Insistent Assistant 5 (Patreon)

Insistent Assistant

Chapter 5

-VB-

After a month at the sea, we arrived at Ilsia Kingdom. I decided to be generous to the pirates… and merely took all of their loot.

Oh, I left the supplies they would need, but all of their money and weapons - ranged and melee - as well as their gunpowder was taken so they wouldn’t be able to do piracy anymore. After all, the high seas are dangerous enough with weapons; it was suicidal to journey without one or other abilities to defend oneself.

It was my way of “killing” the pirates without killing the people. If they decided to go back and I encountered them again… Well, I will do what I must do and rectify my mistakes in having let them go.

But that’s the river future-me has to cross.

Right now, I was in the Ilsia Kingdom and didn’t know what to do next.

Oh, sure. I was going to keep training with Thorkell, but I wasn’t in the wild anymore. I could go back out into the wild and live as I had on that island. It shouldn’t even be too hard. However…

“Oh. My. God.” Thorkell whirled around and grinned at me. In front of him was a window with his hands planted firmly against the glass. On the other side of that window was a pair of axes, and even I could tell that they were some fancy good shit.

“Thorkell, I don’t have money to spare.”

“B-But axes!”

“No, Thorkell. Would you rather sleep in the forest outside of the city or in a bed?”

The giant vikinger withered. He looked at the axes longingly before he turned away.

“I hate you, Thorkell,” I grumbled as I slept on a three layers of thin blanket and one layer of blanket on top of me. Thorkell also slept like that right next to me, but he had his pair of axes cuddled in his bosoms.

I paid for that, you bitch.

The man looked so happy.

He also smiled like a loon when he told me the next day that I would be training specifically to be a “passable axeman.”

-VB-

As time passed by once again, I found myself once again wondering about my purpose in this new world.

And let me be clear, I was not thinking about what I merely wanted to do. I thought about the kind of people I would meet, the mark I would leave behind in this world, and the wild adventures that might come my way, because fucking hell, I would be very dumb not to take this chance!

But the adventure was the journey. What did I want to do? What did I want to make that mark of mine?

“You’re-!”

I jolted and ducked, only to get kicked in the stomach. I gagged as I flew away from Thorkell, sailing through the air like a rubber ball before crashing into the trunk of a pine tree. My hardened body tore through the trunk of a tree thicker than I was and then continued on some more. I crashed face-first into the ground and then tumbled twice before rolling to a stop.

But I didn’t get a rest after that harsh treatment. No, when I opened my eyes, I saw Thorkell in the sky, jumping towards me.

I rolled away and then jumped up just as Thorkell landed where I’d come to a stop.

“DISTRACTED!” he roared gleefully.

“I KNOW!” I roared back at him.

He swung with his wooden club from his left to right and from top to bottom: a classic diagonal slash. Instead of dodging backward, I leaned sideways to my left and stepped around his attack.

And then the bastard did the absurd. He stopped his diagonal slash (clubbing?) halfway through, stopped right at his waist (my chest) and swung at me.

This time, I ducked down, rolled away, and got back up just as he was ready to strike me again.

He swung.

I jumped… forward.

He got into his guard and tried to kick him in the groin, because there was no other way I was going to win against him.

He instead kneed me in the stomach. I saw it coming and got my left knee and arms down into a guard.

Not that it helped because he broke through my guard and slammed me in the chest with that knee strike. Still, it had slowed it down enough that I wasn’t sent flying like last time. As much as it hurt, he put me through worse. I jumped up and decked him in the jaws… which did nothing.

I might be getting better with my pain tolerance, battlefield perception, and even multiple weapons, but my strength wasn’t exactly up there.

Thorkell grinned down at me. There was a thud behind me just as both of his hands were my shoulders, gripping me tightly and locking me into place.

“Ah, shi-”

Then he headbutted me.

I crumbled under that one attack and twitched on the moss-covered forest floor.

“Aw, man. Already? It’s only been ten minutes!”

Tehn muuneets o’ ‘e ‘ettin’ m’ shi’ ‘icked in…

He crouched down and poked me.

“Alan, you still there?” He poked me again. “Oi, you better be in good shape. I want my lunch.”

Fuck you.