A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

It seemed a particularly bad moment to be leaving them to their own devices, but Oliver had given all the concessions that he could. Time was beginning to get on, and there was still the Hobgoblin to slay before he could call all his tasks complete for the day.

He said as much to his men. Verdant assured him, as honestly as he could, that they were well and that their condition was merely one of tiredness. Oliver chose to trust that, as he plunged ahead.

When the goblins came up, he slowed his pace, allowing a sizable number to gather as they ran alongside him. When their number increased past five, and hit upon six, he slowed to a halt to allow them to assail him.

The greedy goblins that had been screeching throughout the entire duration of their chase didn't seem to see anything untoward with the way he had stopped so suddenly. They must have been accustomed to their prey running out of energy as they hounded it, or becoming immobilized by fear.

The entire pack of them seized upon the opportunity in an instant. Half of them had spears, whilst the other three were content to merely to use the ragged claws of his fingers and the sharp teeth hanging out of their wide open mouths.

For Oliver, his weapon was the trust sword, and that technique that he'd decided to test on the lesser foe. Towards that end, he even let the pack get closer than he normally might.

Ordinarily, at this point, he would already have struck out and killed the two front runners that had already stepped inside his range, but here he wanted to test this technique as a way of dealing with foes whenever he was overwhelmed.

His sword went to work in a barrage of the most careful stabs. He employed the technique with precision, targeting the most vulnerable parts of the goblin's body. An eye here, a throat there, a liver elsewhere. One by one, with the tiniest little wounds, the goblins were kicked out of the chase, falling to the snow instead.

They were less merciful deaths than his ordinary way of dealing with them – usually, he'd hack them so viciously that they couldn't stay alive for long. Here, though, a couple of wounds – whilst fatal – were light enough for them to feel an intense pain as they felt.

Before even needing to draw a breath, he'd dealt with all six of them. They lay scattered on the snow in front of him, seemingly perfectly intact, aside from those minute wounds where the very tip of his blade had pierced them.

"…Better than I expected," he acknowledged. That was the way it should be, he supposed. He was a man of the Third Boundary now. He should be able to deal with a significant number of goblins at once, no matter how outnumbered he might have been. This technique exercised a speed and precision that he'd previously lacked.

In the past, even if he had dedicated hours towards reaching that speed, he still wouldn't have had the strength to deal significant damage with it. Here, though he'd pulled back his strength in favour of speed, the attacks still held more than enough bite to deal with lesser opponents, a fact that would be hard for anyone else to have replicated.

Sparing them a brief moment more of acknowledgement, assuring himself that they were dead, he sped on towards the Hobgoblin area, intent on finishing his mission.

Already, the day had been a mightily productive one. Just that speedy technique of dealing with lesser opponents – a Style of the Fleet-Foot – he would have been content, but he'd also been given the massive gift of awareness through Ingolsol, now that he'd had the presence of mind to finally draw those connections, and use the fragments as they were meant to be used.

Still, there was far more to be done. It wasn't even midday yet. Those were the sorts of things that a fresh Boundary Break was meant to be made of. That overwhelming progress that came from Claudia's Blessing. That should have been what he'd felt first, rather than the sticky void as he almost lost his life through getting there early.

Before he'd even pierced that clearing where he knew Hobgoblins to dwell, he could sense one, taking advantage of Ingolsol's awareness. It stuck out like a sore thumb in his mind's eye. A great big burl of swirling malevolence. So terribly angry, pained and maddened. The goblins were like lesser dots when compared to that maelstrom of emotions.

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Faced with such a presence, Oliver could never feel any guilt about killing it. There too, it was as though the Gods were training a man to be comfortable with killing. Giving him a way of entering combat, without fear of morality.

He skidded into the clearing, announcing himself in a loud voice, declaring his name. "HERE STANDS OLIVER PATRICK!" He shouted to the Hobgoblin, knowing it to be amongst the branches of that large central tree, lying in wait with that bludgeon that it had.@@novelbin@@

Purposefully, he went closer to the tree's base and raced around it, giving the Hobgoblin a target to aim for when he finally decided to bite the bullet and leap on the loud human invader.

The Hobgoblin's were nothing if not confident. To make one feel fear, as Oliver had done more than once in the past, was a thoroughly difficult feat. Seeing a human calling a challenge to it, the thought of losing never once crossed the bulging monster's mind.

The muscles of its neck rippled, as it roared a reply to the challenge, and launched itself from the fullest height of its branch, halfway up that tree.

Any other creature would almost certainly have broken a leg trying that, especially if they were as heavy as a stout Hobgoblin. For it, though, with its thick bones wrapping in the protective hammocks of its massive muscles, the slight slowing of the branches that it battered through as it fell, and then the cushion of the snow, was more than enough to ensure that it didn't get injured.