A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

On the right side, he dove straight in. Their spears still came searching for him, but they were just slow enough that it didn't pose a problem. There was already a gap opened up in the centre, a place for Beam to gather his footing.

As soon as his feet hit the ground, he was a storm of steel. Faster than he had been mere hours before, he sliced through goblin after goblin with all the efficiency of a meat grinder.

The reason was two-fold. One, he'd grown used to fighting against this style of army. Beam was telling himself that fact continually, as he sought to praise his own progress. But the second reason was that he was indeed getting stronger. There was a style approaching his own now, a unique style, growing denser with each passing moment – so dense that he almost had a name for it.

Like that, five spear-wielding goblins fell to the floor, dead.

Beam rushed towards the general's next. They were the heart of the problem, after all, those two Half-Titans that stood just behind the wall of archers. As Beam breached the spear wall on the right, and came plunging towards them, the two hurried tried to assume the defensive, and protect their missile-launching troops – but they were already far too late.

The goblins themselves turned to run. But they were already caught in Beam's web. He sliced through all six of them, in a manner that was both inefficient, and super-efficient. With one strike, he would cleanly end a goblin's life, by severing an artery or delivering a fatal slash to some organs.

With another strike, he would hit them with such monstrous force that the body went flying. There was an unpredictability to his fighting now, an unpredictability that to the outside observer was difficult to penetrate, but Beam had come up with his own logic for it now.

With his misdirection, he set the stage, he created the battlefield and he dictated the flow of combat. When he combined that with his monstrous style, he created something unpredictable, but fluid, as though he was dragging the enemy into deep and dark waters. And when they were in those dark waters, he would launch a fatal strike.

The first Half-Titan attempted to step towards Beam, but there was already panic in its eyes. Beam's movements on the battlefield were seamless now. He'd already set the stage with his slaying of the archers, he'd already controlled the space and spun a web, pulling the Gorebeast in a certain direction. He'd subconsciously planted the idea within it that Beam would target the legs.

He'd gone low on all the goblin archers, after all, and the Half-Titan was far bigger than they were.

With a slightly exaggerated motion, he drew his sword back behind him, and moved to target the creature's legs, just as it had begun to expect. A fist was ready to meet Beam to counter that strike.

Of course, Beam had predicted such a response, for the stage had been set up by him from the start. He was thoroughly in flow with the timing of the battlefield. The current was his – the crashing waves were his. He severed that arm at the elbow.

The Half-Titan looked at its arm, stupefied, hardly able to process what had happened. Because of Beam's positioning, and Beam's flow, his counter on the monster's attack had been lightning fast. Indeed, it was almost like he'd been throwing his own strike to counter before the monster even began throwing his.

The sequence was concluded. With no right arm to defend itself, Beam pivoted to the Half-Titan's right. His sword speared into its lower gut, as its eyes still failed to process what was happening, and its arms flailed directionlessly.

As it buckled under the damage of that blow, Beam swiftly withdrew his sword, and sliced out a chunk of its throat, half-severing its head. He allowed the body to collapse behind him and he rushed towards the next Half-Titan.

"Captain!" The officer on duty saluted, as he finally noted the presence of Lombard beside him. His men had just loosened a volley, aiming at the left flank of the spear-wielding goblins, but the arrows were about to fall short, as they had all day. Their only real purpose was that of distraction.

Lombard watched the battle, almost smiling, as with three movements, he dealt with the second Half-Titan, before he began butchering what remained of the battlefield, starting with the four Gorebeasts that had been rushing in to attack his rear.

"Are my eyes deceiving me, or did our young comrade deal with those with deceptive ease?" Lombard asked. It was more a question to himself than anyone, but the officer dared not run the risk of offending him by remaining quiet.

"For the magnitude of enemy, I'd be in agreement, Captain. He seems to have grown more adept at slaying the foe throughout the day. A few hours before, it took him far longer to deal with just a single one of them, and an army half that size," the officer informed him.

"Is that right?" Lombard murmured, tapping the hilt of his sword. "His movements do look sharper than I've seen them previously. Or perhaps it's that he's merely grown more accustomed to fighting this enemy?"

"It does seem unlikely that one could improve their strength in just a matter of hours," the officer said, by way of agreement.

"Mm," Lombard murmured thoughtfully. Perhaps it did seem rather unlikely, at least from the eyes of a soldier. But the knights dealt in different things. They knew of the boundaries that the Goddess Claudia had set. They knew just how exceptional progress could be once it was loosened.

'And this is Dominus Patrick's apprentice, after all,' he thought to himself. 'Nothing would be beyond the pale if it involved that man.'

"Ah. It seems he's finished. Have the men deal with the corpses," Lombard said.

"Sir!" The officer saluted again, before he barked some orders to the sergeants beneath him, and men began to move. "By the way, Captain… I was wondering – what of the night shift?"

"Ah, yes. Indeed, I expect many of our men will be wondering about the night shift…" Lombard said, nodding along.