##Blessed Knight

"Alright, I'm ready." Sir Graham sits in the middle of the clearing with his legs and arms tied together. His sword lies in his teeth. Maddox stands over him with new armor, a new shield, and a new spear.

"Are you sure?" Maddox asks.

"Oh, shall I give you time to acquire more friends?" Graham asks.

"No, you already made me get ten people from the pub. I don't even know them," Maddox replies. The rest of the group nods in agreement.

"Nonsense, one against eleven is still weighted in my favor. Why don't you get ten more?" Graham says.

"Excuse me." A man holding a crossbow raises a hand. "I don't even know what's going on here. I'm just a simple farmer. Can I go?"

"Would you be able to live with the dishonor?" Graham asks.

"Yes." The farmer drops the crossbow and runs.

"Looks like you need one more," Graham says.

"This was supposed to be a simple raid." Maddox rubs his eyes. "I was going to startle you with my knife. Then, you scream and hand over your money. If I knew it would be this much work, I wouldn't have attacked."

"Nonsense. I'm going to go fight Yawed, and I need a warmup," Graham says.

"You're going to fight Yawed?" Maddox blinks a few times. "Alone."

"Yes."

"Screw it. We'll be doing you a favor. Let's get him."

The men swarm the incapacitated knight. Graham reacts by spinning in a circle on the ground. A tornado of dust surrounds him blinding his foes. When they can see, they observe a spinning ball with a blade at the end.

"What the hell?" one man asks.

"I should've gone with the farmer." Another man lays down his armor and fleas. As he runs, a stone hits him in the back.

"You missed your chance to surrender," Graham says. Graham continues his spin and strikes at the rest of the opponents' kneecaps with his sword in quick secession leaving Maddox alone. Maddox's legs shake, and he unfortunately wets himself. Graham stops spinning and stands up straight with the ropes that once bound him on the ground.

"Do you yield?" Graham points his sword. Maddox fires a bolt with his crossbow. Graham waves his sword back and forth turning it in sawdust.

"What magic is this?" Maddox asks.

"The magic of training every day for twenty hard years," Graham laughs and throws a small dart. The dart goes over Maddox's shoulder, hits a tree, hits a rock, hits a branch, hits the dirt, and finally strikes Maddox in the neck. Maddox collapses before Graham.

"That must be one hell of a training regiment." Maddox sputters and squirms. "I think I'm paralyzed."

"A fitting end to an opportunistic raider. I hope Yawed is more challenging." As Graham says this, a dragon flies over head with his possessions in a large sack over his shoulder. "Hmm, looks like he's a coward too. No problem." Graham picks up a spear and tosses it in the air. Yawed quickly descends and crashes into the ground. "I hope whatever town he lands in uses his riches wisely."

"Are you even human?" Maddox asks.

"Yes, but I was blessed by the wizard Talor at birth," Graham says.

"That's nonsense," Maddox spits, "If I had known that, I wouldn't have bothered you."

"Too late. Off to my next challenge," Graham walks away. Maddox screams profanities at him while the recruits wail in agony.

r/AstroRideWrites

"Day 2,429: Sunny, clear, 76 degrees. I think I'm officially out of options." The hero puts the pencil down and closes her journal as she looks around at the debris scattered around her. She had trained to be the best, sure, but this was just boring. A sigh escapes her lips as she reminisces about her training days, back when there was a challenge. She had poured literal blood, sweat, and tears on the training grounds to be better than the ones who would belittle her and make her feel weak. One by one, she took them all down. Even the masters refused to fight her in the end. It wasn't a problem, though. Plenty of people had underestimated her and more would do so in the future. Plenty of adversaries to prove wrong.

However, she had trained too hard and had left no one to beat her. At first, it had been lone thugs looking for an easy mark. Then street gangs started to notice the new hero taking out their lower ranks and decided to put an end to it. They failed. Larger gangs and mafias started to sweat and they sent their best hitmen to take care of it. Child's play. Years passed and crime rates went down. She was hailed a hero for taking down the biggest criminals and villains in each city she visited. Eventually, national governments started to notice and would send out offers to come to clean up their villains. She accepted, hoping for new challenges. One by one they fell, her reputation only growing better by the day. Her work for governments had made new enemies, though, as local warlords and terrorist groups started pooling their resources. Small armies started greeting her. They proved to be child's play. She had started to set challenges for herself by wearing a blindfold or only using one hand. Sometimes she would only fight in the water against pirates to try to even the odds.

Eventually, however, the fights became few and far between. Most of the criminals and ne'er-do-wells had given up or gone into hiding, their champions beaten or too scared to fight. The terrorist groups and warlords had long abandoned their bases and territories for fear of being the next victims. The world's governments had gleefully recouped the weapons that were left behind, happy to recoup the inventory they had sold to these groups for years. With no truly evil people left to fight, the usually apolitical hero decided that the next best option for a challenge was the corrupt governments that had been happy to employ her for their own gains.

She started with the religious zealots who refused to give their people basic human rights. They went down easily and within a month, the people were forming new governments for themselves. The bigger countries had started to get worried, seeing that the hero once thought their ally was now a possible foe. The bigger countries started to gather their armies and weapons of mass destruction in case they were next. Less than a year passed before most standing armies had been defeated. She had left the largest militaries for last. They had the most corruption but she had wanted to give the little guys a chance first, just in case. They had all been disappointments.

As she walked toward the new mega-base built with the full, joint forces of the world's eight biggest superpowers, hope rose in her chest. Even though it had been years since she had tasted defeat, she knew that this would at least pose some sort of a challenge. Tanks rolled out to meet her and entire field armies filed out and spread across the vast desert that would be their battlefield and her playground. Fighter jets, gunships, and drones flew overhead. Turrets, mortars, and missiles all had her in their sights, locked and loaded. This was it. Her last chance. "Please don't make us do this. The world has seen a peace that could never have existed without our joint efforts," came a booming voice. "It's not too late to turn around and just forget this little campaign of yours!" "You and I both know this has to happen. If you had just taken the hint years ago and straightened yourselves out, this wouldn't be happening," She yelled "But no. You thought you could just keep on being douchebags and doing what's best for you. You brought this on yourself. Let's get it over with." She snarls the last sentence to herself as the first bullet whizzes by her head.

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