Luke's first sign of his new world appeared by the stench- putrid old blood spilled off the young man's skull. A near death experience was not unexpected to Luke in the slightest.
In fact, just moments ago he willingly stepped forwards into his doom.
Earth had become a world filled by horrible war, and Luke lived his late twenties drafted into World War Three. What surprised Luke was how distinct the smell of blood appeared from what he knew should have been a battlefield.
He failed to smell burnt gunpowder. Tinnitus failed to haunt Luke's hearing.
The sour rations and shellshock conditions broke Luke's resolve long ago, so when their armored personnel carrier received the first blast in a change, he ran out first. Luke recognized the sound of artillery when it came.
He just assumed one shell had been fired. A second artillery shot erupted while his convoy fell unconscious from concussion, and denied Luke the proper sense of time to predict his demise.
By the time Luke left his transport a second shell landed on top of him.
Luke gingerly moved both arms to his shoulders. The dry, chilled fingers he found himself burdened with didn't start resting above the ornate wooden table beneath him. Instead Luke realized with a start- that his blood came from somebody new.
Instead of Winter cold, an iron forged flintlock pistol chilled Luke's grip. The model wasn't just old. It lacked decorations of every kind. Luke chuckled to himself in shock.
"Feels crazy to be surprised by a flintlock prototype, of sorts. Can't feel any injuries at a glance…" Luke retorted out loud. Death aside, he smiled. The old model reminded Luke about the world he felt Earth had lost.
Fighting mechs would have been preferable to the destructive power boasted by modern nations. At some point humanity stopped competing for land, and started to compare how many times one nation could destroy it all.
Once Luke reminisced for long enough his eyes cautiously scanned the room. Well decorated wallpaper was lit by orange-yellow lamps. Luke stood up and approached the objects.
"Oh? This light looks like electricity.. Or maybe electricity adjacent."
His reckless nature caused Luke to brush his finger across the glass shielding the metal bulb. "Cold, weirdly cold. If my room temperature wasn't decently warm, I wouldn't have thought much more. How did they do it?"
A set of broad double doors creaked wide open. 'Fair enough.' Luke pondered inside. Just by architecture alone, Luke understood his position. 'Somebody who owned a large amount of property took his own life. Even a feared lord would be checked on after a noise like gunpowder.'
One older man flinched at Luke's presence.
He wore a plain servant attire one would expect from the Victorian Era. Luke watched closely as the servant glanced away from his gaze, down towards the pool of blood, and back to Luke himself. Cruel silence held Luke's throat as he waited for the servant to speak.
"Young master.. Did you somehow miss your shot?"
The older servant sighed rather matter-a-factly. Luke scoffed inside before he realized just how baffled he felt.
Not only did his body's previous owner commit suicide, but he also was expected to do so.
The complications implied gave the once dead man a severe headache. Luke scraped his finger across the fresh pool of blood, which stained the varnished dining room table and white cloth.
Sticky red liquid coalesced around a suspenseful, dragged out fingerprint. About ten seconds passed before Luke found the composure to speak.
"Come on. Even if you're talking about me, missing the flintlock point blank would be impossible." Luke said. He desperately hoped his words might spark a conversation leading to some clue about his new identity.
The implied servant nodded back in anxiety. His nervous nature carried too much angst for somebody so casually aware of a person's self-imposed death. "Forget talking here. Call my knights." Luke shot another guess in the dark.
Victorian architecture or not, the servant called Luke 'young master.' Lacking information could be explained by recent memory loss. A person with such a title would receive reasonable care no matter the circumstance.
Luke understood that his fastest method to discover this world's social structure was making a claim by intuition. In a world where elite soldiers are not valued, Luke could infer that his new life matched the depressing state of the last one.
Over five aching seconds the older servant lamented over pursed lips. His shaky eyes darted away from Luke's certain gaze.
"R-right away, sir…" Luke nodded once more before his servant was nowhere to be found. Pungent blood stench wafted around the empty room in the man's absence.
An absentminded expression on Luke's face disappeared when four people opened his dining room door. Each one wore exquisitely decorated cloth garments. Luke felt reminded about officer uniforms from before the first world war, seeing how much effort had been placed into a single pair of clothing.
On both shoulders rested a yellow-blue emblem, formed by a sword piercing a monster's neck, lay stitched onto their sleeves. Luke paced around the massive table, which took more space than he could ever need for eating.
"Thank you for coming, as I need to ask some questions.. Have you ever experienced memory loss after a severe injury?" Luke decided to drop his bomb right off the gate.
Hiding memory loss would just result in suspicion. 'Better sooner than later.' One knight in particular flinched at Luke's comment. The man boasted neat, long brown hair that was tied into a bun. He narrowed his dark blue eyes at Luke, darting glances between the pool of blood on the tablecloth, and Luke's serious expression.
The knight clenched his fists.
"My Lord, are you speaking from experience..?" He questioned.
Luke shook his head no. The last thing soldiers enjoy from their commanders would be arrogance. As much as telling the truth outright made his life simpler, Luke read the room. His subordinates looked upon him with either raw fear or pure contempt.
"Sadly no. The reason I called you… is to ask for your experiences. Knights are much more prone to blunt injuries than normal people, so I wanted to know if you've experienced memory loss after an impact."
Luke sighed and placed his palm to his forehead. Memory loss resulting from blunt trauma was a common occurrence on Earth.
The unlucky soldiers felt short term memory loss before their hearing loss, a consequence of missed artillery rounds shaking their skulls. Here, Luke doubted anyone aside from standardized soldiers would understand such a concept.
The knight of sorts looked Luke up and down once more, then clicked his tongue.
"Tch.. Looks like you wanted the easy way out. Did you forget we have a monster dynamo to deal with?" Retorted the knight over unhidden frustration. Luke gasped for a moment. He desperately wished to uncover some hidden knowledge about monsters and dynamos, but sighed in disappointment.
Conflict hardly surprised him by now, so the words "monster dynamo" caught his attention first. Modern technology rivaled every Earth-bound creature to the point where nature stopped being an enemy, and became a place of pity.
"Yes, actually." Luke readily admitted, a smile leaking from his expression. The four knights staggered back with a flinch. "I haven't just forgotten my necessary tasks, but also your names. Instead my head feels jumbled with strange knowledge I can't place my finger on."
Luke's casual hint about his memories from Earth easily flew past his subordinates' attention. As far as they felt concerned, Luke had forgotten his role on the worst day possible. The same knight stepped forward to openly voice his concern, eyes locked in a stern glare.
"My name is Knight Josh, captain of your first mechanized squadron. Right now the most important task is to leave the castle walls, and repel the monsters which attack your citizens." Josh spoke plain and simply.
His tone mocked the past young master's decisions, also telling Luke what needed to be done. Luke simply nodded in earnest. The complaints of the infantry were something Luke felt inclined to listen for regardless of time or place.
Luke believed doing right where his commanders did wrong, was the only thing he could still do for his deceased brothers in arms. One small act of selflessness by their superiors could've halted wars or fed the starving for good.
A single concern listened to could've saved their own people from dying for a rich man they'd never met. Luke moved away from his large dining table, past his subordinates and shady servant. All eyes locked on Luke's calm expression as he ignored their anxiety.
"Tell me where we need to go." Luke finally explained over his shoulder. Knight Josh flinched to a smile, alongside everyone else.
The one exception stood a young woman. She boasted smooth black hair, and a flawless fair complexion. A single hair tie rested right above her chiseled bicep. The gender norms Luke worried about at first disappeared completely.
He always despised people who avoided progress simply because a man or woman took stage. In the end Luke categorized advanced society by how well people treated one another.
So, although the woman lacked a proper leading rank, her role as an intellectual stayed well secured. More so, her sharp intuition glared up at Josh's cocky attitude, and soon at Luke himself.
"My name is Knight Tina. Are you.. Sure about heading outside?"
The woman questioned Luke's reasoning. She still introduced herself as precaution for Luke's rank and amnesia, but her intentions screamed loudly.
"Our mechanized units only have 8 mobile knights in stock. Leaving the castle walls before the dynamo ends would result in suicide."
She carefully summarized her words to convey the danger to Luke in a noble manner. Words hardly meant a difference to Luke, who simply nodded again with a smile.
"Are you afraid of death? Still comes for us all one day." Luke taunted with a sneer. His subordinates clenched their fists for a brawl, aside from Josh who had spoken before.
Luke interjected with a hand raised, "You should understand fully… I shot myself point blank using a flintlock pistol. None of my memories feel like they should.. but if people are dying outside the walls, then I know that takes priority."
A cold scythe of silence followed the grim expressions around the hallway. Knight Josh's mouth lay ajar, shocked over Luke's new attitude. He nodded in earnest. Multiple servants who gathered to check on the noise started to file away from blocking the halls.
"Follow me then." Jason agreed. "We'll suit up without Knight Tina, and put you in her place." Josh readily took charge before anyone could state their denials. Luke nodded in response. Any other day he'd prefer his more experienced knight to join the battle.
However, with combat focus uncertain, all Luke could rely on was his experience fighting in the infantry. Most soldiers who slept in a trench dreamt about the cramped walls of a tank, although Luke preferred the foxholes.
Thousands of abandoned trenches lay across the battlefield. Only a couple tanks moved at one time. Being inside heavy armor just made soldiers an easier target.
"Knight Josh. You're making the right decision, but remember that you are my subordinate. I'll listen to any concerns you carry after this. In return, you must follow my commands, Knight Josh."
Luke's stern rebuttal over his knight's attitude hushed the room once more. As much as Luke served via forced draft on Earth, he knew people well enough. Knight Josh's actions would harm Knight Tina's reputation.
The immediate confrontation allowed Luke the context for later, when he'd need more rational advice. Knight Josh's emotional attitude would certainly help civilians in need at the sacrifice of his teammates.
"... yes, Sir." Josh reluctantly agreed, head cowered low. The hike towards the "hangar" took much longer than Luke once expected.
Each branching hallway lacked archway supports.
The stone blocks that constructed each path should have weighed nearly 1 Ton as far as Luke recognized.
He couldn't help but shudder at the structural nightmare, especially after digging foxholes in flooding territory.
Drafted soldiers didn't get a proper training session. A lack of information about flood zones, which most soldiers normally despised, killed most of Luke's childhood friends before they fired a round.
In this way, Luke couldn't help but marvel at the scale of what his Knights deemed a hangar. The first archway he spotted in stone appeared ten stories above. It spanned a width of 500 meters, causing Luke to lose his sense of scale with every step.
'Stone has to be lighter on this world. It has to be! How else would this be possible?' Luke muttered beneath his breath. He narrowly avoided a few slurs in his shock, but managed to keep his noble persona.
The subordinates following gave Luke a glance of worry before they dashed off shouting commands.
"One moment, my Lord." A Knight who stood towards Josh's right held out his palm. "Please tell me honestly. Have you forgotten how to pilot a Mobile Knight?"
The phrase 'mobile knight' hit Luke before reality.
He'd been raised on superhero movies and C-Tier dramas, or maybe a super bowl competition once in a while. The idea of Mobile Suits baffled Luke who believed heroes changed wars.
Until at least, when he experienced war itself. Mobile Suits carried an odd composure. Sure, Luke understood he would never pilot one, but their nature redefined what infantry meant to the world.
"...Of course not." Luke muttered beneath his breath with a glare. Experience driving a tank or not, nobody in their right mind would pass up such an opportunity.
"You'll just have to show me the location of the hatch. From there, we should be fine. However, I have forgotten your name and title." Luke mixed in his lack of knowledge for good measure.
The one piece of training draftees received was maintenance work. Scrapped tanks poured in faster than bodies, so everyone started there. Luke assumed he could reason his way around a mech in due time.
"My name is Knight Nicholas. You better not forget mid-battle." Nicholas gripped his ornamental saber with a glare. Yeah, yeah I get it. Nobody likes me here. Stop glaring already.
Luke thought as he almost replied.
All three Knights ignored Luke's confusion to seek their individual mechs. Each towering giant rose eight stories tall. They'd been forged using metal and painted matte green, a family insignia decorating their house-sized shoulders.