Chapter 1

Since the beginning of recorded history, regardless of gender,

Jeanne d’Arc is the only person to have become the commander-in-chief of a nation at the age of seventeen.

— Lajos Kossuth

***

I stood in front of the camera once again.

“I’m going to build the launcher out of wood. The original version uses a tin coating, but to stay true to the source material, I made the frame using only wood and rope.”

I was a YouTuber.

I run a channel where I recreate weapons from movies and video games in real life.

Becoming a YouTuber happened by pure coincidence. I originally uploaded videos simply to keep a record of my work, but thanks to the crazy algorithm, I ended up making an unplanned debut.

“The XOP series features many weapons based on real history, and wooden cannons were actually used in the past. However, because of the material’s limitations, if you use gunpowder…”

As I explained, I quickly assembled a cannon.

I adjusted the angle and loaded it with a custom gunpowder mixture.

Aim. Fire.

Fizzzz. Boom.

With the sound of the gunpowder exploding, the double-layered target shattered into pieces.

Any expert watching would be astonished that such crude materials could produce that much destructive power.

That’s it for today’s video.

I cleaned up the shattered glass fragments expressionlessly.

My work was done. All that remained was to send the footage to my editor, and it would be uploaded to the channel a week later.

Bzzzt. Bzzzt.

My phone vibrated in my pocket. It was a text from my manager.

(Manager): The TEET Group product I mentioned is ready. It should be delivered to your workshop tomorrow morning.

(Me): Great. Thanks for your hard work. I’ll take care of the rest.

TEET Group was a defense contractor.

As my channel grew and gained more international viewers, sponsorship offers started coming in from defense companies.

The sponsored content usually involved comparing the weapons I built myself with the company’s products.

Naturally, professionally manufactured equipment far surpassed anything I could build on my own with makeshift materials, and the contrast made for entertaining content that turned out to be surprisingly effective advertising.

The next morning, the package from TEET Group arrived at my workshop.

I frowned.

There was a strange message printed on the box.

It read:

“To the place where your talent will truly shine.”

I found it suspicious but opened the box anyway. There was no other way to find out what was inside.

The moment I saw the contents, my face went pale.

“Those lunatics… They packed explosives like thi—”

Boooooooom!

And just like that, my first life came to an end.

***

Maxime Blanche.

The eldest son of the Blanche family, who ran a blacksmith shop.

“Let’s get going.”

“Okay!”

My younger sibling answered cheerfully. The child listened to his older brother better than to his parents.

“The sky is so clear. Perfect weather for a demonstration.”

“Are we going back to the place we visited last time?”

“No. Today isn’t an experiment day. Let’s go where the children are.”

Domrémy, in the region of Lorraine.

Children didn’t go to school.

At most, they received an education at home before helping with the family trade from a young age.

The concept of child labor simply didn’t exist.

It was only natural for children to help the adults, and there was little distinction between labor and apprenticeship.

There was a reason child mortality was so high. Calling this the age of barbarism wouldn’t have been an exaggeration.

“Take this, my sword!”

“Hyah!”

Even in an era where children worked as part of daily life, no one stopped them from playing.

They picked up fallen branches and dueled with them like swords or passed the time throwing balls.

It was simple, ordinary fun. There were no games designed to flood you with instant excitement. Things would stay that way for centuries.

Then the sound of wooden wheels rolling reached their ears.

They turned toward it and saw my younger brother and me pulling something behind us.

“Huh?”

“What’s that?”

I answered.

“It’s a mobile trebuchet. About one-third the size of a grown man.”

The children stared blankly at the smooth, elegant machine. It was probably the first trebuchet they’d ever seen. Even if they had seen one before, it certainly wouldn’t have looked like this.

I’ve always had a knack for making even ordinary things look cool. That’s one of the reasons my YouTube videos pulled in so many views.

“Did your dad make it to give to the lord?”

“No. I made it as a toy.”

“…You made this? Stop lying.”

“My brother doesn’t lie!”

Coat protested immediately. I smiled, reached over, and ruffled his hair.

“I’m the son of a blacksmith. Anyone born into a blacksmith’s family could make something like this.”

“R-Really?”

That was a lie, of course.

It had taken me a tremendous amount of effort.

When I came to this world, I lost all the tools I’d used in my previous life. The manufacturing methods were different too. Adapting to everyday life had been difficult, but adapting to working with medieval tools had been even harder.

“What’s a trebuchet?”

“It’s a siege weapon used to throw heavy objects. Usually stones. I made forty custom projectiles and even added an aiming adjustment mechanism to improve its accuracy.

The margin of error is about five centimeters per meter. Though once you go beyond twenty meters, the spread increases enough that it stops being meaningful.”

“……”

The children stared at me blankly.

They didn’t understand a word I’d just said.

That was the point.

I wasn’t trying to explain it. I was deliberately using technical terms they couldn’t understand so they’d lose interest in how it worked.

“Want to see it fire?”

Every child nodded at once.

They tossed aside the sticks they’d been using as swords.

The game that had seemed so much fun just moments ago suddenly couldn’t compare.

“Come on. I know the perfect spot.”

I led the children to the top of a small hill.

The sky stretched endlessly before us.

With the flat landscape and low buildings, nothing blocked the view.

It was the kind of place that made you feel how insignificant mankind truly was while emphasizing the grandeur of the heavens. If I were a deeply religious man, I’d probably end up worshipping the sky itself.

“See that tree over there? I’ll hit it.”

After making my declaration, I adjusted the trebuchet.

One of the children, whose cheeks were covered in a rash, tilted his head.

“You can hit something that far away?”

“Of course.”

I lowered the counterweight into position.

That completed the launch preparations.

My younger brother who was already familiar with the process helped me finish setting everything up.

Then I looked at the children.

“This button fires it. Who wants to do the honors?”

Every hand shot into the air.

Even my little brother raised his.

I had no idea why.

I handed the trigger to the child who seemed the most composed.

“You do it. I’ve already finished aiming, so all you have to do is press the button.”

“O-Okay.”

The boy squeezed his eyes shut and pressed the trigger.

Click… Whirrr!

The trebuchet sprang into motion.

The loaded projectile arced gracefully through the air.

Thunk.

It struck the tree dead center.

“Wooooow!”

The children erupted into excited cheers.

Personally, I wasn’t completely satisfied.

The firing angle had been slightly off. Not because of my calculations, but because the tools I’d used to build it weren’t precise enough.

“It really hit! Toby, you saw that too, right?”

“Wooow…”

One child was so overwhelmed he could barely cheer, his face turning bright red instead.

Kids are always fascinated by exciting new things.

“See? That’s my big brother!”

My younger brother puffed out his chest with pride.

***

The Blanche family ran the only blacksmith shop in Domrémy.

And the work of a blacksmith was fairly straightforward.

They made plows and repaired worn-out farming tools. From time to time, the local lord would commission them to forge horseshoes, blades, and other metalwork.

“Hey, Gent, just how did you raise your son?”

Gent Blanche, the head of the household, answered gruffly.

“What’s there to it? Boys who grow up in a blacksmith’s shop naturally mature on their own.”

“That’s not just maturity. What Maxime’s doing is on another level. How can a kid that small withstand heat that even grown men struggle to endure? Anyone who saw him would think Hephaestus himself had been reborn.”

“I was melting iron by myself at his age.”

It was a lie.

No one knew better than he did just how extraordinary his son was.

That was precisely why he kept his talent hidden.

Anything too exceptional was bound to invite gossip. And gossip had a way of turning into malicious rumors.

It was an age when people believed in gods and demons as unquestionable truth. Talent beyond their understanding was inevitably linked to such things.

As a father, he wanted to boast about his son, but Gent chose to be cautious.

That caution, however, was broken in an unexpectedly positive way.

“Is Brother Maxime home?”

“The trebuchet! The trebuchet!”

The sound of children chattering drifted in through the blacksmith shop’s ventilation opening.

“Maxime, your friends are calling for you.”

He had heard that his son had changed the entire landscape of children’s play in Domrémy overnight.

“I told you before. I wanted you to keep your talent hidden for a few more years.”

“…I’m sorry.”

“I wasn’t thinking clearly. I was worried because you never went outside, but seeing how popular you are puts my mind at ease instead. The other children like you too.”

There was an unmistakable hint of pride on his normally stoic face.

Maxime was caught off guard.

Maybe I’ve been cooped up in my room for too long. Then again, I haven’t exactly acted like a normal kid and gone out to play.

Mentally, I was an adult, so it wasn’t easy to fit in with children.

Fortunately, I had a knack for the family trade and devoted myself to it instead, but it seemed I’d only given them something else to worry about.

“Big brother, let’s bring this too.”

Unlike me, my little brother had already finished getting ready to go.

I never expected the kids to get this attached to me, but since things turned out this way, I might as well give them some good memories.

After all, wasn’t that why I’d built the trebuchet in the first place? I couldn’t stand seeing them play with dirt-covered toys.

These kids had a lifetime of hardship ahead of them. At the very least, they deserved some happy memories from their childhood to balance it out.

“Go get the tools on the shelf. I’ll carry the trebuchet.”

“Okay!”

“Don’t run. You’ll just trip again.”

My little brother, who had been about to dash off, hurriedly slowed to a walk.

“Father, we’re heading out.”

“All right.”

As if he hadn’t been smiling just moments before, Gent resumed striking the iron with his hammer. There was still work to be done, but he had given his children permission to go out and play.

He might have been a man of few words, but he was a good father, one who was ahead of his time.

This was an era when children were often treated as little more than property. Parents who respected their children were rare.

I picked up the trebuchet and headed outside.

Standing before the children, I held up two fingers.

“I’ll let you use it if you promise me two things. First, swear you won’t come shouting in front of the blacksmith’s shop like you did today. Second, never aim the trebuchet at a person.”

The children eagerly agreed, each in their own way.

Pulling the trebuchet behind us, we headed toward a quiet spot. The noisy procession startled a sparrow perched nearby, sending it fluttering away.

Word must have spread, because I saw children I’d never seen before.

Just as we were nearing the hill—

“So you’re the one who made the famous weapon?”

A sturdy-looking black-haired boy stepped into our path. The children behind us immediately began shouting.

Whether out of determination or sheer stubbornness, the boy refused to move aside.

“Yeah, I made it. Mind letting us through?”

“Just a second.”

The boy shifted awkwardly before holding out his hand.

“I’m Pierre. Eight years old.”

He was offering a handshake.

It wasn’t the sort of greeting you’d expect from a little kid. Judging by his stiff posture, he looked like the kind of boy who was obsessed with pretending to be a knight.

Knights offered a handshake to show they carried no weapon and had no intention of fighting.

Children often imitate the things they admire.

He had blocked our way, but there didn’t seem to be any malice in it. It wouldn’t hurt to play along a little.

Clasp.

The moment I took his hand, Pierre flinched.

“I’m eight too. You can call me Maxime.”

Maxime didn’t know it, but Pierre had never shaken hands with anyone before. Whenever he held out his hand, people ignored him.

It was a small gesture, but at that age, even the slightest acknowledgment could mean the world.

Pierre trembled with emotion.

Then, a small figure suddenly popped out from behind him.

“Me too.”

Like Pierre, the child had black hair.

When he noticed my gaze, he hurried to explain.

“I wasn’t planning to bring her either, but Mom made me…”

“Hewwo.”

She pressed her cheek against my clothes and gave me a quick hug.

A perfectly childlike greeting.