A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor-Chapter 729: Ideas of Gold - Part 3

"As I’ve mentioned before, if you unify how you present information, then you’re more capable of amalgamating that information with work from your colleges, or from intellects of the past, you’ve worked on the same subjects as you," Volguard said. "Now, enough dallying, answer the question. You’ve already done three today – you can’t tell me that’s the limits of your desire for learning?"

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Oliver sighed again. "Critical point when they’re at their weakest…" He repeated, trying to translate it more into his way of thinking. When he thought strategy, he typically put it in terms of his own fights, and imagined himself in that position on the battlefield. "Ah… He’s taken down three or four foes, and he’s run out of momentum," Oliver said quietly to himself.

The professor’s ears twitched. "It sounds like you might have something there," he said. "Now would you try translating it into terms that the scholarly are more likely to accept?"

"Will they accept momentum?" Oliver asked.

"They might, though that is not how Joshua phrased it."

"Then, the critical point when they’re at their weakest is when their momentum runs out.

They might be the stronger force, capable of securing maybe five castles in a good month or two, without any hope of the enemy turning it around, but if they can’t secure a near fatal blow that momentum carries them all the way, they’re in the position for a significant reversal," Oliver said, speaking from experience. Whenever he was fighting more than one foe, he felt the same thing.

He’d be able to create an opening for himself, and that opening would give him momentum enough to kill five or six men – but if there were twenty, and he kept pushing beyond the range that his momentum carried him, he’d be at his most vulnerable.

"Good," Volguard said, doing his best to keep a straight face. "And you guessed that based on..?"

"The flow in combat when you’re fighting multiple opponents – it’s more evident than against one," Oliver said.

Volguard nodded. "Very well. I’d expected that Joshua’s theorem would at least keep you occupied for a little longer, but at this rate, I suppose we could conclude these lessons earlier… It certainly seems that teaching you in this manner is far more effective than attempting to get you to memorize anything, though I do worry about how reliant your learning is on your knowledge of combat."

"Why’s that? As long as I get the answer, that’s fine, isn’t it?"

"It is. I’m not slighting you for it. In learning, as with combat, one should use every method that they have at your disposal. It’s a good thing that you have combat to rely on. I just worry about you doing it long-term. For you to really appreciate strategy as it should be appreciated, it ought to be a tool through which you can see the world, separate from combat," Volguard told him.

"I worry that I might be limiting you long term, by encouraging it too heavily… Or, it might simply be the case that your view of strategy will arise independently of its own accord."

"Seeing strategy separate to combat..? That doesn’t seem like it would be that helpful. They’re both one and the same," Oliver said, pulling a face.

"Your understanding of combat will always be there, but if you had a separate perspective just as potent, could you imagine what understanding you might be able to generate?" Volguard said.

The man asked him to imagine, and Oliver genuinely did try to, but as far as combat went, he could think of nothing that he knew that even came close to that level of understanding. Though, the point that Volguard made about the value of a secondary perspective did hit home.

He thought of Ingolsol, and he thought of Claudia, how each saw the world differently, and granted him a significant amount of power through those unique interpretations.

"Ah, that’s what you mean," Oliver said. "I’m unsure how I would achieve that… but I think you’re right – maybe I just need to learn more about strategy, and then I can start seeing it as you see it, rather than just a load of different problems."

"Indeed," Volguard said, nodding. He was a little put off by how quickly Oliver seemed to understand most of what he was trying to convey. Even more so with that last point that he’d tried to make – something that he struggled too much to find the words for, to the point that even his own colleagues struggled to understand what he was getting at.

In contrast, Oliver picked it up instantly, as though he’d lived a hundred lives that he could relate the words to.

"Well, finally, I thought that we might spend a little time talking about leadership, and a strategist’s role in all of that. I heard that you’ve been given command of a hundred men by Skullic, and that you’ve been given a village to protect by Lord Blackwell. Those are significant occurrences, ones that mustn’t be taken lightly, despite their suddenness," Professor Volguard intoned.

"Unlike a regular nobleman, your experience in such administrative duties – referring to the village, of course – is lesser. I’d thought, under the guise of certain strategic theorems, we might see how they relate to governance," Volguard said, noting how Oliver was suddenly sitting up considerably straighter. "Interested?"

"Most definitely," Oliver said.

The Professor hid a small smile. "See, strategy has a use outside of mere theory, and outside of the battlefield. Allow me to show you."

…

…

His lesson with Professor Volguard was longer than most – twice as long. It had happened that way once or twice. Sometimes, the professors’ schedules were such that they wouldn’t be able to see him for two weeks, but they happened to have an extended bit of free time on another day, enough to make up for two lessons at once.

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Typically, those lessons were more difficult to stomach than the rest, but that day, his lessons with Volguard – as soon as they’d shifted to matters that seemed immediately applicable to Oliver – had been interesting beyond measure, enough to cure his distractedness.