Cooro 1’s POV

  It’s funny how the author changes my story all for the sake of shock value. There I was making my way to the slave auction after selling my secret room equipment for 100 million gold coins when a carriage trodden by horses came at headlong speed going a little too fast for a crowded road. The rein strap keeping one horse in place broke apart leading the horse trotting towards me faster than I had time to react to.

  That wasn’t what finished me. I finally got to use my Golem Shield skill protecting me from an instant kill by arms of a golem deploying like airbags shielding me from the horse. It crashed into the arms sprawling to the ground before writhing its legs trying to get back on its feet.

  Just when I thought I avoided another unlucky situation where I’d end up dead…turns out a horseback rider lost control of his horse ramming into me at full throttle.

  I recovered my senses only to find a horse neighing loudly and standing on its hind hooves thrashing its front. I felt my rump sodden with muddy water as my legs just collapsed.

  Where was I; obviously this wasn’t the world of Rainbow Ashes yet it wasn’t a Maerd trial either. It seemed like I was in another world. No duh, like any reincarnate as a mob/villain character, memories would come to me like softwares being downloaded on a computer. Until then, I could only fathom what I was seeing–who, what, when, where, why and how as my Grade 10 English teacher put it.

  I seemed to be in a training circle around a camp or a training ground; the horse and mud starting to make sense. Judging by the light blue nearly smothered in clouds the ‘when’ seemed to be in the afternoon.

  Who I seemed to be wasn’t a knight judging by how there were no gauntlets on my hands and even looked a little pudgy. Seems I was here to grab the reins of the horse in case the rider couldn’t do it himself.

  How I got to be a lowly squire hasn’t registered yet but clearly the original owner of this body didn’t make good decisions or it was a poor country. As for the what–what all this meant for me–that was left for later. I wasn’t going to stay in this bedlam forever.

  “Rodrick!”

  I flinched at the intimidating roar coming from an unknown figure. The rider on the horse dismounted from his horse coming up to me, and he looked fuming despite a helmet covering his face. He came close and gave me a punch on the right side of my face!

  Although it hurt like a boxing glove hiding lead in the stitches, it jogged a few memories back into my head; mainly the origin of this bodies’ owner: Rodrick Adderapple.

  He was born from a Margrave family dwarfed only by a King. Most of his years were spent perving on the maids, eating like a pig and seeking attention from his father. Like any isekai world he awakened a skill that changed his life: Memorize.

  It was a skill that literally gave him a photographic memory, and like any royal father it abhorred him so much he dropped him from his family bloodline leaving Rodrick with no other choice but to work as a squire. Now sixteen years old he is helping a knight with a skill in ‘Lance Profiency’ in an upcoming tournament to earn a place on the frontlines of a war between demi-humans, elves, merfolk, demons, centaurs, dragonewts, and spirits.

  I learned this in less than a minute after receiving that punch. Now hunched over trying to make myself feel better, but the knight was treating it as me being lazy and kept shouting “Come on! Stand up and help me back on my horse, swine!”

  I could tell he had no love for commoners using people beneath him as disposable tools even if he needed them like a parasite who needed a living organism. Back when I was Toby Sampson I took a horseback riding camp so I already knew a little about straps and saddle riding, but this fallen noble Rodrick has done it so many times for so many despot nobles trying to be soldiers for the king he could do it with his eyes closed.

  Not wanting to stir up any trouble until I got a good idea how Rodrick’s skill–my new cheating ability, my other self still in the erotic world and Rainbow Ashes with his other skills used without a worry in the world–worked. I got on all fours like a dog under the saddle. The noble used me as a stepping stool to get back on the saddle. It was bad enough I had to degrade myself this way for the lout, fate added a knight without a helmet showing his shaven glossy brown with an orange shade hair sauntering up with two young girls in dresses in his arms.

  One was blonde with a black vest and strings over her buxom body with white dress under it and pink lipstick; the other was black haired with a red vest and black dress. It was hard to tell if the girls looking at me were laughing because of my humiliating position or if they were just in a good mood being held by a knight until the loudmouth man cooed with joy over my humiliation.

  “See that? He used to be a Margrave son until he unlocked a skill his useless body could never use so his father banished him. The poor guy had the fortune of not being born a commoner but squandered it being lazy and rude before his any of you feel sorry for him?”

  The girls' happy faces were replaced by dark eyeshadow reeling their heads back.

  “No,” said the blonde. “Just looking at him makes me sack.”

  “Even a pig rolling in filth looks cleaner than him,” the black haired girl replied.

  “Good, we’re in agreement. Don’t worry; once all the knights are prepared for the battle he’ll be banished from the kingdom…never having to be seen again. My money is on Horned Rabbits killing him.”

  This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  They burst out laughing as if their mockery was a funny joke. I listened for a viable reason: I was slaving for the boarish knight over me but all I heard was cruelly of people who think they’re better than me simply because they come from a family with more money and options; paid for it with a foot pressing and twisting on my back.

  “Don’t just stay there! You still need to fasten my saddle!”

  Apparently I was supposed to pay for his horse going out of control by wrapping a lasso around my waist attached to his waist while his horse trotted around the field. When finished I felt a rope tugging on my ribcage hard enough to sever right through it if I didn’t move to keep it under my ribcage; all the while the spoiled knight was riding his horse around the field having a fun riding lesson.

  It wasn’t a short experience either–at least an hour passed if my counting was accurate before he dismounted from his horse. I finally got to collapse and take rapid breathes hoping it would soothe the rope burns all over my body. Despite how I just spent an hour feeling the whiplash of a rope the knight marched up kicking me with his sollerots.

  “You call yourself a squire?! I nearly fell off three times because of your incompetence! Why do you make yourself useful and get me some booze?”

  He pulled out two silver coins from under his armor showing them off like a kid on the playground whose father bought him nice things. He dropped them on the muddy ground. Despite being exhausted and half-standing he glared down like a sergeant would stare into a cadet.

  “Pick it up and get some booze for me and Emilia.”

  With that he turned around leaving two silver coins in the mud and his underappreciated squire who unfortunately had to be me to head into a brothel for a chubby blonde prostitute with pigtails and freckles.

  I reached my hand into the mud to retrieve the coins but if he expected me to buy him booze with it then he was dumber than Chris Griffin from Family Guy. I was going to give him a bottle, yes…one just drunk that had the lingering smell of booze but would really be filled with my piss.

  Picking up the coins I walked towards the forest to find the nearest stream to wash the mud off them. Along the way I passed knights and commoners alike, all of whom whispered to their traveling partner something about the way I looked, smelled or just had bad luck from going from a duke’s son into a squire. The things they said were really mean–even Cooro Rippel didn’t get such rude things said about him or a wish he should die–only when I reached a pond and saw my reflection did I find out how feasible it was to know this body looked unreliable and untrustworthy.

  I wasn’t an obese person but I had a belly bulging off my waistline, soft butter fingers, a nose with hair in the nostrils, greasy red hair and red eyes. My garbs were pure dark green with several cuts through it and my pants were brown trousers barely holding up. I was an unpleasant person to look at, but I wasn’t the butchers’ son from Game of Thrones. That being someone who wasn’t born from a royal being bullied and then murdered when I ran away.

  The previous host was a brat but he was too young when his father exiled him for his skill. Speaking about his/my skill it was time the fringe in my head wondering about its properties learned how to help it make me reach the pinnacle of power.

  “Status open!”

  Unlike my previous status screen this one folded open in three sides like the Game Master Adventure book in Dungeons ‘n’ Dragons. The first page showed my information like an I.D. card which was pretty useless until I saw a curved arrow in the right corner and it showed the information of the spoiled knight-in-training, the brown haired knight belittling my past to make himself feel better, and his brothel girls. Second page showed all kinds of expertise Rodrick had. Skimming through the list scrolling down the page that reminded me of an Apple update agreement, I learned they were all at level 1 since eating and labor weren’t in the expertise people can improve. Magic was on the list but the level was at zero meaning I couldn’t use it without getting a lesson first. Finally there was a third page titled Memorized List. It was mostly blank except for words inscribed “Humiliated Squire”. I figured it was talking about what happened today at the training field.

  Even so, my curiosity made me touch the words. When I touched those words it was like my consciousness was booted up into the Matrix. But instead of downtown New York I was back standing in the training field with the rope wrangling my belly to keep the pudgy knight steady on his horse. It was like watching a camera recording but my brain kept fringing a feeling this was important when really it was just humiliating for me.

  Eventually, the video stopped and I returned to the pond. Having to relive that was absolute torture unlike the investigation mini-games in Cyberpunk 2077 which were just tedious and boring.

  “I want to know what his experience was through all of that.”

  It was at that moment light illuminated on the DnD status board leaving words engraved next to the first ones. After the experience of seeing myself be tortured I was hesitant to touch letters again; if I wanted to remain a chubby fallen noble who is hated by everyone I could afford to resist being a Matt Damon. Before I knew it my finger already pressed against the word.

  I returned to the training field once again. Unlike last time I was seeing blurs of color flitting in a circle because I was riding a horse galloping as fast as it could. If my brain was anything to go by it appeared I was looking through the memory of the knight. This was intriguing if not a little close to an ex machina. It seemed like I could see through the memories of other people–not just my own.

  Immediately after I announced “I want to know what the smug knight’s experience is.” I was soon venturing down a path towards the training field when a loud groan tooted in my ears. There was me on all fours. Still holding the hot shoulders of two prostitutes. I rhetorically asked if they wanted to spend time with a dirty fallen noble over there.

  The scene ended returning to reality. I was curious so I opened the screen. Just as I thought: experience from those memories gave me experience too. A small red color filled the empty gauge by a sliver. It became clear I needed moments to go on. Should I try books? No, those are mostly fiction or embellished. It seemed my best bet was to find people with experience; old retired heroes.

  If I can hear their tales and ask the system to show me it would increase my potential. But first…I needed to give a knight his bottle of piss.

  I couldn’t stop laughing on my venture to the retirement home seeing the prideful noble in knight armor’s face when he chugged down the bottle of piss I gave him. Turns out he is short blonde haired in Moe’s hairstyle from the Three Stooges, beady brown eyes, and sunken in cheeks despite a fat head and bulky frame.

  So there he was with a prostitute who looked more like a pig farmer in a Swedish-esque dress clinging to his side while raising her legs across his left knee ensconced on his right. He was rude to me saying “When I asked for booze I expected it a lot sooner. You’d think a banished noble with the skill Memorize would remember that.”

  And then–he took a swig of my bottle of piss. He churned his lips back and stared at vacant space as if his brain had a telltale sign of what piss was, but then he just chugged it down like a bottle of Cola. While he was gorging himself on urine I backed away from his room in the brothel.

  Getting to see his naivety was the fun part…seeing all the glares from girls in revealing dresses and patrons was the hard part. When I wake up tomorrow reality won’t suddenly make them happy to see me. I had no idea if my plan of going to a retirement home to memorize their stories would make me stronger and perhaps richer learning secret locations, however, at least they didn’t hear gossip on how I was an exiled noble treating me like trash.

  When I reached the retirement home I realized how it was brown and white like a mug with foam but with a watermill attached to it. There were blocks of stepping stones between a path of grass encompassed by statues of little gnome/impish creatures. They seemed to be two wooden chairs adjacent to each other with four seniors sitting down.

  Sauntering my way with a leap in my step I prepared to talk to them…then I was stopped by a curly brownish blonde haired man holding his hand out to stop me.

  “What do you think you're doing here?”