I'm reflecting.
At the same time, I'm recuperating.
Sounds pretty pathetic, right? A hero who was just tearing through a battlefield like a one-man army, and then the next thing you know he's sprawled in bed like a sickly Victorian maiden, groaning and whining.
But that's the inconvenient reality. Ever since that big fight in Donigaton a while back—yeah, the gothic city I'd gone to and then doubled back to—I got knocked flat. I can't even say what the exact illness was. Fever, a heavy head, no strength anywhere in my body.
Maybe it was my first time on a battlefield, and I killed a little too many people by accident, got wound up too tight, and the stress rebound hit me.
Maybe I was simply exhausted. After all, before I got isekai'd, I was a standard shut-in who couldn't carry a sack of rice to save his life. The only "heavy labor" I ever did was rolling a jug of bottled water from the front door over to the water dispenser.
There's also the possibility of PTSD. Though I'm not sure whether my "this feels like playing VR" combat experience even met the criteria for traumatic stress.
Either way, the moment I got "taken apart" and pulled out of that ridiculously cool white suit of power armour, I didn't even finish the cutscene where everyone worships you and flatters you. My vision went black and I dropped straight to my knees.
When I woke up again, I was already back on that familiar plank-hard bed in Valmonda Fortress.
The fortress medicae staff gave me a full workup—thank the Throne, they didn't just toss me straight back to a robed weirdo to "repair" by hand this time—and their conclusion was: nothing major.
But they also refused to give me medicine, and they certainly weren't going to do any real treatment.
Their vague explanation was that they were afraid their mortal medical methods might cause some unpredictable adverse effect on a "walking miracle" and "living holy icon" like me.
Besides, my condition wasn't at a level that absolutely required medical intervention. What if they gave me a shot and "treated away" my so-called "halo of lucidity"? If there was any risk at all, they'd rather not take it.
In the end, they decided on the most primitive, safest treatment plan—stuff me with nutrition, make me rest, and have me drink more hot water. (That last one was my own request. They don't have that habit.)
Lady Inquisitor, on the other hand, was decisive. According to what I heard, the moment I went down, she immediately ordered her trusted troops to escort their "priceless treasure" (me) out of Donigaton at top speed, back to the fortress—despite the city not being fully pacified yet. She herself had to remain there to handle the aftermath of the unrest and dig deeper into the conspiracy behind this whole incident.
So my first war ended in a way that felt strangely anticlimactic.
To be honest, it still didn't feel real. Like clearing a major stage in a game: the boss fight is intense enough to make your heart jump out of your throat, and then before the victory animation even finishes, the game crashes to desktop.
Based on the stories I heard afterward, my performance in that fight was already the stuff of legend. After I "ignored swarms of daemons and a sky full of psychic flame and storms, strode straight into the cultists' formation, and quite literally 'blew up' their leader," there was no suspense left.
With morale through the roof, our forces quickly swept away those cultists—now scared witless—with crushing momentum. After that, with help from local security forces, restoring order to Donigaton was only a matter of time.
And I, the so-called "great contributor," exited early and perfectly missed all the flowers and applause. Good. Saves me from dying of embarrassment.
During these days of sleeping and recuperating in the fortress, I was basically a useless lump. Other than eating, drinking, and taking care of bodily needs, all I did was lie in bed thinking about life.
To keep myself from turning into a complete idiot, I had the servants looking after me bring me books and materials from this world to cram some knowledge into my skull.
Worth mentioning: that half-man, half-machine servitor's attitude toward me is now so respectful it's almost comical. Maybe Lady Inquisitor made good on her promise that "the Inquisition will provide you with support."
That thing no longer spends all day repeating electronic phrases like "Confirming order," "Insufficient clearance," and "Please wait." Now it does everything it can to satisfy my requests—bringing me paper books, or loading the information I want into a device like the handheld tablet computers back home.
In addition, Lady Inquisitor specifically left one of her clerical staff at the fortress to "watch over" me. He was a withered old man who looked exactly like a high school disciplinary dean. His name was long, nasty, and drenched in old European aristocrat stench—Merpus von Starkhausen, or something like that. I couldn't remember it to save my life. So I decided to call him Director Merpus, or just "Mr. Merpus."
I asked him directly to use this opportunity to give me a systematic "crash course" on this world. I was sick of being a clueless idiot who knew nothing about anything around me.
Mr. Merpus supposedly used to work in the Imperium's civil administration, and his learning was extensive. He always kept a stiff face and spoke like a ruler had been jammed down his spine, but he answered every question I asked, and his explanations were genuinely clear. With his help, the chaotic puzzle pieces in my head finally began to click into something coherent.
First, I learned the name of the planet I was on—Grandtale.
My current location was at the far southern tip of a massive continent in Grandtale's southern hemisphere. The natural environment here was relatively harsh. Cities and settlements—like Donigaton, where I'd been earlier—were comparatively young in historical terms.
Their architecture also leaned heavily toward what he called "Imperial style," the kind of dark gothic aesthetic that always made me feel gloomy and oppressed. In Mr. Merpus's words, this was a region with strong "Imperial cultural" influence.
He made a point of saying that because Grandtale's real history was far older than the so-called "Imperium" itself.
Whenever Mr. Merpus brought this up, his face would always show this reluctant, unwilling expression—like someone being forced to acknowledge another nation's "ancient history." But even he had to admit that, according to Imperium scholars—based on incomplete and heavily damaged ancient records (and the claims of Grandtale's local populace, which he clearly had no intention of accepting)—Grandtale was very likely one of the first wave of human colony worlds after humanity stepped into the sea of stars.
In the language of my old world, that's "since time immemorial."
Human history here was absurdly old, and its cultures were wildly diverse. Across this planet, countless regimes rose and fell, split and reunited—over and over—playing out the same cycle so many times it made your head hurt.
The planet endured several global wars on a scale so vast they bordered on extinction-level events. They conquered the stars, and they also destroyed themselves… basically, almost every element you can think of in human history has some reflection on this world.
And yet the "Imperium" that now ruled this region of space had only formally incorporated Grandtale into its domain not long ago.
Supposedly, when the Imperium's Great Crusade expeditionary force first reached this system, it was even beaten back by Grandtale's local interstellar government at the time.
That regime was later sneeringly labeled by Imperial historians as the "Grandtale Pocket Empire," a minor starfaring power that controlled a dozen-odd nearby systems and didn't know its place.
Later on, it was only through the efforts of one of the Imperium's mainline forces—the XVII Legion—that Grandtale was finally brought into the Imperium, primarily through "diplomatic means."
Hearing that, my brain automatically filled in the blanks: if they'd already fought once, then whatever "diplomacy" came afterward was probably like this—some superpower from back home sailing carrier strike groups to your doorstep, bombing your infrastructure to pieces, propping up opposition factions, slapping you with blockades and sanctions, and then smiling warmly across the negotiation table to say, "Now, let's discuss free trade and the democratic process."
In short, the ground under my feet right now was deep water.
And while I was cramming all this background knowledge into my skull, the core of my reflection kept circling back to one thing—
That suit of white power armour.
I plan to return it to Lady Inquisitor.
(End of Chapter)
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