Medieval Knight System: Building the Strongest Empire Ever!-Chapter 5: The Four Basic Stances German Longsword

Two weeks had passed.

In short, without the helper called the system, it would have been very difficult.

Being able to adapt safely was entirely thanks to the system’s help.

First, medieval times were anything but abundant. Sugar and spices were the exclusive domain and status symbols of nobility, and most grain, including wheat, as well as meat, was claimed by the lords. Before the Black Death, commoners survived day to day on porridge made from barley or oats—they couldn’t even afford bread. Hard bread couldn’t be easily eaten, either.

But after the Black Death, when lords began reducing taxes due to the shortage of labor, the commoners who had subsisted on porridge could now eat hard black bread or occasionally white bread, improving their living conditions. Still, compared to nobles, everything was lacking.

The streets were also extremely unsanitary, and the Church regarded asceticism as a virtue, so adapting to all of this was far from easy. On top of that, the biggest ordeal was life lived in constant proximity to death.

Even events in war-torn countries were just passing headlines to most people. If you suddenly dropped them in the middle of a battlefield of killing and being killed, could they survive? In that sense, I was quite lucky. At least I wasn’t a commoner being exploited.

I was the fifth head of the hereditary knight Streit family.

Unlike commoners who paid various taxes, I didn’t need to pay any. The Streit family was a hereditary knight family registered on the Duchy of Beren’s knight roll and was entitled to use the title of Ritter. So my father’s name was Aseldorf Ritter von Streit.

That meant if I received knight investiture, I’d become Wolfgang Ritter von Streit.

My father was recorded as having died in battle in the war with France, so military merit had been registered in his name.

Usually, knight investiture didn’t happen without military merit, so many knight candidates scrambled to establish their own. Why did candidates need to earn military merit? Because there were too many knights and knight families in the Duchy of Beren, so they screened candidates primarily through military merit.

I could receive the benefits of knight investiture through my deceased father’s military merit alone, without needing to establish any of my own. If I applied at any time, the investiture ceremony would take place within a month, but I was putting it off for now.

The current me wasn’t even a proper knight—just a greenhorn who didn’t know how to fight. So I kept busy, collecting points through repetitive quests. I think I worked really hard for those two weeks.

My daily routine was packed with repetitive quest schedules.

I woke up at 6 AM and stretched first. After stretching for about 10 minutes, I put on my coat (surcoat) and ran for 30 minutes. If I went back and forth from East Boulevard (Kisling) to West Boulevard (Linz), I could complete the quest twice. That netted me 100 points.

Jogging every morning back and forth, I passed in front of the plaza and church, where I could easily spot beggars of all kinds. And most of those beggars had bandages and leaned on crutches to look pitiful.

Sometimes the Church handed out alms to the beggars, and whenever that happened, they swarmed in droves.

"Sir, please spare a coin for a poor beggar who lost his leg."

"I can’t feed my child because I haven’t eaten. Please give just a coin."

Jogging back and forth on the boulevard every day like this, the beggars came to recognize me and actively begged. Early on, not knowing any better and feeling pity, I had given alms of a few copper coins, and the beggars who remembered that latched onto me asking for more. I was flustered at first, but by now I had adapted.

"Hey! Begging is prohibited in the plaza!" 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝚠𝚎𝚋𝗻𝗼𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝚘𝐦

"Damn it, run!"

I frequently witnessed here the same miracle that only happened on the subway. Most of these injured beggars were fraudsters, so I absolutely didn’t give alms to them. The same went for beggars carrying babies, because they used babies picked up from who knows where as props for begging.

I returned home after that, washed briefly, and ate breakfast at 8.

Originally, Catholics didn’t recommend eating breakfast, but I ate it out of necessity.

I mainly ate German-style breakfast. Since this was a German region, I wanted to develop eating habits similar to the locals’. Fortunately, Beren region (Swabia + Baden) cuisine was famous for being delicious enough to represent southern Germany. I mainly ate Schäufele and potato soup.

From 9 o’clock, I repeated lower body, upper body, and body balance training quests, then finished my morning exercise at 12. The points I earned in the morning alone totaled 200. The good thing about repetitive quests was that copper coins came in steadily too, not just points.

I could also earn a steady 200 copper coins. This added up to a considerable income. The copper coins I earned were mainly used to buy firewood and water and to cover various other living expenses. I’d checked what level of earnings this was over two weeks, and apparently a day laborer earned 20 copper coins a day.

I was earning 10 times that in the morning alone, so I had no worries about money for now.

I mainly ate modern food for lunch.

Ah, the joy of eating modern food in a medieval setting. Only I could savor this privilege.

I was essentially living day to day for the sake of bathing and eating.

Endlessly repeating training every day, it gradually became habit.

In the afternoon, I mainly trained with a wooden sword.

I gradually increased the count starting from 100 swings, and now I was up to about 300. When I had first started this training, I was surprised by the weight of the wooden sword and surprised again that simply swinging it was harder and more exhausting than expected. This training earned me 100 points and 100 copper coins.

And as soon as I had accumulated 1,000 points, I purchased the German Swordsmanship Manual.

[German Swordsmanship Manual]

[Stage 1 Training Quest]

[Master 4 basic stances (Ochs–Vom Tag–Pflug–Alber)]

[Proficiency 50/100]

[Basic stance correction]

[Reward — 500 points, 500 copper coins]

When I first saw this quest, I was a bit thrown off by the unfamiliar names.

It was a swordsmanship style that specialized in aggressive defense and pressuring the opponent.

German swordsmanship wasn’t about clashing swords like in movies or cartoons but favored closing the distance with blades in contact, then cutting.

It was an unfamiliar discipline I’d never encountered before.

At first, I had considerable trouble adapting.

But the basic stance correction was a big help.

Thanks to that, my proficiency rose to 50.

It was hard, but I think it was rewarding training.