A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1373 - 1373: Secrets of the Past - Part 3

"Are you genuinely irritated, boy?" Skullic said. "Your suggestion is a valid one, but it would be inaccurate in describing what I intended to describe, for the stench included perfume, but was not limited to it."

"How did you ever get married, Skullic?" Oliver asked.

"With a priest," Skullic replied, smiling.

"…Damn it, I'm too tired to jab at you. Thirty seconds in, and I'm already exhausted," Oliver said, yawning again in place of a laugh. Naturally, he hadn't been particularly bothered about what Skullic had said, but it was fun to hold the General's feet to the fire every now and then.

"Then sit, weakling, and read your book," Skullic said, quite childishly. "I am rather busy. If you wish to pick apart my terminology, you can do it at a later date."

"You yourself said this wasn't studying… This is leisure for you," Oliver said. "Leisure can't keep you busy. Or can it?"

"You're here for the same reason now, are you not? It kept you awake until the early hours of the morning, so I will hear no complaints from you. Sit down, and do what you came here for. You're interrupting me," Skullic said.

"Here's a strange historical fact for you, Skullic," Oliver said, as he walked over to his desk. "At some point before you arrived, this was once called my house. Strange, isn't it?"

"Yes, your sarcasm is terribly witty, boy. Maybe if you could improve that strategy of yours, you might stand a chance at beating me in a war of words as well," Skullic said. "Until then, I will accept no challenges."

"That's a low blow…" Oliver muttered, but he couldn't deny it. He was still years away from being able to trouble Skullic in the likes of strategy. There was no more to be said in his defence, and besides, he was too tired to continue the game. He settled on the page in front of him, and was finally able to drift away from his tired state of mind, and into the words of the First King.

The man had led quite a life – that was obvious to Oliver by now. His birth was interesting. He was born into a position of leadership, but only really on the village level. He supposed in current Stormfront terms, that would put him as a minor noble. But the Stormfront people of the past had no home.

They were a wandering group that had changed the location of their camps every year or so, when the prey had dried out.

It was only when they had arrived in the land of modern day Stormfront that those people of times past had found something that they wished to fight for, and keep.

They had been no strangers to warring with the natives of the various lands that their nomadic movements brought them to, but the discovery of Stormfront proper, with the Black Mountains to the north, and the sea to the west, and its fertile farmland, just beneath the Verna deserts to the east of it. It made it a perfect pocket of paradise.

Something that even a nomadic peoples were ready to settle down for.

The First King had been born into such a war, right in the centre of it. It had taken fifty years for the first Stormfronters to carve out a country for themselves, after choosing to settle, and the First King was born ten years into that war.

By that point, the batting had not been going well. Other nomadic groups had joined the Stormfronters, and their numbers had swelled to over a hundred thousand, but only a fraction of those were warriors, and the strain of the increased population only made their war efforts more difficult.

The tiny patch of land that they had managed to conquer, in those first ten years, was no bigger than a city like Ernest. Somehow, they hadn't been able to grow it beyond that point, no matter how they tried, no matter who took the helm.

The people had started to think themselves cursed. No victory in battle brought them closer to their desired future. Nothing they could do served to ease their path. They were on the verge of being completely broken – and it was into such a world that the First King had been born into.

When the First King described it from his experiences, he made it sound like a paradise, where any action he took had the potential to cause significant effects, but when he managed to describe their situation more objectively, it sounded like a true hell, for any that would hear it.

Mothers had to truly fight for the lives of their children, to see them fed. To have a child in those conditions was a dangerous thing. It left a woman weak, in a time when weakness couldn't be tolerated, for the scarcity of food. One child in ten, the First King had predicted, survived such conditions. And the First King had been one of them.

'Anyone would think that such a way of living would give rise to a bitter and resentful man…' Oliver mused, but when the First King described his childhood, he had sounded as childish as the boy he was describing. He made it all sound like the most extraordinary amount of fun.

For a man whose very life was put on the scales each day, who could quite easily have been snuffed out, in one of the many night time raids that the first Stormfronters had endured, the First King seemed to have enjoyed it an unusual amount. He seemed to see life and death in a different way to most.

Reading through the First King' words was more than enough for Oliver to forget his tiredness. For as long as his eyes were on the page, he was afflicted by the First King's energy, and it more than made up for his own.

Before he knew it, it was midmorning, and Nila was standing right next to him, jabbing at his shoulder with a finger, pointing out the steaming stew that had been set in front of him.

"Nila..?" Oliver said sleepily. "Where's Skullic?"