Chapter 14: A New Career

It was late afternoon by the time David finally woke up. He still felt mildly lightheaded, but it wasn't enough to make him dizzy or anything. When he sat up, he noticed "lunch" in front of him. The only reason he'd hesitate to call it lunch is because of what it consisted of; a large piece of steak, with a side of kale and spinach, beans, and a bowl of dried fruit. This felt more like dinner with an appetizer than lunch. He looked over to Alice who was sitting at her desk looking at him amused. 

"You got to eat a lot to grow up big and strong like me!" She said while flexing her skinny arm laughing all the while. "But no, seriously, you lost a lot of blood, eating all that will go a long way to help you recover." She said seriously, hiding her worry. 

"Got it." David said as he eyes the food. "But don't you think this is a bit too much?" 

"Eh, don't worry, you can't finish what you can't finish." Alice said nonchalantly. 

"The people at the house tell me the same thing, but I still don't like wasting food." David said as he pokes at the steak. 

"Well how about this then." Alice said with a big smile on her face. "I'll eat whatever you don't finish!" 

"Aren't you normally on a diet you glutton?" David said sarcastically while he began eating. 

"Hey! I'll have you know I take my diet very seriously!" She yells at David, miffed. "But I can still have my cheat days too..." She said significantly quieter this time. 

After the meal was done the rest of the day proceeded normally, until it was time to leave. 

"Ah before you go." Alice said as David was standing up. "Starting tomorrow your knight training will begin for a month, you will report to the training ground in the east wing. It will probably take all day, so you don't have to bother coming here." Alice said and then paused slightly saddened by this fact. Picking up on this David walks over to her and ruffles her hair. 

"Don't worry I'll make sure to drop by on occasion to make sure you don't get lonely." David said with a sarcastic grin. Alice swats his hand away and shoos him out the door after forcing the letter of knighthood into his hand. As David walked down the hall heading home, he thought again about what an insurmountable job he had ahead of him, he was tasked with creating a medieval intelligence agency, he had a lot of homework to do, a lot of books to read, and probably twice as many problems to work out. And with that thought he headed home.

The next day he did as Alice instructed and headed to the east wing of the Palace. There he saw numerous vampires all training, be it with swords, spear or bow, nearly all of them were practicing. There was one who seemed to clearly be in charge so David headed over to him. 

"Sir," He began, getting the instructor's attention. "I've been told to come here today to begin my training." He said while holding out the paper. Without even looking at the paper the instructor looks David up and down, noticing he's human and scowls. 

"You're in the wrong place, leave now before I get the guards to throw you out." He said aggressively. 

"Actually sir, I am in the right place, The King has ordered me here." David said not willing to take any shit from the instructor. He thrusts the letter a little closer to him. Upon hearing the mention of the King, he swiped the paper and looked at it. 

"So, are you Henry?" He said looking at the name on the paper. 

"Sir, with all due respect." David said, already sick of this instructor. "I'm not illiterate, we both know it said my name on the paper, David Lee Williams." The instructor thrusted the paper back into David's hand.

"Go grab a sword and get over there, instruction will begin in a few minutes." He said with some malice. 

As he watched David leave and go grab a sword, he could only scowl to himself. He has always hated humans, they are weak, pathetic, but most importantly every human he has ever met has been spineless and lacked motivation. It's not like he liked every vampire he has ever taught, but there never was a human he's met that has even mildly lived up to his expectations, this human was going to be no different. 

After grabbing the sword and getting to the indicated spot he begins stretching which gets him some odd looks from some of the other vampires there. He didn't care though, outside of the princess' office the whole castle was hostile to him. There was no difference here, be it the stares of bemusement or hatred, he just ignored it all. It didn't even matter that the instructor didn't like him, all he was concerned about was finishing this training and getting out of here. A few minutes go by before actual instruction begins. The day is broken up into three parts. Morning where they all practice their swordsmanship, spear skills, archery, and the like. The Afternoon, where they go inside for tactical, theory, and leadership training. And after a short lunch break, they have practice matches. After it all they all went home near sundown. The area was still open to anyone that wanted to stay but no one did. Except for David, He had barely learned anything on the first day. This time however it had nothing to do with discrimination. The simple fact was, the minimum skill level of all the prospective knights was just much higher than David had. Even putting aside the gap in powers with David's human body only barely keeping up with the vampires, due to his exercise regimen he kept up. He was still behind in all the other areas; David had never wielded a sword before and the swordsmanship that was being taught seemed to favor the speed, strength, and flexibility of a vampire too highly. He had never used a spear before and therefore his thrusting skill was laughable at best, and worst of all he was a failure at archery. 

Lack of skill could not explain David's abysmal ability with the bow, he knew the theory, he saw what others were doing, but he could barely get an arrow to loose, let alone hitting the target. Then when it came to sparring, one would expect that they would just not bother having him come up because he wouldn't be a match, instead it was the opposite, he was sparring nearly the entire time. They treated him like a punching bag, even though they were using wooden swords and spears, and even with their strength held back he still got pummeled. Apparently, the vampire he fought back during the raid was nothing like a knight, he stood no chance against these guys. His failure to show any sort of skill however had an interesting effect. At the beginning of the day he was looked at with scorn by most of the others there, but by the day's end, he had unwillingly become the class clown. The instructor aside, nearly everyone found him to be hilarious even going so far as to joke with him. Perhaps it was because he was just proving the superiority of the Vampire race, or perhaps it was something else, but the mood had improved.

Despite that David would have preferred that they still looked at him with scorn. At least that way he could just ignore them, it was hard to ignore them when they were constantly coming up to him to "talk" to him. So, with the little he learned that day, he kept training in the field until the moon hung high in the sky. The next day he came in early to begin practicing as soon as possible, but unlike the night when everyone had left as soon as they were done, the field was packed with people. He found it incredibly hard to practice alone with everyone constantly bugging him. 

This whole process repeated itself for 6 days including David continually training at night. After all this time David had begun to understand some things. First, like he originally thought, the imperial swordsmanship they taught was not something he could learn, of course he could theoretically master a watered down version, but the Imperial swordsmanship which consisted of mostly of thrusts to pierce the enemy or strong sweeps to kill multiple enemies at once, was entirely built, from the ground up, for Vampires. In fact, the style focused almost exclusively on killing humans, the piercing strikes were used to swiftly eliminate individuals and the sweeping motions were used to incapacitate a large number at once. This was reflected in the sparring as well, the reason they kept putting him in to spar was so that the vampires could see how effective the techniques worked on an actual human. In other words, it was pointless for him to learn, no matter how in shape he got, he could never mimic the motions that the other knights did. 

The second thing he noticed is that in the middle of the day, the so-called "theory class" was so wrong it actually hurt him to listen to. It seems that this world took the "medieval" part of "medieval" warfare seriously. Rather than following in the footsteps of great generals like Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, or Hannibal Barca, none of which existed in this world of course, the "theory course" taught that war was won by the individual. That a single knight could change the course of battle with "individual glory" and by "acting on their own." The concept of unit cohesion was nonexistent. Judging by how they talked about war, in this world war was nothing but two giant mobs throwing themselves at each other without a plan. Just listening made him think Sun Tzu was rolling in his grave. Every time they spoke of the "feebleness" of human morale and skill, all he could think about was how a well-trained army could stomp over these knights who just throw themselves at the enemy. It was embarrassing, especially when he thought that he is now part of this rabble that calls themselves an "army." The only things that he had actually learned in this class had to do with the chain of command, which, unsurprisingly, was sparse. 

Basically in the order of ranks from the bottom up there was footmen, which made up the majority of the army mostly staffed by humans, then there were knights, officers that took command of the footmen, then paladins which were in charge of multiple knights or larger groups of footmen and then there was the generals whose jobs need no introduction. In special cases where a more rigid chain of command was required, special sub ranks can be awarded temporarily but in general these were the 4 ranks. All of it made no sense, no matter how backwards this world was, these so called "superior" vampires had the military strategy of cavemen. David was no military historian, but he felt even an idiot could see that their tactics were just a good way for people to die.

All of that aside, on the sixth day, during the sparring, David had a breakthrough. He was, as usual, struggling to keep up, when he, in a moment of panic, changed the positioning of his sword and managed to block a blow. Of course, the moment didn't last long. Only second after he managed that he was beaten down. And while none of the knights seemed to realize what David had done, the instructor did, still though he said nothing as practice continued. 

Later that night while David was practicing alone, he felt a presence watching him. He had become much more sensitive to such things due to being on the run in the forest for 2 months, it could almost be called a sixth sense. But despite feeling this presence he didn't feel threatened by it, so he just continued practicing. After a while of being watched the person steps out of the shadows, revealing himself to be the instructor. 

"You always practice late at night like this." He said as he got closer to the area David was practicing in. 

"There are too many people in the morning, it is annoying." David said as he continued training. The last person he wanted to see right now was his bigoted instructor but there was nothing he could do about it, the least he could do was passively ignore him. 

"During the morning training, sparring sessions, and even late at night you never slack." He said without his usual aggressive attitude. "I gotta know, why are you trying so hard?" 

"Do I need a reason to try hard?" David said, finally stopping for a moment deciding to just get this conversation over with as soon as possible. 

"If I'm going to do something then I might as well put my all into it." He said wiping some of his sweat off his body with his towel. "Besides, I have someone to protect now." David said as he thought of Alice. 

"I may have misjudged you; I was wrong. I'm sorry." He said rather stiffly, but completely genuine. This completely took David by surprise; it was the last thing he expected. 

"I've never met a human that was willing to go all the way. Usually after being thrown into the sparring a few times they beg to be let off, not only did you not complain about it for 6 days, but you also kept up your own individual training." David couldn't believe what he was hearing, the bigoted instructor who had been putting him through hell since he arrived and singling him out every time he could was now giving him a heartfelt apology. 

"It was due to my own prejudice that I didn't recognize you as a warrior. So, to make up for it, allow me to give you some wisdom." 

He said as he walked over to the barrel with all the wooden swords. 

"Earlier, during the sparring session, you managed to block the aspiring knight's strike by taking a stance like this right?" He said as he, with the wooden sword, positioned himself in the same way David had during that match. It was shocking to see, David had spent this entire night trying to recreate just that, to see the instructor so easily replicate it was something amazing. 

"I could tell at a glance whatever this is, is most definitely not the Imperial sword style. However," He takes a few powerful and quick strikes using the same stance David was trying to replicate. 

"This actually might be better for you; I mean I think you've realized by now the Imperial sword style wasn't made for humans." He said with a sheepish grin on his face, a strange look for such a big guy, with all his battle scars. That was it, the thing he had felt during the battle earlier, a sword style that was perfect for him, something that could counter the Imperial sword style that had been constantly beaten into him. 

"I might be taking a risk by doing this, and I may end up regretting this later but..." David thought to himself as he walked over to the instructor. 

"Sir!" David said seriously with a light bow. "Please can you help me develop that sword style?" He knew this was a gamble, but he could tell, despite spending hours on trying to recreate it, he had not done so successfully once. However, his instructor, with maybe an hour of watching him practice and the once instance of it succeeding during his spar, had somehow managed to do it. If David was ever going to learn swordsmanship that would work for him, he would need his instructor's help.

The instructor laughs boisterously. 

"Alright!" He said with a smile. "But I'm sure you already know I train people hard, don't be expecting to back out early just because it is tough!" 

"Of course." David said with a very small grin on his face. 

"Right, tomorrow is the day off training, right? Come here at the normal time tomorrow and we will see what we can do about helping you eh?" He said as he put the sword back into the barrel and then walked off. 

"Thank you, sir!" David said, more energetically than he intended. David decided that there was not much point to continuing any longer anymore, so he stretched a bit and then headed home.

The next day David headed to the Palace but before he headed to the field he had to stop in and say hello to Alice. His visit with her was short and he apologized for it being so, but he promised next break he would visit longer. She let him go after she teased him for a bit and then saw the door close behind him. She had been worried this whole week about him. The knights were notorious for acting superior to other vampires let alone humans. However even though it did not show on his face she could see excitement in his eyes when he talked about training today, despite the fact it was supposed to be his day off. She'd pry the information out of him later, but at least for now she knew he wasn't having a bad time.

David arrived at the field before the instructor and then began stretching. He is still stretching when the instructor arrives. 

"I've wanted to ask for a while now," He said as he arrived in the area. "Why do you do that every time before you begin the training?" David thought a moment about what he was talking about and then realized he was referring to the stretching. 

"Ah, I'm stretching, it helps to loosen up before exercising and helps prevent muscle tears and strain." He said as he changed to the last part of his stretch. 

"Do you think it would help me?" The instructor said with an innocently curious look on his face. Apparently, David had completely misjudged this man when he first met him, what he assumed was a bigoted muscle-headed oaf, was a man who took his job seriously, and who just had high expectations for everyone. It may seem simple but for his instructor, who has probably trained hundreds of knights, to be asking him if something would make him stronger just shows how seriously he takes his job. He doesn't care who gives him information so long as it helps him get stronger or refine his methods. If he was the one that taught the theory class David may have been tempted to mention how backwards it was to him. 

"I'm not sure," David said after thinking for a moment. "Vampire and human bodies are slightly different after all." The instructor looks slightly dejected by this when David suddenly felt like backtracking a bit to make up for it. 

"However, stretching also helps increase flexibility so I can't imagine it not doing something for you." After David said that the instructor perked up a bit. 

"Well if that's the case, I'll have to give it a try sometime then!" He was like a big kid; it was quite a strange juxtaposition. After that they began training the new sword style David found. They sparred over and over and over. They kept sparing and every time David was disarmed or fell, he would get back up and ask to go again. It got to the point where the instructor had to call for a break because, despite not being tired himself yet, David had overworked himself and had yet to admit it, he needed a break and lunch was a perfect excuse. After lunch they continued sparring, they even continued after the sun had gone down. Even though the moon was out giving the area some light, he was surprised at David's nighttime visual acuity. 

Vampires are known for their adaptive eyes, helping them see in the dark, however humans are not known for such things so to see David, a human, still fighting just as well at night was an odd sight. Eventually they called it a night and David thanked him for his help. After David had left the instructor pulled out the sword David had been using and examined it, the wear on the weapon had become quite significant, in just one day the sword had received so much abuse, David had received at least this much, if not more abuse during the day and yet did not complain once. If there was ever going to be a human he liked, it was going to be this one. He might think too much when he fights, his footwork might be sloppy, and his skill with a bow might be nonexistent, but the fire in his eyes, the desire to push on and keep fighting, that he liked a lot. And with that thought he too headed home.

The effect of that night's training was not immediately noticed, for a little over a week training went on as normal, with David losing all of his practice spars, the only difference was that instead of the instructor choosing David to take part most of the time, it was in fact David volunteering. Then, as he was doing a practical spar with one of the less talented aspiring knights, it clicked for him. David was not a gifted swordsman; he had survived in this world by using his wit and creating advantages for him to level the playing field. However, as he stood on the stage sparring, the vampire could not land a blow, every time he swung whether it was a stab or a swipe, David seemed to be prepared for it and was able to parry or block it. In truth David had gotten better at "seeing" the moves of the vampires after fighting with them so many times, he had learned to pay attention to not the movements of the sword but their arms, shoulders, waist, and feet, all of these tell the story of where and how they will strike, thus he can almost predict what they are going to do before they do it. David with his sword held out in front of him looked like an impregnable wall to this young knight. David had learned a sword style similar to the one used in kendo, rather than a fencing style that focused on piercing moves, this style focused on light taps to the opponent's sword to parry it or redirect it from its original course, it was a very defensive sword style so it did not give David much time to attack but ultimately that was not his goal. For the first time since he began his training with the knights more than 2 weeks ago, he ran out the timer and fought the knight to a standstill.

 It was not a victory, no one could say that David had won on the stage that day, but as far as David was concerned, he won, beating a vampire might be out of the question, but fending them off? If he was able to do that it didn't matter how overwhelming the vampire is. If he can buy time, a properly thought out strategy could win in the long run. However, it did not take long for his hopes to get dashed because immediately in his next fight he once again failed to survive. However even in that fight where he lost so badly, he managed to make some headway, everyone there could tell that David had improved even if only a little bit. 

Despite this, David felt like he had achieved a great feat that day, so much so that for the first time he did not stay late and instead went to visit Alice to tell her of his news. Even with him withholding much of his enthusiasm, she could still see how excited he was of his "small victory." She didn't really see the value in what he had achieved, after all not being able to beat your enemy was no better than losing, but she was happy that he was happy. It was getting late so David was then preparing to head home but before he did, he said something to her that caught her off guard. 

"With this, I might be able to protect you soon!" She was stunned, he was going to protect her? Was he taking the knighting ceremony that seriously? He was a human, although they were great friends by this point, if push came to shove, she would be the one to protect him, right? He was no pushover for sure, but that doesn't change the fact he's human. Still though, as she looked at his face full of enthusiasm from his brazen new declaration, she could only smile at him. 

"Yes, I think you will, thank you." She said sweetly as she saw him leave.