Future Knight [EN]: Chapter 6

Future Knight Episode 6

After a long period of agonizing, Kang Chan concluded that he should cling to these uncivilized beings as much as possible to survive and endure 20 years here.

‘Okay, for now, I’ll stay here and investigate the lifeforms of this planet, and then try to contact the main fleet from the crashed warship when I get the chance.’

While he was racking his brain with these thoughts, a thunderous sound suddenly echoed from his stomach.

Grrrrr!

Kang Chan’s back bent like a shrimp.

“Ugh! My, my stomach… What’s wrong with my stomach?”

Grrrrr!

He had been so tense that he didn’t realize it, but all he had eaten for the past year was the thin rice porridge he was fed while lying down.

Moreover, he had exerted a tremendous amount of strength right after expelling a large amount of waste, so he was bound to be hungry.

For him, who had lived in space his entire life, hunger was almost impossible.

This was because one pill was enough to keep him from feeling hungry all day long.

The pills he had been taking contained the exact amount of essential nutrients and calories needed for a person to live, highly concentrated in a triple layer.

When it was mealtime, they would gradually dissolve in the gastric juices, and the contents would swell up in contact with moisture, eliminating hunger and providing nutrients.

It was a pill created because it was very difficult to preserve food for long periods and cook it in the narrow spaceships that roamed the vast universe, and the pill had become the standard diet for all humans living in space.

He couldn’t even remember when he had felt this hungry.

All thanks to that one pill he had been habitually taking every morning.

To him, hunger was like an unbearable pain.

“My stomach hurts so much, is being hungry this painful?”

Grrrrr!

“Ugh!”

As another piercing pain and loud noise echoed from his stomach, he quickly grabbed the fruit in front of him.

He instinctively felt that he needed to put something in his stomach.

However, even though he picked up the fruit, he didn’t feel any urge to eat it.

His eyesight was very good.

By Earth’s standards in the past, it would have been over 5.0.

The fruit he saw was increasingly grotesque and even repulsive.

Unlike the fruits he had only seen in pictures, there were fine hairs on the surface.

Kang Chan had to contemplate for a long time, holding a peach with fine hairs all over it.

‘How do I eat this…?’

His hand holding the peach trembled slightly.

He brought the peach to his mouth and then pulled it away several times.

Jaina, who was watching him, couldn’t help but chuckle at his behavior.

It was quite cute to see a grown man struggling to eat a single peach.

Unaware of how Jaina was looking at him, he pondered for a while and then slowly put down the hairy peach, rummaging through the fruit basket for another easier target.

However, there wasn’t a single fruit in the basket that looked easier than that.

All of them had hairs, or hard surfaces, or were slippery, or had countless small holes.

“Ugh! Disgusting!”

To the elf Jaina, this behavior was incomprehensible, but to him, who was born in space and had never been exposed to plants in his life, these unknown organic masses were the epitome of disgust.

He chose one of the fruits lying messily on the table with a trembling hand.

It was the smallest and easiest raspberry.

It was disgusting as well, but he picked it up because it was the smallest and easiest.

‘There’s no choice. I have to eat to survive!’

He squeezed his eyes shut and threw a raspberry into his mouth. And he chewed with all his might.

Then, as the raspberry that had entered his mouth was crushed by his molars, the unique sweet and sour taste and aroma of the raspberry spread throughout his mouth.

‘Ugh!’

He widened his eyes in shock.

“I, in this world…”

Suddenly, it felt like a song was playing in his ears.

The sweet and sour taste and aroma of the raspberry, transmitted to the brain through his sense of taste, was so electrifying that it felt like electricity was running through his body.

Kang Chan shouted.

“Delicious!”

Jaina was startled and flinched when he suddenly shouted, but he didn’t care about Jaina at all.

All of his senses were focused on this amazing-tasting organic matter.

It wasn’t a bland taste like something artificially synthesized.

The taste of fresh raspberries grown in nature was a shocking taste that he was experiencing for the first time in his 20 years of life.

After that, he shoved any fruit he could reach into his mouth.

And he began to eat ravenously like a starving beggar who hadn’t eaten for ten days.

Crunch! Munch, munch, slurp, crunch! Crunch, crunch! Slurp, slurp……

The young elf clicked her tongue at his appearance.

‘What is this human? He was struggling to eat, and now he’s eating like he’s possessed. I can’t understand humans at all.’

Jaina shook her head, watching him eat the fruit without knowing whether it was going into his mouth or his nose.

Kang Chan had no time to care about how Jaina was looking at him.

He was just mindlessly eating fruit like crazy, as if he was going to eat all the fruit he had never eaten in his life.

The fruit basket, which had been full, was emptied in an instant, and Jaina had to carry fruit baskets all night long, sweating profusely.

* * *

Elves and dwarves, who were allied with the elves, gathered in a beautiful conference hall built on the largest tree in the elf village and were having a serious conversation.

“He says he’s from outer space. I think he’s telling the truth. His unfamiliar yellow skin, which can’t be seen in the humans of this continent, and his jet-black hair and eyes, all show that he’s clearly different from the humans of this continent.”

Suddenly, the elves and dwarves filling the hall began to buzz.

“Oh! So he’s an alien?”

“Ominous… An alien has entered our forest.”

The withered sages of the forest murmured ominously.

“Please be quiet, everyone.”

Artheon scolded, and the noisy hall became quiet in an instant. And he opened his mouth again towards the dwarf’s lord.

“Lord, you have examined the crashed ark that he came on, so I ask you. Did you feel anything from that place?”

At Artheon’s words, the face of the dwarf’s lord became gloomy.

“Well, I have nothing to say. I’ve always prided myself on being the best at handling metal… We don’t even know what metal was used in that ark, or how it was joined together. The only thing I found out was that the metal that makes up the exterior of that giant is harder, tougher, and more heat-resistant than any metal we currently possess.”

Once again, the hall buzzed loudly.

Clearly, the various metals possessed by the dwarves included the dragon’s bones, which boasted the strongest strength, and orichalcum [a legendary metal mentioned in several ancient writings], which was said to be the strongest metal, but the fact that it was even stronger than that left everyone in the conference hall speechless.

Artheon opened his mouth again.

“Currently, the human who came on that ark is in a very weakened state. It’s no wonder. He’s been in a coma for a year. So, I’ve ordered him to rest and recuperate, and I’ll continue to observe him, be wary of him, and report to you. That’s all.”

As she sat down to applause from everyone in the conference hall, Leision, called the Archer, rose from her seat. Then, everyone in the hall stared intently at her face with tense expressions.

The real reason they had gathered in the conference hall was to hear a report from her.

“From now on, it’s about the main agenda of the meeting, the Green Elves. I’ve been checking on their movements with the Elf Rangers for a month and have collected various data.”

When the story of the Green Elves came up, the conference hall was silent as a mouse.

In that silence, the brows of Artheon, the lord of the elves, and Gaffeld von Kraxion, the lord of the dwarves, twitched slightly.

“I hope the humans will fight well against them.”

A dark shadow was cast on Artheon’s face as he spoke.

“Hmm, I hope so.”

Gaffeld von Kraxion, the lord of the dwarves, who was praised as the Hammer of God, also had a dark expression.

* * *

The next day, as the dazzling morning sunlight warmly and softly shone on Kang Chan’s eyes, Kang Chan frowned and slowly woke up, looking around him.

The surroundings were full of fruit peels and seeds.

And the elf girl, who had been carrying fruit all night and had fallen asleep exhausted, was fast asleep on one side of the bed.

“Munch, munch… Ah, hmm.”

Seeing Jaina, who had been carrying heavy fruit all night for him and had fallen asleep exhausted, he felt a strange sense of pity, but he didn’t feel sorry at all.

Even though he was in a vegetative state, he didn’t seem to have any intention of forgiving the girl who had given him an indelible emotional scar.

Kang Chan carefully got out of bed so as not to wake Jaina, and then slowly looked around the structure of the house.

He hadn’t had time to look around because he had been in a series of urgent situations since he opened his eyes, but now he was more relaxed than before, so he slowly turned his eyes to the surroundings.

From now on, he had to live here for a long time, so he needed to know about this world in detail.

‘How did they make this?’

The house was as if the tree had grown into a house on its own, with no artificial touches at all.

Everything from the bed he slept on to the table where he ate fruit and the drawers were all just parts of the tree that had grown naturally.

After looking around the mysterious structure of the house, Kang Chan went out the door and couldn’t close his mouth in even greater surprise.

“……”

Under the first blue sky he had ever seen, the emerald leaves melted in the warm sunlight and danced in the breeze.

As the deep scent of the forest spread deep into his lungs along with his breath, his whole body seemed to tingle with the freshness.

“Is this the scenery of Earth, the homeland of mankind, that I’ve only seen in pictures?”

The beauty of nature seen with his own eyes could not be compared to pictures.

In an instant, his heart swelled, and tears welled up in his eyes without him realizing it.

He thought they had dried up, he had lived without blood or tears, but where were these tears coming from…

He took a drop of his tears on his finger and stared at it for a long time until the tears dried.

Kang Chan felt annoyed as he watched Jaina, who was babbling busily all day long.

Even though Kang Chan, whose magic had been dispelled, obviously couldn’t understand her, the girl didn’t think of closing her mouth.

“……”

In his life, there had never been a language barrier.

This was because the bio-computer implanted in his head contained a vast amount of various languages, so he could speak various languages without much effort.

For him, who had a bio-computer that didn’t even know the language spoken by the elves, living with them was unbearably frustrating.

However, he couldn’t always go to Artheon and ask him to cast a Speak spell [a magical spell that allows one to understand and speak any language].

So he decided.

He had to learn their language quickly.

Moreover, he had heard that all the races living on this continent had almost the same common language, with only slight differences in dialects.

If he learned the language of this place, he would have no problem with everyday conversations with other races.

‘That’s one good thing. Earth has too many languages.’

For the sake of survival and mission, he had to learn the language of this planet more quickly.

“First of all, if I want to live on this planet, I have to learn their language quickly. Computer, from now on, save all conversations with them.”

-Yes, I understand.

“I’ll master it within a month.”

From that day on, Kang Chan’s tearful war with language began.

The most important thing in any language is vocabulary.

Kang Chan grabbed everyone, young and old, and desperately collected their words, pointing to things one by one.

The words obtained in this way were stored, combined, and organized by the bio-computer, and the bio-computer helped to identify the characteristics and grammatical forms of their language.

After much effort, Kang Chan was able to speak the language at a level where he could have basic communication with them in just one month, although it was awkward.

Many elves couldn’t help but be amazed at his memorization and comprehension skills.

But they didn’t know that it was all thanks to the biochip in his head.

For him, memorization was just a matter of hearing or seeing something once and never having to worry about forgetting it.