A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor-Chapter 1127 A Changing World - Part 5

1127: A Changing World – Part 5

1127: A Changing World – Part 5

“Reach for nothing but the gilded gold chair,” Ingolsol said.

There was no creature happier now than that Fragment.

He desired it all.

As they walked through the forest, his impulses would continually harass Oliver.

Grab that beautiful flower with its purple petals, pluck it from the ground, admire it, and then crush it with your hand.

And so Oliver did.

Stomp in that stream, acknowledge the minnows that swim down it, and bar their path forward.

Toss them from the water without further thought.

And so Oliver did it.

It was a relentless path of destruction that Ingolsol didn’t seem to tire of.

It was the truest control that he’d ever had of Oliver’s body, and it had come for the longest time.

For days, the stormy green, grey and blue eyes that categorized Oliver were replaced by the solid gold of Ingolsol.

All the creatures with any sort of sense fled, fearing the stampeding monster coming their way, sensing Ingolsol’s malevolence.

“That’s enough, Oliver…” Claudia said.

“You’ve given him enough.

He’s grown stronger enough already.”

But that strength was not the strength of the Fourth Boundary yet.

It was a strategy of growth only available to Oliver, given the nature of Ingolsol’s Fragment, and the nature of his balance between two different Fragments.

He thought that he could focibily feed Ingolsol, until he grew to a level of power that could be called the Fourth Boundary… And then in surviving that, he would drag the rest of them up with him.

No, he hadn’t thought it.

That was most certainly the wrong way to put it.

He’d come down into the forest thinking nothing, with no good strategies in mind.

He had trained those days before then, and he hadn’t come up with a solution.

Only when he’d been amongst the forest by himself, and he’d been able to commit everything that he had towards this single desire, did the world and the answers begin to open up to him.

There was a single option that allowed him power.

When he opened up his heart, and he propositioned it thus, stating to it his desires, it was Ingolsol that answer.

He said he wished for power, and Ingolsol had responded as if they were magic words.

He’d hungrily reared his head, and he’d responded with such energy that Oliver couldn’t help but shrink back.

Indeed, he feared Ingolsol.

The Fragment that he had spent so much time with, and he still eared him.

How could he not?

He was an eternal source of danger, just as he was one of strength.

Oliver didn’t understand him.

Ingolsol claimed to wish despair on all things, but he was hardly the sort of mournful God that would wish for just that.

He was an animated evil… but even then, in him, there was a fairness.

Oliver didn’t understand.

It was like letting chaos in, but for all his wants, he let chaos in regardless.

So Ingolsol reigned, he took control of the body that was Oliver Patrick, still feeling the leash around his neck, and he made use of his newfound freedoms to the highest degree that he could.

At times, too, he pulled Oliver’s sword from its scabbard, and he forced the wounded body to move in ways that it was unfamiliar with.

He hacked the sword into a side of a tree – Oliver’s treasured blade.

Oliver could never have used it like that, but Ingolsol did so without hesitation, and it bit deep.

“Swordsmanship, all that rubbish?

Who needs it, mortal?

The only thing you need is overwhelming strength.

You had the right of it years ago when you fought up your styles.

Well – you had one right of it.

That was the Style of Overwhelm.

All enemies should be overwhelmed.

You don’t need strategy, or cunning, you just need absolute overwhelming strength,” Ingolsol said delightedly, seeing the fresh chip in Oliver’s blade.

“More strength… That’s what you need.”

In that, Oliver supposed that his and Ingolsol’s goals were aligned.

Ingolsol wanted strength enough to carve the very mountains apart, and to tear whole cities down by their foundations.

He cared not how he had to act in order to achieve it.

Better still that he act like a ruthless barbarian.

More and more Ingolsol begged for.

He feasted on Oliver’s soul, and on his experiences.

Oliver withdrew into a shell of himself, just barely surviving the onslaught.

He allowed it, with the greatest trace of calm that he could muster.

It was something that only he could do, for he had endured a similar situation for many years, when Ingolsol had first cursed – or Blessed – him.

It was the same relentless feeling as back then, when there was nothing to keep Ingolsol in check but Oliver’s own will.

The Dark God of Despair went on a rampage within himself.

Even Claudia was made to look weak from the face of it.

Claudia was bound by more gentle things.

The rhythms of the laws of progress.

She couldn’t merely rise up to equal Ingolsol.

She wasn’t the sort of God that would snatch vitality from the mortal that she inhabited.

Just like Oliver, she was made to cower, as Ingolsol grew stronger and stronger – and then he came for her too.

“Wench, it is about time that you submitted,” Ingolsol said.

“We have shared the same halls for far too long.

Your inputs bother me.

Your weakness irritates me.

Give me all that you, and make me stronger for it.

The divinity that you possess is wasted on you.

Let me swallow you up, and I will take myself all the way to the Fourth Boundary.”

It was a ruthless declaration, and one that Claudia, inevitably, had to resist.

“You will not manage it, Ingolsol.”

“You mean to fight me?” Ingolsol cackled.

“With how much stronger than you I have been allowed to grow?”

“I do,” Claudia said.

Oliver could see her raising up a shield in the halls of his mind.

She was armoured, and ready for battle, a look of determination in his violet eyes.

“Tsch,” Ingolsol tutted.

He saw weakness in her, and he didn’t like the fact that weak dared to pretend that they were strong.

The two warred.

For those final two days of Oliver’s week, his marching stopped.

As did his swordplays.

He spent his time in the filth of the dirt, in complete agony.

His mind was on fire.

Every part of his body was.

It felt as if his soul was being torn to pieces.