Habsburg Title: None Occupation: Noble Affiliated Force: Greater Germania Empire, County of Argau (Lower Burgundy, not the Duchy of Burgundy). Retainers: None Strength: 9 (the average attribute for a normal adult male is 5) Agility: 7 Stamina: 8 Endurance: 8 Mental Power: 10 Talent: Two Lives (Having fused two souls, you are born with twice the mental power of an ordinary person. Maximum Mental Power permanently +5). Skills: None
The system was called the "Yesterday's Battleship Tower Defense System." It came from a knockoff tower defense game he had been desperately working on before his transmigration, staying up through the night for days without rest, eager to finish and release it.
The game itself was nothing new. Put simply, players drew cards to summon all kinds of hero characters, defended and strengthened their own territories, and repelled wave after wave of enemies.
But the problem was that the game began with a territory!
And Lothar currently did not even possess an empty title, much less a territory. He simply had no way to activate the system.
As a result, he had not been able to draw a single card so far.
After finishing his training, Lothar returned to his room in the castle.
With the help of a maid, he removed his surcoat and chainmail, changed into a light linen shirt, and headed straight for the castle's tower.
This castle was called "Eagle Fortress," transliterated as "Habsburg," and it was also the origin of his family's name.
In Gaul and Germania, surnames were preceded by prefixes such as "de" and "von," meaning "from" and signifying noble origins with fiefs.
Eagle Fortress was a sturdy mountain castle in a strategically vital location. So long as its food stores were sufficient, even an army of thousands would find it difficult to breach.
Lothar stroked the raised stonework along the battlements and let the cool mountain wind wash over him, feeling rather reflective.
In his previous life, even salaried workers could live in air-conditioned homes that were warm in winter and cool in summer, with soft mattresses and running water twenty-four hours a day.
But in this era, even nobles lived far from comfortably.
This was especially true of Germanic nobles, who were more martial in nature and accustomed to living in castles rather than country estates. Their living conditions could only be described as appalling.
Damp and dark.
Rats and fleas.
They were commonplace.
After all, in this era, castles held far greater military value than residential value. Their strength was always considered before their comfort.
Heavy footsteps rose from below the tower.
A soldier in a ridge helmet and surcoat said quietly, "Young Master Lothar, my lord asks that you come over. It is time for lunch."
"Mm, I understand."
Lothar nodded and followed him directly to the castle's great hall.
The soldiers of Eagle Fortress were full-time troops. Unlike the peasant soldiers who were conscripted only in wartime and farmed the fields in peacetime, they were all professional soldiers. There were only a little over a hundred of them in all of Eagle Fortress.
During wartime, they and the count's knights would form the core of the army, equivalent to a general's personal guard in the East.
Upon entering the hall of the castle's main building, the most eye-catching sight was the three heraldic shields hanging on a gray wall draped with a tapestry at the far end of the stone-vaulted ceiling.
On the left was a shield bearing three black lions on a yellow field. In the center was a shield bearing a black single-headed eagle on a yellow field. On the right was a shield bearing a red rampant lion on a yellow field.
The first represented the Hohenstaufen family of Henry VI, the Imperial Emperor of the Greater Germania Empire, to whom Lothar's father, Count Werner, pledged allegiance. The center shield represented the Greater Germania Empire, while the one on the far right belonged to Lothar's own Habsburg family.
The long table beneath the shields had already been covered with dishes by the maids.
Lothar's father, Count Werner, was already seated with his elder brother Otto. As for his mother, Lady Elise, she had died of illness a year ago.
Seeing Lothar, Count Werner gave a slight nod and gestured with his eyes for him to sit.
He was a man who rarely smiled.
His cheekbones were high, his eye sockets deeply sunken, and he wore long brown hair and a beard. A deep scar marked his cheek. By appearance alone, he was far from handsome.
Yet both his sons, whether the eldest Otto or the second son Lothar, were strikingly handsome.
Once Lothar was seated, Count Werner raised his hand and traced a cross before himself, from top to bottom and left to right.
"Thank the Heavenly Father for granting us food, and may You also grant food and drink to those who are poor and distressed. In the Father's name, amen."
Only after finishing the prayer did Count Werner signal for the two of them to begin eating.
Today's meal was fairly plentiful. The main dish was goat stew with carrots and potatoes, while the side dishes included roasted quail, fruit pie, and a basket of white bread made from fine wheat flour.
The tableware was silver, covered in intricate patterns. It was said to be one of the spoils Count Werner had brought back when he joined the Crusades in his youth. Otherwise, in a backwater as poor as Argao, it would have been impossible to assemble a set of silver tableware for everyday use while still keeping enough in reserve for banquets.
PS: 1. The setting of this novel is fictional. Some characters, families, and countries have real-life prototypes, but please do not scrutinize the history. For instance, Count Werner was a figure from the early eleventh century, while this era clearly did not yet have Bucket Helms. The Imperial Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire was also not from the Hohenstaufen family, but the Salian family.
To emphasize: this is fantasy, not historical fiction!
PS: 2. As everyone knows, there were three Burgundies in the Middle Ages. The Lower Burgundy where Habsburg is located is not Burgundy in Gaul, but lies within present-day Switzerland.
PS: 3. Most characters in this book omit their "Christian names."