With the swordmaster Songbai on board as an instructor, Kian's training regint took on a much sharper structure.
The daily cycle looked like this: most of the day spent in the Sanctum working raw physical conditioning. Once that was done, sparring sessions with Songbai to develop technique. When boredom set in, a trip to the cage for a death-match against the Aeldari warrior, followed by the seven-hour respawn reset and straight back to training.
One problem erged early: the physical gap between Kian and Songbai was simply too wide. The swordmaster's technique was exceptional, but when one fighter can overpower another with pure force alone, technique has no room to express itself and nothing can actually be transmitted.
Kian's solution was to lend Songbai the Infiltration Reactive Power Armour, then don his own Standard Reactive Power Armour and engage resistance mode. The servo-chanisms in powered armour could work with a wearer's movents to amplify force, or against them to create drag. In resistance mode, Kian's full output was slowed and dampened until it roughly matched Songbai's natural level, making it possible to actually feel the pressure of the swordmaster's attacks.
The results were imdiate. Once the physical disparity was equalised, Kian found himself getting carved up. Every thrust he launched was deflected by crisp, economical counter-movents. He couldn't land a clean hit.
By the end of the first day, his blade hadn't made contact once. Pure technical domination.
Kian was delighted. This teacher had sothing real.
Songbai taught with total commitnt. He'd been paid three hundred million Agri-Scrips. He held nothing back, passing on everything he'd accumulated across a lifeti.
By the end of day one, Kian had absorbed every offensive and defensive stance in Songbai's repertoire. Day two covered combinational sequences and flow between techniques. By day three, Kian's blade was occasionally touching Songbai during exchanges.
Songbai offered an observation with so encouragent:
"My lord, every high-level duellist carries a fine blade. You have a power sword, I take it? Even these few touches just now would have been lethal strikes if that blade were live. A power sword through powered armour is still a killing blow."
He was right. In a world where everyone fighting at this level carried powered weapons, a hit was a hit. The armour didn't matter if the blade did.
Kian absorbed Songbai's knowledge like a sponge. The swordmaster could see that within half a month, he would genuinely have nothing left to teach. The resistance mode kept Kian's physical output suppressed, but it couldn't slow his neural response. Once he'd internalised the foundational sequences, his eyes began reading Songbai's attack patterns ahead of execution, and he started responding to what the swordmaster was about to do rather than what he'd already done.
When Kian's win rate reached one hundred percent, the apprenticeship was over.
The death-match sessions with the Aeldari warrior continued as his daily cooldown. Every rest period ended the sa way: walk to the cage, fight, die, wait seven hours, repeat. The progress was visible. He'd gone from being killed in a single exchange to consistently lasting ten rounds before she ended it.
The Aeldari warrior was quietly unsettled. The Immortal in front of her was improving at a pace she hadn't thought possible. A few months, and he could already trade with her. There were monts now where his blade ca genuinely close. If he were carrying a power sword instead of an iron blade, she would have real reason for concern.
Another ten days passed. His stats plateaued at Strength 48, Endurance 48, Focus 59. Ti for the third procedure.
Antonius, once Kian was on the table, delivered his assessnt:
"This is the final surgery. I'll be adding nine kilograms to your overall skeletal mass. That is the absolute ceiling I can reach while keeping your body functional. Any further augntation beyond this point carries serious risk of progressive skeletal disease."
Kian nodded. Then, before the procedure began, he added one more instruction.
"I had the Rejuvenat physicians clone a cartilage sample from my own tissue. When you're done with the bones, implant it under the skin of my forearm. Sa location as the iron plate last ti."
The iron plate experint had delivered its result: when he died and respawned, the plate was gone. The resurrection system had identified it as foreign material and excluded it. So the question beca: what did the system consider part of him?
His hypothesis was that biological material cloned from his own tissue might read differently. Implant sothing genetically identical to himself, let it integrate, then die and check whether it ca back. If it did, he'd have found the boundary of what the resurrection chanic counted as his body, which opened up possibilities worth thinking about.
The procedure took eight hours. When Kian climbed off the table, he was nine kilograms heavier. Structurally, he was now sothing beyond what any unaugnted human fra was ant to be.
He rolled his shoulders, feeling the new weight distributed through his skeleton, then drove a fist into the tal wall beside him.
The wall rang with a dull, heavy impact. The skin across his knuckles split and bled. The bones beneath were completely undamaged.
Antonius dismissed the dicae-servitors and turned to Kian.
"Your skeletal mass now approaches forty kilograms. Current body weight: 187 kilograms. At peak training adaptation, you should reach sowhere around 220 kilograms. That is the practical ceiling of what bone density augntation can achieve."
Then his vox-amplifier shifted to a noticeably warr register.
"So. Strength. Compelling, isn't it. And we've only just begun. chanical heart and lungs: fatigue becos a concept that no longer applies to you. chanical liver and kidneys: tabolic disease is simply not possible, you could drink reactor coolant without ill effect. chanical limbs: force output beyond anything biological, with the option to integrate weapons directly. Optical implants and fibre-optic spinal column: reaction speed approaching lightning, precision approaching a fabricator array."
Kian raised one finger and wagged it slowly in front of the enginseer's faceplate.
"Pass. I train natural. The bone surgery is just a supplent."
He patted himself down and went back to the weights.
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