Poor Noble Nord’s Adventure

Prologue

The Kingdom of Hamill, located in the eastern part of the continent of Ilva, has a total of seven knight orders.

There are the four “Regional Knight Orders” led by local lords stationed in the north, south, east, and west of Hamill.

Then, there’s the “Kingdom of Hamill Knight Order,” the largest in the kingdom, and the “Royal Guard Order,” tasked mainly with protecting the royal family, totaling six.

And finally, the smallest and shortest in both size and history, but known as the strongest in Hamill—the “Iron Dragon Knight Order,” making seven in total.

These orders are collectively known to the public as the “Seven Great Knight Orders.”

And Nord belonged to the Iron Dragon Knight Order.

The Iron Dragon Knight Order is an elite unit in the Kingdom of Hamill, composed entirely of dragon knights who ride wyverns.

Since he belonged to the Iron Dragon Knight Order, Nord was, naturally, also a dragon knight—or at least an apprentice.

There were two reasons why he held the title “apprentice.”

The first reason was simply due to Nord’s lack of skill and knowledge.

In the Kingdom of Hamill, those aspiring to become knights almost always enter a military academy run by the kingdom.

At the academy, students live in dormitories, learning group life skills to instill cohesion and discipline, as well as combat techniques and various kinds of knowledge.

Some nobles, pampered as heirs, were numerous, but it was considered better for them to be trained under the name of the kingdom, with their peers, than in the limited environment of a noble household.

The only exceptions to not enrolling are heirs of major lords, who receive elite military training from seasoned knights in their personal retinue.

However, even among high-ranking nobles, the importance of personal connections from the academy years—often called “friends who shared meals”—led to an increase in academy admissions.

So, what about Nord? Due to the severe financial difficulties of the Ferris family (thanks to his parents having many children!), he abandoned the knight’s path and didn’t attend the academy, instead becoming an adventurer.

In other words, he never received any knight training (except for some from the Ferris family).

While he did gain experience through countless adventures, enough to become a Crystal-level adventurer, his experience and knowledge of monsters are different in essence from the knight’s human-centric experience and knowledge.

As a result, once Nord’s membership in the Iron Dragon Knight Order was decided, he was quickly required to acquire the knowledge and skills necessary as a knight, particularly in human combat.

There are rare cases of noble offspring joining the academy after the recommended age, usually due to the sudden deaths of elder siblings or heirs.

Even though Nord had been an adventurer, his delay was only about a year, so entering the academy was still an option.

But rather than choosing that path, he directly joined the Iron Dragon Knight Order as an “apprentice” for a different reason.

That was the second reason.

While eating his breakfast, Nord glanced at the green creature sitting on the floor beside him.

It was greedily chomping on a large slice of meat placed in a feeding bowl on the carpet beneath the large table in the Ferris family’s dining hall.

Its body was covered in deep green scales with a beautiful luster, and its limbs, gripping the meat tightly, displayed claws sharp as spear tips, deeply embedded in the cold flesh.

Its neck extended like a tail, and its face, though childlike and innocent, already boasted sharp teeth lined like a saw, capable of tearing through meat.

“Kyuu?”

Sensing Nord’s gaze, the young dragon paused in its eating, tilting its head as it looked up at him.

Its round, cute eyes held vertically slit pupils like those of a reptile or a cat, exuding a trustful gaze free of any hostility.

Nord gestured, “It’s nothing, go ahead and eat,” and the young green dragon seemed to understand, resuming its battle with the meat.

The young dragon, with its deep green scales and healthy appetite, was the second reason why Nord had become an apprentice knight.

A few months prior, Nord found himself needing to earn two hundred silver coins for his sister’s wedding.

Newly promoted to Crystal-level adventurer, Nord saw no feasible way to earn that amount by conventional means.

So he devised a plan to sneak into a wyvern’s nest and steal an egg in hopes of a fortune. Despite various challenges, he succeeded.

However, just as he was about to sell the egg, it hatched, and the young green dragon—Newt—was born.

Standing there, unsure of what to do, Nord explained the situation to his father, who arrived with a middle-aged man: Goldwin, the vice commander of the Iron Dragon Knight Order, Hamill’s elite dragon knights.

Vice Commander Goldwin, seeing that the young dragon had become attached to Nord, ordered him to join the Iron Dragon Knight Order.

This was partly because the Order wanted to increase its number of wyverns (and thus, dragon knights), but, as he later learned, it was mainly due to the young dragon’s fondness for him.

According to Vice Commander Goldwin, all of the Order’s wyverns were hatched by hand from eggs but were notoriously hard to tame, even as juveniles. Though weak as young, their resistance only grew as they matured, so the Order entrusted knights with the strength to handle the wyverns from an early age.

Yet, here was Nord’s dragon hatchling, acting as if it were a child clinging to its parent.

Goldwin, hearing of this from Albert—Nord’s father and his academy peer—visited the Ferris estate and confirmed it with his own eyes.

Hearing Nord’s story, he decided that they should study this “taming method” in the Iron Dragon Knight Order and brought Nord into the Order.

Later, with wyvern researchers from the kingdom present, Nord recounted his adventure into the wyvern’s nest and the events that followed, leading to a hypothesis.

Apparently, wyverns recognize the presence and scent of their mother while still in the egg.

The difference between Nord and previous wyvern handlers lay in the “scent” he carried.

Even after bathing and washing away any traces—specifically the scent of the mother wyvern’s droppings—the young dragon quickly adapted and showed affection toward Nord.

Continued observation confirmed that, no matter how many times Nord bathed or used herbal deodorizers, the young dragon maintained a sense of filial love.

Researchers concluded that “the young dragon recognizes Nord as its parent.”

This report was, of course, conveyed to the kingdom’s higher-ups and the Iron Dragon Knight Order.

The technique that Nord discovered by chance in his adventure was recognized as a method that could impact the Iron Dragon Knight Order’s role and potentially the future of the kingdom. It was then decided that the Order would continue to observe wyvern development with this new approach.

This was the reason Nord, without attending the academy, was a part of the Iron Dragon Knight Order as an apprentice dragon knight.