A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

Chapter 324 : The Worth of a Man - Part 6

The enemy had unsettled his men with their singularity, their determination to do battle on their own terms, to solve the problem themselves, to close that distance themselves. And it had worked. It was working. But the second Jok adapted, and changed his own stance, he was met with a critical counter that approached premonition.

It felt like he was a cliff, fighting against the sea. Every scrap of material he gave away only weakened him more and more.

"Who the hell am I fighting now?" He found himself asking. The villagers hadn't moved yet. Not a single word had been spoken, but there was a united determination in their eyes. By a principle of understanding that went beyond what words could convey, they all realized their path to victory even more strongly than before.

It bound to their own wills, to slay Jok himself. For somehow, they'd all been naïve enough to believe themselves capable of that. And now each of them saw a better route, a surer strategy. To not cling to it would be to oppose the intelligence that even the most cursed of humans was endowed with.

It was to realize that one needed a large amount of water, only to ignore the bucket on the shore of the river, and continue scooping it with their hands.

Somehow – they'd all been convinced that it was indeed water that they needed. That it was indeed Jok that needed slaying. These cowardly people, of the same ilk that Jok had seen in every village. What gave them the strength to realize that in the first place… When had Jok lost?

That charge, wasn't it..? When they'd overcome his forty or so men in that charge… and all because of that boy. But then, he'd also failed to kill the boy earlier – that was why he'd been there in the first place. Even as he took his men to the Southern Wall, they'd been unable to kill him.

It was impossible to tell for Jok. He felt like he wanted to do the whole thing over. It seemed like Beam had seized an advantage so early on that neither of them had noticed. Had that really been the case, though? Regardless of whether it was or not, the end result was the same. Those freshly blooded villagers had slain their enemies with such ease that they believed they could take down a Commander.

That had been the seed that had been planted in their mind… But these eyes, as Jok had a feeling there were more than two hundred. He recalled the elderly man that had thrown himself in a suicide charge earlier, and the woman that followed him. It wasn't just the villagers of fighting age that had joined in, their whole army had increased in size.

The embers of a great fire were growing, and Jok bit his lip in irritation at that fight. "Gods be damned…" he cursed, as the burning houses crackled in flames behind him.

In the shadows, Beam did not quite make the same terrifying image that Jok had begun to put onto him. His breath was laboured as he leaned against the stone wall of a house.

He could sense bodies all around him, all of them primed and honed, like brittle knives. Sharp for the moment… But…

It was not only they that were being influenced by this battlefield, being buoyed by its tides. It was Beam too being tossed around by it. As he struggled to remain conscious, and pushed his body and mind to the limits, taking in every scrap of information that he could, he noted those people around him, and their uses. Find more chapters on m_v l|e'm-p| y r

"Take the reins," Ingolsol said again. He'd said that so many times before. "Don't you feel the power? The power of a King. Use them. Extend your reach – devour his soul."

When it was just Ingolsol speaking, Beam had been able to ignore it. Yet now Claudia whispered to him too. They weren't words – her words couldn't reach him here, in the domain of darkness and despair that Ingolsol created. But he could feel her intentions.

Two parts of himself united in a singular yearning, a euphoric feeling. Even as his body was racked with pain, he was hit by such a feeling of rightness that his mind went white, and he almost lost consciousness. It was as though all at once, a thousand years had been connected (not that he had ever lived that long).

Earlier, it was struggle that had got him through his worst moments of fighting, ever reliable, ever his companion, it had saved his life, and kept the battlefield going until now. He'd been forced to adapt merely to keep air drawing into his lungs. He endured the beatings, and overcame them.

His sword edge had grown sharper, his instincts had grown stronger, he'd learned to trust his unconscious mind more, out of necessity, and his martial skill, his Poison Water Style, it all blossomed for it.

Now, as the battlefield situation demanded that he think, that his mind adapt as well as his body, those same instincts that he'd trusted in earlier, they pointed towards the same answer as Ingolsol and Claudia.

"Lead."

"Take command."

"Wear the crown."

They all spoke at once, some arrogant, greedy, and power-hungry. Others desperate, and compassionate. All the different souls of all the different thousands of years that had led up to Beam, they cried out their decisions. Rarely had a body been so united.

It was not only those voices of his unconscious, either, it was his past as well.

The blessed child that he had been, in his village, surrounded by friends, as they ran through fields of grass, as Beam charged on ahead of the rest, leading them all to greater fun.

"It's only natural, right?" That smiling face seemed to say.

The him that had been in the depths of despair, as he awoke to the corpses of his family, and the wounding of his liver.

"Coward – take it," he said, with dark and angry eyes, filled with resentment.