I, Fia Ruud, was the youngest child of the Ruud knight family.
It was said that I had red hair and golden eyes, and looked exactly like my mother, who was a beautiful woman. However, no one had ever called me beautiful. It's strange.
Unfortunately, my body looked similar to my mother's, and no matter how hard I worked out, I never gained muscle and remained thin. ...My chest too!
A knight family was a family that owned a territory. A knight appointed by the king became the head of the family. It was a family that ranked next to nobility. If there was no knight left to inherit the family, it would be destroyed on the spot.
Therefore, all children of knight families aimed to become knights.
Of course, like most people, I had always wanted to be a knight since I was little.
However, being a knight was not an occupation that anyone could take if they wish.
It was the most popular profession in the country, and the entrance exam for the Knights' Order was held at frightening acceptance rate, such as 1 per 50 or 100 participants.
Being appointed a knight means that your status was guaranteed by the country, and being a knight was considered to be a very honorable thing. Maybe the reason for this was that their salaries were extremely high.
The job of such a knight was to protect the royal castle, protect the royal family, and protect the country.
Specifically, they would be responsible for maintaining domestic public order, guarding borders with neighboring countries, and even subjugating the excessive number of monsters.
In other words, the most important thing for a knight was skill with a sword.
As someone who was born into a knight family, I was well aware of this.
I knew this, so I trained hard since I was little.
Fortunately, there were many knights in the territory, and all of my siblings were aiming to become knights, so I had no shortage of training partners.
Train, get tired, collapse, sleep, eat, train...
I never got bored and did the same thing over and over again, day after day. It was tough, but fulfilling and fun.
But one day, I realized something.
What?
Come to think of it, I had never won against anyone in a mock battle, have I?
Whaat?
Did I lose to the new guy who joined 3 months ago??
Whaaaat?
I should have stepped in at the perfect time, but why was my sword flying away??
...Yes, I had no talent with a sword.
However, lack of talent could be overcome with some effort.
It's not like I was aiming to be the best knight!
I could become one of the many knights appointed by the country!!
I didn't know if it was my admiration or my will, but at this time I was driven by the thought, "I'll become a knight no matter what!"
So, even though I realized that I had no talent, I continued to train and as a result, I became strong enough to be able to join a lower-ranked group. That's what I thought. By myself.
During that time, the two older brothers and older sisters, surprisingly, all became knights and left home.
The only time I felt lonely was when my sister left.
As soon as my brothers found out that my sword skills weren't that great, they lost interest in me and blatantly ignored me, so my daily life didn't change even after they left me.
Even my father saw through my incompetence much earlier than my brothers and forgot about my existence, so it was okay for me to be absent for a long period of time to protect the western region as vice-commander of the 14th Knights.
In the end, everyone in my family had been away for the past few years, so I hadn't been able to measure my current ability.
That's why opinions were divided about my "Coming of Age Ceremony."
The "Coming of Age Ceremony" was a simple ceremony that was held when children turned 15 years old.
The idea was to pick up a stone of any kind anywhere.
The general rule was to show this stone to a fortune teller and had them predict your future based on its color and shape.
However, in our case, special rules were added to this.
If you didn't aim to become a knight, the rules were the same as normal, but if you aimed to become a knight, you must prove your strength by hunting a monster and bringing back the magic stone inside its body.
A monster was, of course, a creature with demonic attributes that was warlike and had high attack power, and it had a magic stone in its body that was proportional to its strength.
Many of them lived deep in the forest, and humans who encounter them were unlikely to survive.
That's why my sister told me not to worry about becoming a knight and just bring a normal stone.
My younger brother said that as a daughter of a knight family, I should get the magic stone regardless of whether I was alive or dead.
My older brother remained silent because he wasn't interested.
My father respected my opinion and completely ignored it.
That's why I was thinking of getting a magic stone in order to become a knight.
Translator's Note
Should I continue from chapter 1 and translate all the chapters before chapter 113?