WIEDERGEBURT Act VI: Chapter 11

Panic raced through me as I realized what had just happened to stroll upon my battleground. I’d not met another Sekbeist Overlord since my battle with Dunherr, but I remembered his words perfectly. I specifically remembered him telling him that he and his two compatriots were the weakest among their brethren.

Killing Dunherr had been simple since he’d already used up so much Spiritual Power battling against Siv and didn’t even see me coming, but I at least recognized his power. If I’d fought him under conditions less favorable to myself, there was no telling how our fight would have turned out, and now I was being confronted with two of them.

I didn’t know what to do.

However, I knew I needed to avoid a battle with them if at all possible.

While I was hiding myself behind the wing of the Great Prismatic Wyrm, the Sekbeist Lords were approachimg. Their footsteps echoed in my ear. It was a dull thud that rang out like a war drum. As they came closer, I could even catch their conversation.

“Hmph. So this is what had caused such a commotion. I thought for sure we’d run into one of the Guddomelig, but it was just a stupid wyrm.”

“A single baby Prismatic Wyrm cannot cause this much damage by itself. Take a look at those wounds. Someone who can use the Concept of Death must have fought against this beast.”

“Huh? I don’t see anyone here, but yeah, I guess someone had to have killed it. Could it be members of the God Race?” A sound like flesh slapping flesh echoed from beyond the wing. “If it is one of those blasted Guddomelig, maybe I’ll finally be able to get my pound of flesh on those damn cowards!”

The first thing that shocked me was when one of the Sekbeist Lord’s commented on how this was a baby. Seriously? This massive creature was just a child? What would the size and power of an adult Prismatic Wyrm be then? However, while that was indeed shocking, what I focused on more was their mention of the Guddomelig, the so-called God Race, the greatest of the Nine Great Races.

“I don’t think it was the Guddomelig. Whoever killed this Demon Beast clearly doesn’t have a strong grasp on the Concept of Death. My guess is they only recently gained an understanding into this concept.”

Well, I couldn’t argue with them there.

“What in Yama’s name are you talking about, Durmuz? The God Race are the only ones capable of living in this realm aside from us. Who else could have done this?”

Given what they were saying, I judged that the realm I’d found myself in was Gudeverdenen--the realm of the gods. That was interesting. It gave me a lot of information that I didn’t have before, and it caused several pieces I’d had been didn’t know what to do with to click into place. Now a lot of things I’d always wondered about myself made sense.

But if I wanted to make use of this information, then the first thing I needed to do was escape from here.

I decided to use the earth element to travel through the earth. I had already reached the Fourth State of Spiritualism for it, so merging with the earth would be easy for me.

“The person hiding behind that wing over there,” someone said before I could leave. I could only assume it was that Durmuz guy.

I felt like my entire body had become frozen under a lake of ice after those words were spoken, but if I was the kind of guy who froze up when shocked, I would never have survived to this day. Yet even as I began merging with the earth, the Prismatic Wyrm corpse was blasted off the ground, sent soaring into the air, and crashed several dozen meters away, leaving me completely exposed.

The two Sekbeist Lords looked exactly how I’d seen them when I was using the wind element to create a sonar image. They stared at my half-buried body, one in shock, the other with an inquisitive gleam. Before I could even decide on what to do, the one on the right pointed at me.

“It’s a god child! It’s really a god child!”

And that was my que to leave.

“Hey! Do not think you can run away from me!!”

I didn’t know what direction I was heading in, but it didn’t matter. I manipulated the earth and threw up several thousand spikes where the Sekbeist Lords were standing. The spikes didn’t hit anything. Both Sekbeist Lords’ presences disappeared, so I could only assume they were airborne.

I didn’t care. I took off, first traveling deep beneath the earth’s surface, then heading away from my current location. It was my hope that they wouldn’t be able to track me since I had become one with the earth.

Time meant nothing as I raced through the ground, traveling further and further. I wasn’t using my own Spiritual Power to move but the earth itself. The Fourth State of Spiritualism allowed me to manipulate the element in its raw form.

I must not have been careful enough. In my haste to escape from the Sekbeist Lords, another problem came to me when an Earth Wyrm wrested my control over the earth and tried to swallow me whole. Its gaping maw appeared before me and made to clamp down. I gathered death energy before it could take a bite out of me, released it in a spear through the ground, and impaled the creature through the head.

That should have been the end of it, but the blood from the carcass must have drawn more of them to me, for I felt the presence of multiple Earth Wyrms closing in.

Knowing better than to remain in this place, I traveled back up, bursting out of the ground before attempting to erase my presence. That was when something struck me. Hard. A pained gasp resounded in my ear as whatever hit me drilled into my side. Blood sprayed from my body as I was sent tumbling across the ground, struck a tree, and caused a massive dent to appear within it. These were ironwood trees, so one could imagine the force with which I’d been hit.

I did not let myself remain idle.

Water flowed through my body, healing my wounds, and I overlayed that power with life energy. So long as I had Spiritual Power, I would not die. That did not mean I couldn’t feel pain.

“Hey now. I said ‘don’t run,’ didn’t I?” the Sekbeist Lord whose name I didn’t know appeared in front of me. I didn’t know where his friend, Durmuz, was, but I didn’t really care.

Swinging my arm, I unleashed a crescent blade of death energy at the Sekbiest Lord. He blocked it. I’m not sure what concept he used, but the air around his fist rippled as he punched my attack, deflecting it into one of the large ironwood trees. I didn’t stick around. Even as the tree decayed, I fired off several attacks. Light. Fire. Darkness. Lightning. The four most powerful attack elements in my arsenal struck the Sekbeist Lord and exploded as I made my escape.

Since going underground was a no-go, I took to the skies, transforming my body into a beam of light energy. The world around me passed in a blur. I was careful not to strike any of the trees during my flight. Even light could not move through these, which I learned the hard when I bounced head first off one when I first reached the Fourth State of Spiritualism for light.

I didn’t get far before an intense Spiritual Pressure slammed into me from above. It was such an overbearing feeling that my body began sinking in the sky like a boat full of holes sank in the water. Gnashing my teeth together, I increased the output of Spiritual Power I was releasing to counteract the effects and effected evasive maneuvers, but then I suddenly found myself locked in place.

It was an odd thing. The world around me was still moving. A breeze blew through the forest, small critters scurried along the floor, and plants swayed to and fro, but I could not move. My entire body had become locked into place. It was like… like…

Like I had been frozen in time.

In desperation, I channeled Spiritual Power through my body, trying to break free from this mysterious power that held me. I might as well have not even bothered. Even a novice with higher level concepts like me could tell that the person locking me in time like this had a far greater understanding than I myself did.

As I was struggling against the time lock, two people appeared before me. It was Durmuz and the other Sekbeist Lord. While Durmuz appeared relatively calm, the other one was grinning from ear to ear.

“You’re a slippery bastard, aren’t ya? I didn’t think you’d be much of a threat because you only just began understanding higher level concepts, but it seems you’ve got quite a few tricks up your sleeve.”

I wanted to answer him, to say something witty and sarcastic, but I couldn’t even move my mouth. I couldn’t even glare. Every centimeter of my body was locked into place.

“I wonder what a god child is doing here,” Durmuz murmured as he tilted as his head at me. The way he looked at me made me feel like a piece of fine art put on display. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking.

“Who cares? Let’s just kill him.”

Those words made me feel tense, but Durmuz didn’t seem to agree with his companion. He sent a glare at the other man, who took a few hasty steps back and raised his hands as if to placate the other man.

“Whoa. Ease up on the glare there, ya? I didn’t say anything weird, you know. We are at war with the Guddomelig for centuries now. What’s wrong with killing one of their own?”

“Zugarod… are you telling me you do not find it strange that a young god child is wandering around Ironwood Forest?” asked Durmuz. I was glad to finally have a name for the other Sekbeist Lord.

“Well… I mean, yeah, sure. I find it weird, but does it really matter?” asked Zugarod, scratching the nape of his neck. “He’s here, he’s an enemy, so we should kill him.”

Durmuz sighed as if he found Zugarod’s one-track mind tiring. “It is indeed as you say. Killing him is a matter of course.”

“Then--” began Zugarod, looking hopeful.

But Durmuz silenced him with a glare. “However, before we kill him, we must learn everything we can. Information is half the battle in war. For all we know, he could have been sent here as sacrificial bait, and the moment we kill him, it could activate a trap that would kill us.”

“You can’t be serious,” Zugarod said, now looking at Durmuz like he was stupid. “You think those soft, weak-hearted Guddomelig would sacrifice one of their own?”

“All I’m saying is we shouldn’t dismiss the possibility.” Durmuz shrugged. “After all, they sacrificed eight of their Great Overlords to seal our king.”

“Yeah. Okay. Point.”

Since I couldn’t move anyway, I listened to everything they said, committing it to memory. This was one of the few times I’d heard the Sekbeist Lords talk. It would be valuable information, provided I could get out of this alive.

The two Sekbeist Lords turned to me. The one called Durmuz waved his hand at my face, and I suddenly found myself able to breathe again. I released a heavy gasp as I realized even my lungs had been frozen. Hacking and coughing, I tried to recover my breath, but then Zogarod fiercely gripped my hair and yanked my head back.

“All right. Time for you to talk. What were you doing out here? Is this a trap to lure me and Durmuz to our doom? Answer us!”

I gritted my teeth as this man demanded answers to questions I didn’t have answers to. More than confusion at this man’s words, I felt anger at his treatment of me. Even in my previous life, I’d never found myself in a situation like this, where I was the one being interrogated. It left a sour taste in my mouth.

That was why I channeled Spiritual Power into my mouth, superheated my saliva, and spit in his right eye.

“GAAA!!! MY EYE! IT BURNS! IT BURNS IT BURNS! FUCK! WHY DOES SPIT HURT SO DAMN MUCH!!”

I had not held back when I spit into his eye. Aside from superheating my saliva to the point where it was several hundred degrees celsius, I had added metal particles into it with the earth element and combined it with lightning. This might might be an all powerful Sekbeist Lord at the Fifth State of Spiritualism. However, no one would be able to recover from having their eye destroyed with what amounted to an acidic lightning lugee.

Zogarod pressed one hand into his eye as if attempting to dig it out with his palm and glared at me through his remaining good eye.

“You are going to get it! I don’t care anymore! You are dead!”

Zogarod was ten seconds from turning me into a corpse. Dark flames gathered in his free hand, which took the shape of a black sword. Unlike the swords wielded and created by the Sekbeist Warlords, this weapon was refined if brutal in appearance. There was an overlaying distortion that caused it to slice through space with even the littlest movement. Yes, this was not the element of darkness but the power of the void.

“Stop,” Durmuz ordered.

“Don’t try to stop me, Durmuz,” Zogarod said in a dark voice.

“What happened is your own fault,” Durmuz replied calmly. “You should have let me conduct this interrogation in the first place. You are too impatient and don’t know how to ask the right questions. Back down, or I will make you back down.”

A struggle took place on Zogarod’s face. I could tell from how these two acted that Durmuz had a higher level of authority than Zogarod, though I was not sure how much higher, and I didn’t know what their position was among the Sekbeist Lords. There was a lot that I didn’t know.

“F-fine. I’ll back off… for now.” Zogarod turned to glare at Durmuz. “But once you finish interrogating him, I will be the one who kills him.”

“That is fair,” Durmuz agreed. “Now stand aside.”

Zogarod grumbled as he stalked away from us, walking over to a tree that he leaned against while crossing his arms.

Now it was just me and Durmuz.

“I believe I should introduce myself before we begin.” Durmuz placed a hand against his chest and bowed lightly. It was an oddly polite gesture. “My name is Durmuz. I am a battalion commander within the Sekbeist Army. And what is your name?”

Durmuz stared at me like he was expecting an answer, but I wasn’t sure if I should name myself. I’d done interrogations before. If there was one thing I knew, it was that the moment the interogee gave the interrogator an answer, they had already opened the door to get more answers.

“Not going to name yourself?” Durmuz asked. When I remained silent, he nodded. “Very well.”

He seemed awfully calm, and I was tempted to break that calm by snapping at him, but before I could speak, a terrible scream ripped from my throat as every fiber in my body felt like it was being torn apart. None of the pain I’d felt before compared to this. It was like every muscle within my body was being slowly dunk in a vat of boiling lava. Agony flared within me, so intense my mind even tried to shut down, but the pain brought me right back. I wanted to squirm and struggle, but my body was still locked into place.

“Haaaa…”

The pain ended as abruptly as it began. My head sagged as I struggled to stay awake. Darkness was creeping at the edge of my vision. I couldn’t understand what had happened, but as my body came back from the brink, I realized my insides were a mess. With a grimace, I activated my Spiritual Power and repaired the damage with the water element.

Durmuz hummed. “It seems while you only have a basic understanding of high level concepts, you are very well versed in the seven main elements. How odd. As a god child, you should have a stronger grasp of at least one high level concept, but all I can sense from you is a basic understanding of life, death, and… dimension? No, though I sense dimensional energy on you, you have no real understanding of it.”

“What… are you talking about?” I asked. I only realized my mistake after I’d already spoken, when I saw the smile that appeared on Durmuz’s face.

“I see.” He nodded once. “It seems you do not come from Ásgarðr. That is interesting. Ásgarðr is the last bastion of you Guddomelig, so there is nowhere else you could be from… unless you were born in one of the lower realms. That would explain why you have such a high grasp on the seven main elements and not high level concepts. If I had to guess, I would say you are from Miðgarðr.”

“Wait!” Zogarod interrupted in shock. “Are you for real?! This god child came from Miðgarðr?!”

“I believe so,” Durmuz replied.

“But… the realms have been sealed off from each other,” Zogarod exclaimed, waving his arms for emphasis. “We’ve been trying to reach Miðgarðr for over a thousand years now with no luck! How did this god child break through the spatial barrier when he doesn’t even understand the Concept of Space?!”

“I do not know, but I intend to find out.”

Durmuz stared at me, and I glared right back, not backing down despite my disadvantageous position.

“We will take him with us,” Durmuz said at last, turning away from me.

“Wha… you can’t be serious!” Zogarod shouted.

“Of course I am serious,” Durmuz said. “This child somehow managed to break through the spatial seal separating the nine realms. I intend to slowly pry that information out of him. We will take him with us, and I will break his mind and body until he tells me what I want to know.”

This was quite possibly the worst situation I had ever been in. I’d realized when I first arrived here that I was powerless, but being caught so easily by these two made me understand this fact even better. I had no power here. The Fourth State of Spiritualism was nothing to these people. Even the small bit of understanding I’d gleamed about the concepts of life and death was not enough to be of help.

“Let’s go,” Durmuz said at last.

Durmuz made to leave, and while Zogarod looked reluctant to leave me alive, he complied with the man’s orders. This was it. If I wanted to escape from these two, I needed to do it now. But I couldn’t. No matter how much Spiritual Power I circulated through my body, none of it did anything. I couldn’t even bring my Spiritual Aura outside of my body because of this time lock I’d been placed in.

Time…

What was time anyway? I remembered reading a few books that told stories about people traveling to the past like I had, but none of them ever explained what it was.

I focused on the time lock keeping my body frozen. I could feel the Spiritual Power wrapping around my body like threads of adamantium, and I tried to understand those threads.

Just before I could begin trying to understand what time was, something shot out from the forest and slammed into Zogarod. The Sekbeist Lord was blasted off his feet. He flew back, slammed through a tree, the trunk of which snapped like a twig, and then plowed through several more trees. I was shocked. However, Durmuz suddenly became alert. He raised his hands as another projectile flew at him. The projectile stopped, and I could see it for what it was.

At first glance, it looked like a light arrow, but I noticed how the arrow itself distorted as it quivered in place. Space itself seemed to warp around it. Those were spatial distortions.

I didn’t get much of a chance to study the projectile before Durmuz crushed it. That was about all he could do, however, because several hundred more arrows flew down at him from above. He didn’t try to block these attacks. He leapt back several times. The spatial arrows struck the ground, then disappeared into the floor, or that was what I thought. I became shocked when those same arrows suddenly appeared behind Durmuz and tried to strike him in the back.

It looked like the areas would hit, but before they could, Durmuz’s entire body became distorted, and then he disappeared. All of this happened very fast. It felt like I had missed something. I blinked several times and discovered that Durmuz was now standing several meters to the left of his previous location.

“Is that you, Fray? Why don’t you come on out?” Durmuz said.

Nothing seemed to happen at first, but then the space several meters in front of me distorted. White tears appeared within the fabric of reality, creating a portal of sorts, through which a woman stepped out of.

I had met many beautiful women throughout my life. My wives, my friend Erica, my mother-in-law, and many other people. I’d always believed that among the women I knew, my wives were the most beautiful.

My belief might have just been shattered.

The woman standing before me now was bewitching. Golden blond hair colored like the sun traveled in a straight line down her back. Two long bangs framed a face that was youthful yet mature. She had vibrant green eyes, a small and cute nose, lush pink lips, and small dimples on her cheeks.

Dressed in a resplendent white robe with a gold cord tied around her waist, the woman’s ample chest was perfectly visible through her outfit. Her robes did not have sleeves, leaving her slender arms bare. They didn’t look very strong. However, I could somehow sense the power within them. She wore no shoes. Her bare feet touched upon the ground. Meanwhile, the cord around her waist helped accentuate her magnificent bust to hip ratio.

Despite how dangerous this situation was, I could not help but be in awe.

“I had been wondering what I would find when I sensed those strange spatial fluctuations, but to think it was you, Durmuz,” the woman said, her voice lilting like a beautiful harp. Only the hard edge, sharper than any sword, let me know this was not a woman to be crossed. “I had not realized you had comprehended the Concept of Space. Did you decide to switch from Time to Space?”

“You are mistaken.” Durmuz looked calm, but I thought I saw some sweat trickle down his scalp as he faced this woman. “I’m not the cause of those spatial fluctuations you felt.”

The woman… Fray… furrowed her brow at him, but then she caught sight of me out of the corner of her eye and turned her head. Our eyes locked. I couldn’t explain what I felt in that moment, but a jolt traveled through my spine. I sensed familiarity in this woman. Somehow, someway that was beyond my comprehension, I knew who this woman was… and yet I also didn’t.

While I was trying to understand this feeling, Fray’s eyes widened as she stared at me. Then, to my great surprise, tears sprang to her eyes. If I wasn’t currently locked in time, I would have said something, but all I could do was stare back.

“It’s… you…” she murmured.

“Oh?” Durmuz looked keenly interested in her reaction. “Do you, perhaps, know this god child.”

As if remembering that her enemy was before her, Fray’s face twisted into a scowl so ferocious even I was taken aback. She turned to Durmuz, held out her hand, and created a bow of white Spiritual Power. I somehow understood that this was spatial energy. She was manipulating space to create this bow.

“If you do not release that child right now, I swear on my father’s name that I will eradicate you from the nine realms,” Fray threatened.

But Durmuz only smiled. “You threaten to erase me, but we are already fighting in a war of extermination. Your threat means nothing to me. I am taking this god child back. Since you expressed such interest in him, I am even more curious to pry out his secrets.”

I had no idea what was happening. I was so confused. But even through my confusion, I understood one thing. The woman known as Fray was undoubtedly an ally, while Durmuz was my enemy, and really, that was all I needed to know.