A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

The Gorebeast lunged in at the closest goblin corpse, and clamped a leg in its teeth. With a mighty crunch, it shattered bone, and swallowed it whole. Before a man could even blink, it was onto its next bite. Beam didn't know the exact amount of meat that it took for them to evolve, but he knew that it wasn't much – especially when it was the meat of a powerful monster.

He was already sprinting in, as the Gorebeast went for its second bite. His movements were light enough, that it almost did not hear its approach. But even without hearing him, it could still sense him, and now it could feel the danger, as Beam's swung towards its back.

It underestimated the speed, and tried to get in another bite before the strike landed. With the meat in its mouth, it attempted to spring away, only for Bam's blade to find it and put an end to its life.

Cheers erupted, followed by urgent urgings. "LAST ONE! QUICK BEFORE IT EVOLVES!"

Tolsey's hand was going to his sword already, as he prepared to dash in and finish off the last Horned Goblin. It had already polished off the liver, and had now reached a blood hand in towards the creature's heart, which it took, and then began to run away, as though it knew that that much meat from a higher monster like a Gorebeast would be more than enough for its evolution to happen.

Sure enough, as Beam rushed towards it, the flesh of the Horned Goblin began to ripple, as though becoming liquid. Its arm thickened, and its head enlarged, with long fangs sprouting out of it.

With it trembling as it was, and Beam now stood just behind it, he could have dealt the finishing strike at, but he knew from experience that an aggression regeneration afflicted the monsters as they were evolving, so he paused his strike, even as the soldiers urged him to get the job done.

"WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR? KILL IT! QUICK! BEFORE IT EVOLVES!"

"Captain – we've got to step in!" Tolsey said urgently. He knew just how dangerous these Evolved Horned Goblins could be.

"Mm," the Captain noted. "It seems the boy has seen this evolution process before. He knows to wait, despite the opportunity to kill."

Tolsey looked up in surprise. "It's right to wait? Why?" He hadn't dealt with many monsters in the midst of evolving before.

"Once the evolution has begun, there's no stopping it, not even through taking the creature's life," Lombard said calmly.

A roar echoed throughout the trees, as the Horned Goblin endured its evolution. Its noise sounded halfway between pain and halfway between ecstasy. But the evolution clearly did not last as long as it had hoped, for the liquid rippling of its flesh soon calmed down, and what was left was merely a stout-looking Horne Goblin, half-evolved, just as Beam had seen in his meat cave before.

The creature complained in disappointment, but it made sense to Beam – it hadn't eaten nearly enough flesh, after all. A measly two organs wouldn't be enough to send it all the way towards the domain of Hobgoblin.

Still, the creature was menacing enough in its own right now. It was like a green dwarf, in both intelligence and in physique. Its roar rippled throughout the clearing, and its anger turned to aggression, as it immediately turned on Beam to attack.

Arrows came with its call, as the goblin archers from within the trees backed it up, yielding immediately to the higher form of creature.

It launched its first attack with an enlarged fist, as the soldiers called out warnings. But before that fist could even finish its attack, Beam severed the hand from its body, before neatly, and easily beheading it, with movements that could be only described as anticlimactic.

But that was the true state of Beam's strength. With no army of monsters to box him in and restrict his movements, a creature of that level of strength posed no problem. Even with arrows in the air – since he could already see where they were coming from and there were only two of them – the outcome didn't change.

The Horned Goblin looked as surprised as anyone, as it realized that its head had been separated from its body. It glanced towards Beam in fear, before the light faded from its eyes and it died.

"Now to hunt those archers," Beam said to himself, twirling his sword in his hands. He moved towards the trees.

"Hold the defensive line, boy," Lombard called out to him. "Our own archers can snuff out the likes of those bowmen."

At his swords, several men ran over from their squadrons, and picked up the bows that were laying a short distance away. They each notched an arrow, as a sergeant commanded them, looking towards the trees, trying to find their location.

His eyes must have been better than Beam's, for he soon spotted it, despite the distance they were away. "Middle of that large fir tree, on the thick branch," he said. "Aim – no, not that fir there Sorsam, to your left a bit. Aye, there you go – draw. Loose!"

A cloud of arrows swam towards the trees. A moment later, Beam heard a scream, followed by a loud thumping sound, as the body of a Horned Goblin hit the floor of the trees.

"Now you can go and collect the body," Lombard told him. "Now that our defensive line has been re-established." Even from a distance away, with Lombard just speaking levely, Beam could hear his every word, and he nodded, dashing towards the trees, just in time to see the sergeant giving more commands to his men, and sending out another cloud of arrows.

They too found their mark, and like a hunting dog, Beam found the kills on the floor with arrows in various parts of their bodies. Impressively, more than two arrows had found their mark on each one.