by Kevin Culp
Rin tried to seem unenthused, but I could tell she was happy to see us return. After I told her the whole story the one part she seemed to latch on to was Torgar calling Korana, “Not-Demon Korana,” and took to calling her that occasionally much to Korana’s annoyance. The two were becoming good friends though, which was something I was quite proud of given the strife between them when Korana first arrived.
In the last few days, I had discovered that I could let myself just autopilot as Archaeus all day. It was annoying feeling like I wasn’t controlling my own body, but when I stayed focused, I could understand what Archaues was thinking, and I felt like I was getting closer to him. I kind of wished that I could talk to John about what he was doing as Kreego. If we could share ideas, then we might both become stronger for it.
I was able to spar with Kreego and have an actual challenge, which was nice. He really wasn’t a character that was meant for a straightforward fight, so I definitely had the upper hand, but it was practice fighting as Archaeus and more challenging than fighting Rin or one of my protégé. Watching Christina and Phillip spar was starting to be pretty impressive. Christina had been much more focused on improving her blade skills, which gave her an edge, but Phillip showed obvious improvement and was certainly becoming capable with a bow. I really wished I could see his character sheet. Both of them had dwarfed Vincent and Kayden.
Korana had improved as well. Maybe not as much as Christina or Phillip, but she had been more powerful, to begin with, by a decent margin. She continued her training with Gregory, and he was impressed with her progress. She also still sparred with Rin during our training.
The town had functioned without Christina for several weeks and had learned to manage themselves under the new system of government I had given them. I did feel that it could probably afford to be threshed out a little further, but for now, it worked and wasn’t a high priority. Without their dependence on her, Christina was able to spend a lot of time with her mom. She did still make time to run every day as well in spite of the cold.
Christina was more motivated than ever to becoming strong, but this was also the happiest I had seen her since her dad died. Part of it was the thrill of having her mom back, but a big part of it seemed to be her sense of accomplishment with all the people she helped free. Christina had always been the type of person that wanted to help other people, and now she had the power to do even more for people and wanted to use it.
Our relationship was better than ever as well. Christina spent several hours a day spending time with her mom, running, or checking in on the town hall, but the rest of the time, she did her best to spend with me. With it being so cold, she was more than content spending a lot of time cuddling in the morning and evening, and we would just sit around talking. She didn’t wear as much of the lingerie that the Princess had sent her due to the cold, but she looked beautiful no matter what she wore.
In a way, it felt like a honeymoon phase of our relationship. The biggest thing I struggled with was the truth. Maybe we hadn’t been together for long enough, but I wanted to ask Christina to take that next step in our relationship. Whether I was William or Archaeus, I knew that Christina was the woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. The problem was, I still couldn’t tell her the truth. I wanted to believe that it wouldn’t make a difference to her, but what would I think if I found out the person I cared about was two people in one body and couldn’t even tell the truth about one of them?
I’m not sure what my hope was of ever being able to tell her the truth. At the end of the day, there was nothing so far that would lead me to believe that I would gain that ability. John was even worse off than me. Being a character that cared so much about the greater good made it easy to function in a fantasy world. Honestly, it felt good too. I had never been a paragon of justice in my world by any means but helping people as Archaeus just felt right. I shared in how much he wanted to protect the people he cared about at the very least.
Really, the only major downsides of being Archaeus were practically negligible. I couldn’t pick up random women, and I had to have a special occasion to drink alcohol. There had been some other minor things that made me taking things slower with Christina, but those had been the only major things, and they really weren’t things I would want to do. I didn’t really care for the idea of picking up random women, but I had tried when I first got here because of how blatantly I was hit on, and what guy wouldn’t want to take advantage of that. I was a loyal person when in a relationship regardless, and I loved Christina. I had never really cared much for alcohol either, so where was the downside.
John, on the other hand, had to be Kreego. In our world, John was a little goofy, but he was overall a professional individual that was serious about most things. He was also gay, and while I had only known him for a few years, apparently he came out pretty early in life and had only even tried to date women for a very short stint in his life. Kreego was a kleptomaniac horn dog that couldn’t even form a proper sentence. Truthfully, I loved Kreego as a character, but I’m sure that John was kicking himself all over the place having to stay in character as Kreego.
At the very least, Kreego was chaotic good. He had started out Chaotic Neutral, but Dan let him shift alignments over time as he spent more and more time with the group. His klepto tendencies sometimes made it difficult, but a lot of times, he would steal things without realizing it and then give it back, typically without the person he stole from even realizing anything was missing. His habit of hitting on women was awful. He tended to go after more attractive women, but as he put it, each race had its own unique form of beauty, and he could appreciate all of it. He would hit on humans, dwarves, elves, gnomes, goblins, and pretty much any other humanoid race you could name.
I couldn’t imagine how that must be for him. I had role-played a gay character before, and if I had ended up in this world and couldn’t stop myself from hitting on men, how would that have made me feel? I had played quite a few female characters too over the years, so I guess I just needed to be grateful that I had ended up as a man.
I was in the tavern having lunch. I was at a table by myself, but Christina was sitting in the corner by the bar playing with her little brother. Suddenly, a loud bang broke the relative silence of the day. Grigear started crying immediately, and Christina picked him up trying to console the child. Several men in the tavern stood up.
“What in the world was that?!” Geoffrey questioned.
A few moments later, we heard the noise again.
The worst part was that I was pretty certain I recognized what the sound had been. Archaeus probably didn’t, but William did. It wasn’t a noise that I was exceptionally familiar with, but I was still certain I knew it. I moved for the door and noticed that Christina had handed Grigear to her mother and was following me. I didn’t want her to come with me just in case, but Archaeus didn’t know that, so I couldn’t say it.
When I stepped out on the street, I saw Kreego hurrying from his house. Our eyes met for a few moments, and I felt that there was an understanding between us we couldn’t express. The sound wasn’t very far away, but it felt like we were walking forever. It was coming from just behind the forge, which was only a few buildings down. When we got there, the smith, Lendon, and Phillip were all standing outside gathered around looking at something that Lendon was holding and talking about.
“I don’t know exactly how it works. The letter explained some of it, but I don’t think he fully understood it either. Apparently, these ‘bullets’ have black powder that explodes inside them, and it uses the explosion to shoot a small piece of metal. He said it’s really effective, but I don’t really know how such a small piece of metal could be.”
Phillip looked up. “Hey, Archaeus, you need to check this thing out. Have you ever seen anything like it?”
Lendon turned around and held up a small weapon. It was a revolver that really looked like something out of the Old West. One of my friends had a .45 revolver that was fr
om like the 1850s, and this was pretty close to that. When I approached, he handed me the weapon. It was heavy for its size and was solid black with a dark wooden grip. I pulled out the cylinder and looked inside the large chambers. They were bigger than expected. I pulled back the hammer and looked at the spring inside it. The device was exceptionally well made considering the apparent tech level of the world.
He held up a bullet and showed it to me. It looked like a pretty traditional bullet. I had expected percussion caps that had to be loaded given the age of the gun, but it looked like the person who had done this at least upgraded to complete preloaded shells. This was the first I’d heard about any kind of firearm in this world. Part of me expected that a flintlock might be feasible, but this was definitely something from my world. Not only was it something from my world, but I knew it rather than getting some block that told me I didn’t have the knowledge of it. That made me assume that it wasn’t something made by someone from this world, but how could that have happened when we couldn’t even use our world’s knowledge?
“No, I’ve never seen anything like it.” I heard Archaeus say.
I handed the gun to Kreego who looked it over closely for a few moments. “Kreego never see either.”
Kreego stared at me and for another few minutes, I felt we had a mental conversation. He was just as interested in this mysterious object as I was.
“So, where did you get it?” I asked.
“My brother sent it to me. Apparently, this small thing is worth a fortune, but he is a master blacksmith that had traveled to the Kanna Republic to learn some new techniques from the smiths there. He was working while he was there to be able to afford his stay when some new inventor approached him. Apparently, this was the first working prototype they developed. It’s called a gun, and it shoots these things called bullets. This inventor guy let him keep the first two he made and six hundred bullets. He sent me this with two hundred bullets. He said he can make more bullets, but the black powder he can get is apparently not as refined as what this guy used and doesn’t work nearly as well.”
So, they did have black powder here beforehand, but I guess not of the quality in this. “Did he by chance say the name of this inventor?”
“Umm… It’s in the letter. I think he said the guy’s name was Dan or something.”
“Where he at?” Kreego asked excitedly.
“Please, do you know anything else, Lendon? I need to find this person.”
“Not a lot, unfortunately. I do know that my brother was working in the capital of the Kanna Republic. I would imagine though that someone who can make this couldn’t be hard to find.”
He was right. Someone that could make this wouldn’t be hard to find. Not only that, but I could understand what all of this meant in spite of it conflicting with what Archaeus would know. This had to be Dan. Dan had degrees in both mechanical and chemical engineering. He didn’t really talk about work, which technically I don’t think he was allowed to, but he was a civilian contractor working for the DOD. He could easily have made a gun like this even with the reduced technology level of the world. I had assumed in this world he was a god, but even if he was, maybe the fact that he didn’t have a character meant he wasn’t restricted to using his outside knowledge. That being said, why would he need a gun if he was a god? Maybe my assumption had been wrong.
“Is something wrong, Archaeus? Could this be one of your friends?” Christina asked.
I tried to tell her yes, but not the ones I had talked about. Unfortunately, I got a prompt that I hadn’t seen in a while and instead said, “No, it couldn’t be, but I need to find this Dan.”
“Then, let’s go find him,” Christina said.
“Kreego in.”
I looked at the two of them and was thankful for having both of them here. I was already reunited with one of my friends from my world and for once had a promising lead on finding another. I loved Christina with all of my heart and knew that I would go to the ends of the earth for her, and she would do the same for me. For the first time since coming here, I realized that I loved this new world. Maybe I shouldn’t, but between meeting Christina and having the chance to adventure as a powerful hero, this really was an amazing opportunity. I knew that I still needed to be cautious, and it was important that I found and protected my friends, but rather than dreading it, I was looking forward to the challenge.
I took Christina’s hand and looked at Kreego. “I guess we need to prepare for our next adventure.”
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