A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1360 - 1360: The Problem - Part 4

He pointed to the thick silver and ruby jewelled ring that sat on the Professor's forefinger. The Professor glanced at it, momentarily distracted, his frown not wavering. "Is it a cliff face," he responded mildly. "If that is all the attention that I have from you this morning, then I suppose we had better move on to more serious matters of study.

Let us see if that can reawaken that degree of… attentiveness, that you had there for a few moments."

Oliver naturally would not have described it as attentiveness, and more as a jokingness, but he did not dare tell the Professor that, when he was captured by his own ideas.

Naturally, though, the more serious the study became, and the more they delved into the older problem that Oliver was so familiar with, his own jokingness faded, and he quickly found himself relying on the old manners of calculation that he'd used in the past.

That was not to say that it resulted in failure for him. He was able to solve a good many of the problems that Professor Volguad put his way – but not in regards to the specifics of a Battle board. On the Battle board, he found himself too limited to operate to any high degree, but then he supposed, that was the very purpose of such a board.

It forced a strategist into limitations, so that he wouldn't rely on novelty, and would instead pursue something closer to the heart of strategy.

"That will be all," Volguard said after a couple of hours. It would have been hard to say that the man didn't seem disappointed. He dismissed Oliver with a thoughtful expression on his face, quite clearly already thinking about other matters.

'Well, that was more fun than I remember it being,' Oliver thought to himself with a slight grin. The matter of teasing Volguard so early on the Battle board had made his usually swift losses far more tolerable than they otherwise would have been. He wouldn't know how long it would take for Volguard to catch on that his strategy there had been merely based on amusement.

And when he did catch on, how would he be able to take advantage of all the weaknesses that Oliver had left in his game as a result? It was a subject of great curiosity.

"…I see you have already monopolized my living room," Oliver said mildly, as he passed through, seeing that Skullic already had one of the dusty tomes written by the First King spread out across the table. The scent of old parchment was a musty one, and he had to wrinkle his nose at it. "You can stand to open the window whilst you're doing that. You'll make the whole house stink of mould."

"It's not mould, it's just old," Skullic said mildly. If Oliver had to guess what fraction of attention Skullic had given him there, he would have supposed it to be less than a tenth of his capacity. It was hardly like he was in the room at all.

"Found anything interesting?" Oliver said, wandering up beside him, to look at the fading sprawls of ink that the First King had scored into the page.

Skullic's attention was upgraded to around three-tenths then, along with a healthy degree of irritation. "Have you not read these books before, boy? It is not the words that I am looking at, nor even their meaning. It is the intent. I know already what might lie on the pages, but I wonder how it differs from the emotion the First King originally saw it written with."

"And you suppose you can tell?" Oliver said. All he could see was the page in front of him, old though it was.

"It requires a deal of effort," Skullic said, "but not as much when you carefully consider what exactly it is that we have in front of us. Think, boy. Hundreds of years ago, this man amongst men, sat down, and he wrote his thoughts in this very book. The same hand that carved the entire country that we know as the Stormfront from the savage and inhospitable continent that it was."

"Hm…" Oliver said, trying to imagine it. He didn't suppose that the man would have looked all that different to Skullic did now. Clad in his armour, hunched over his book, broad of shoulder, and serious of expression. But then – there was a feature in the book that anything written by Skullic couldn't possibly share. "At least this man knows not to press his pen to the point of breaking," he observed.

"Mm?" Skullic said, the fraction of his attention was upgraded there, all the way past five tenths, for whatever reason. "You are quite right… He wrote this with a light hand. I would have thought there to be more passion in it, given the words."

"'I have marched east, and I have marched west, in the hunger for a foe, and in the hunger to see my people fed. Whatever enemy I found, I soon turned into a red stain upon my sword. But none, I tell you, have excited my passion for battle more than the Yarmdon to the north have. They have a love for combat, different to my own. Every time I cross steel with them, I learn something in my play.

Tell me, reader, is it wrong for a King to bring the lives of thousands along on his follies?'" Oliver read. "That does sound pretty wrong to me, First King. If you want to play around, you can do it in a sandpit. Don't go dragging your men into it, damn it."

"So you say," Skullic said. "But that is a mere difference in perspective. Just because he did not treat war with the seriousness that you and I do, it did not make him any less accomplished."

"…Are you claiming him to be a light-hearted man?" Oliver asked.

"You really haven't read these books, have you, boy? What the hell were you doing at that Academy then, eh? The most interesting books you'll find in any library, they're written by the First King," Skullic said. "Come, I charge you, spend an hour here, reading what the man has said – you'll be hooked, I tell you."

"I'll pass," Oliver said. "I've got people to see. I'll leave the dusty books to you, General, and trust that if you find any wisdom, you'll send it my way."