A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

He tried a practice swing with his left hand at the empty air. Again, it felt awkward. He'd done proper battle with it against Rogue Commandant Amion, but now that he'd spent nearly a full day resting since then, it had gone back to feeling just as awkward as before. It took a good few slashes before he began to work through the stiffness, and he managed some degree of stability in the blade.

Then he started to add more speed to his imaginary attacks, cutting through the air with countless whooshes. He imagined Dominus' sword forms as he'd practiced. It was Dominus that he'd received his practice style from. That man had never missed a day without standing in the quiet with his blade, and pursuing some sort of ideal.

There were times when Oliver had done the same, but in the recent years, he'd found that his ideal had clouded over all the more. There was doubt in the sword, as what he aimed for seemed so disconnected from the reality. Now there was doubt no longer. Each slash came with solid intention. Each slash was a reach towards a higher height.

"Khan," Oliver said, remembering. The man had used his power of Command to overcome all the strength that Oliver had built up. The same strength that had managed to take down the great General Talon, and Khan had overturned it as if it were nothing. He'd been like a solid, unbreachable wall. His strength had seemed beyond even the Fifth Boundary.

"Those are the sorts of rock walls that a Sword needs to cut through," Oliver told himself. There was Command of his own to pursue, of course, to augment his blade as those Generals did, but he thought that a true Sword should have been able to overcome without it. He did not doubt that Dominus would have had no trouble with the likes of Khan.

He had even dared to wonder why a man like Dominus would need to get so strong, when everyone else seemed so weak in comparison. Khan had given him the answer to that.

Crisp slash after crisp slash bit through the air. Oliver's attacks on his imaginary enemies were relentless. He needed to get better, he told himself. Even if he only had his left hand to work with for now, there ought not have been any shortage of ideas.

There were times when such ideas had carried him far. His different forms. His Style of Overwhelm, and of Trickery. As the years had passed, all those styles that had seemed so different had blended into one. The disconnection from one Style to the other had ceased. They'd become a unified whole that manifested each component when it was necessary.

Oliver knew that to be the better state of the martial art, but with the loss of that defined conscious thought that brought him from one style to another, there came a feeling that he ought to have been doing something else.

Through Claudia, there was a simple solution to the situation of strength. If one wanted strength, then he had only needed aim for one true thing. A Boundary Break. That was when everything changed. Between each Boundary, he could indeed gather strength. He could make incremental progress, almost linearly at times, and he could be excited with that.

But in a Boundary Break, there was an explosion. It was almost madness. It made the efforts of before and the incremental progress of before look paltry in comparison.

So it was, as Oliver swung his sword, that he followed in his master's footsteps, and he pursued that Boundary Break just as Dominus had once pursued a Boundary Break of his own, for all those years.

He'd feared the Boundaries when he'd entered into the Third prematurely, and he'd felt the danger that an imbalance in that realm could cause. Now he had reason to go further. A wanting that outweighed such fears.

"Again," he told himself, slashing and slashing away, ignoring the breath that started to come more rapidly, and the arm that started to ache. He was a man chasing an idea, and no amount of fatigue would let him stop until he hit upon something that satisfied him.

He swung with a searching mind, looking for something new, something that might augment upon the old, and transform all that he had learned. He had so many tools available to him that he felt he'd let grow dusty over the years, but even as he reached for them, he could not help but wonder if he was looking in the wrong direction.

His was an impatience that made him long for the quickest path, and in longing for it, he snubbed all paths that did not win his heart, and ceased to travel all together.

A half an hour later, and a dissatisfied Oliver was left covered in sweat, no closer to the ideal that he sought after. He tutted. This much was to be expected, but he tutted regardless. A Boundary Break was not such an easy thing that he could be achieved in a single session of training. Nor was progress such an easy thing that it could be continuously achieved with the same straightforward efforts.

Oliver found progress, at times, to be like a skittish sheep that one needed to sneak up on and trick. If one always travelled in a straight line towards it, then that sheep would grow used to one's ways, and a man would find himself straying further and further away from it.

"I suppose this is all I can do for now," Oliver told himself. Somehow, even with the lack of progress, he could not feel too disheartened. There was a glory to the pursuit that was familiar, and it was exciting. It was a feeling that connected him to the Beam of years ago. That single hearted pure desire. Now he was in the same boat.

In some sort of way, it felt as if he was connecting with his roots.

Unlike that Beam of years ago, though, this Oliver could not spend all his time merely progressing. His station had given him more duties to take up his time, and there was only so long that he could put them off.