A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1516 - 1516: The Unexpected - Part 7

"…Tsch," Blackwell shook his head in disgust. "And now you've made a mess of the earliest stages of our war effort. If this goes on any longer, then we're going to lose an ally that is most necessary. Are you going to take responsibility for that, General Karstly?"

Oliver now found himself firmly on the back foot. The flow he'd sought to establish had been entirely shot down. Gar attacked him at will, in that erratic way that he had, without really making use of the previous attacks that he'd formed.

He would wait whenever he seemed to feel like waiting, or else push through and continue an attack that he should have backed out of, putting himself in a dangerous position. It was so against the flow that Oliver had learned through all his time training and fighting that he was at a loss as to how he might deal with it.

All the complexities of information that otherwise would have been reduced to a single sense for where the battle would head next now existed as individual data points that Oliver had to continually keep track of, and in keeping track of one, he lost track of another.

It felt as if he was fighting far more enemies than just one. As if a mud army had suddenly arisen from the ground, and taken aim at him, with slingshots and spears, throwing whatever they could at his side. He tried to track some of them, but others still made it to his back.

It had been a long time since Oliver had found himself feeling so defenceless. Ordinarily, against a mighty man, he could at least reduce the enemy's might to a single realm. Against Zilan, he could say that the man was overwhelmingly strong, and that his strikes fell more heavily than he was used to.

Against Gar, there was none of that. There was just an abundance of chaos. It seemed as if his very nature was to exist as a lack of understanding.

"What a creature…" Samuel commented mildly, seeing the way he was pushing the famed Oliver Patrick closer and closer to the point where the fight ought to have been stopped. Blood ran freely from Oliver's wound now, but the referee dared not stop it. He glanced anxiously in the direction of Lord Blackwell, as if asking permission, for he knew very well what outcome the mighty General had favoured.

General Blackwell in turn simply glared back, and that was answer enough. Even if the rules had to be changed and bent, General Blackwell was unwilling to see them towards such a pitiful defeat so early on.

And yet, increasingly, it was beginning to seem as if he didn't have a choice. He clenched his fist tighter and tighter, until the bulge of his hand muscles threatened to burst through the metal of his gauntlet.

"Karstly!" He said, louder than he intended, directing the fullest extent of his rage at him. "Did you have to allow for this to happen?"

"You blame me, General Blackwell, but how was I to assume that you would not even catch the slimmest glimpse of who that challenger was?" Karstly replied mildly.

The vein that bulged on Blackwell's forehead more than suggested that he received Karstly's hidden meaning. 'Don't blame your lack of competence on me,' the younger General seemed to say.

It was with the highest effort that the already volatile General Blackwell kept himself from exploding. His grief lent an extra oil to everything that he felt, but by sheer will did Blackwell manage to keep himself held together.

"Such creatures ought not to exist," he growled. "To have such power, and have no presence. It is an abomination."

"They lose other things," Karstly said. "I am sure you can quite well see the fragile state of our young challenger's mind. It is not the sort of feat that a normal person might be able to pull off – to become so mighty with the sword, without having the magnitude of one's presence amplified in the process."

"Damn it," Oliver cursed to himself, feeling his wounds pile up. He had already forgotten what the conditions of the bout were himself. The blood ran freely, and he had no thought as to why the referee wasn't stopping the competition. He could hear the crowd loud in jubilation, enjoying the show with unhidden excitement. He could hear too the anxious cries of his men, and of Nila, threaded in amongst them.

"…What are you?" He said accusingly of Gar, trying to force some distance from the young man, by putting his sword in between the two of them. He had the sense that, in fighting Gar, he was fighting against something not of this world. Something that turned those natural laws entirely upside down.

Gar frowned at him. "Stronger. Stronger than you. Gar the strongest. Is obvious," he said, and one could tell that he very well believed it. The sword that sought out Oliver was a hungry one. It was dangerous, and reckless, more reckless than the most far gone of slaves were likely to be. It wasn't a sword that sought to defend anything. It was a style of swordsmanship that made it seem as if the past didn't exist, as if there was no connection to anything, anywhere.

The more Oliver fought the young man, the more he felt a feeling of sickness build up in his stomach, as if his very being was being eaten away, along with the armour that he wore.

Another strike slammed into his right arm, running down the length of it, goring through the plate, and drawing blood. It had been such an impressive art piece of metalwork, and now Gar had turned it into his personal graffiti project, using red ink and harsh cut lines as his tools.

Backwards step after backwards step, Oliver was forced to take. He swatted at the air in front of him, but once more, his sword found nothing. Gar didn't even use the momentum of the strike to counter attack. He let it sit there, as if it didn't exist, and he launched another attack, based on nothing at all, something so unconnected that it might have been entirely of the void.