by Kevin Culp
The Trials of
a Modern
Paladin
Vol: 2
By: Kevin Culp
Prologue
I watched as Christina's sword parried the club of a charging ratkin. The force of the blow was jarring to her arm, but she maintained a firm grip and followed up with a thrust of her own after deflecting the attack. As her sword pierced the creature's shoulder, it let out a high-pitched squeak and took a few steps back. Another attacker was sneaking up behind her, and just as I was about to call out to warn her, she pivoted on the ball of her foot and whirled around to face the new threat. The ratkin she had stabbed in the shoulder moved back in as if to flank her, but Phillip stepped into the path and the two fought back to back.
It had only been about two months since I had started teaching them to fight, but Christina and Phillip seemed to have a knack for it. The other's I was training had also improved, but what made these two stand out was their adaptability to a situation and what I guess one might call battlefield awareness. The battlefield awareness I couldn't take credit for teaching them given that today was their first time fighting actual enemies.
This all started about a month ago, well a little longer if you count the fact that I wasn't from this world before that. Actually, I wasn't even Archaeus Alexander Velnir before that. My name used to be William Shawcro, a customer service representative working in a call center in Wilson, Kansas. Archaeus Alexander Velnir, the man I am now, was just a character I played for several years in a tabletop game. About four months ago, I was walking home from a game session and just kind of ended up here with no real explanation. It wasn't like those anime where you fall down a well or open a book and find yourself in another world. I just sort of walked here. After arriving, I didn't believe it was real, and I'm still not certain, but I met a girl, befriended a prince, saved a town, and now here I am. I still don't know if it's real, but if it is, I also have reason to believe my friends from my world are here somewhere too after randomly finding a newspaper that listed all of us as missing persons. Now back to why we are here in this cave.
Ever since I befriended Prince Leovald and officially became a noble in this land, the town of Freid has seen substantial support from the capital and has been growing. There have been a lot of caravans moving back and forth with supplies for construction and even new people settling in the area. About a month ago, the caravans started getting attacked frequently, and during the last attack, a survivor followed the attackers back to this cave then came and warned us about it.
I had never heard of ratkin before, but they are basically short anthropomorphic rat people if the name couldn't tell you that much. According to everyone I had spoken to, they really weren't that strong, but they had been attacking the caravans in such masses and always left no survivors to tip us off. I felt this could be a good actual combat experience for those I was training. I figured I could keep them safe, and worst-case scenario, I had to clear the ratkin out myself. Equipped with swords and leather armor, except for Christina who wore my armor and several other pieces of protective gear, we headed to this location.
When we first got to the cave, I was fighting by their side, but they really didn't get to do much, so I decided I would just observe unless they needed my help. Obviously, the ratkin would try to attack me frequently since I was just standing around on a battlefield, but the few I killed didn’t really take away from my trainee's combat training. I had to use a lot of healing on them, but I had come prepared for that, and so far, our whole group was intact.
“I think that was the last of them in this room,” Christina said just after she had plunged her sword into a ratkin's gut and began walking toward me. She definitely had a stronger stomach for all this gore than I did.
“God, how many more of these are there.” Vincent sighed as he slumped down to the floor.
“Hopefully a lot, I'm just getting warmed up,” Kayden said excitedly.
Kayden's reaction was getting kind of annoying. He was getting better, but he would often back up to someone else for help putting them in danger and then act tough like he had saved them.
I looked at them both, “Well we've been in here for a few hours with no clear end. We may have to call it soon then come back a later day.”
Phillip was squeezing some fresh claw marks on his arm, “That may be for the best because I'm getting exhausted, and I know you said you were almost out of healing magic.”
I moved to heal him, but he shook his head. “Don't worry about it. It's really just a scratch and we might need your magic in case we are ambushed on the way out with how many winding tunnels are here.”
“As long as that wound doesn't slow you down. I don't need you getting further injured because of it,” I looked at him, but he just let go of his arm and nodded like he was ready to move on.
We started heading back the way we had come from. There had been so many tunnels branching off as we went that it was hard to remember the path we had taken, but the one thing Kayden had proven was that he had an excellent memory, so he seemed confident at every fork in the road. It still surprised me that these ratkin had caused so much trouble for the caravans. There were tons of them down here, but they were basically being killed by a party of level 0 characters that had a small amount of training and most of the caravans had hired guards. Most of the hired guards in this world weren't that high level, but I’d at least estimate they were around level 3 or 4.
Kayden was leading the way, and while I had told him to just stick to the group, he kept getting a bit ahead of us so that when he turned a corner, I couldn't see him for just a moment. What was even more annoying, was that I knew he couldn't see given that Vincent was the only one carrying a torch. It felt as though we had been walking for hours, and I knew we had been in this cave for a long time but was starting to wonder if we had gotten lost. Just as I had the thought, I saw a light up ahead, and Kayden stepped around the corner that I knew would lead us out of the cave. A scream pierced the air. We all drew our weapons and made to run for the entrance.
Just as I rounded the corner something smashed into me, but before I retaliated with an attack of my own, I saw it was Kayden running into me.
“Archaeus, we need to run it's a monster,” he screamed like a girl as he gathered his wits and moved to get behind me.
I looked ahead and immediately understood why he was afraid. Barreling towards the entrance of the cave was a giant creature. It stood close to ten feet tall with gray skin and a muscular build. It had a huge wart covered nose and hair that looked like quills. The giant creature was wearing something like a leotard that was soaked in fresh blood, and it had an enormous club in one hand. A grin swept across his face at the prospect of his next kill as he charged.
“Stay back and let me handle this,” I shouted as I stepped forward to meet the creature's charge.
He seemed surprised that I charged him rather than fleeing in terror, and the misstep let me get inside his reach before he could even swing his club. I plunged my sword straight through his chest where the heart would be all the way up to the hilt. The monster went limp and fell forward before I could even retrieve my sword from his chest, but I back stepped to keep him from falling on me.
“Pshh, if I had known he was that weak I would have killed him myself,” Kayden shouted.
“I doubt it's that the monster was weak as much as Archaeus is just that strong,” Christina commented, and I could tell there was a hint of pride in her voice.
As I looked over the creature, something told me there was something more I should know about it. I often got that feeling when there was something that William Shawcro would know, but Archaeus didn't know.
Just as I had that thought, the monster's enormous arms moved, and it began to push itself up off the ground. A squeak behind me let me know Kayden had changed his mind on killing this thing himself.
The monster seemed confused and spoke slowly. “You hurt me, tiny man. How did tiny man hurt big man? I hurt you back now.”
He swung his club, and it definitely hurt. I wouldn't have called in unbearable. He definitely couldn't bypass my damage resistance, and I doubted it would leave much more than a bruise. The real problem would be that he had my weapon, I was almost out of healing for the day, and apparently, this monster was immortal or something.
“Archaeus!!!” Christina screamed with concern, but she threw her sword toward me. Normally, I would think it wasn't smart to throw a sword like that, but even when I caught it by the blade it didn't hurt.
When I had swords made for all of my students, I had taken into account that Christina wasn't very strong but had a high finesse, so I just got her a short sword. Right now I regretted that, though I suppose even with a long sword I would still have to get inside this monster's reach. I stepped back up to the creature and took another blow from his club. As it hit me, I slashed my sword across his thigh and he howled in pain as I continued my assault. A few more slashes of my sword and he had blood and guts pouring from his belly with deep wounds on each leg. I thought to myself that this must be enough to fell most monsters, but what about one that was still standing with a sword all the way through his chest and not even a trickle of blood still flowing from that wound.
He started to laugh, and I knew this wasn't going to end well, “tiny man hurt me, but I get crush tiny man more than most. This fun.”
The wounds on his legs and stomach started to close before my eyes. The guts pouring out of him started to crawl back inside his body and seemed to knit themselves back together as the wound did the same from either end. I continued my attacks not letting up, and while it didn't happen fast, I could see all of his wounds closing. He hit me several more times with his club, as the fight devolved into a pure slugfest, but his healing was seemingly infinite.
From somewhere behind me Phillip yelled, “Archaeus, I think that's a troll! Fire should be able to stop his regeneration if I'm right!”
Something clicked inside my head, and I imagine it was actually William Shawcro having a sudden realization that this new information was obvious. Unfortunately, he also had the thought that fire doesn't work on all types of trolls, so I just had to hope that this wasn't one of those times where it didn't.
“Vincent, I need the torch!” I yelled at him.
He threw me the torch, and when I turned back to the troll, I could see a shimmer of fear in his eyes that told me we were on the right track, though I guess he still wasn't smart enough to run. I held the torch with my hand in the fire because I had to make sure I didn't just swing it at the troll and break it. The fire didn't hurt me due to my elemental resistance, but after taking another hit from the troll, I put a gash in his knee then pressed the fire down on it.
He howled in pain. “Stop, tiny man. Tiny man can't hurt big man.” He fell backwards with fear in his eyes.
I moved slowly toward him as he sat up, and I started to speak, “do you surren....”
A flicker of hope filled his eyes as he grabbed his club and started to swing sideways. I rushed forward and plunged the torch into his chest alongside the sword that was still buried there. I pushed it deeper but not so deep that the fire went out as he wailed in pain. He dropped the club and moved to grab me. With one hand still holding Christina's sword, I made a smooth swing and cut cleanly through his thumb. I watched as the fight died from his eyes. His blood covered my body and the smell of burning flesh filled my nostrils. I wanted to throw up but definitely couldn't do that in front of all my students. Archaeus was used to this, but William Shawcro probably would have thrown up and passed out by now. The monster stopped moving, but I continued to burn him just in case then freed my sword from his chest.
Christina, Phillip, and Vincent all approached me, but Kayden still seemed unsure. I looked at them. “I wonder if this monster was in league with the ratkin?”
It was Christina who responded, “I don't know, Archaeus, but are you certain it's dead?”
I looked it over and none of the wounds were healing. “It should be, but we may want to watch it for a short while just in case.”
“You really are scary when you get serious, Archaeus,” said Vincent.
“He's not scary, he's inspiring,” Christina replied. She took my hand and moved to kiss my cheek, but judging by the sickened look she had when she stopped herself, I assumed it was covered in troll blood. At least that's what I hoped the reason was.
Christina and I had been dating ever since we were in the capital, so I guess for about two-and-a-half months now. Since I was the noble in charge of Freid, the town had actually already started treating her like she was nobility as well. In truth, people went to her more often than me probably because she was a local they knew or maybe just because she was a person they were used to turning to for help anyway. She had always been the type of person who wanted to help everyone. Her father's tavern was still being run by Christina’s uncle, Nicholas, along with the help of Rin. Luckily, Rin had actually started learning to cook, though she was still a better fighter and trained with us occasionally. She said she didn't plan on staying at the tavern much longer, and we would have to find a replacement soon.
After sitting around by the bloody troll corpse for another thirty minutes, I decided it should be safe to leave since it still wasn't healing. The sun was setting, and we were about an hour and a half from Freid. Kayden had suggested I cut off the troll's head for good measure, but I didn't have the stomach for that and just told him that if his healing still worked it wouldn't matter and if it didn't work, then we were fine either way. We tried our best to clean ourselves up with the little water we brought and then headed back to town.
Chapter 1
By the time we got back to Freid, it was dark. I handed Kayden, Vincent, and Phillip each a platinum and told them it was their payment for assisting the town in its time of need. They didn't question the fact that I could have easily handled it all on my own and simply said their thanks and ran off together. They were probably heading to the tavern I assumed. A platinum piece would go a long way in a young man's hands.
I took Christina by the hand, and we walked through the town. Not much had really changed about it despite all the people that had settled here. The main road still only had a handful of businesses on it. Stephan's nephew Geoffrey had taken over as the town’s tanner. A lot of new people had settled around Freid, but nearly all of them had been farmers which meant there was a fairly large amount of clear-cutting going on surrounding the town. I guess it was a little harder to move a business, but I would guess that as businesses lost customers in their respective areas, they would relocate as well. That was actually a sad thought, and while I wanted Freid to grow, I hoped that not too many shop owners would have to go through that. After all, it wasn't their fault they were on lands ruled by the corrupt Baron Lyndmire.
Christina squeezed my hand. “Every time I walk down this street, I see my father in the hands of that cruel orc. I just wish that back then I knew how to fight the way I do now. I know it wouldn't have made a difference, but I would have liked to help avenge him.”
It made me sad to hear Christina talk about vengeance. She was such a caring girl that I hated to hear the experience had jaded her to that point. Honestly, she was the kind of girl that I always thought could forgive just about anything and befriend anyone. I guess the cold-blooded murder of your father and people you've known your entire life isn't easily forgiven though.
“I'm glad you didn't have to fight with me during that battle. I'm sure you could handle yourself against an orc, but trust me, you feel even more responsible when you are the person who could have done something and wasn't there,” I said with a grim smile.
I put my arm around her and we walked to our house. About two weeks after the attack, a group of builders had arrived saying they were here to start development, and their first order was to build me a home. They wanted to do something a little over the top and extravagant, but I forced them to keep it simple both for myself and for Christina. It was a two-bedroom log cabin that was probably about a thousand square feet. I had them build it close to where the underground spring ran so we could put in a well pump in our backyard. As soon as we got back, Christina filled up the tub so we could wash.
Our relationship was still new, I guess you would say. While we were living together, Christina was very shy about things, and Archaeus was respectful of that. I loved being with Christina, so I wouldn't change a thing. She took her bath alone and then refilled the tub for me. She had bathed me once, but that was when I was just a customer at the tavern and a nobleman at that.
By the time I got out of the bath, Christina was making dinner. She was wearing what I'm not really sure if you would call pajamas or lingerie. It was a pink silk outfit that consisted of a top that cut off about halfway down her stomach and I guess what you would call short shorts. It was plain but very appealing and didn't help some of my personal frustrations to say the least. Shortly after our home was finished, we received several such pieces of clothing from Rose, the youngest princess who was about eight years old. It came with a note that basically said it was to be a housewarming gift, and how her brother Leovald liked it when pretty girls wore these kinds of things. Christina was quite embarrassed when we first opened the package but insisted it would be rude to turn down a gift from a princess and not wear them. Now I think she was starting to enjoy it. She always smiled when she would catch me staring, and I would always look away quickly.
Dinner was excellent, though Christina's cooking always was. It was just some chicken, beans, and potatoes, but she knew how to season everything just right. We finished eating by candlelight and then went to bed for the night. Our bed was very nice, not nearly as big as the one in the capital thankfully, but we had plenty of room. In the end, we would still always end up cuddling when we fell asleep.
