Future Knight

Chapter 4

“Huff! Huff! Huff!”

Having escaped from a long nightmare, he opened his eyes to see a familiar ceiling.

Turning his head to look around, he realized this was the very room where he had first woken up.

“Huff! Huff! Huff!”

His entire body was drenched in cold sweat, making him acutely aware that he was alive.

‘What a filthy nightmare, damn it.’

After taking a few deep breaths to calm himself, his gaze returned to its previously cold and unfeeling state.

‘They didn’t kill me. Not that they could learn anything from me anyway.’

He always thought he was closest to death and was ready to die at any moment.

However, waking up alive like this, he felt a deep sense of relief contrary to his resolve.

When Kang Chan tried to move his body, he felt nothing but intense pain. He didn’t even have the strength to twitch a finger.

‘How long has it been since I used battle mode to that extent?’

As he closed his eyes and recalled the past, an elf girl who had been quietly watching him from beside him spoke.

“Are you going to sleep again?”

Startled by the sudden female voice, Kang Chan turned his head to see a cute girl with familiar features looking at him with bright eyes.

“Who are you?”

At his question, the elf girl’s face twisted in anger.

“What? Who? Huh, seriously! After you made my face like this, you don’t even remember? Unbelievable…”

The elf girl threw a basket of fruit at the stranger irritably.

“Here, eat this!”

“What is this?”

“Can’t you see? It’s fruit!”

The girl’s eyes, as she threw the fruit irritably, were slightly bruised.

It was then that he remembered who the girl was.

She was the elf girl who had been taking care of him and had been kicked by him.

Feeling a little sorry for having kicked the young girl who had been looking after him, Kang Chan sighed. But he didn’t have the luxury to worry about the girl right now.

The current situation was already making his head feel like it was going to explode.

‘If they were going to kill me, they would have done it long ago. Seeing as they just put a little girl here to watch over me and left me in bed, they must not know who I really am yet.’

He decided he needed to act calmly for the moment.

“How long have I been like this?”

“Do humans usually sleep this much? Or is it just you? How can someone sleep for a whole year and then sleep another three days straight?”

“I’ve been asleep for a year?”

“Yes, you woke up exactly one year after you arrived here.”

“…….”

Kang Chan’s eyes were filled with disbelief.

The special unit Red Mars he belonged to was not the kind of place that would allow him to lie in a remote mountain village for a year.

So what had happened to his comrades and the warship during the year he was asleep?

“How did I get here?”

“You were carried here.”

At the girl’s sarcastic tone, a flash of murderous intent appeared in Kang Chan’s eyes.

‘I must endure. I must endure. This is enemy territory.’

After composing himself, he asked again in a low tone.

“I’m not asking how you got here, but rather how you ended up here.”

“Oh, that? I barely made it out alive.”

– Blood pressure levels are rising rapidly.

Kang Chan’s mind flashed red with the elf girl’s endlessly twisted attitude, but he desperately overcame it and managed to maintain his composure with difficulty.

“What’s your name?”

When Kang Chan asked the girl her name in a low, trembling voice, she replied cheerfully.

“Jaina.”

“Ah, Jaina.”

“But you know, why have you been talking down to me since the beginning?”

“Isn’t it obvious? It’s because I’m older than you.”

“How old are you?”

He hesitated for a moment.

He had been born over 80 years ago.

The time he spent in a sleep capsule for long-distance space travel was much longer than the time he had spent awake and living.

Of those years, 40 had been spent just to get to this place.

Kang Chan wasn’t even sure if this planet used the same time units as Earth, but he roughly estimated his age and spoke.

“Hmm… about 20 years old.”

“What? 20 years old? I’m 95 this year, so what’s this? A snot-nosed kid has been talking down to me all this time? Unbelievable.”

Despite her disbelief, the girl’s appearance didn’t look any older than a middle school student to Kang Chan.

“I’m not in the mood for jokes right now.”

“You brat! Are you looking to die? Hey! Old man, don’t you dare act all superior when I’ve been wiping your ass for a whole year because you couldn’t do it yourself!”

At that moment, something in Kang Chan’s mind snapped with a ‘pop’.

“Didn’t I tell you there would be consequences?”

Forcing his heavy, waterlogged body up, he staggered and slowly approached Jaina.

Seeing the intense murderous intent in his eyes, Jaina instinctively backed away in fear.

“What’s wrong? You should be lying down if you’re not well.”

“I’ll fix your manners…”

“Kyaa!”

Just as Kang Chan, in a fit of rage, was about to lunge at Jaina, the door opened, and someone entered the room.

It was Arteon, the Lord of the Elves.

She had received urgent news from a standby healing mage about his awakening and had teleported in immediately.

“Oh? You two seem to be having fun.”

“Lady Arteon! That human tried to kill me!”

Jaina ran into Arteon’s arms, trembling and teary-eyed.

Without bothering to make excuses, Kang Chan raised his hands and, with a look that said “to hell with it,” sat back down on the bed. Watching him, Arteon gently stroked Jaina’s head with a warm gaze.

“It’s alright, Jaina. There’s no need to worry. He won’t hurt you. Go wait outside for a bit. I need to talk to him.”

“No! That beastly human might do something to you, Lady Arteon!”

As Jaina’s words made Kang Chan’s eyes blaze with anger again, Arteon placed a firm but gentle hand on Jaina’s head and spoke in a kind yet strong tone.

“Don’t worry and go outside.”

“But…”

“Go outside.”

“Yes…”

Once a dejected Jaina left the room, Arteon slowly approached Kang Chan.

Then, a tree trunk rose from the floor, forming the shape of a chair. Arteon sat gracefully on it and smiled at Kang Chan.

“Shall we have a serious conversation now?”

“What do you want to talk about?”

“About you. Oh, wait a moment. It seems the effect of the Speak spell is wearing off. Let me cast it again.”

Once again, a halo of multicolored light gathered in her hand, forming a shape that then permeated Kang Chan’s body.

When he first encountered it, he was too desperate to notice, but watching it calmly now, it was a truly beautiful and mysterious sight.

“What is it you’re so curious about regarding me?”

“Everything.”

“Everything?”

“Yes.”

An awkward silence fell between them, which Arteon eventually broke.

“Let me introduce myself first. My name is Judrian Od Arteon. What is your name?”

“My name is Kang Chan.”

“Kwangchan? Is that your full name? Don’t you have a surname?”

“Kang is the surname, and Chan is the name.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Your surname and given name are quite short.”

“It’s alright.”

Her eyes sparkled as she spoke.

“Where do you come from?”

“That’s…”

He hesitated for a moment.

It was an obvious question they would ask him.

However, when actually faced with the question, he was conflicted about whether to tell the truth about where he came from.

But there was no point in hiding it, so Kang Chan decided it was better to reveal his identity openly and seek their help.

He decided to be honest about where he came from but resolved to lie about his purpose.

“I’m not from this planet.”

“What? This planet? What do you mean by that? Isn’t a star something that shines in the night sky?”

Arteon’s face was filled with confusion at the stranger’s unfamiliar words.

Kang Chan could immediately sense her bewilderment.

It seemed she didn’t even know that the land she stood on was a spherical planet.

It was like his ancestors who believed in the geocentric theory.

Or perhaps, she believed they stood on a continent supported by four elephants on the back of a giant turtle.

That was just Kang Chan’s opinion, of course.

He decided to keep the explanation simple and straightforward.

“I come from far away, from space.”

“What? Space? What is that? Isn’t there a heaven above the sky?”

Seeing her innocent face, unable to comprehend his words, brought a slight change to Kang Chan’s expressionless face.

“……”

Talking to her felt like conversing with a pure-hearted child.

Kang Chan decided he needed to kindly explain the concept of the vast universe and the planet they stood on.

Kang Chan raised his heavy body, opened the window, and pointed to the night sky, speaking to Arteon.

“Do you see those bright stars?”

“Yes, I see them. But why are you suddenly talking about stars?”

“Those stars can be much larger than the continent you are standing on.”

“What? That doesn’t make any sense. How can those stars be bigger than this vast continent?”

“Don’t distant objects appear smaller? I come from so far away that this continent looks as small as those stars.”

Arteon still seemed puzzled, as if she couldn’t grasp the distance he was talking about.

“Then, what do you mean by those stars?”

“A star is what you call the place where you live. Lady Arteon, do you think the world we stand on is flat?”

“Of course, isn’t it flat?”

“You are mistaken. This world is round.”

“That’s absurd… I don’t like such jokes.”

She already knew from her levitations that the horizon wasn’t perfectly flat. However, she couldn’t fully accept the idea that the world was perfectly round as Kang Chan described.

Arteon’s face hardened.

She seemed to think Kang Chan was mocking her.

“This is absolutely not a joke.”

Arteon picked up an apple Jaina had thrown at him to eat and held it out to Kang Chan.

“Look at this, Mr. Kwangchan! How can people live on a round object like this? If it were the top of the apple, maybe, but everyone would fall off the sides and the bottom. How can anyone live on it?”

She didn’t seem to know about the concept of gravity.

The conversation seemed to be plunging deeper into a maze, and Kang Chan had no idea where to start explaining.

He felt like he had traveled back to the medieval ages on ancient Earth.

Desperately trying to explain, he decided to refer to the contents of an encyclopedia stored in his computer.

“I’ll explain slowly. When we drop something from a height, it falls to the ground, right? This is because this star exerts a force that pulls objects toward it. We call this gravity. In terms of our star’s expression, it’s Newton’s law of universal gravitation.”