Chapter 31: Ten Years

Steam drifted lazily toward the vaulted ceiling of Sigurd’s bathroom, gathering beneath carved stone arches before disappearing through narrow vents hidden among the ornamental molding.

The room itself was larger than the entire apartment Nikolai had once lived in on Earth. White marble covered the floor and walls, interrupted by veins of black stone and thin strips of gold worked into geometric patterns.

Several enchanted lamps burned with steady amber light despite the moisture in the air, while a row of incense burners released thin streams of fragrant smoke from alcoves surrounding the enormous marble bath.

The scent was subtle, something between cedar and an unfamiliar flower native to Eden, and for once there was no sword lying within Sigurd’s immediate reach, no weights attached to his limbs, no Vis circulation exercise occupying half his attention, and certainly no Ferocious or Demonic Beast trying to remove some portion of his body. After what Osric had put him through that day, Sigurd considered the absence of attempted murder an improvement.

He sank deeper into the warm water until it reached just beneath his chin. White bubbles gathered around his shoulders, occasionally drifting across the surface whenever he moved, while the heat gradually worked its way into muscles that had spent the afternoon being battered around a mountain valley.

Sylvia had insisted that medicinal herbs be added to the bath after seeing the bruises covering him, although Sigurd suspected the servants had added the bubble soap afterward simply because they still found amusement in preparing elaborate baths for the Tenth Young Master.

He had stopped arguing about such things years ago. There were battles worth fighting, and preventing Sylvia’s attendants from fussing over him after training had proven decisively unwinnable.

For several minutes, Sigurd simply sat there.

That itself felt strange.

His days had become so thoroughly structured around training that inactivity almost created discomfort. If he wasn’t cultivating, he was practicing swordsmanship. If he wasn’t holding a sword, Osric was making him run, climb, fight, endure some ridiculous environment, or learn how to continue functioning after exhaustion had turned his limbs into dead weight.

When none of those occupied him, there were books to read, knowledge about Eden to acquire, Martial Techniques to study, and countless things he still didn’t understand about the enormous world into which he had been born.

Even meals occasionally became lessons whenever Osric decided to discuss martial theory while eating.

Sitting in warm water with absolutely nothing demanding his attention gave his thoughts room to wander.

Perhaps too much room.

Sigurd raised one hand from beneath the bubbles and looked at it. The hand belonged to a ten-year-old, but there was little about it that resembled the hands of an ordinary child. Calluses covered his palm and fingers from years of sword practice.

Several pale scars crossed the back of it, remnants of claws, branches, blades, and training accidents that medicinal treatment had failed to erase completely. Beneath the skin existed physical strength that would have been impossible for Viktor to comprehend before arriving in Eden.

That thought carried him backward.

Earth.

Sometimes it felt impossibly distant.

Sometimes it felt like yesterday.

Nikolai could still remember the rain striking the roof of that industrial facility. The smell of wet concrete. The rifle against his shoulder. Kara’s voice coming through communications while he counted guards and realized that the intelligence didn’t match what he was seeing.

He remembered warning Mason, losing Bravo Team one signal at a time, and watching everything he had trusted for twelve years unravel within minutes.

Two hundred and seventeen operations. Fourteen countries. A career built upon completing whatever assignment his organization placed before him.

He had been their Blood Hound.

Then they decided the Hound needed to die.

Sigurd leaned his head against the marble edge of the bath and closed his eyes. The explosion returned easily enough when he allowed it. Heat. Pressure. Concrete collapsing.

The certainty that there was nowhere left to run. Nikolai hadn’t expected heaven, hell, reincarnation, or anything else waiting beyond death. He had spent his life dealing with things that could be measured, investigated, tracked, killed, or escaped.

Religion and stories about another existence had never held much importance to him.

Then he opened his eyes inside a newborn’s body. Even now, ten years later, the absurdity almost made him laugh. He remembered trying to break the midwife’s thumb.

Sigurd’s lips curved slightly at the memory. It had been a perfectly reasonable reaction from his perspective at the time. He had awakened unable to move properly, surrounded by strangers, covered in blood, and with no idea what had happened. His instincts had responded before his infant body demonstrated exactly how useless it was.

Then Sylvia had held him.

That memory felt different. Sigurd opened his eyes and stared at the steam gathering above him.

He had spent the first years of this life treating everything according to concepts carried over from Earth. Zierghardt was an organization. Sylvia was the person responsible for his survival. Servants were personnel. Resources were advantages. Training was preparation. Strength was security. The framework had been familiar, and familiar things were easier to understand.

Ten years had complicated that considerably.

Sylvia wasn’t an asset.

Mira wasn’t personnel.

Osric certainly wasn’t merely an instructor anymore, although Sigurd would rather swallow his sword than tell the man that directly.

This life had begun becoming his own somewhere along the way.

He wasn’t certain exactly when Nikolai had stopped being the name he instinctively associated with himself. There hadn’t been some dramatic moment where one identity died and another replaced it.

The change happened gradually. People called him Sigurd every day until he answered without thinking. Sylvia hugged Sigurd. Osric trained Sigurd. The servants worried about Sigurd. The sword in his hand belonged to Sigurd Di Zierghardt.

Nikolai had died in that facility. The memories remained. Yhe experience remained. But the person sitting inside this bath was Sigurd.

He looked down at his reflection between patches of white bubbles. Ash-white hair with black roots had become damp and fallen across his forehead. Iron-grey eyes stared back at him from a face that bore no resemblance to the man he had once been.

Ten years.

He had been in Eden for ten years.

The number was difficult to appreciate until he considered what those years had done to him.

On Earth,Nikolai had reached the limits of what exceptional training, experience, equipment, and preparation could accomplish with an ordinary human body.

He could kill people from hundreds of meters away, infiltrate secure facilities, survive situations that should have killed him, and dismantle teams considerably larger than his own. His organization had regarded him as one of its finest weapons.

That version of himself wouldn’t survive against ten-year-old Sigurd. The thought would have sounded ridiculous once.

Now it was simply true.

His current body possessed strength that belonged in the mythology Viktor had once dismissed as fiction. Vis reinforced his flesh, bones, senses, and movements. A serious battle between himself and the Silvervein Direwolf had devastated an entire valley.

Their collisions shattered stone. Their movements crossed enormous distances within moments. The beast’s attacks carved through forests and tore apart a mountainside, while Sigurd possessed enough physical power to kick its massive body through a stone ridge.

If the current Sigurd somehow returned to Earth, the organization that had spent twelve years turning Nikolai into a weapon would have no framework for dealing with him.

Their fortified facilities would mean nothing.

Armored vehicles would mean little more. Numbers wouldn’t solve the problem. Given enough time, Sigurd could lay waste to an entire town with his current strength alone, and he hadn’t even left the first Martial Rank.

That last thought erased some of his amusement.

Awakened.

He was still only an Awakened martial practitioner.

His First Vis Core had almost reached the Ascended Stage, but above Awakened stood Master, Grandmaster, Transcendent, Supreme, Saint, Monarch, Paragon, and finally Genesis. He had watched Osric kill a Demonic Beast by flicking an ordinary pebble.

He had witnessed two beasts transform a forest into rubble simply by fighting each other. He had awakened a Martial Soul whose true size he couldn’t even comprehend and whose Grade caused the System itself to return an error.

Earth would have considered him a monster.

Eden considered him a talented ten-year-old.

Sigurd found that strangely exciting.

"Status."

The familiar translucent panel appeared above the bath.

[STATUS]

Name: [ Sigurd Di Zierghardt ]

Age: [ 10 ]

Species: [ Human — Zierghardt Lineage.]

Title: [ None ]

Martial Rank: [ Awakened; Nascent Stage — Peak ]

Martial Soul: [ Star Devouring Leviathan ]

Grade: [ ERROR — Unquantifiable ]

Type: [ Primordial Beast / Growth ] 𝑓𝑟ℯℴ𝓂

State: [ Awakened — Dormant [

Authorities: [ Devouring | Gravity | Light |

Stellar ]

Bloodline: [ Zierghardt Bloodline — Dormant ]

Ancestral Chains: [ 0/100 Broken ]

[SKILLS]

[ Basic Swordsmanship — Completion ]

[ Severing Line: Rank: Black | Mastery: Major Completion. ]

Type: [ Offensive / Single-Strike / Vis Reinforcement / Precision.]

--------

Sigurd studied the panel without touching it. There were other sections he could open, but he didn’t bother. The information before him was enough.

Ten years old.

One Vis Core.

Peak Nascent.

Severing Line at Major Completion.

A Martial Soul he had barely begun to understand. It looked impressive until Sigurd remembered Osric watching his battle as though both he and the Silvervein Direwolf were moving like snails. There was always another mountain.

Perhaps that was what made this world interesting.

Sigurd dismissed the panel and sank slightly deeper into the bath. The incense continued burning around him, and warm water moved gently against his bruised body while his thoughts returned to the question Osric had asked after the battle.

Helheim.

He had known for years that the day would eventually come. Zierghardt could train its descendants within its own territory, but keeping them surrounded exclusively by their clan forever would produce warriors who understood only Zierghardt.

For the first time, Sigurd would be leaving the environment that had defined his entire second life. He would see how strong other Zierghardt’s descendants actually were.

The thought brought a slow smile to his face.

Five days.

Sigurd closed his eyes again and allowed the warmth to settle around him.

"So I’ll finally be going to Helheim in five days."