Chapter 1

Chapter 1 : Recovering Memories (1)

Aslaf, who had been driving the sheep to the riverside to water them, sensed that something had gone wrong. Tyron, the master’s son, was riding toward him with a face full of rage, snorting just like the horse beneath him.

“Hey, you!”

Aslaf carefully lowered his head in greeting.

“Young master, what is the matter?”

Tyron did not even dismount before he swung his whip without warning.

With a crack, the sharp leather whip struck Aslaf across the chest.

“Ugh!”

The whip tore through Aslaf’s clothes and left a clear red mark across his chest.

“You stole it, didn’t you?”

Tyron dismounted and immediately grabbed Aslaf by the collar, shouting in his face.

“It was a famous sword I barely managed to get, and you dared steal it?”

“A sword? Me?”

Aslaf was flustered, unable to understand what was happening, but he quickly searched his memory.

In this rural domain, far from the city, it was not easy to obtain a high-grade sword worthy of a noble. A few days ago, Tyron had bought a treasured sword from a merchant who had stopped by. The merchant claimed it was a blade forged by Batangkara, a master swordsmith, and that it was worth whatever price he named, so Tyron had bought it on impulse.

But since Tyron suspected someone had stolen it, the sword must have disappeared.

“That’s right. It was you, wasn’t it?”

Tyron’s eyes rolled wildly as he raised the whip. Tyron was already infamous for his foul temper, and now that his newly bought sword was gone, he seemed too furious for any words to reach him.

“No! I did not steal your sword, young master.”

Aslaf cried out, biting his lip in injustice.

But Tyron did not listen. Before Aslaf could even finish speaking, he shouted.

“Liar! You showed interest in my sword before. You secretly drew my blade and touched it without my permission. You wanted a sword, so you stole mine!”

Years ago, when he had been younger, Aslaf had once watched Tyron practicing swordsmanship and, out of curiosity, drawn a sword in Tyron’s room to examine it. He had also been curious about how it differed from the knives used to butcher sheep, but more than that, he had somehow felt an instinctive urge to hold a sword, as though something were drawing him to it.

Tyron had caught him, and Aslaf had been beaten and locked in the storage room for three days without food, warned never to touch the master’s possessions without permission again. Even so, he could not forget the strange feeling he had felt when he held the sword. It had felt familiar, as natural as holding a spoon, as if he had gripped a sword countless times before.

“I did not steal it. I swear in God’s name.”

Aslaf, with a firmness unlike that of a fifteen-year-old boy, closed his mouth and faced Tyron, the master’s son.

All Aslaf could do was deny it. If he challenged Tyron by asking whether he had any proof that Aslaf had stolen it, he would only provoke Tyron’s rage and make the whipping last longer.

“Well, well? How dare you glare at me?”

Tyron lashed the whip at Aslaf’s face. With a sharp whistle, the whip flew toward Aslaf’s eyes.

“Ah!”

Aslaf instinctively turned his head and raised his hand, narrowly avoiding being struck in the eyes. The hand that took the blow swelled with a red welt. Still, it was a blessing beyond measure that the whip had not hit his eye. He might have been blinded.

“You stole my ring last time too, didn’t you? Everything that keeps going missing lately is your doing.”

“No. That wasn’t me, it was......”

A face flashed through Aslaf’s mind. Juan, Tyron’s servant. He was someone who could enter and leave Tyron’s room at any time without being suspected.

Yesterday, when Tyron’s sword had gone missing, Aslaf had happened to run into him in the garden. Usually, Juan would nag Aslaf for no reason or hit him in a casually unpleasant way as he passed by.

But that day, Juan had looked somehow uneasy. He avoided Aslaf’s gaze and hurried past without a word. It was clearly different from his usual behavior.

Still, there was no use saying Juan was suspicious. Juan had Tyron’s trust, so Aslaf would only be cursed for trying to pin the blame on someone innocent.

And Juan would never have hidden the sword in his own room, where he might be discovered. Telling them to search Juan’s room would be pointless too.

“You lowborn bastard. I never liked you from the beginning!”

Unable to control his anger, Tyron swung the whip wildly.

Crack— Crack— Crack—

Each time the whip struck, Aslaf staggered backward.

“Where do you think you’re running?!”

“Ugh!”

The skin swollen from the whipping split open, and drops of red blood trickled down.

Aslaf backed away from Tyron’s whip and was driven into the river. But because of the rain that had fallen the day before, the river had swollen and was flowing faster than usual.

“Uh?!”

While avoiding the whip, Aslaf stepped wrong on the slippery stones of the riverbed and fell straight into the cold water with a splash.

The fierce current swallowed him as he fell. In an instant, he was swept down into the deeper water. The chill seeped all the way into his bones.

“Guh!”

He flailed, trying to breathe, but he could not withstand a current several times faster than usual.

He kept sinking, unable to hold his body upright in the violent flow. Muddy water poured into his nose and mouth.

‘Am I going to die like this?’

Even in that moment, Aslaf thought with astonishing calm. As if this were not the first time he had faced the danger of death.

‘Not yet.’

Even as his consciousness faded in the murky brown water, he used all his strength to cut through the current and swim.

After being swept along for a long while, he finally managed to swim up toward the surface. The shining surface, lit by white flashes, drew closer and closer.

First, he had to get above the water and breathe. His mind was growing hazier. Just a little more. Just a little.

He wrung out every last bit of strength, even the strength from his nursing days, and swam until he crawled onto the riverbank. He tried to gasp for air, but he had swallowed too much water, and his lungs were packed full of it. He could not draw in any air.

‘Get a hold of yourself!’

But unlike his will, his vision blurred. His exhausted body would not move.

‘Am I really going to die?’

Then, amid his dizziness, a vision appeared before his eyes. A scene he had never seen before unfolded around him.

It was a battlefield.

The tide had already turned, and groaning soldiers lay fallen across the plain. Torn flags and broken spears littered the ground.

Horses that had lost their masters wandered without direction, while flocks of eagles, drawn by the smell of blood, circled in the sky and gathered to tear at the corpses.

Aslaf was fighting in armor marked with the crest of a noble. The armor was stained with blood, as if he had survived a desperate battle, and around him lay the soldiers who had fallen while defending him to the very end.

‘What? Why am I fighting?’

Aslaf looked around.

Enemy soldiers surrounded him from every direction, leveling their spears at him as they advanced step by step. It was impossible to break through the encirclement and escape.

“You should give up now.”

An enemy commander on horseback slowly approached, pushing through the soldiers. The bristly-bearded enemy commander looked down at him arrogantly and called his name.

“You cannot live. Alexei the First. All that remains for you is death.”

‘I’m Alexei the First? That’s absurd.’

Even with his mind clouded by this ridiculous situation, Aslaf nearly let out a hollow laugh.

‘Now that I’m dying, I’m seeing all kinds of nonsense.’

Alexei I was the king of a neighboring country who had died in a war fifteen years ago.

Though already wounded in several places, Alexei I did not lose his dignity even as he bled. Leaning on his sword pressed into the ground, he stood upright and asked him,

“I did not rebel.”

Even with death before him, Alexei I remained astonishingly calm.

“Why did you frame me? I did not collude with the barbarians.”

“I know, Alexei.”

The enemy commander looked at him with a sinister smile and licked his lips.

“But everyone wants you dead. Your crime isn’t treason. It's too offensive to tolerate.”

“Is that so?”

Alexei I asked back in a hoarse voice filled with despair.

“Can’t you tell from the fact that no one came to save you?”

The enemy commander pointed his sword and smiled with a bloody leer.

“So you’ll have to die.”

At his gesture, the enemy soldiers advanced with their spears.

Alexei I hurled a dagger like lightning. The dagger flew straight toward the enemy commander’s eye.

“Agh!”

The enemy commander instinctively tried to cover his eye with his hand, but the dagger pierced through his hand and stabbed into his eye. Blood spurted out as the eyeball burst and spilled down.

At the same time, dozens of sharp spears stabbed into Alexei I’s body. Pain assailed him from every direction as his heart, neck, and bowels were pierced.

“Urk!”

Alexei I collapsed without even managing to scream. His head spun, and the world whirled around him.

“Cough! Cough! Hack!”

At the same moment, Aslaf vomited water and breathed.

It felt as though the air entering his lungs traveled through his blood vessels to reach his head, washing his brain clean. It was as if a veil had been stripped from his mind, and the half of his muddled brain that had been dim until now had suddenly awakened with a flash of light.

Aslaf barely propped himself up on his elbows and raised his upper body.

“Hah, hah, hah!”

As he took deep breaths, his mind gradually cleared.

Once the relief of being alive settled in and his heart calmed, he remembered the hallucination he had seen moments ago.

‘What was that? Why did I see a vision like that?’

Of all things, he had seen himself as someone he did not even know, a king who had died before he was born.

Alexei I had been the lord of the Azure region. He had driven back the barbarians’ invasion, expanded his domain, founded the Duchy of Azure, and been recognized as king by the emperor of the Empire.

But not long after that, he had raised a rebellion and ultimately died after being subjugated by the Imperial Allied Army sent by the emperor. The territory of the Duchy of Azure had been divided and absorbed by neighboring countries.

His portraits and records had all been destroyed as part of an erasure from the record, leaving few people who even remembered his face.

Aslaf clenched his fist without realizing it and muttered,

“Georg.”

The name of the enemy commander he had just seen came to his mind on its own. Though he had never once seen the man before, it felt as though he had known him for a very long time.

‘You killed me.’

And that was not all. Alexei I’s life flashed through Aslaf’s mind like a revolving lantern. He had been a noble who gradually built his power in the provinces. With outstanding strategy, he had won several wars, founded the Duchy of Azure, and ascended the throne himself.

‘I fought the Yeon tribe. I waged war against the Rong tribe too.’

‘I went to war with the Duchy of Gironde and gained half its territory.’

‘I went to the imperial palace and met the emperor.’

‘During the coronation, thunder crashed, and lightning struck inside the palace. People panicked, covered their ears, and hid.’

Everything Alexei I had experienced came to him vividly, as if it had happened only a few days ago.

The more he thought, the less he could distinguish himself from Alexei I.

‘Could I really be Alexei I?’

Aslaf shuddered. Someone of his insignificant status had been a noble king in a past life.

“No. Why did that great king have to reincarnate as a despised shepherd in a backwater like this? Why? For what reason?”

Aslaf shouted up at the sky in disbelief, then suddenly froze where he stood.

‘Maybe......’

Because he had realized the reason Alexei I might have had no choice but to reincarnate as a shepherd boy.

It was said that reincarnation was usually determined by the karma one accumulated in a past life.

A person’s own choices played some part in it, but people generally believed that if one did good deeds, one would be born into a better environment, and if one committed many evil deeds, one would be born into a worse environment.

‘Is it because of Alexei I’s karma?’

Alexei I had been a great monarch who founded the Duchy of Azure, but at the same time, he had been a cruel and terrifying tyrant who frightened people so badly that even crying children would stop crying in his name.

He had been rumored to have colluded with barbarians to raise a rebellion, cruelly killed prisoners, and even massacred civilians in Kihen.

‘No, wait. I did all that in my past life?’

Bewildered, Aslaf searched his memories and pressed a hand to his forehead.