A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

He\'d agreed to meet Nila at her house, planning to get his scouting mission out of the way at the same time. Instead of leaving the forest by his normal route, he set off further to the west, continuing along the border where the trees met the plains until he\'d covered quite the distance and the village grew small behind him.

Then, from there, he left the trees, crossing the plains as he kept the same distance from the village, scouting its perimeter as he had been told to.

He covered all this ground at a lumbering jog. The limp in his leg was only slight now. Not because the pain had disappeared, but merely because Beam forced it to behave thusly. He\'d forced himself to endure the pain and at least produce some semblance of how he used to move.

All the while as he ran, he was thinking about how he might solve the problem that he had. Of course, there was his injury – that was an obstacle. But beyond that, there was that wall that felt as though it was coiling around him, restricting his progress. He wanted to see if he could overcome it today, as he hunted the spiders.

He thought that since his strengths had left him, he\'d be forced to discover something new.

Of course, he was slower than he was. He had only just managed to recover his ability to sprint – but when he did, his leg wound would leak a good amount of blood, so he held off it.

Along his route through the plains, around the perimeter of the village, he spied nothing, save for a herd of wild horses playing in the distance and the blue edge of what he thought might be the Salt Sea – before telling himself he was nowhere near close enough to catch sight of it, and it must have been the sky that he\'d spied.

With that, satisfied he\'d covered at least the western perimeter well enough, he moved to meet Nila. The quest was only to check the north, east and west, since the south had already been confirmed to be safe. And since Beam and his master lived in the north, that area was already thoroughly scouted, which just left the eastern plains to be checked for the quest\'s completion.

"You\'re already out of breath," Nila noted, as she stepped out of her house with her bow in her hand and a leather quiver over her shoulder, filled with arrows.

"Training," Beam told her. "I need to quickly get back to what I once was."

"New trousers too? I bet you\'re bleeding again under them," she said.

Beam could feel that he was and seeing the slightest darkening of the wool around the thigh, he half regret wearing them. It seemed like a waste to let such new clothes get dirty.

"Well, you definitely look better. Maybe if you cut your hair, you might even be handsome," she said, when she saw that he was making no move to reply.

"Are you ready? I want to jog there, if you can manage it. I need to get the training in," Beam said.

"I can… But are you really sure this is a good idea at all? I mean, it\'s only been a little over a week since you got cut so badly. Don\'t you feel like you\'re rushing it?" Nila said, her eyes betraying her genuine concern.

"I can\'t let such a shallow wound slow me. Let\'s get going," Beam said, moving to run.

"Ah! Wait up! Where are we headed again?" Nila asked as she ran to catch up with him.

"Over the mountain river," Beam told her, "there\'s a giant spider colony grouping up. They\'re starting to cause trouble."

"But don\'t giant spiders usually live alone? I thought they only got together to breed?"

"I guess that\'s why it\'s a problem," Beam said.

"Are we really going to be alright? Giant spiders are pretty strong, you know, and if they\'re grouped up like this, that seems like it\'ll be a problem," Nila said.

"Mhm, I guess so. It\'s my first time fighting any, so we\'ll find out. Master said that they\'re only a bit stronger than Goblins though, so I\'m not too worried. Besides, I have you today, don\'t I?" He said that part with the mischievous grin that he\'d learned from Dominus, a look that filled anyone who beheld it with a sense of foreboding.

"..? Why do I suddenly feel scared?" Nila said.

"Well, I\'m pretty weak at the moment, so we\'re going to have to use a little bit of strategy to keep us safe," Beam said.

"Guhh… I thought this would be easy money, but now I\'m just uneasy. This is really going to be okay, right?" Nila asked.

"Relax. I won\'t let any get close to you," Beam said.

"Now I\'m even more uneasy! You know how poisonous these things are, right!? You\'re not going to try and duel them like Goblins, are you? Please don\'t get hurt again," Nila shouted.

But Beam didn\'t reply. A moment later they entered the treeline, with Beam taking the lead on his unstable leg, heading up the dirt path covered in pine needles that began the trail deep into the forest.

They jogged for nearly half an hour like that until they reached the mountain river, at a point further downstream from where Dominus took Beam to train. Nila was out of breath as she looked down the ravine, putting her hands on her knees to try and recover.

"What… What now?" She asked.

Beam was in a similarly bad way, given his injury, but he was considerably more comfortable in that place of fatigue, for he\'d grown used to it in recent weeks.