A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

Chapter 5: The Cursed Child - Part 5

"Damn it…" he muttered, the energy draining from his limbs.

There was no point rushing around now. The dry grass of the roof had been burned hours ago, and the wall had already collapsed inwards, half reduced to ember. In short, there was no saving it now.

"Hah…" he sat on the ground, his back against the nearby tree, a palm to his cheek and his eyes drifting from the sky to the fire, and then back to the sky again.

Beam was not the only one who watched as the fire's smoke rose up into the sky either.

When the scent of the smoke entered his nostrils, Dominus Patrick finally opened his eyes after hours of meditation. A quick glance at the sky told him how far away the flame was. He let out a sigh, about to ignore it, but a white rabbit was quick to put a stop to that.

It ran up towards Dominus without a shred of timidness and put a paw on his leg. That was enough to make Dominus wince, for that leg – and that side of his body as a whole – was strongly affected by the Pandora Goblin poison, making his existence at times relative agony as he fought to keep the poison at bay for as long as he could, so that he could find what he sought to find.

The rabbit would not leave Dominus be, no matter how much he attempted to ignore it. With a weary sigh, he got to his feet, just as the rabbit bounded away.

"Mmph… is this an omen?" He asked himself. Dominus had long since broken through the fifth boundary – one of only a few people in history to achieve such a thing – so he knew well the power that the Gods had, but never had he seen one attempt to guide him so blatantly.

His face was stern as he saw what the rabbit wanted from him. It clearly attempted to lead him towards the source of all the smoke. Even knowing that the Gods were likely involved in such nudging, it did not make him wish to proceed any faster – in fact, it only made him feel less enthusiastic.

Dominus knew better than anyone just how little time he had left. It had been two years since the king had ordered they do battle with the Pandora Goblin. Two years since the greatest hero the land had ever seen perished so needlessly. Two years since Dominus lost his friend, that very same hero, one of only a handful of people in the entire world that recognized his swordsmanship.

Dominus had done Arthur proud with that recognition. When had heard of his friend falling, dying a needless death at the orders of the king, Dominus had rushed forward to the battlefield himself to confront the beast. He had managed a mighty strike on its hide, wounding it, yet the creature's claws had landed on his side in return, sending him flying a great distance away and filling him with its poison.

With that strike of Dominus', he became the first person in the creatures' two thousand-year history to wound it. A feat that even Arthur did not manage – his great friend and the land's greatest hero. In obscurity was Dominus' sword forged and in obscurity did it die as well. There was no one to see his magnificent feat, or praise it. Not even Dominus himself. He could not be satisfied with merely wounding it – he had to kill it, to avenge that friend of his. And so he meditated, prolonging his life, looking for a way to get stronger, so that he might slay the creature before death finally took its grip.

And here the Gods were, interfering in such a process. They led him to an open clearing in the forest, where there had once stood a house, which was now half-burned from angry flames.

He saw a boy there too – the boy had just arrived. The boy took a glance at his burning home, heaved a massive sigh and then sat on the ground with his back against the tree.

Dominus twisted his face in annoyance. This was what the Gods had brought him to see? A boy who lacked any sort of strength entirely? He was so far beneath Dominus in skill, that the comparison between a man and a God would have been more than apt. From what Dominus could see, he was merely a peasant boy. A peasant boy down on his luck, but nothing more than a peasant boy after all.

The old knight shook his head and turned to leave. Perhaps he had misinterpreted the white rabbit. Perhaps it had merely been a playful pest, rather than an omen from the Gods. Dominus had bigger fish to fry. He was intent on solving the greatest puzzle in knightly history – on achieving a strength far greater than anyone else. And as of yet, he had no signs of how to do that. His progress had ground to a halt a decade ago and he knew not how to break that deadlock. But he knew he wouldn't find his answer here, in a realm so different from his own, the realm of the peasantry.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the boy shift. He turned his head slightly, to see what he was up to. The boy tore his shirt off, knelt on the ground and started doing pushups, even as his house burned in front of him.

Dominus recoiled slightly. He was sure the boy had lost himself to despair, when he saw him sitting with his head in his hands, and yet here he was, doing pushups, a look of determination in his eyes. Dominus saw the marks on his back, the whip lashings of the slave, the signs of much suffering.

With his interest finally captured, if only a little, Dominus observed the boy a little further. He had a soft spot for those that struggled. He never had the talent to match Arthur. He was never blessed by the Gods in that regard. It was only his relentless struggle that had brought him up to Arthur's level – a fact that his friend praised almost tirelessly.

With the boy exerting himself, Dominus finally caught just the slightest of fluctuations in his aura, just the smallest signs of who he really was – and there, his eyes widened, as he caught just the smallest whiff of a boy that had broken the Second Boundary.

He had turned around completely by now, completely puzzled. No other knight in the land would have been able to detect the Goddess' blessing through such a frail aura – that was just how weak Beam was. A person's aura would multiply with the progress he had achieved and yet, despite the Goddess' blessing, there was seemingly no progress at all.

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