A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor-Chapter 1116 An Army in need of Improvement - Part 3

1116: An Army in need of Improvement – Part 3

1116: An Army in need of Improvement – Part 3

For training, they could have allowed themselves to commit in a half-hearted manner.

They would not have been too scolded for it, for their weapons were padded, and the fact that it was indeed training was not to be dismissed.

It wasn’t as if they needed to go to the grave over the battles that they were fighting here.

Yet looking at them, you would not think so.

Training seemed to be the farthest thing from any of their minds.

There were hundreds of personal battles enduring, and each man seemed to give himself to his weapon with all his strength.

Even the usually disciplined Blackthorn men could be heard shouting as loud as some of the peasants, as they put forward all the strength that they had.

“You Blackthorns – you’d better keep up!” Firyr shouted as he pushed forward.

Of course, his own unit was compromised half of Blackthorn men by now, and they were forced to yield to his command.

He put upon them the same reckless expectations that he demanded from his normal men, and they were made to rush behind him, in the endless flow of head-hunting combat.

His path was straight towards Verdant’s, the man that they knew to be their target.

The General of their little battlefield.

“Cover him, Kaya!” Jorah shouted, moving his men to match Firyr’s recklessness, rather than attempting to control it.

He’d had years of practice with that one task, and he was able to fill in the gaps with hardly a pause for breath.

In the face of it all, Verdant’s side remained calm.

Knowing full well that Firyr was out looking for his head, Verdant merely aligned himself, and his strongest soldiers – a mixture of the biggest peasants and slaves and Blackthorn men – right in the path of that charge.

There he sat, waiting, as if he didn’t feel the slightest chance that they would lose.

That was exactly the sort of commitment that Oliver had wanted from them.

If it had been any other group of soldiers, Oliver did not think they would have been able to make such progress over the span of a single training session.

But they were clawing their way forward as if desperate for every bit of ground that they made.

They fought as if both their lives and their pride were on the line.

Every man did what he could.

In the midst of that battle, Oliver looked for Yorick.

There was another man in him that Oliver wished to see the growth of.

He found himself, on the right flank, in Verdant’s army, drenched in sweat, as he tried to keep his own soldiers in line.

One could tell from the way he fought that he was unused to doing battle on foot, but still it would be hard to call him weak even when he found himself in that position.

There was strength on Yorick’s face, the willingness to stand his ground no matter what came.

Of course, that was far easier to do in training than it was on the battlefield.

Still, the fact that there was such determination in his expression… Oliver thought that to be progress indeed – and when he thought it to be such, those thoughts wandered back to his own progress.

‘For it to happen so quickly, in just the span of a single session…’ Oliver thought to himself.

He’d known such types of progression himself in the past, and he’d seen it in the peasants when he’d brought them to the battle with Talon and he’d seen them train there.

This time, though, felt different.

In all honesty, when he had them train together, he didn’t expect for the changes to be immediate.

He thought that the sense of identity that the Blackthorn soldiers had was far too deeply set for them to work so closely with new allies.

He thought the same to be true of the Yorick men.

He thought that, and yet here they were.

It was hard to call it anything but a success.

Would that translate immediately over to the true battlefield?

It was hard to say.

A gap had been breached regardless, and the methods through which they could continue to breach that gap filtered into Oliver’s mind.

“What do you think?” Lasha said, finally recovering herself, looking in the same direction as Oliver was.

“It is too quick,” Oliver said.

“These are not the laws of progress that I know.”

Her eyebrow twitched as she heard him announce that.

“Two quick?

From the youngest Boundary Breaker in history?

Both the Second, and the Third?” Lasha said.

“Too quick,” Oliver acknowledged again.

Something was different.

Perhaps it was simply the mountain itself.

Or perhaps it was the scale of battle that they had been through.

All those men that he had known, and he had fought with for so many years – they all seemed to be infected by an energy far above what they’d had previously.

He wondered if it was simply the aura of the battlefield, and of enemy territory, and of the battles that they’d so recently been a part of.

They had gathered experiences of the likes that they had never gathered before, and they’d done so quickly.

What they had achieved in a matter of hours, Oliver had expected would take at least a week.

The readiness of his forces as they were here on day one was the readiness he had hoped to take them out with, when they went on patrol.

He eyed Blackthorn.

“It looks like a victory is about to be decided.

Will you see the battle ended?”

“…Very well,” she said.

“But I have not forgotten what has occurred with these Serving Class men.

I will speak to Verdant, and we will ensure that proper justice is carried out.”

She went dashing away before Oliver could try and deliver her any sort of warning.

He supposed that she’d planned it exactly like that, knowing what it was that he would say.

The last moves of the battle played out.

Firyr’s attack on the right of Verdant’s centre had been stifled by Verdant himself.

But from the left, an even larger attack was forming, with Karesh at the front, hurried on by Jorah.

They tore through the infantry in their way in a relentless charge, and soon enough they arrived at Verdant’s unprotected back.