It was deep into the night. On London's busiest thoroughfare, the traffic flowed endlessly through the streets of London.
Amid the torrent moved a sleek Rolls-Royce.
Rolls-Royce—an automaker long associated with the British royal family—was a familiar sight at royal weddings and in gatherings of nobles and powerful capitalists. It effectively served as the designated carriage of England's monarchy.
And this very car was one such authentic royal reception vehicle.
In its rear seat sat a black-haired youth of twenty-odd years. His gaze was hazy, his state half-drowsy, half-drunken, yet the faint upward curl of his lips betrayed his fine mood.
Only hours before, he had stood within the sanctified hall of all scholars—the London Royal Hall—receiving from the hands of the British King, Charles, the world's most coveted recognition: for a groundbreaking discovery in pharmacy that could kill cancer cells. At just twenty-three years of age, he had unlocked the fundamental cure for cancer, a medical miracle that would shape the future of humanity.
Now, he was leaving the so-called "world's most exclusive banquet"—an event held not merely to honor him, but to allow the high-class elite to discuss the future profits from the drug that would one day cure cancer.
To achieve such a feat at such an age was to embody the very phrase "winner of life." He could already picture the luxurious life that awaited him.
But as he dreamed, the royal chauffeur at the wheel—a neatly uniformed Brit whose steady hands revealed years of seasoned driving—suddenly stiffened. A shadowy figure maneuvered a massive truck into the Rolls-Royce's path. Panic laced the chauffeur's voice:
"Sir… watch out—!"
Before the young man could even react, the massive truck slammed into the Rolls-Royce with the precision of a predator striking its prey. In disbelief, he roared—but that would be the last sound he ever uttered.
…
"Ah!"
A youth, his head bound in bloodstained bandages, cried out in terror as his eyes flew open. Panic blazed within them. Without hesitation, he twisted sideways and flung himself off to one side.
Thud!
He landed heavily on the wooden floorboards, the sound echoing sharply through the room—headfirst, no less.
"Ah—!"
This time his cry was not of fear, but of agony, the shrill wail of a slaughtered swine.
His head was already wounded, and now, having struck it once more, the pain piled wound upon wound. Waves of needle-like torment surged through him, stabbing deeper and deeper, until tears and snot all but burst from his face.
"Damn it, damn it—what… what is happening?"
Clutching his head with both hands, he writhed in anguish. Only after a long while did the pain dull slightly, enough for him to raise his gaze and look warily about.
A timeworn wooden floor.
A bed draped in coarse, rough-woven blankets.
Walls built of stacked stone.
A window framed entirely in wood.
A faded desk.
Several volumes bound in sheepskin.
And an ancient oil lamp, worn and antiquated.
"Where… where is this place?"
It could not possibly be a hospital—there was not even the most basic medical equipment. Clearly, this was no ward.
Then where was he?
Had he not been struck by a car? How could he, in the blink of an eye, find himself here instead?
As this thought struck him, he suddenly became aware of a flood of memories searing into his mind. No—these were not his own memories. Or rather, they were memories that should not have been his.
"Name: Sean Campbell, fifteen years old, a student of Neo Knight Academy. Injured in a duel…"
"And in half a month's time, he is to be expelled—no wonder he was goaded into accepting the challenge…"
The memories surged like a tide, pouring in without mercy. They contained the life of a boy named Sean Campbell—his growth, his struggles, his path. The nearer the events, the clearer the recollections; the further back, the hazier. Yet all of them carried such piercing realism that they felt as though he himself had lived them.
A dreadful premonition gripped his heart. Hastily, he looked down at himself—then froze in shock.
"These… these aren't my hands!"
His body was clad in garments of coarse flax, worn with age, the chest split open by a simple seam. His feet bore short woolen socks.
The hands—smaller than an adult's, rough with heavy calluses. Yet the skin was pale and white, not the yellowish hue he had always known. They were not his hands.
"Transmigration…?"
The word leapt unbidden to his mind.
As one raised in the age of information, he understood what it meant. But what confounded him was this: weren't such stories reserved for those who had failed in their former lives?
He himself had been on the cusp of enjoying the fruits of success—an imminent Nobel laureate, poised to begin a life of "luxury." How could he, of all people, be swept into the tide of transmigration?
He had not even had the chance to savor the joys of that long-anticipated life!
"These buildings… they bear the style of medieval Europe. Could it be… I've come to the Middle Ages?"
Scholar though he was, he forced himself to remain calm, more than an ordinary man might. Accepting that the transmigration was real, he began to probe the new memories, searching for whatever knowledge of this world might aid his survival.
Suddenly, the color drained from his face. For he had just learned that a century ago, this world had been ravaged by a plague of unparalleled devastation—more than two-thirds of its population perished in that catastrophe.
"What… what is this? Could it be… the Black Death? No… surely my fortune is not so cursed, that I arrive at the very time of its scourge?"
The Black Death—that terrible pestilence which once swept across Europe, called also the Great Mortality, the Great Plague. Its contagion was dreadful, its death toll immense. Towns lay desolate; the average life expectancy of Europeans plummeted from forty years to twenty.
And with the medicine of the time, there was no cure. A death sentence, swifter and more merciless than even modern AIDS. One infected rarely survived a week, as though the scythe of Death itself hovered close.
To be reborn in such an age was no blessing. One might fall to plague at any moment.
"The plague… spread by sorcerers? So they really did lay blame on the helpless, as medieval Europe was wont to do? No—no, wait…"
His body trembled, his face white as bone.
For according to Sean Campbell's memories, this was no Black Death. It was worse. Far worse. A calamity of the world's ending.
The plague did not merely kill. Those stricken rose again as monsters of inhuman strength, driven by hunger, preying upon the living. And those they slew, in turn, became monsters themselves.
"This… this is like Resident Evil in the movies. Is this truly medieval Europe?"
He recoiled from his own thought. Impossible—no Middle Ages of Earth had known such horrors.
Then… was this not Earth at all?
Delving deeper into the boy's memories, he found a vivid image seared upon them.
A vast hall. Eight men in iron armor and boots, swords at their waists, standing solemn guard around the chamber. At the center, a man of noble bearing in gleaming leather armor and fine boots.
Beside him, upon a recessed pedestal, lay a sphere—transparent, larger than a man's fist, its material neither glass nor jade, something wholly unknown.
Before it, a line of finely dressed youths, their queue stretching so far it vanished beyond the hall.
One golden-haired boy, delicate of face, stepped forward nervously. Under a hundred watchful eyes, he stretched out his hand, grasped the orb—and clutched it as though clutching fate itself.
A second. Two seconds. At the third, the change came!
The clear orb blazed red, like iron fresh from the forge, glowing with eerie brilliance.
"You possess the gift of a knight. Boy, your name?"
The nobleman's voice, unexpectedly gentle, rang out.
In an instant, gasps of astonishment thundered through the hall.
The boy felt the searing eyes upon him—the envious glares of those in line, the wonder of the onlookers. His chest heaved; excitement shook him so hard his whole body quivered.
"My lord, my name is Sean Campbell."
This, then, was the memory of Sean Campbell being tested for knightly aptitude. No wonder it lingered most vividly—it was his defining moment.
Though incomplete, it revealed much. The orb, unknown to his old world, was clearly a relic of mystery. And knightly aptitude must be a rare gift indeed, to provoke such commotion.
"Knightly aptitude…"
As the thought struck, three lines of black text appeared before his very eyes:
[Name: Sean Campbell]
[Knightly Gift: Lesser]
[Swordsmanship Gift: Novice]