Regina's POV
She was already awake.
She always was. Sleep was a dull thing, unnecessary. She preferred the hour before sunrise—when the world still felt like it hadn't made up its mind whether to live or die.
This morning, she sat on the edge of her balcony in silence, staring down at the drills.
4:00 a.m.
The courtyard below was alive with grunts and shouted cadence.
"Today, today, if I die today… I will die no more!"
They chanted as they moved—ragged at first, but tightening over time into something cold and rhythmic. A formation of cadets—boys and girls, swords and staves, sweat on their brows and pain stitched into their posture.
Her eyes narrowed slightly as she listened to the commands barked by her aunt's second-in-command.
Commander: "Squad! Fall in!"
The cadets scrambled into alignment—shoulder to shoulder, clean rows, no wasted space.
Commander: "Squad! Attention!"
Spines locked straight. Heels together. Hands stiff at sides. Eyes forward, no twitching.
Commander: "Stand at Ease!"
Left foot out. Shoulder-width. Hands clasped behind backs, right over left, thumbs crossed. Eyes still ahead. Not a word.
Commander: "Stand Easy!"
Shoulders dropped. A little breath. A blink. A shift in weight. Not rest. Just… permission to remain human.
She watched, unblinking, as they flowed through the routine.
These are not the postures of peasants with pitchforks, she thought, dispassionately. This is something else.
It was too precise. Too polished. Too patterned to have come from the sporadic chaos of this world's militia culture.
And then her eyes found her.
The maid.
Flailing. Panting. Always one beat too slow. Her top half-hanging from her shoulder, boots caked in dirt, silver-white hair clinging to her face like soggy string.
Yet she kept moving.
Even after being forced through:
Commander: "Squad—Attention!"
Commander: "By numbers—Left Turn!"
Cadets:
"One!" – Rotate left, precisely.
"Two!" – Stamp down. Solid. Controlled.
Commander: "About Turn—By numbers!"
Cadets:
"One!" – Pivot back.
"Two!" – Stamp. Back to attention.
Commander: "Stand at Ease!"
Commander: "Dismissed!"
The formation scattered.
The maid didn't.
She stumbled toward the manor like a half-crushed roach, exhausted, eyes glazed.
Regina didn't smile. She didn't frown. She didn't feel anything in particular—except maybe curiosity.
She noted the girl's condition. Noted the time. 6:00 a.m. on the dot.
Right on time for her to fulfill her primary function: waking up Regina.
The maid entered her room quietly, straight from the drills. Regina was already seated at her vanity, brushing her hair with one hand while sipping tea with the other. Still in her sleeping robe, as was her ritual.
She didn't speak to the maid.
The maid did her tasks automatically—folded the sheets, opened the curtains, laid out the outfit, arranged the boots—all without command.
Routine. Conditioned behavior. Pavlov would've been proud, if Regina knew who that was.
By mid-morning
The sky was soft blue. Regina stood, fully dressed, and stared out her window again.
She was bored.
That was reason enough.
"I'm going to town," she said aloud, casually.
She turned toward her maid, who was still standing at attention, clearly trying not to fall over.
"You. Come."
No explanation. No permission. No concern for her state of exhaustion.
Regina simply wanted company. Not out of loneliness. But out of the quiet, gnawing entitlement that said: I deserve whatever makes my mood more convenient.
MC's POV
I was running on fumes.
Between the 4 a.m. drills and the 6 a.m. maid shift, I'd had maybe a full minute of downtime—if you count blacking out on a stairwell for twenty seconds as "rest."
And now this.
No breakfast. No questions. Just an order to follow.
I trailed after her like a drunk dog.
We moved through the training yard again—some poor suckers still stuck doing formations as the commander bellowed commands like thunder down a canyon.
The others chanted like they didn't care if they collapsed:
"Today, today, if I die today… I will die no more!"
Cheery.
But the worst part? It was familiar.
The cadence. The steps. The turns. The way the commander screamed "By numbers!" before every turn.
This wasn't some random fantasy-world militia training.
This was Earth.
Military.
Structured. Synchronized. Imported.
"System," I whispered as I followed Regina toward the main gates.
[Yes, Host?]
"That military stuff… you didn't give me that, right?"
[Correct. That level of tactical formatting was not part of your transferred knowledge.]
"So… it came from somewhere else?"
[Possibility: Another Transmigrator. More than 87% probability.]
My gut clenched.
I wasn't the first one here.
And if someone else had been here long enough to teach knights how to march like Marines…
That meant they were powerful.
And dangerous.
"Just my luck," I muttered. "I finally get reborn—and someone else already beat me to colonizing it."