The deepest impression Leif had of the demon dragon’s embrace could be summed up in one sound:
Whoosh-whoosh-whoosh.
After that unfortunate noble was burned to ashes, a glowing blue bar suddenly appeared out of thin air in front of her. In the upper-left corner of the bar was a number indicating level.
Of course Leif recognized what it was at a glance.
It was a game interface. Unfortunately, whether because the system was malfunctioning or because her level was too low, everything except the experience bar and the level display—currently showing Level 0—was grayed out and unusable.
She was absolutely certain this game interface was something she had inherited from the now-deceased player. And she, who’d formerly been an NPC meant to supply players with items, hand out quests, and give story hints, had now become the new player.
As for what kind of impact this change would have on the game’s balance, Leif hadn’t gotten around to worrying about that yet.
Even without a little tutorial sprite popping out to explain the rules, Leif quickly worked out, by instinct alone, what the system basically did.
The blue bar only displayed clearly for a short while before its color faded.
In fact, after that, the experience bar only became visible when Leif consciously focused on it, or when the numbers changed dramatically. Most of the time the bar was so faint it was practically transparent air, so there was no such nonsense as someone’s face in her line of sight getting blocked by UI elements.
Then Miss Demon Dragon hugged her. Dragon and girl lay hand-in-hand on the grass, fingers tightly intertwined. Pale flaxen hair tangled together with red-brown locks.
Leif stared wide-eyed at the blue experience bar hovering in midair.
The numbers were exploding upwards—every time she leveled up, she could almost hear a whoosh-whoosh-whoosh in her head.
In the blink of an eye, it shot up to Level 5—the max level of this game was Level 120—and a firework went off in Leif’s mind.
The “Backpack” icon that had been gray a moment ago turned into a blue button, ringed with a bright white halo.
Her backpack opened automatically at her mental command. Inside were 64 slots. Sixty-three of them were empty; only the top-left slot contained a single torn parchment scroll. The title on the parchment was a string of old-fashioned letters forming several unfamiliar words, clearly not in the same language as the ones used in clerical scripture.
Leif remembered from the stories Priest Riley had told that the demon dragon race had been born on the scorching, volcano-riddled Keshina Continent, and that the language of Keshina had formed by absorbing the language of the Deya Continent. Even after thousands of years of evolution, their roots were still similar.
But even squinting and guessing, she could only be sure that the scroll’s title was something like “X Dragon Handbook.”
In her previous life, she had followed the system’s prompt and finished off the “heavily wounded demon dragon” with a single strike, so of course she’d never gotten this “X Dragon Handbook.” Leif now suspected she’d missed some hidden content back then. In her opinion, the most likely actual name of this book was “Dragon-Slaying Handbook.”
The description text on the parchment, at least, was in a language Leif could understand. It tactfully avoided explaining the handbook’s purpose—perhaps the title was already obvious enough—and only stated that the parchment had twelve chapters in total. Completing each main story quest would unlock one chapter, and finishing the tasks recorded on the parchment would grant generous rewards.
It didn’t specify what the rewards were. But knowing how absurdly greedy demon dragons were by nature, Leif guessed they’d probably be gold coins and gems.
When Leif hurried back to Edd Village and heard Priest Riley mention the story of a knight saving a princess, everything finally clicked.
The meadow where she’d run into Reynard McIntosh, the spot where the demon dragon had fallen from the sky, and the altar in Edd Village where Priest Riley preached—all three lay in a straight line.
In other words, if she’d obediently sold the sheep to Mister McIntosh at the beginning and pointed him toward Edd Village, then when he reached the midpoint of the road, he would have discovered a half-dead demon dragon lying there.
At that time the dragon’s wounds hadn’t had time to heal. One sword strike, at most two, would have been enough to finish it off.
After receiving his reward, he would have headed to Edd Village and naturally gone to where the villagers gathered. Right then, while Priest Riley was tearing his hair out over the lack of candidates for the knighthood, he would have swallowed his pride and begged this outsider for help.
Leif, who loved skipping cutscenes more than anything, was now forced to painstakingly reconstruct the whole plot. But when she thought of all the monsters she would fight later, the endless piles of gleaming Jingesha coins, the endless supply of lamp oil she’d have, the evenings she wouldn’t have to waste sharpening knives but could spend on all kinds of entertainment…
The little shepherd girl couldn’t help but bounce with joy.
“I want to become a squire knight!”
“No.”
The old priest snapped his scripture shut. His overly loose tortoiseshell spectacles slid down his thin nose again. Through the lenses, his slightly cloudy eyes fixed on Leif.
“You can’t.”
“Why?” Leif asked.
Everyone around them burst out laughing.
The old priest ignored her. He reopened his scriptures and cleared his throat, as if to say that Leif had just asked a question so stupid it wasn’t even worth answering.
“That’s easy.”
A girl two years older than Leif, one hand on her swollen belly, frowned slightly. There was helplessness in her eyes, yet also a faint smile, the look of an adult facing an adorable but hopelessly clueless child.
“Because you’re a girl, Leif.”
In her clear pupils, Leif saw her own reflection: rough homespun clothes, a pair of worn leather boots, a sheep’s lead-rope in hand; her figure could by no stretch be called tall or imposing.
She really was a girl, Leif thought.
But she was a girl who had been just half a Leifer away from beating the game to full completion.
Leif gathered up her meager savings and packed enough dry rations to last a month.
Before leaving, she lifted her chin, waved at the villagers, and shouted,
“I’ll definitely come back! I’ll come back with a Radiant Knight of the Temple medal, with honor—
and with my bride!”
Gary wanted to stop this girl who was clearly not in her right mind, but only then did he suddenly realize that Leif had said “bride,” not “bridegroom.”
“That lass will be back soon enough,” said old Priest Riley.
When he heard Leif talk about a “bride,” he knew perfectly well she hadn’t meant anything proper by it, but it was still an offense against the Temple’s strictures, even if it was only in words. In his heart he begged the merciful Father to forgive this sharp-tongued little girl.
To the villagers behind him, the old priest said, “You only barely count as a knight after receiving a knight’s sash. Only clergy and old royal houses are qualified to bestow a sash. No priest would ever grant one to a woman. And a royal sash is even more out of the question—unless she is willing to risk her life on those bizarre, deadly quests.”
“And without a knight’s sash…”
The old priest patted Gary on the shoulder. He remembered this young man had come to him just last month to ask him to officiate a wedding, yet now the girl he was going to marry had simply walked away. The old priest knew Gary must be feeling miserable, so he tried to comfort him.
“She won’t get far. In a few days at most, they’ll send her straight back to the village.”
The old priest’s prediction turned out to be completely wrong.
One and a half months later, Leif’s journey was still going on.
All around her, snow-white hyacinths stretched to the horizon. These plants, which seemed to fill every corner of Kino, gave off such an overpowering fragrance that Leif couldn’t stop sneezing.
Kino was the capital of the Kingdom of Aesaya. Right now, a heavy sadness hung over the royal city.
Leif learned the cause of that sadness from the city’s gate captain: the old king had passed away one year and five months ago. Although the prince consort—now the new king—had shown every sign of wanting to rule diligently, the old king’s only daughter, the noble and beautiful Princess Sophie, now the current queen, had fallen desperately ill with severe pains in her chest from grieving too much for her late father.
“Occupation?”
Frowning, the gate captain gripped his quill as he wrote down the identities of incoming travelers. He looked at the dusty, road-worn girl standing before him—Leif, leading a sheep by a rope.
“Knight,” Leif said.
Under the captain’s dubious gaze, she gently pinched Lily’s ear, then swung herself up onto the sheep’s back.
Over the past month and a half, Lily had grown a lot. The rough roads and all the dangers along the way—she had often had to flee for her life alongside Leif—had trained her into lean, solid muscle. The downy lamb fleece had fully changed into matte adult wool.
She was a full-grown sheep now, while the girl hadn’t grown much at all, and had actually gotten thinner.
Ever since Leif had stolen a Green Wuqing root from a farmhouse to feed the gluttonous Lily, and the two of them had then been chased over four mountains by the furious farmwife, girl and sheep had forged a bond of shared life-and-death. Once she’d gotten big enough, Lily had naturally become the mount of the shepherd girl who was determined to Leife out her knightly fantasies… though of course, she could only carry Leif for short stretches at a time.
In an earlier city, a gate guard had questioned Leif’s claim to be a knight. Leif had told him that, etymologically, the original meaning of “knight” was merely “a person riding something.” The stereotypical image was a man on a horse, yes, but even if he rode a mule, a camel, a donkey, or even an old hen, that didn’t strip him of his knightly status.
The illiterate guard had been so thoroughly confused by her sophistry that, before he realized he’d been had, Leif was already leading her little sheep past the gates.
“Knight? Even if we accept what you say—that all the men in your village have died out, and you had no choice but to let a woman become a squire—then tell me, where is your knight’s sash?”
The capital’s gate captain was not so easily fooled. Seeing Leif’s expression that clearly said she was cooking up some new nonsense, he let his face harden.
“Listen, little shepherd girl, don’t try to argue. Where is your male guardian? Until I see him, I have the right to detain you.”
Leif craned her neck to look at the huge poster nailed up beside the city gate.
On it was a bounty for a black demon dragon, sealed with both the Temple’s official stamp and the signet marks of over twenty kingdoms. The quest rank was S, just one tier below the highest SS, which meant the reward would be extremely generous.
If she could bring in a piece of the demon dragon’s corpse as proof that she’d really killed it, never mind a knight’s sash—she’d immediately be recognized as a promising squire knight and be showered with favor by the Temple and every major kingdom.
The text on the poster confirmed her guesses exactly: this was an extension of the newbie benefits. Among all the old-line kingdoms qualified to grant knight’s sashes and issue high-level quests, the Kingdom of Aesaya was the closest one to Edd Village. She reasoned that the capital, Kino, had to be a mandatory stop for any player.
“Captain, I came to the capital precisely to receive my knight’s sash,” Leif said.
Obviously, this wasn’t the only quest available in the capital. As long as she could complete any quest of rank A or higher, she could obtain a knight’s sash from Aesaya.
Assuming she could get inside.
“Little shepherd girl,” the captain said sternly, pointing toward the open country beyond the gate, “I’ll say it one more time. Leave. Now.”
The nearby guards already had their hands on their sword hilts, the blades drawn an inch or two. If Leif continued to loiter and argue, they would draw steel on her for real.
Leif thought that if she could just pull out a dragon rib from her backpack right now, the captain’s attitude would flip instantly. Instead of driving her away, he’d probably rush to welcome her in with utmost respect.
The king and queen would receive her with all the honors due a hero. She’d ride a flower-decked carriage pulled by fine horses in a triumphal parade, the girls of the royal city would scream and pelt her with garlands and handkerchiefs…
But that was impossible.
All in all, this was the three thousand and fifth time in the past month and a half that Leif regretted not killing that demon dragon when she’d had the chance.
Lily suddenly grew restless and backed up a few steps. She’d never run out of patience this quickly during previous delays. This time, she even started trembling in fear, and Leif had no idea what had spooked her.
From inside the city walked out a female attendant with flaxen hair and golden-amber eyes. She wore a spotless white robe and was tall and slender.
In her hand she held a decree from the queen.
The instant the gate captain saw this favorite of the queen appear, all the color drained from his face. He snapped at his men,
“What are you standing around for?”
The guards immediately shoved their swords back into their scabbards and, together with the captain, bowed to the woman.
“Good day, Lady Natiavida.”
“What’s going on?” Natiavida’s amber eyes fell on Leif.
“And this is?”
“She’s a crazy little shepherd girl claiming she’s a knight!” the captain said obsequiously, hunched over in a cringe of flattery. “Don’t worry, my lady, I’ll have her driven off at once.”
Natiavida said nothing. She moved her feet lightly and walked toward Leif.
As that woman with the gentle smile drew closer step by step, Lily nearly lost her mind. She tried to bolt, but all four of her hooves had become heavy as lead, nailed to the ground.
Lily’s legs suddenly buckled, and she dropped to her knees.
Leif hadn’t expected her to do that. She cried out in surprise and tumbled off the sheep’s back.
Before she could get a mouthful of dust, she fell into a warm embrace instead.
Leif heard the female attendant, who had forgotten to let go of her after pulling her up, say to the gate captain,
“I don’t think she’s lying. Her Majesty the Queen has a task for her.”
