The Pathway Of Wisdom-Chapter 33: The Sinister Plan. Part-1.
Jake stood under the sun in heavy armor and kept waiting.
He kept waiting and waiting and waiting; two hours went by, and Alex still didn’t arrive.
Every time someone was sent to bring him to the arena, he would send them back saying he would come in ten minutes as he was getting ready.
He kept delaying, and with each passing minute, Jake’s situation worsened; he couldn’t even stand properly, and he was barely supporting his body with extreme determination and grit at that point.
*Huff!* *Pant!* *Huff!*
After a whole two and a half hours, Alex finally arrived at the arena, and by that time Jake was in such a bad state he had already thrown away his helmet as he couldn’t withstand the heat.
His heavy armor felt so heavy that he couldn’t even move an inch, and his sword, which seemed as light as a feather at normal times, now seemed extremely heavy!
When Alex finally showed up, Jake’s mind went blank from sheer anger and frustration!
His emotions went haywire, and he was so angry and broken that even Alex felt a tiny bit of pity looking at his helpless face.
"Oh~ my bad, little Jake, I got up late today and couldn’t sleep properly at night so I was taking a small nap~ Yaawwwnnnn~..."
As he entered the arena, Alex stretched his body with a teasing smile on his face and yawned loudly as he rubbed his sleepy eyes!
It was clear that he was taking a nap and didn’t come to the arena on time on purpose!
He already knew that Jake’s situation was bad, and he made him stand under the scorching sunlight for nearly three hours straight!
Not only was Jake badly dehydrated due to his diarrhea, but he was now even more dehydrated due to the scorching heat of his heavy armor getting hot under the sun.
Alex’s teasing smile and relaxed demeanor were even more infuriating to Jake, who was a very punctual and disciplined warrior.
"Yawwwwnnnn~ Oh, little kiddo over there, give me that stick you are holding. I kind of forgot my sword so I will make do with that..."
Alex looked at a random kid who was playing with a stick and asked him to give it to him.
Those words were so disrespectful that Jake’s eyes went bloodshot, and he lost all sanity in that moment.
"You!!! H-how can you!!! How can you disrespect the code of a warrior like that!!!?"
"Do you have no honour!?"
Hearing those angry shouts of Jake, Alex smirked and spread his arms open wide as he looked at all the spectators and said out loud,
"I am not a warrior, Jake Schild. I am not a swordsman. I have no need to follow the code of conduct that a warrior must follow..."
"I am a ’Saint’ of the ’God of Wisdom’! Only those who know the ’Path’ of strategy, the path of intelligence, and the path of tactics are qualified to be a ’Saint’ of a God who is the most ’Intelligent’ in this world!"
Alex smiled as he clenched the wooden stick in his palm with a playful look on his face.
"I am no warrior, Jake Schild, but I am a strategist. I believe in the god of ’Wisdom,’ not in the God of ’War’ and ’Battles’..."
"To be the believer of my benevolent god, you need not power, you need not money, you need not connections... You only need the thirst for ’Wisdom’!"
Alex didn’t care what others thought of him.
He had the title of the god of wisdom’s chosen saint! It won’t be considered strange if he uses various kinds of strategies and tactics to defeat his opponent.
In fact, it was a much better choice to challenge him in a battle of strategies and tactics instead of a head-on power struggle, as that would make you vulnerable to many kinds of tactics.
As a wise man once said,
{If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles!} (Source: Sun Tzu, Art of War.)
Alex already knew from the get-go that he was physically very weak and was no match for Jake in any possible way if he fought him head-on.
But Alex was no idiot; he was not going to fight Jake in the field that benefited him the most. He decided to fight Jake in a battle of tactics and strategy, which was his domain of expertise.
Alex had listened very intently whenever Ethan explained anything to him ever since he came to this world.
Ethan himself revealed all of Jake’s weaknesses to Alex unknowingly.
He told Alex that Jake liked eating at the vendor, and he loved the grilled meat a lot.
So, what did Alex do? Of course! He went and bribed the vendor to mix unhealthy stuff in Jake’s food!
The food vendor was just a poor guy, and in front of money, he could only bend his knees; he had no other choice.
Jake ate that food and had a stomachache!
Alex didn’t stop at that; Ethan had told Alex about the training ground where Jake often went for training when they first entered the city of Ilma.
Alex took advantage of that too.
He stood near the entrance and waited for a suitable target to come out.
When a poor and haggard-looking soldier with a depressed face came out.
Alex bribed him and told him that he had to spread rumors among the young trainees that if they won in a spar against Jake that day, Freya would accept their proposal!
Alex had already inquired about Freya, and she also trained in the training grounds along with Jake and others, and it was obvious to Alex what young men in their teenage years used to think.
Most of them had a crush on Freya; they all liked her, and thus he only had to spread a random baseless rumor and just watch the show from the sidelines!
They all ran up to fight Jake and tired him out one by one.
Even if any of them had won, Freya would have rejected them later anyway, so it didn’t matter much.
Jake was the only one who suffered from it all; not only was he tired, but the bad food he ate spread in his body due to all of that hard exercise.
The final nail was the dirty cold water that got splashed on Jake when he was on his way back; Alex had actually paid a cloth washer to do that to Jake.
Alex had seen his ironing and cloth cleaning shop when Ethan and he entered the city of Ilma, and it was located exactly on the path that Jake used to take every single day!
It was all planned from the very beginning!
