Chapter 23: Mercy

Sigurd stood motionless, staring at the ruined clearing and the headless body sprawled across its center.

Blood continued pumping from the torn neck in weakening bursts, running through craters and broken earth before collecting beneath shattered roots.

The victorious beast stood over its kill with its chest heaving, bronze fur soaked almost black beneath the blood of both creatures. Sigurd had seen people die before.

He had killed more than enough of them himself.

Yet there was something brutally different about watching two creatures large enough to demolish the forest tear each other apart until one physically ripped the other’s head from its body. For several seconds, his face remained blank simply because he couldn’t find an appropriate reaction.

Osric coughed beside him.

Sigurd blinked and finally looked up. The instructor was watching him rather than the beast, amusement tugging at the corner of his mouth.

Osric took another sip from his flask before asking, "So, what do you think? Cool, right?"

Sigurd stared at him, then toward the corpse, then back again. There were probably several reasonable answers to that question. None came to mind. Eventually, he only shook his head.

Osric chuckled softly. His gaze drifted toward the battlefield, and some of the humor faded from his face. "You’ll see worse eventually. Much worse. The martial path looks magnificent from a distance. People see great clans, famous names, techniques that split mountains, men who live for centuries, and warriors powerful enough to decide the fate of entire territories. What they don’t see are the bodies underneath all of it."

He rolled the flask between his fingers, his voice becoming quieter. "Every step upward puts you beside people willing to kill for the same step. Resources run out. Opportunities have owners. Pride creates grudges, grudges become blood feuds, and sometimes people will try to kill you simply because of the family name attached to your back."

Sigurd listened without interrupting. Osric wasn’t speaking like an instructor reciting something written in a family manual. His eyes had changed. They remained fixed on the ruined clearing, but Sigurd had the distinct impression the older man wasn’t seeing either corpse anymore.

Osric continued, "You’ll have companions die. You’ll kill people whose names you never learn. You’ll meet men you respect on one battlefield and discover them standing against you on the next. Sometimes you’ll make the right choice and still bury someone afterward. Strength doesn’t make the world kinder, Young Master. It only gives you more control over which consequences become yours."

His thumb brushed absently over the two missing fingers of his right hand before he closed that hand around the flask. "So remember one thing when the day comes that someone genuinely becomes your enemy. Never leave an enemy alive because you suddenly feel merciful. Mercy toward an enemy who intends to destroy you is cruelty toward yourself and everyone standing behind you."

There was no dramatic emphasis at the end. Osric simply drank.

Sigurd understood him perfectly.

In his previous life, Viktor had walked a road paved with corpses. He had infiltrated buildings knowing people inside would die, pulled triggers from rooftops hundreds of meters away, broken necks in dark corridors, and watched teammates disappear because someone behind a desk had decided their lives were expendable.

He knew what it meant to hesitate in front of an enemy who wouldn’t return the courtesy. That part of Osric’s lesson needed no explanation.

What Sigurd hadn’t fully appreciated until now was scale.

The bloody world he remembered suddenly seemed almost restrained compared with Eden. On Earth, an assault rifle, explosive charge, armored vehicle, or missile represented frightening force.

Here, he had just watched two living creatures turn a section of ancient forest into wreckage using claws, horns, muscle, and whatever monstrous power existed inside their bodies. Trees wide enough to dwarf houses had been snapped apart during their struggle.

Boulders had shattered from impacts. The ground itself had been remodeled beneath their feet.

And these clearly weren’t the strongest things in Eden.

Not remotely.

Sigurd exhaled slowly.

Then the earth trembled.

RUMBLE!

His attention immediately returned to the clearing.

The surviving beast had dropped the severed head. Its massive body shifted as it turned toward the forest’s edge. The deep crimson eyes that had been fixed on its dead opponent now stared directly toward Sigurd and Osric.

It had noticed them.

The beast lowered its head.

A growl rolled across the clearing.

Sigurd’s expression changed immediately. His hand went toward his sword despite knowing how meaningless that weapon would be against something he could barely follow with his eyes.

The creature charged.

BOOM!

Earth exploded beneath its paws.

Sigurd’s pupils contracted as the gigantic bronze body became a blur crossing the clearing. Each stride sent tremors through the ground. Broken branches jumped. Loose stones scattered. Blood flew from its wounds in long red arcs, but the injuries seemed irrelevant beneath its remaining fury.

Osric didn’t move.

He looked bored.

Then a smile appeared.

"Oh," Osric said, watching the monster approach. "Looks like your reward can’t wait to meet you."

Sigurd turned toward him with disbelief. "My what?"

Osric crouched.

Sigurd’s words died as his instructor calmly picked a pebble from the ground. It was tiny, barely larger than the nail of Osric’s thumb. He brushed dirt from it against his coat, held it between thumb and forefinger, and looked toward the charging beast.

Sigurd looked from the pebble to the monster.

There had to be more than a hundred meters between them.

The distance was disappearing rapidly.

Osric raised his hand.

The beast roared.

Osric flicked his thumb.

BANG!

Sigurd saw a line of light.

That was all.

The pebble vanished from Osric’s fingers, crossed the clearing faster than Sigurd’s eyes could track, and struck the center of the beast’s armored forehead.

Its head exploded.

There was no resistance, no dramatic struggle between attack and defense. One instant the creature possessed a skull large enough to crush Sigurd beneath it. The next, everything above its shoulders disappeared into a violent cloud of blood, bone, fur, and shattered armor.

The headless body kept running.

One step.

Two.

Three.

Momentum carried the enormous corpse forward for dozens of meters while blood sprayed from its neck. Its forelegs finally folded.

BOOOOOOM!

The beast plowed into the earth and slid through the clearing, carving a trench before stopping amid a cloud of dust.

Chunks of bloody armor rained across the battlefield.

Sigurd stood perfectly still.

His hand remained wrapped around the hilt of his sword.

Slowly, he looked at the corpse.

Then at Osric.

Then back at the corpse.

Osric had already retrieved his wine flask.

The instructor pulled the stopper free with his teeth, took a leisurely drink, and glanced at Sigurd as though he hadn’t just killed a monster with a pebble.

Sigurd opened his mouth.

Nothing came out.

He tried again. "How strong are you?"

His voice shook slightly despite his best effort to keep it steady.

Osric looked at him over the rim of his flask. For a moment, the usual teasing expression disappeared, and Sigurd caught something much harder beneath it. Then Osric lowered the flask and smiled.

"Strong enough."

Sigurd waited.

Osric offered nothing else.

"That’s it?"

"That’s it." Osric nodded with a smile.

Sigurd stared at him for several seconds before looking back toward the headless corpse. He had trained beneath this man for two years. He had sparred against him repeatedly.

Osric had corrected his stance, struck his knees with wooden swords, thrown him into the dirt, complained about his shoulders, and occasionally drank while watching him train. Sigurd had always known the instructor was holding back.

Apparently, "holding back" had been a ridiculous understatement.

Osric began walking toward the battlefield, stepping over broken branches and chunks of stone.

After several paces, he noticed Sigurd hadn’t followed and glanced over his shoulder. "Are you planning to stand there all day, Young Master?"

Sigurd finally released his sword hilt. "I’m reconsidering every time I tried to hit you during sparring."

Osric laughed. "Good instinct. Keep reconsidering it."

Sigurd followed him into the clearing.

Up close, the destruction looked worse. The corpse of the six-limbed feline lay inside a crater, its severed neck surrounded by blood. Farther away rested the headless armored beast Osric had killed. Sigurd could still feel lingering pressure from both bodies despite their deaths.

Osric stopped between them.

Then he turned toward Sigurd, placed one hand over his chest, and performed an exaggerated bow.

"Young Master," Osric said, his grin returning, "I believe the Demonic Cores of these two Demonic Beasts should be sufficient as your reward."

Sigurd barely heard him.

His eyes remained fixed on the distant corpse, then shifted toward the tiny crater where Osric’s pebble had first struck the ground beyond it.

A pebble.

Osric had done all of that with a pebble.

The gap between them suddenly felt wider than the forest.

For once, Sigurd had absolutely nothing to say.