A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

Chapter 685 The Blaze Forward - Part 6

That rushing drive wasn't just applied to his lessons. It was midweek already when Oliver had received that fragment of hope from Professor Volguard, and as soon as it had ended, he'd gone into the gardens to practise with his sword, and to find a spear that he might attempt to use and add to his arsenal.

Though he'd been barred from any and all combat classes, that didn't stop him from training alone.

Training alone brought with it a hearty amount of progress in the different weapons, or at least, that was how it felt. It was like he was dusting off a layer of rust that he'd only just seen was there.

Though he didn't reinvent the wheel with his spear training, everything was growing crisper, and he thought that the thrust of his spear was approaching that ideal that Combat Professor Kolan had shown him.

He reflected on what a shame it was that he couldn't ask Professor Kolan for private tutelage, but he'd been informed in no uncertain words by a third party that such a thing was off the table. As one would expect from an Academy with the military as its foundation, weapons training was in more demand than any other pursuit.

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It was only in archery where he'd gotten off lucky, because of the efforts of Professor Yoreholder herself, who'd insisted on making the time whenever she could.

He found at least an hour a day to dedicate to that weapons training. Students would see him training amongst the trees as they passed, kicking up snow in the frosty winter world, as he cut imaginary opponents to ribbons.

Therein lay the precarious balance. The more the progress of the last few weeks – and that week in particular – got to him, the more his mind pushed for firmer plans, and firmer controls. There seemed to be two distinct paths there, and it puzzled Oliver what the difference between the two was.

One invited the urge for complete control, whilst the other was gentler, like water, like the budding flow of battle, to merely solve tiny problems, trusting that they would build into a mightier wave. If Oliver had not had so much battle experience under his belt, he might have been drawn in by the first of those ways.

There was a seductiveness to it, that plotting of a future that may or may not come to be – and there was even a strength there, that didn't seem to last. But the world, continually, threw those plans out of order with its surprises, both in good ways, and in bad.

He hadn't expected an assassination attempt. That had thrown his plans out of whack. Had he plotted, like a true strategist, that might have broken him. It did not, though, for his way was the subtler way – the way of a man that knew not good things until most recently.

He hadn't expected the letter from Lord Blackwell. That too, had he been plotting so furiously, with no leeway in his plans, was something that he might not have been able to enjoy so thoroughly, for it would run contrary to his designs.

His highly volatile world demanded the second approach. There could be no other way of moving, when the world was in such chaos. All that a man could do was whatever he could do.

And so, even with anger licking at him, Oliver once more settled into a peculiar calm – a purposeful calm – of the same sort that had afflicted him at the trial. It was the calm of a hunting animal, alert and ready, but not immobilized by anticipation.

Another day passed, with people he wasn't quite sure he deserved doing more for him than he could have ever expected.