A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

Chapter 69  The Colour Red - Part 10

He pretended not to see the pain on Beam's face, as the boy fought to wrestle the recoil of such progress. Both Ingolsol and Claudia continued their war inside of him, feeding on this new potential that he was gaining, as both of them grew in size.

Dominus winced as he turned away. He could not imagine how hellish the pain Beam was enduring was. He could only pray that the boy managed to find his way forward, before it was too late.

Chapter 8 – Blades and Blood

The next day, Beam was outside Nila's house again with his log cart.

Somehow, his mood was poorer than the day before, after yet another day of no progress in strategy. Despite doing so well in his strength training, his agility training and his martial training, his lack of progress in strategy was leaving him so worried that he couldn't properly enjoy them.

He got there earlier, like Nila had suggested, but she was still sat outside her house, her legs crossed and her arms folded, looking thoroughly discontent as she checked her arrows waiting for him.

"You're late," she told him, bouncing up to her feet.

Beam glanced at the sky. "It's only dawn. If I'd come any earlier, it would have been pitch black."

"That's exactly what you want, idiot," she said, jabbing a finger at him. "If you arrived when it was dark, then by the time we got into the forest, there'd only just be the tiinieessst bit of light. It would have been perfect.

Beam sighed with a shrug. "Alright, whatever you say. Let's get going then."

Nila twisted her face at his reaction. "What's with you? You're in an even worse mood than yesterday."

"It's nothing that concerns you," Beam said curtly. "Let's get going. I have things to do later." n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

"That line again!" Nila said in annoyance. "No one's impressed!" She shouted. "Everyone's got things to do! All you're going to be doing is running around doing more tasks with Greeves. It's not like you're really doing anything special – so stop acting so high and mighty."

Beam gritted his teeth, genuinely annoyed, holding his hand up for quiet. "Look, just hurry up, would you? We've only got today to go, then we're done with each other. Surely even you can put up with that major inconvenience just for today."

"Wow, you're really annoyed, huh?" Nila looked at him condescendingly. "No one likes boys that are hot-headed, y'know, you'd better get that sorted, stupid."

But Beam was already pulling his sled, even more annoyed at himself for himself for getting annoyed. Then even more annoyed on top of that when he remembered how far behind he was in his strategy training. It was eating at him like crazy. He had his Goblin mission today too, but he couldn't really look forward to it when strategy was going so poorly.

'I need to do something about it,' he said, clenching his fist as he walked, thoroughly ignoring Nila by now, already plotting how he could fix the problem that he'd found himself in. 'If I hurry and finish this, then go to see Greeves for the Goblin's location, then run all the way back… Maybe I can get a few games of Battle in with master before I leave to hunt the Goblins. If I can just solve something in those few games, then I won't be so distracted later on.'

He knew that he likely shouldn't be worrying about it as much as he was, but he couldn't help it. It was impossible to set it from his mind when he had no real hope of improvement to cling to for it. It wasn't like he'd shown any particular skill for it in the past, except maybe against the Goblins last time. But it was still quite possible that it was just a major area of weakness and no matter how much he practised, he wouldn't get better at it.

In truth, what was happening, was the boy was running himself straight into a brick wall. As everything else did well, his mind grew worse, the strain needed to keep up normal function was unbearable. But he told himself it was nothing – in fact, his anger only grew with himself from the weakness. He couldn't believe how pathetic he was.

Before, his progress had been a struggle, he was used to that. He was even content with that, for struggle soon became his aim, for he could not reach true progress – so to merely endure the struggling quickly became his goal, a way to remain sane whilst endlessly pushing forward through the endless blizzard of his harsh reality.

But now he'd been given a gift, or so he was told – the blessing of Claudia and the passage through the Second Boundary. To be progressing in everything so well and yet for strategy to remain stagnant – he could not fathom it. It irked him so. It did not help that the essences of Claudia and Ingolsol were only continuing to grow inside of him, making him quicker to anger than he normally might be.

"You're walking so fast," Nila said, drawing his attention back to the world around him.

"Are you not going to run off again?" Beam said in annoyance. "I'm not joking – I really have to get this done as fast as possible."

"Hah, you're so lame," Nila said, ignoring him.

"Damn it," Beam cursed in frustration, imagining all the time that was slipping through his hands. He hated it. He hated the feeling of irritation. He hated that he was fighting with Nila, despite having no reason to. He hated that he couldn't just relax and trust that he'd get better at strategy no matter what happened. He hated the fact that he wasn't already good enough at it as to set the worry from his mind. In short, Beam hated the current him.

He felt for the knife on his belt in an attempt to calm himself. That was it. His fingers around its hilt – that was beginning to feel familiar now. That was what progress felt like. A knife had never felt so comfortable in his hands before. Just a week and a half ago, he was even less than he was now, or so Beam assured himself. 'Progress will come,' he repeated over and over.