A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

Chapter 27: A Meeting With The Devil - Part 3

Beam bit his lip and began, feeling re-energized by his master's words. He brought the stone towards him, wrapped his arms around it and brought it up to his lap, just as he had done with the second one. He finished it the same way – by lifting it up to his chest and dropping it once his master gave the signal.

One lift. Beam let out a breath to steady himself. It was heavier than the second stone, that much was obvious. But it moved. It had moved without him needing to give everything he had. The shape was different to the second one too – as well as obviously the size and weight – so his positioning wasn't quite as good as it could have been.

The second lift was better, as was the third. He was growing more confident with each rep. He settled into a steady rhythm as his technique began to dial itself in to the point of near flawlessness. He was a stone-lifting machine, just as his master had said. Up and down he went, ignoring his struggle, ignoring the shake of his legs. He pushed past his limits without pause. It was not until after the tenth lift that his body refused to do any more and the stone merely rolled out of his hands when he went to grab it.

He moved to run after it, completely caught up in his task by now, not noticing his own exhaustion, but his master was there to bring him back from the void.

"That'll do," he called out. Beam looked back as though waking from a trance and the fatigue hit him all at once. He collapsed to one knee and took rapid gasping breaths.

Dominus handed him a cup of cool water, fresh from his jug, flavoured with pine needles. Beam gulped it down gratefully.

"Ten…" Dominus murmured, as he took a seat beside him.

"That's… good… right?" Beam asked between breaths, not quite able to tell from the look on his master's face.

Dominus looked at him with a shake of his head, his eyebrows twitching. "For someone your age and size, with as little training as you have, to be lifting more than half the weight of a man in the form of a slick stone? That's unbelievable," he muttered. "You have far more talent than I ever did… Perhaps you really might be the one to slay the Pandora Goblin." He said that second part so quietly that even though Beam strained his ears as hard as he could, he still couldn't catch all of it.

"What was that?" He asked.

"Nothing," Dominus said, regaining his composure and pushing himself back to his feet. "You'll go easy on the strength training for the next two days and then you should be able to progress further… As for your strength test… mm… let's see. Lift the fifth rock ten times."

"BWEG!?" Beam almost spat his drink out. The fifth rock was HUGE, by his estimation. The fourth rock was nearly twice as big as the third and the fifth rock was nearly twice as big again after that. Not only was the weight an issue, but with the size of it it'd be near impossible to wrap his hands all the way around, and to rest it on his lap too… It would be a problem.

"Are you— are you sure that's even possible?" Beam asked, panicked.

"Oho," Dominus looked at him with a wry smile. "So there are limits even to your own expectations? Relax. Lifting that much weight won't suddenly give you the power to take over the world. It will merely be a good start. That fifth stone is about the weight of a man. Granted, it's much harder to lift that as a slick stone, but it's still not an unGodly amount of weight. I think your good friend Perth might even be able to do twice that weight."

Beam twisted his face at the sarcasm. "He's not my friend…" he said bitterly, before processing what had been said and brightening up a bit. "So you're saying I'll have half the strength of Perth? And all that before the end of the month?"

"Mm, possibly. You'll likely have a little over half his strength," Dominus said non-committal.

"But how will I manage to beat him and his two friends at the same time if I'm only half as strong as he is?" Beam asked.

Dominus tutted in disgust. "I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're only asking such a stupid question because you're tired."

"What do you mean?" Beam asked, surprised. True, his heart was still beating wildly from the earlier exertion, but he didn't think his question was that bad.

"It's not only strength you'll be fighting him with, foolish boy. It'll be strength, multiplied by a new speed, multiplied by a month of martial arts training. If you can not beat him with all those factors in your favour, then not only do you have no talent, you barely qualify as a functioning member of society," Dominus told him with his usual venomous tongue.

"Ah…" Beam reddened, embarrassed. With his strength progressing so wildly, it featured strongly in all his daydreams about his future potential, and he kept forgetting about everything else.

"Up now, before you waste too much time, there's running to be done. Then you're going off into town again." Dominus said, dragging his apprentice to his feet.

…

…

As Beam walked back into town, for the second time in two days, he did so this time with a considerable spring in his step. His morning really could not have gone any better. The sun was sat high in the sky, just before its highest point and the world to Beam was feeling just as sunny as the sky looked.

Not only had his stone lifts gone as well as they had, with a thoroughly ridiculous new record of twenty lifts on the second stone and ten lifts on the third. But also, immediately after that, despite his exhaustion, his running had actually gone well. There seemed to be a sudden reversal of fortunes.