Virgin Knight Who Is the Frontier Lord in the Gender Switched World - Chapter 173

I must be dreaming.

As I pass through the brigade, the fools, drunk on dreams, unavoidably come into view.

Everyone is intoxicated by dreams.

They believe that once this journey ends, their futures will be filled with fortune.

Those who dream believe they will grasp a piece of happiness.

For the half-mercenary, half-bandit groups and the Black Knights, it’s the status of knighthood and the position of a regular soldier.

For merchants, it’s citizenship and wealth to escape a poor background.

For the third and fourth daughters of clerical nobility, it’s the chance to be recognized as knights in their own right, gaining the admiration they seek and proving themselves to the world and their families.

Just now, I hurled at Valiere-dono, “Everything is the result of your own actions, and whatever happens, you must take responsibility.”

Now, I wonder how far she intends to take that responsibility.

As far as I know, it is impossible to take responsibility for all the inflated dreams here.

At the same time, there was never a need to take on such responsibility.

Originally, everyone joined this journey with that understanding.

“Not everyone’s dreams will come true.”

According to the plan devised by the madwoman, Lady Sabine, Valiere-dono’s confidante, at most 1,000 people will see their dreams realized and be saved.

Even in Anhalt, boasting the elector’s greatest wealth, not everyone who gathered will be employed. The royal family members are all famously miserly. Including the kind Valiere-dono, the Anhalt family is notoriously stingy when it comes to money.

Rather than deal with everyone gathered, they might as well give away a piece of Anhalt territory and let them all migrate there, as if to say, “Now live there.”

Whether those gathered would be satisfied with that is another matter entirely.

In essence, it’s like telling them to become settlers.

Landowners living on already developed lands are not about to hand them over just like that.

Feudal lords resist dividing their lands with desperate tenacity, and under normal circumstances, they would refuse even the entry of outsiders.

Continuing this pointless thought, I walk through the stationary headquarters.

The lively voice of a merchant resonates all around.

“Delicious apples here! How about one, noble knight!”

It’s an apple seller.

A horse-lender with two donkeys, selling apples he had just bought in a town we passed through the other day.

The brigade’s sutler is functioning perfectly, and merchants participating in this journey are free to buy and sell.

“Maybe I’ll take one.”

I pay the horse-lender and bite into an apple.

The tartness fills my mouth, and suddenly, I remember my childhood.

As a child, I was truly naive, understanding little of the world—always clamoring for this or that, desperate to satisfy my desires.

Despite everything I wanted being readily available in the market, none of it ever reached my hands for one simple reason.

We were poor.

“What nonsense.”

Watching a mercenary being frowned upon by the horse-lender for trying to trade a blood-stained shirt he had stripped from a bandit for an apple, I smirk thinly.

He was much like my mother.

Uneducated, uncultured, barely able to calculate, and unable to negotiate properly.

Even if I begged for an apple, she usually ignored me, insisting, “We have no money.” But for some reason, she indulged me that day.

Looking back, it was probably because of the festival that day, with elaborately dressed clergy and knights walking down the main street.

Despite it being a festive day, my mother and I were poorly dressed.

Without a lord or land of our own, unable to pay taxes, it’s not like a Black Knight of robber-like quality would have money for finery.

I didn’t much care, but perhaps my mother felt both humiliated and terribly sorry for me.

She dressed me in patched-up clothes and gave me a small apple.

That tartness is still vivid in my mind.

I don’t know how she managed to scrape together the money for the apple, but it was probably through some wrongdoing.

It wouldn’t be surprising if she had traded a blood-stained scrap of cloth taken from someone she had killed for that apple, just like the mercenary earlier.

Violence was the only thing my mother was good at—nothing else.

That was probably her greatest regret.

Though she was usually cheerful, that aspect seemed indelibly marked on her.

We were so poor that we didn’t even have money for finery, but there were other reasons for our poverty.

There were connections even among fellow mercenary knights, including runaway noble daughters—the third and fourth—who could read and calculate.

My mother paid them to educate me.

My ability to read, calculate, and negotiate was due to that education.

In exchange, our home truly had no money left to laugh about.

There’s something I still don’t understand.

Why, when she was truly poor, didn’t my mother simply abandon me at an orphanage?

It would have made her life much easier.

To my uneducated and uncultured mother, my rise in the world was the only condition for victory in life, as if it were the happiness of the entire world.

I wonder why she went so far for me.

“In the end, not a single one of your desires came true.”

I understand.

My mother’s wish was not for me to become the kind of robber knight I am today, but a truly commendable knight blessed with a lord worthy of utmost loyalty.

She probably envisioned me as one of those impressive knights who walked down the center of the avenue during that festival, not as someone destined to be remembered as the worst robber knight in history.

Everyone dreams.

This isn’t reality.

I’m not meant to live this life.

I am someone who could grasp something much, much more valuable.

It’s all a misunderstanding. Everything is a lie. Born into this hellish world, don’t entertain such ridiculous thoughts.

There is hardly one in ten thousand who can proudly say their life is not a lie.

Even I, Amelia von Berlichingen, who has put forth every effort, could not obtain everything.

The dream of fulfilling my mother’s wishes will never come true.

This world is full of scum not worth my true and earnest loyalty.

Everyone truly only thinks of themselves, and there is no one worth sacrificing everything for.

I am envious.

As I walked alongside the brigade, I couldn’t help but feel a little envious of those whose dreams have not yet been crushed.

The mercenary nibbling on half an apple after tangled negotiations, the horse-lender feeding the other half to the two donkeys.

The leader of a mercenary group who, while pretending to be a knight mounted on his horse, talks about his family’s crest.

The leader of a losing mercenary group, who hasn’t grasped anything yet, shouting at his members to find and kill any small-time bandits.

All the people I meet as I march from the rear to the front of the brigade, setting up camp for a day’s rest everywhere.

Everyone must be thinking this:

This is a march of dreams.

For them, it’s a march of dreams, an opportunity they might not encounter again in their lifetime, where they can exert all their strength with true heart and soul.

Valiere von Anhalt is someone worth staking my life on, someone who will fulfill all my dreams.

Suddenly, I found myself pondering something utterly trivial.

If I were still a child, and my mother had come across such a march of dreams, would she have participated?

Surely, she would have.

Taking me along as a child, claiming I could be useful, joining the journey on such a far-fetched basis, defeating the bandits and becoming the most meritorious, and then being granted an audience with Valiere-dono.

Holding a conferment ceremony in front of everyone, with my mother becoming a commendable one-time knight admired by all.

I found myself imagining such dream-like things.

It was truly trivial.

I, who should have obtained wealth, castles, and lands, even felt anger at harboring such fanciful dreams.

I closed my eyes and murmured softly.

“Do you not take it too lightly, allowing people to dream, Valiere von Anhalt? You are committing a grave sin. You are doing something for which being torn apart and killed would be no more than you deserve.”

It’s like a complaint.

But I really know.

It’s not that Valiere-dono is at fault.

It’s us who are freely dreaming because of her.

Moreover, that kind-hearted Valiere-dono is even aware of the sins she’s committing.

But.

“Anyway, what will become of this journey? Will it conclude without incident? That’s hardly certain. Someone whose dreams have been betrayed is bound to snap and cause chaos.”

Dreams and despair are two sides of the same coin.

It’s hard to say where one’s desires will be fulfilled, and everything going as planned is truly just a dream.

Reality is different.

“In any case, how you will lead these deranged participants in this march of dreams, how far you can go, is truly intriguing, Valiere-dono.”

No matter how this journey ends, I’m sure I will find it enjoyable.

I sit back in the chair at the headquarters, close my eyes as if looking forward to something, and whisper very softly:

“It’s all your fault.”

These words.

Were they thrown at Valiere-dono, who shows these pitiful people dreams that might vanish at a touch?

Or were they gently thrown at my mother, who had done everything for me and still haunts my heart?

Even I did not know.