Chapter 16: Initial Understanding

Sigurd woke before sunrise the following morning.

There was no servant waiting beside his bed and no instructor demanding that he get up. His eyes simply opened at the hour his body had grown accustomed to over the past two years.

For several seconds, he remained beneath the blankets and stared at the dark ceiling while yesterday’s training replayed through his mind.

He remembered the final strike clearly: the movement of his feet, the rotation through his hips, the Vis leaving his Nascent Core and following the motion rather than being forced ahead of it.

More importantly, he remembered what had been wrong.

The energy had reached the blade slightly too early, his forward step had been longer than necessary, and the mistake forced his upper body to compensate near impact.

Those were small errors compared with what he had been making that morning, but Severing Line wasn’t a technique where small errors could simply be ignored.

Everything had to arrive together.

By the time the first light appeared beyond the windows, Sigurd had washed, dressed in his training clothes, and eaten breakfast.

Sylvia wasn’t awake yet, which spared him the usual argument about eating more because he was "still growing." He left the residential wing with his practice sword secured at his waist and the Severing Line booklet tucked beneath one arm.

The estate was already stirring around him. Guards were changing shifts, servants carried supplies between buildings, and several distant training fields echoed with the first sounds of weapons striking targets.

House Zierghardt didn’t wait for the sun before beginning its day.

Sigurd reached the eastern training ground while dew still covered the grass surrounding the stone practice circles.

Yesterday’s damaged target remained where he had left it. He placed the booklet on the nearby bench but didn’t open it.

He had read the manual enough to understand what it wanted.

Constantly returning to the diagrams now would only encourage him to imitate the illustrations rather than internalize the movement.

He drew his sword and began.

The first attempt was better than almost everything he had done the previous morning. His step remained compact, his hips rotated smoothly, and Vis traveled from his Core through the correct route without forcing his shoulder rigid.

The timing was still imperfect. The energy entered the blade a fraction after the optimal point and produced only a faint shimmer before the sword struck wood.

Sigurd immediately withdrew, reset his stance, and repeated the motion.

The second attempt was closer.

The third failed because he became too conscious of the improvement and accelerated the circulation.

Sigurd clicked his tongue softly, returned to his starting position, and tried again.

Hours passed like that. He wasn’t trying to strike harder. Strength was irrelevant to what he needed. Whenever the sword landed poorly, Sigurd identified the cause before attempting another repetition.

If his foot was wrong, he corrected the foot. If his grip tightened too early, he repeated the movement without Vis until his fingers stopped doing it.

When the circulation lagged, he slowed the entire technique rather than forcing more energy through the route.

Yesterday he had been discovering how Severing Line worked. Today he was removing the inconsistencies that prevented him from reproducing it.

By midmorning, the difference became obvious.

Sigurd stepped forward, and the movement flowed without hesitation. Vis left his Core as his weight shifted, followed the rotation through his torso, crossed his shoulder and entered the sword precisely as his arms carried the blade toward the target.

Pale energy gathered tightly along the edge.

CRACK!

The blade sank deeply into the wood.

Sigurd pulled it free and immediately attacked again.

CRACK!

Another clean cut appeared several inches beneath the first.

Again.

The third strike landed at almost exactly the same depth.

Sigurd stopped and studied the marks. Yesterday, one successful attempt had been surrounded by failures.

Now the successful executions were becoming normal, while mistakes had become the exceptions.

The technique still demanded concentration, and he couldn’t activate it instinctively, but the separate pieces were finally beginning to feel like one movement.

He continued training.

When breakfast had burned away and hunger began distracting him, Sigurd stopped long enough to eat the meal a servant brought to the field.

Afterward he rested until the soreness in his Vis channels faded, then returned to the target. He didn’t mistake exhaustion for dedication. Osric had spent too long teaching him the difference between useful training and damaging himself for pride.

There was nothing impressive about practicing badly because his body was too tired to maintain proper form.

By afternoon, Sigurd could execute Severing Line repeatedly without the obvious mistakes that had plagued him the previous day. His foot landed where it should. His shoulders remained loose.

His edge alignment held through impact, and the Vis followed the strike rather than fighting against it.

What remained was refinement. Sometimes the energy dispersed more than necessary.

Sometimes the circulation was correct but not efficient. Occasionally the strike felt technically perfect while still lacking the unity described in the manual.

That bothered him most.

Correct wasn’t necessarily mastered.

He continued until sunset painted the upper walls orange, then stopped only when his arms began affecting the quality of his cuts.

He returned to his quarters, ate enough food to satisfy Sylvia after she discovered how little he had eaten during the day, and spent the evening cultivating.

The dense Vis inside the private cultivation chamber filled the room while the faint stellar vortex produced by his Martial Soul drew energy toward him.

He refined what his body could safely handle, circulated it through his Nascent Core, and stopped before fatigue turned concentration sloppy.

Then he slept.

The following morning, he repeated everything.

Wake up. Eat. Train. Cultivate. Sleep.

The routine continued into the next day with almost no variation. Sigurd didn’t find it monotonous. Repetition had been part of his life long before he became a Zierghardt. Viktor hadn’t survived twelve years of professional operations because he only practiced when training was interesting.

Marksmanship required repetition. Physical conditioning required repetition. Entry drills, weapon transitions, surveillance procedures, memory exercises, hand-to-hand combat, everything useful eventually became boring if practiced long enough.

The people who continued after the excitement disappeared were usually the ones still capable of performing correctly when circumstances became ugly.

House Zierghardt understood the same principle far better than most families.

The clan’s children were born into privilege, but that privilege came with competition attached to it.

The Main Line competed with itself. The Seven Great Branch Houses competed for influence and resources. Vassal Houses fought to raise their standing, talented descendants attracted instructors and investment, and every generation produced another group eager to prove that they deserved what the previous generation possessed. Nobody needed to explain to a Zierghardt child that strength mattered.

They grew up surrounded by evidence.

Slacking off didn’t simply mean progressing more slowly.

It meant someone else passed you.

Once that happened, catching up became harder because advancement brought more than personal strength.

Talented descendants received better resources, greater attention, stronger instructors, more opportunities and eventually positions carrying real authority. Those who repeatedly failed to distinguish themselves could watch their standing decline regardless of the surname they carried. Being born into the direct line provided enormous advantages, but even that wasn’t an eternal shield against mediocrity.

More importantly, a descendant rarely stood alone.

Behind every promising child were servants, retainers, instructors, subordinate households and relatives whose futures became connected to that person’s success.

Sylvia’s estate itself was proof. Hundreds of people lived or worked beneath its authority. Guards built careers there. Servants raised families there. Vassals attached themselves to particular members of the Main Line and could rise or stagnate depending on how those relationships developed.

As Sigurd grew older, the number of people affected by his position would only increase.

He didn’t feel crushed by that reality. He simply understood it.

On the third day after receiving Severing Line, Sigurd’s training changed again. He no longer needed to stop after each strike and diagnose obvious faults because there were fewer obvious faults left.

Instead, he began linking repetitions together, stepping away from the target after every cut, resetting his distance and attacking from slightly different positions.

The manual’s instructional stance remained his starting point, but real opponents weren’t wooden posts waiting at an agreed distance.

Even before Initial Understanding, he wanted to know whether minor changes in position would destroy his synchronization.

At first, they did.

A half-step farther away made him overreach. Approaching from a slight angle altered his hip rotation enough to delay the Vis.

Beginning with his sword several inches higher changed the timing through his shoulder. None of these variations were part of the technique yet, and Sigurd didn’t pretend they were.

He used them to expose whether he genuinely understood the standard form or had merely memorized one exact sequence.

Whenever something broke, he returned to the original stance.

Step. Rotate. Circulate. Cut.

Everything arrives together.

By evening, he could feel the principle beneath the instructions more clearly than he had the day before.

The fourth morning arrived with aching muscles and a strange sense of anticipation. Sigurd ate, stretched, and returned to the training field.

He performed Basic Swordsmanship for nearly an hour before touching Severing Line, allowing his body to warm naturally.

When he finally stood before the target, he didn’t think about the System, Osric’s promised gift, or the one-week deadline.

He simply raised his sword.

Sigurd breathed in.

His Nascent Core turned quietly within him.

He stepped forward. There was no conscious command to release Vis. The energy moved because the strike moved. His rear leg drove against the ground, his waist rotated, his torso transferred the force into his shoulder, and the circulation traveled through the same chain without racing ahead or falling behind.

His hands guided the sword forward. Vis reached the weapon at the precise instant the blade settled into its cutting line.

A thin pale edge appeared.

The sword passed through the target.

Sigurd felt almost no resistance.

For a moment, nothing happened. Then the upper half of the thick wooden post slid sideways along a perfectly smooth diagonal cut and crashed onto the stone.

Sigurd remained in his finishing stance.

He knew immediately that the strike had been different.

There had been no moment where he was performing swordsmanship and circulating Vis separately. From the first step until the blade passed through the target, Severing Line had existed as a single action.

A familiar chime sounded inside his head.

Sigurd slowly straightened as the translucent blue interface appeared before his eyes.

[Technique proficiency requirement fulfilled.]

[Severing Line successfully learned.]

[Mastery Stage Updated.]

[Severing Line — Initial Understanding.]