How to Suck Honey at a Warrior’s Party

The role in a typical canonical fantasy novel is where you’re a member of the warrior’s party, but you have no presence than a villain.

That’s who I am.

It was a moment in time when my life began to change.

It was a normal day for me: I practiced my magic, came down to the village, killed a wild boar that was ruining the crops, roasted it for a village feast, and went to sleep with a full belly.

But the moment I took a bite out of the thick boar’s hind leg, I realized my past life.

I still haven’t figured out what the secret is in that boar meat. By the looks of it, I was the only one who realized my past life. I glanced over at Carrot, who was nibbling on the opposite hind leg, but she only smiled at the meat she hadn’t eaten in a long time.

“Cylon only says difficult things.”

That was the answer I heard as I brushed Carrot.

I lay in bed late at night, alone, thinking about how hard the bed I had loved for years was.

It was all because of my previous life. It was because the brain remembered the softness of the mattress.

In my previous life, I was a boring graduate student in 21st-century South Korea. I dropped by a professor’s lab to ask a question, got a red bean tea, and was immediately dragged back to graduate school.

My days were filled with running errands, collecting samples, conducting experiments, and writing reports. Even amid delusions of a caffeine overdose that landed me in the hospital for a few days, I was also an avid hobbyist.

And my past life hobby was reading fantasy novels, and it turns out that I preferred the old, classic kind. The stories I remember were all pretty similar.

They were all the same, with demons rising out of nowhere, only legendary gods, and humans being sent to the demon king’s castle with the pretense of being warriors.

Judging by my suddenly 21st-century sensibilities, it was a story of people taking the sacrifice of a cow for the greater good for granted, state power and fanatics going out of their way to gaslight warrior parties, and, in short, a story of warrior’s party human rights gone bad.

What’s so funny about being in the same exploited position? In my previous life, I constantly sought out and read similar novels. I read them on my way to buy coffee for my professor’s errands, and I read them when a car ran a red light and ploughed into me.

It was a hollow death.

A little depressed, I didn’t leave the house for three days to clear my head. None of my neighbours thought it was strange because I rarely left the house for research.

I looked around the house I had lived in for the past three years with a puzzled expression.

“So this is the medieval period that the novel is talking about.”

After a long time of appreciation, I had a strange realization.

Certainly, not Earth: the period in Earth’s history called the Middle Ages ended historically about six centuries ago. Even in my previous life, the Middle Ages were the stuff of fantasy novels, where antiquity was mangled.

Yeah, like this one.

Why would there be toilets in the Middle Ages?

Flames roared in my palms.

Why magic?

The conclusion came. I was in a book.

The problem is, I don’t know what book.

I slept soundly, prioritizing sleep over contemplating what kind of world this one was.

A wizard was a researcher by profession in my previous life. Past life habits carry over to this life, and I was obsessed with research in my previous life, and I was obsessed with research in this life.

I’ve entered the world I loved, but I’m still doing research….

I was sad that I had only one aptitude, but I had already mastered magic, and I couldn’t become a swordsman now. I decided to let go of the inevitable and practice the maximum amount of laziness I could right now. That was to sleep in all day.

After a few days of staying in bed when I couldn’t sleep, Carrot and Toma came home.

Bang, bang, bang!

“Cylon! Cylon! Are you home? Cylon!”

Carrot’s distinctive voice woke me from my sleep. I opened the door, holding my head, which was dizzy from lying so long.

“Cylon! Are you sick?”

“No. What’s wrong?”

Toma broke into the conversation with a haunted look on his face.

“There’s a warrior! I heard the adults talking, and Uncle Tom’s got a room for him!”

Uncle Tom was a trader who travelled from village to village. Knights could not travel to these deep mountain villages, so some merchants would take on the task of fixing up rooms in the villages they travelled through for a fee.

“Hurry up and tell us what’s written!”

“We’re all waiting!”

I was the only one in the village who knew the letters. Whenever there was a room available in the village, the whole village would go around looking for me. How did they live without me….

“Huh? Come to think of it, Toma, isn’t the drawing in your room the same as the one on Cylon’s collarbone?”

“Yes!”

Carrot and Toma shouted ominously. I rushed into the house and checked myself in the mirror. Through the gap in my slightly open shirt, a mark glinted where it hadn’t been before.

It was like mixing a harp with the wind. Ah, ominous. Such an ominously holy light.

I had already anticipated the arrival of the warrior. Not only had I encountered a weak demon when I had ventured deep into the forest to test the magic I had studied, but every fantasy novel I had read in my previous life had featured a warrior.

However, the arrival of a warrior and the strange markings on my collarbone were unexpected.

This is the warrior’s route. Am I destined to be exploited in this life, too?

“Heh, heh, heh.”

“Cylon, laugh like my grandfather.”

“Yeah. What’s wrong?”

Behind me, the kids chattered again. Shaking my head, I told Carrot and Toma to wait a moment. They nodded dutifully and went back to playing in the dirt.

I dressed first. My shirt was tied up to my neck.

I’d already been spotted by Carrot and Toma, but I didn’t want them to know that I’d been chosen to join the warriors in front of the whole village. I wanted to buy a little time for the rumors that were bound to spread.

Carrot and Toma arrived at the town square to find it crowded. It seemed like the whole town had come out.

“Hey! Cylon is here!”

“Get out of the way!”

The villagers who had made the path as wide as the parting of the Red Sea were all glowing. Their hearts were full of excitement at the arrival of the legendary warrior. What they didn’t realize was that the arrival of a warrior meant that somewhere in the country had already been taken over by a demon.

Most people would live in this small village for the rest of their lives. Outside of the village, it’s a lonely world. I feigned calm and read the room on the outside wall of the chief’s house.

[An evil spirit is eating away at the country.

…For days and days, the emperor prayed to the heavens.

and the Lord looked down and gave him some prophecies.

‘A warrior and his companion will defeat the demon and save the entire continent!’

The markings below are intended by the gods to identify a warrior’s companions,

If you see this mark somewhere on your body, come quickly to the palace.

If they flee, they will be torn limb from limb….]

It didn’t go off my expectations.

“Hey, Cylon. What the hell does it say?”

“Uh, um… the country is going to be ruined.”

“What!”

“But there was a prophecy that the fallen country would be saved by the warrior and his colleagues.”

“Phew, does that mean this town will be safe?”

“Why shouldn’t it be, what’s a warrior, it’s a godsend!”

“But isn’t Cylon saying that a country has to be destroyed once before it can be saved?”

In an instant, there was an uproar around us. I was instantly tired and longed to go home and sink into the bed where I had been for several days; the laziness I had acquired in the last few days had taken possession of me. Apart from being tired, it was a satisfying reaction.

I will never work hard in this life. I was going to be a lazy, leisurely person.

This is what I had decided while staying at home. This is the determination of a man who has lived only about 56 years in his previous and current lives combined!

I wasn’t going to do anything to please anyone, and I was going to live a life of constant vigilance against stress, the root of all ills. Research, which I had chosen because I loved it, had suddenly become a torturous activity of swearing and tears.

Moreover, what was a warrior’s party but teamwork. When you don’t know the people you’re going to be working with, you have to make sure you’re in the right frame of mind if you don’t want to grab the world by the scruff of the neck and your opponent’s head at the same time.

The fact that I was in a fantasy novel was a small consolation. I think there will be no heinous lunatic. But the Lord wouldn’t have known either. He hadn’t realized there would be no lunatic in his party, but there would be a wizard who would want to eat him alive.

In order to do so, he had to take a good position as a fellow first.