Duellist's Road: No Shortcuts - A LitRPG Fantasy Adventure Read online

  Duellist's Road

  Book 1 - No Shortcuts

  Rafael Kalleen

  Copyright © 2021 Rafael Kalleen

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are entirely fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or deceased, is coincidental and not intended by the author. No part of this book may be reproduced or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in an form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Dedication

  Even now I struggle with thanking everyone who made this book possible, because there are simply too many of them.

  Very likely I need to address my fencing friends, who patiently helped me act out some of the fights and moves in this story so that I could write them as authentically as possible.

  I also can’t forget those friends I have never met in person, the world people at the twobestfriendsplay subreddit who were very interested when I talked about fencing and encouraged me to write a book. Not to mention how that bizarre sense of humour kept me sane during the covid lockdown!

  Lady luck is to thank as well, because if not for a particular set of circumstances I would never have gotten involving with fencing at all and thus could never have written this book.

  A big thanks to the author KamikazePotato as well who gave me invaluable advice.

  Katie—you know how invaluable you were to me actually finishing this process. And you asked to be in the dedications page while fencing me, which I think makes my drunken agreement legally binding.

  Chapter 1

  Carr

  Looking back on it, I was a bit of a mess after I died.

  Now, don’t get me wrong, I feel like I would have hated this new world even if I hadn’t died under those circumstances…but it probably wouldn’t have been as bad. Maybe my sense of self-preservation would have kicked in. At that time, I felt like I was almost just looking for a place to die one more time. Maybe I would have found one too, if he hadn’t been my first opponent.

  I couldn’t say I understood this world much—but then again, I hadn’t really made an effort to. Have you ever tried to care about something after you died once already? It’s really, really difficult. Frankly, I think nine times out of ten I would have just gone on wandering about the world until I eventually died again.

  But this world caught my attention in a way that I couldn’t ignore.

  It was a world ruled by swords; not through war, but through duelling. Swordsmanship was less a tool of war and more of a sport, yet it ruled everyone and everything. Back on Earth there had been, once upon a time, such a thing as Trial by Combat—but here it felt like everything was determined by combat. It was a world where the economy to the magic system revolved around swordsmanship. It should have been an amazing world to someone like me, who loved fencing more than anything else, but it wasn’t.

  People didn’t really fight with their own skills. They fought with their magic [Skills]. A magical type of swordsmanship assigned to them from birth that guided their swords with very little input from its user. There were many different [Skills] that people could become better at, but their [Swordsmanship] was different; it never changed.

  Someone with higher [Swordsmanship] would never lose to someone with lower stats, unless the difference was so numerically minuscule as to not matter. It was an immutable law of this world created by its God.

  And I wanted to stab that God in the face and prove him wrong.

  Not with his [Skills], mind you.

  I wanted to stab him with my actual skills.

  The ones I earned myself by working hard on the piste every day.

  Every breath this God takes is an assault to my pride and I shall not let it go unanswered.

  My answer to this insult, I hoped, would be quick and emphatic—but hopes aside, it seemed more likely that this would probably end with my death. Quite frankly, in the little time I had spent on this world, I had come to make some assumptions about how this magical [Swordsmanship] worked but wasn’t certain of anything. If I was right, I would make my point and maybe distract myself from the fact my best friend betrayed and murdered me. If I was wrong, I would probably die.

  Eh. I already died once.

  Were those magic [Skills] beatable by my own real skills earned through hard work? Possibly. If it followed the rules I had observed, the answer was a solid ‘maybe.’ If it in fact followed no observable rules and was just impossible magic with varying effects, I would die a miserable death.

  Either way was fine with me. Hard to care about living when you've already died once. It was hard to care about anything, really. But I still cared about fencing.

  This was petty of me, I knew. After seeing what that bastard had done to obtain this magic, I was naturally very averse to it—the fact that it felt like it made light of the activity I had dedicated my life to only made my hatred more intense.

  “Sir?” the attendant asked. She seemed concerned, as if trying and failing to find a way to politely inform me my presence was not wanted. “Are you—a foreigner?”

  By strict definition of the word, I probably was. “Is that an issue? I heard you had an open spot after one of the duellists forfeited and I’m here to volunteer.”

  “Participation is fine but sir—!” Her voice was scandalized. “Forgive me for my bluntness, but your [Swordsmanship] level is...you understand, yes?” she asked in a low voice. She looked around after saying so, as if bringing up the topic of my [Swordsmanship] in public was indiscreet. “It wouldn’t be much of a fight, sir. You would die and the participation prize wouldn’t cover the costs for treating your injuries.”

  “Not much of a fight is better than no fight at all. No one else wants to fight your Champion, do they?” I asked. “And you guys sold a lot of tickets already, didn’t you?”

  “We have,” she admitted. “Even so, you must understand that if you fight him, you will—“

  “Die? Oh yeah, almost certainly,” I acknowledged. It really was the most likely outcome but that hardly concerned me. “But dying is my right.” I threw my registration papers across the table. “And I believe it is not your right to deny me such.”

  She met my eyes, uneasily at first, but nodded firmly a moment later, as if the hesitation had never been there. “Your name is—Carr?”

  “Yeah, it is.”

  “That’s an…odd name,” she said, hesitantly. She’s not sure whether I’ll be offended or not, it seems.

  “It was an odd name back home too. Usually more of a last name but—“ I abruptly stopped. They didn’t really have last names here, more of a weird title based on their origin. Better not to draw more attention to myself. “Anyhow—my duel starts soon, yes?”

  The attendant smiled at me and gestured at a door behind her. “You may go through. Your match will start in around an hour and forty five minutes.”

  “That sounds…oddly precise. Any chance of a delay?”

  “Hardly,” she replied proudly. “We factored in both the [Swordsmanship] and the [Sword] values—unless we are really bad at time-managing what goes on between matches, we feel pretty confident about predicting how long the matches themselves will take.”

  I nodded, and we exchanged pleasantries for a moment. My guess was that she expected me to die and thought it was her duty to make me feel taken care of and well-liked for a moment. In this, she succeeded. Our talk was very nice and I found myself enjoying her presence quite a bit. Granted, I enjoyed most conversations I had after that year or so in the void, but she was still very nice t
o talk to and appeared to be enjoying our conversation as well.

  I took this opportunity to look at her for a second—she was tall, though not as tall as me, and had long, light blonde hair that could perhaps be better described as ashen. She smiled politely, and it occurred to me that if she was the last person I had a conversation with, that would be fine with me.

  It was really strange to think of your own death so casually. To be frank, my death felt almost desirable at that point. It felt wrong to be alive after what had happened. Johan…

  “Good luck,” the attendant said, and she appeared to sincerely mean it. Here she almost broke down her pretence of cheerfulness, like she was bidding me farewell before my execution.

  Hell, maybe she was.

  “Thanks,” I replied. “I’ll need it,” I added. I had meant it as a joke, but by the end my laughter turned almost nervous. For the first time, I questioned my decision. Was it really worth dying over?

  Yes, it was. A bird that cannot fly, a fish that cannot swim, a fencer that cannot fence—they’d all sooner die. It wasn’t as though I really wanted to risk my life. It’s just that I felt, deep within myself, that if I were to take a single step back from here, that the man I always wanted to be would die. My body already died once. I can’t let the last remnant of myself die too.

  It was childish. I knew that. But if a man couldn’t hang on to at least one childish notion, why even bother living? Cling on to your childishness, and defend it, until you don’t enjoy doing it anymore. My coach had taught me that. And by god, I still loved fencing.

  “It’s time,” someone called. It wasn’t the same attendant from before. I nodded, and followed them through the tunnel and into the arena.

  The crowd welcomed me with deafening cheers. The cheers weren’t for me, of course, but for either the massacre that was about to unfold, or for the noble standing across from me, dressed in elegant clothing and basking in the adoration from everyone. He stood at the centre of the arena with his eyes closed, smirking slightly and raising his sword to the sky.

  Even having only been in the city for a few days, I already knew his name. Valle the Champion, they called him. The brown haired noble sported a fancy cloak around his shoulder that he threw up in the air emphatically as if to signal his readiness to fight. He played to the crowd, who chanted his name rhythmically.

  I expected him to be a boastful, arrogant sort based on his reputation—but he seemed quite focused, almost like an athlete from back on Earth. Instead, the arrogance came from the announcer, who held some sort of device—it looked like a microphone but I knew it wasn’t—and screamed in our general direction.

  “WELCOME ALL! DESPITE THE UNFORTUNATE WITHDRAWAL EARLIER, A CHALLENGER HAS SHOWN HIMSELF BRAVE ENOUGH TO CHALLENGE OUR CHAMPION!”

  There was so much I hated about that man’s voice. There was so much sheer arrogance, as if he was boasting about himself and not the man in front of me. To make things worse, the stadium shook with excitement in response to his words.

  I grit my teeth and walked toward Valle hoping to force the duel to start soon. I could handle dying, but I could not handle one more minute of listening to this announcer.

  INTRODUCING FIRST, FROM THE SOUTH CORNER, THE DEFENDING CHAMPION, WITH A STREAK OF 97 WINS, THE CITY OF CRESTA’S VERY OWN, THE INVINCIBLE VALLE!

  The crowd cheered again, as if attempting to outdo its earlier outburst. My ears hurt from the sound.

  VALLE OF CRESNA, SON OF THE CITY LORD, BOASTS THE HIGHEST [SWORDSMANSHIP] THE CITY HAS EVER SEEN! OUR SHINING RAY OF HOPE!

  Numbers floated right above his head, and the crowd ooh’d and ah’d, as if they were witnessing a sign of competence rather than luck. As if he had worked for those numbers instead of being blessed with them from birth.

  [Valle the Champion of Cresna]

  [Swordsmanship] : 735

  [Sword]: 132

  [Duel Record]: 97 Wins, 3 Losses, 0 Draws

  His numbers were by far the highest I had seen since I came to this world. There was more to his stats than I could see—my incompetence dealing with this system meant I couldn’t see other things related to it. That was just fine by me. The only number I cared about increasing myself was my Duel Record—the other stats were rather pointless.

  There was something funny about the difference between how the crowd saw Valle the Champion and how I saw him. To me, he was a privileged cheater who got off on glory he earned by being born not by working hard for it, some bastard that shouldn’t even call himself a fencer. To them, he was their pride and joy—an anomaly born with stats high enough to make this tiny city stand out against the others in the Empire. We were probably both right.

  “AND THE CHALLENGER, FROM THE NORTH CORNER, THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER WHO DARES TO STEP UP AGAINST OUR CHAMPION! NO ONE KNOWS HIS BEST BUT WE DOUBT HE WILL HAVE MUCH OF A FUTURE!”

  The crowd laughed and I couldn’t help but join them. Fair was fair—annoying as the announcer was, he had a point. I was probably going to die, unless my observations happened to be entirely correct. Even then I would still have a good chance of dying.

  This time, the crowd gasped—and I laughed harder. I had expected mockery, but instead I was met with silent shock. This was good too. I couldn’t help but grin at my numbers—if I cared about them, they would be impossible.

  [Carr the Duellist]

  [Swordsmanship]: 0

  [Sword]: 0

  [Duel Record]: 0 Wins, 0 Losses, 0 Draws

  This silent shock soon gave way to a sort of outraged cry. Some out of concern for my safety, and some out of fury that I dared to stand on the same ground their precious Champion of Cresna did.

  It was their very Champion who spoke first.

  “Now, wait a minute!” he cried. There was both shock and concern in his voice, and he looked at me not in disgust but in pity. “Hard as it might be to find opponents for me, this should not be allowed! I’m a duellist, not a murderer! Even if this match is to points rather than [Death] I just might kill this poor creature by accident!”

  A loud road from the crowd indicated they agreed with him.

  “Lord Valle is right!”

  “This isn’t fair!”

  “Why is that mad man even standing across from him?”

  “Spare the mad man! Even I could beat him, he shouldn’t stand against Valle!”

  They raised very fair points. I was indeed a mad man.

  I was a man who was very mad that those insolent peasants thought that this spoiled brat in front of me was better than me. Better or not, he could still kill me. I would do well to remember that. But it was hard to control my anger right now.

  More than that, it was appealing to let my anger control me. When I was angry at something I didn’t have to think—I didn’t have to remember.

  “Look here, my good man,” he pleaded, “I wish you no harm. Nor do I wish to harm your pride in suggesting this, yet…well!” Valle stopped suddenly and his eyes moved toward my numbers. “We can see the end of this road, should we choose to walk down it. Please surrender. No one would think less of you if you did.”

  “That’s not true,” I answered. “I would.”

  “You are no swordsman!” he cried. “Please, reconsider.”

  “I’m no swordsman,” I agreed. Valle appeared relieved, until I added, “I’m a fencer.” And today I become a duellist.

  His hesitation was clear. “I have fought people with low [Swordsmanship] before and I mean not to make light of their courage. Those people, however, had [Swords] to help them with the matter. You lack even a magic sword, do you not?”

  I tapped my trusty old friend—the one thing that had come with me from the other world aside from the clothes on my back. The one I had once gifted to Danner, before everything went to hell. The one thing that had survived my encounter with Johan and the Grim Reaper. My epee. “Indeed. It doesn’t have a sharp end either. There’s a button at the end, though it shouldn’t do anything without electricity…not
that you’d understand what I’m saying.”

  Valle very much didn’t. He just shook his head, exasperated. “Please understand, I mean no harm to you. I just want a fair fight.”

  He is a good man, I thought, and this realization took me by surprise. Considering how no one in this world had to actually work for their skills handling a blade I had naturally assumed that the privileged noble who was a local champion on top of that would have been an arrogant fool. This wasn’t the case. Confident, yes…but not arrogant. I was keenly aware that I was the faithless old villain here, trying to push my ideals onto a world that had no reason to subscribe to them, rejecting this man’s kindness.

  I could have tried to make a bunch of moral justifications in my head.

  “It wasn’t fair that people’s [Swordsmanship] determined their status here!”

  True, it was unfair that people determined how to live and die based on things beyond their control. This was an unfair magic system.

  “This system allowed for a privileged class to exist!”

  True, it appeared like the skill was to a degree inheritable and this made the system unfair in several other ways as well.

  “It’s dangerous for so few people to be so strong!”

  True, I could see the danger in that, theoretically. They could abuse their power, surely.

  But in reality, none of those reasons were why I was standing right there.

  In my world, swordsmanship was my life. I was a World Champion Epee fencer and was very competent in other forms of swordsmanship—knowledgeable of HEMA but frankly more interested in the sport than anything else. I was an athlete, not a historian, and even the best historical fencing training wasn’t good enough to prepare you for a real duel. No, I was an athlete and I loved fencing for being a sport.

  Back on Earth, swordsmanship was something you earned. My friends, rivals and enemies all worked really hard to get to where they were. We studied our own habits, reviewed videos of our matches, ate right, exercised frequently, and the amount of effort we put into the sport, the amount of our life that we put into it…it was something beautiful! Our fencing was a reflection of the life we lived, and win or lose, I was always proud of that. Remembering the wonderful matches I had with my friends still brought a smile to my face.