A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

Chapter 52: The Village Elder - Part 2

"Wow…" Beam had to gulp as he considered it. And then Hobgoblins were even stronger than that? It seemed it really would be a mistake to go after them straight away, if their difference in strength was that vast. But still, he wasn't entirely satisfied, but at least a difficult opponent like the corpse soldier created something for him to aim for as he trained. "I'm really going to need to get better, then."

"That you are," Dominus agreed. "With that, more of your training is going to be dedicated to the martial movements, since your body in its strength and speed is already progressing as it should be."

Beam clenched his fist. He could hardly wait. He had more opportunities to test his worth. There were two more Goblin quests, a giant spider quest and a corpse soldier quest on top of that. Even though the situation with Greeves was irritating, in the end, the quests themselves provided such an abundance of opportunity that he suddenly found himself feeling grateful.

"Still, you've got to get your standing amongst the villagers improved and you've got to make some allies there – there's not much sign of that yet. But perhaps with these winter firewood quests and the food one, perhaps they'll give you an opportunity to work on that. I think, in my humble opinion, if you wish to pass that element of the test by the end of the month, you'd better get started on it now," Dominus suggested.

He definitely didn't like to hear it and he definitely hated the prospect of attempting to be friendly with more people that he viewed essentially as strangers, but Beam knew his master was right and he gritted his teeth, preparing himself mentally to get the matter resolved.

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"As for your training today… since you're injured, and you had such a hard day yesterday, I should possibly make allowances," Dominus mused, "we wouldn't want your wounds to worsen."

"No, I'm feeling fine," Beam assured him, standing up quickly and wincing from the pain. Dominus looked at him doubtfully. "…I mean, not fine, but I want to make sure I keep up with everything. This might be one of those days where my strength is set to improve, right? 'Cos it doesn't always make sense, does it, as you were saying?"

Dominus tilted his head at that and considered it. "It's certainly possible," he decided. "But you're going to need to wander into town afterwards and deliver those Goblin heads to Greeves, so don't wear yourself out too much… Oh, and also, you're going to need to get me a new knife, since you shattered the last one."

Beam flinched at that. "…But I'm only going to be getting 5 coppers," he said weakly, knowing that such an amount was far from enough to secure a new knife, especially in this town, with just a single smith and with there being such a shortage of iron lately.

But Dominus was undeterred. "I have a feeling that if you offer those five Goblin heads up for a trade, he might be able to find you an old knife that you can sharpen yourself. Those monster ingredients are worth quite a bit more than he's letting on."

"I'll try," Beam said meekly, not relishing the thought of negotiating with Greeves once again. But it had been his fault that Dominus' dagger broke, after all, so he was determined to at least fix it in some sort of way.

…

…

It was past noon by the time Beam wandered into the marketplace, carrying an empty grain sack, filled with the 5 Goblin heads that he himself had slain. Most of the blood had already drained out of the heads overnight, but there was still a patch of green staining the bottom of his grain sack, causing people to shoot him strange looks as he walked through town.

But Beam was feeling particularly confident that morning, for not only had he just slain 5 Goblins the day before – a feat that most men wouldn't accomplish in their entire lifetime – but his strength had also seemingly returned, for on the second stone that day, he again managed to match his all-time record of 20 lifts. And then on the third stone, he set a new record of 11. He'd felt that he could have done far more, but with his wounds bothering him, he didn't want to go all out.

Of course, as with all things, nothing was quite perfect and though he'd succeeded in improving his strength slightly despite the injuries, his speed had been lacking compared to previous days. It wasn't quite as bad as it was on his worst days, but it was still a noticeable decrease from how it had been yesterday.

Still, that wasn't enough to put Beam into a bad mood. He was growing used to the strange setbacks that often arose in his training and he was satisfied as long as he was improving in some sort of way.

He strolled through the marketplace, daring to observe the stall owners as he passed, wondering what wares they were selling. Mainly, he was interested to see if any of them were selling knives.

But what he saw mostly was meat and furs being hawked on behalf of hunters and farmers. There were a few clothes stalls too, selling fur coats and hats in preparation for the winter. They caught Beam's eye as he realized he would soon be in quite desperate need of some himself.

He figured that his master would probably tell him off if he didn't get his clothing situation sorted, so he resolved to do that as soon as possible, lest he come down with a cold and it affect his training.