The Arcane Paladin

Self-Published

Community Rating

Description

Follow Arc, the reincarnated soul trapped in a sword, and Travis, the humble farm-kid with a troubled upbringing, as they embark on a coming-of-age epic/progressive fantasy adventure, learning about the hard-magic system, how to fight the monsters that invade from the north every spring, fumble their way through noble decorum, and get mistaken for a kingdom devastating Chosen one by the church and state.

Cover Art byPedro Puglisi

Information

Status: Hiatus
Year: 2022
Author: Degermark

Royal Road Stats

Rating: 4.6/ 5.0
Followers: 870
Views: 351,033

Chapters(60 total)

Reviews

No reviews yet. Be the first to share your thoughts!

Community Reviews(10)

DrBuckerRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
Excellent story with great characters and character growth and real relationships. No one is perfect and their flaws are what make them beautiful ans i couldnt ask for better character interactions. I love the pacing and everything about the systems of magic and the world building.one of the best stories on this site.
GheldanRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
Quite a fun story. I stumbled upon this and just couldn't put it down.
The chapters are entertainin, the characters feel fleshed out, and the pacing is great. I would recommend this story to any and all who might be interested.
So far none of the characters feel overpowered, and Arc (the sword) has some really well thought out restrictions to keep him from becoming super OP.
TeremtesRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
The story has good pacing and fun lore drops that make it fun to piece the background story together. The fun predictability and the lack of twists for shock value is a good sign of a good writer and story, makes it fun to pick up what the author is putting down.
Torus99Royal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
A wonderful world and characters. Here's hoping it's finished one day.
Huh, evidently reviews have to be a certain length. I suppose I'll just keep typing words until it sees fit to let me post. Which will be soon, I hope. Because like, I've run out of things to say. I like the story and hope it's finished soon. What else does RR want?
Ode123Royal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
Really addictive story and writing style. I've read 46 chapters in two days. I like the characters and their growth. I hope the author sets up some kind of membership program like Patreon so I and others can pay for this story. Perhaps the author gets then more time to write.
PhiFellRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
As always 5/5 doesn't mean "perfect" but is an unequivocal recommendation.
I noticed no grammatical mistakes or even awkward phrasing. This has either been edited well or the author has taken significant care to ensure a lack of errors.
The style is good enough that this could be published in actual physical print with no edits and it would still be well above average for modern fantasy novels.
I enjoyed the story thus far, it's a neat take and I think it's done well. The synopsis does a poor job in selling it IMO and I almost didn't read this - but I'm glad I did. This was an immediate follow and favorite, after I caught up.
You may have noted I gave characters a 4.5/5 but I still think they are well above par for this genre and especially for a web serial. I marked it down a half point because I feel it's weaker than the other sections by comparison. I have, at most, minor quibbles - a few characters are a bit too good natured at times, one character gets over a grudge a little easily. It's the sort of thing that most YA fiction engages in ubiquitously and egregiously. I don't feel it meaningfully detracts from the story, and it could just me being cynical.
Overall this is on par with many of the highest quality stories on RR, and an easy recommendation.
AlsoJohnRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
A prematurely deceased soul is contemplating reincarnation as a duck when suddenly it is Isakied to another world with out the intervention of a truck. Now the soul in a sword is stuck and the sword is not in stone but wood. The story starts off as very good.
E.B. and Walt Disney had best up their game. This story is much more relatable
malinizgeldiRoyal Road
★★★★★ 4.5
In this novel, he sweeps the mysteries under Traver's story. This incident doesn't make this novel bad, but so much mystery made me skip the last 10 chapters. Also, it doesn't help that the novel progresses so slowly. So what makes the novel beautiful? of course arc. I really started to get tired of the story of the traverine after the 30th episode, especially since the arc started to stay in the background in the story. Now think like this; 1 arc, 5 traverses - 1 arc, 6 traverses - 1 arc, 7 traverses - 1 arc, 8 traverses. just like that, traver novel began to dominate. As I said, this event does not make this novel bad, but it does damage the reason for starting this novel in the first place. If I had to give an example; Consider another novel in which a particular chicken is featured. The reason I started that novel was the character development of the main character and the romance of his family, but if you've read it, you know that the side stories of animals in that novel completely took over the novel. I hope this is not the case. I leave the novel to the "read later" option. I'll probably see it years from now. please don't delete my comment for my example.
Reader1587Royal Road
★★★★★ 4.5
I started to read this because the basic premise reminded me of the Japanese light novel "Reincarnated as a sword". One of the main characters happens to be a guy reincarnated as a sword, another one is the unsuspecting farm boy whose entire life is going to be changed after encountering the said sword. That is where all the similarities end. The sword is not powerful at all, it struggles a lot to learn magic by itself and tries to teach it to his protege. The boy wants to become a mage in spite of all the odds stacked against him. So far good. Regarding the grammar, I haven't found any glaring inconsistencies.
My main gripe is the story style. The majority of chapters are divided into three parts:
The first one is a story from local mythology or travel journal, then a sword's point of view and a boys' POV. I found the first part not interesting, disconnected, not adding anything to the story and disrupting the flow, so I just speed read through it without paying much attention. Another minor annoyance was countless repeated remarks about the protagonist scratching the sword's pommel. I wish the author was more inventive here, conveying the wordless communication between two characters in a different way. The pace of the story could use some improvement as well. Initially, it is glacially slow, not much progress happens, then the travelling chapter suddenly brings more sudden challenges then previous 50 chapters altogether. The characters are colorful and interesting, although I wish we had learned a bit more about what makes them tick. Overall, this story falls just half of a star short of a perfect score, which can be remediated by an editing pass, and if you read a few chapters and like the story and style, you can probably adjust your personal score upwards.
RocksNPebblesRoyal Road
★★★★★ 4.5
I really enjoyed this story and it is well written with only a few word choices errors here and there. The story starts strong and makes sense for the most part, but I found it began to drag after a while and a slow pace became a nearly nonexistent pace.
The story is definitely slice of life and while there is a magic school and you hear a few magic words or classes from time to time, it really doesn't matter. If he'd just been at a prep school for young men with big hefty....mana pools/not even funny comedy about large male reproductive organs being hinted at, then it'd be basically the same. The kid is just so special, has so much potential, has so many advantages, and is just a good kid helping his friends out with their problems in an 'issue of the week' format.
This is ok, but I quit after a solid 500 plus pages when nothing meaningful for the plot had occurred in over 300 pages and I realise I didn't care about any of the characters. It also has that frustrating bit of you being held back in terms of what you know, you're not fully aware of what the characters know and with the multi POV you end up knowing both more and less about what's happening than the POV you're in.
This works at times, but isn't a great method to create mystery, tension, or just being told instead of shown or shown things which don't really matter or which you can't put together yourself, as there are zero breadcrumbs or moving parts for you to participate or predict anything. Some random kid in his class is a half elf and don't know...ok...so what? Exercise is hard for him, mystery solved!?
It is like the author thought up some new detail and put it in later which gives a different flavour to what happened when it was happening.
Here is an example, spoiler below.
High mana peope get exiled from villages and the local jarl was in some plot to delay identifying them so they become local enforcers instead of being sent to the capital for regular army or mage training.
This is a key bit of