Chapter 2
It was good in the forest. Plenty of game. Raw meat doesn't irritate and even brings pleasure. Setting up a den for the night is easy. This remarkable body practically doesn't feel the frost, I don't know why. Clothes are practically unnecessary. Finding water to drink or bathe is even easier... The only downside is boredom. And the lack of communication. I can't communicate with wolves, can I? No, they easily accept me into their pack, we hunt together... But it's boring with them.
A year passed at this pace. Maybe more, who knows, I didn't keep track of time. The boredom became so unbearable that I dragged myself out to the people.
During this time, I had grown noticeably taller and gained mass. If I escaped the basement as a skinny twelve-year-old boy, then after this year (let's assume it was a year), outwardly I could be given sixteen or seventeen years.
I came out of the forest not in Canada, but in America. And the year was 1776. And what was happening in America that year?
War.
The War of Independence from Britain. Later called the American Revolution.
And I had no money, no relatives, no connections... I might as well go back to the forest.
I thought and thought, and decided... to my own detriment, to volunteer. To seek status, adventure, money, glory. What a fool I was!
What status? What money? What glory? A ragged, half-starved, poorly armed crowd—that's what the volunteer continental army was.
As for adventures: I saw enough death, disease, blood, and slaughter there. And not only saw, but participated myself.
My personal graveyard expanded to a couple of hundred people. How so? Like this—rage. Bloodlust. It's not for nothing that the comics attribute them to Sabretooth.
After all, what was a battle like back then? Line formation against line formation shooting at each other with muskets. Five or six volleys. And then nerves fail, or cavalry approaches, or artillery, or whatever; in short, it all comes down to a melee brawl, somehow managed. That's where I lost my mind. So much so that you couldn't catch me if you tried.
I turned into a beast on the battlefield. And killed, killed, killed... Until the enemies ran out. Or until I managed to pull myself together. The latter, thank God, happened more often than the former.
Once, however, a third option happened: a bullet hit me right in the head. From a distance of one meter. From a musket. More precisely—in the eye. And through it into the brain.
I passed out then. My side thought I was dead. For a whole night, the healing factor grew a new brain (what do you expect? A musket ball entering the skull and not piercing the back wall just ground all its contents into mush, ricocheting twice off the bone). By morning, the bullet fell out, pushed out by the regenerated tissues the same way it went in, through the eye socket. After that, I suffered from memory problems for another three days. I wandered through the forests and hid from people.
That's when I got lucky. Although, it was relative luck. Just out of the corner of my ear, observing from the bushes another group of people, in this case Hessian soldiers, I heard the combination of words "regimental treasury."
And following that came the thought—war should bring money. Throughout all ages, that's what they fought for: trophies, drops, loot—whatever you call it, the meaning is the same—robbery. By that point, my mind was almost back to normal, so this phrase wasn't forgotten.
I tracked the regiment those soldiers belonged to for a week. I watched, listened, sniffed around, and found out. And I found out. Where this very regimental treasury was kept, by whom, and how it was guarded... And then came the night. Very, very dark.
Night vision, superhuman senses and strength, hunting skills, and silent movement... I didn't even need the healing factor. A dozen silently killed soldiers, the chest into a sturdy sack, the sack on my shoulders, and off to the forest.
They looked for me for a long time. They lost about fifty more men. And then the patriot troops arrived, and everyone forgot about the treasury.
Money.
I buried the money in the forest, carefully remembering the spot. And I dug the hole very deep so it couldn't be stumbled upon by accident. Why?
Where would I go with it? There's a war all around, no reliable banks or safe places. And sailing to Switzerland would take forever.
The result? I joined another volunteer regiment and continued to fight for the independence of the United States of America, damn them.
It even somehow happened that I was honored to shake hands with Washington himself, who was our commander. Although, I can't even remember the exact occasion.
Anyway, the war ended with the logical victory of the States. And I... couldn't find a place for myself in civilian life. I wandered around for about three weeks, looked around, and went to the port to find a passing ship. The Land of Great Opportunities somehow didn't appeal to a simple Russian transmigrator.
At first, I thought of rushing to Russia. More precisely, the Russian Empire. Thank God I remembered in time what was happening there at that time. I imagined it, shuddered, and crossed myself.
By chance, I got into a conversation with a sailor in a port tavern. And he, being heavily intoxicated, generously poured tall tales into my ears about distant lands he had personally visited and those he had only heard about (and you couldn't tell which category was which in most cases).
But what caught my attention in his story was the mention of some Siamese fights where fighters fight for money using elbows and knees. And most importantly, that they LEARN this!
It happens that a randomly heard word or a stray thought gets stuck in your head like a nail, and stays there, urging you to reach out, move, do...
So this drunken sailor's mention of martial arts masters got stuck in my restored brain so deeply that you couldn't knock it out if you wanted to.
I spent three weeks looking for a ship. Another couple of days negotiating with the captain. I gave almost all my salary that I received upon discharge from the army, but I still sailed. To that faraway Siam, which, as I remembered from my school geography and history course, in my time bore the proud name of Thailand.
The journey to Bangkok took several months, which had literally just ceased to be the village of Bang Makok near Rattanakosin Island. I spent just as much time wandering around Siam looking for a school or a master who would take me on to teach. I received countless rejections, but patience and stubbornness eventually break through any walls. It's not for nothing that in canon it was said about Sabretooth that once he picks up someone's trail, he won't give up until he catches them. Apparently, part of this quality fell to me too.
A certain Master Hon, after a week-long siege (in the end, I just stood on his doorstep and didn't leave, day or night, for three days (I pissed all over his fence during that time)), agreed to train me in the art of Muay Boran.
And then...
The next twenty years passed steadily and fruitfully: training, arena fights, training again, fights again...
Sometimes I had a hard time in the arena when I ran into really strong opponents, and I did run into them. Sometimes I purposely lost fights when the master was paid very well for it (what do you expect? You have to live on something).
And then Master Hon died. He simply died of old age. There was no one to teach me anymore. Other Masters wouldn't take me, saying that it was time for me to take students myself—my beastly mug had become too recognizable in certain circles.
Sighing one last time over Master Hon's grave, I dragged myself to the port again.
I had something to pay with this time—piracy flourished in these waters. A couple of tips from drunken sailors, a couple of very, very dark nights, and a couple of pirate lairs turned out to be "slaughtered by wild beasts," leaving torn claw wounds and throats bitten through by fangs. But the pirate treasury disappeared without a trace.
I catch myself realizing that making "stashes" has become a habit.
So, while studying under one Master, willy-nilly you hear about others. So from Hon, I heard that in Okinawa there is a certain art bearing the name of the Way of the Empty Hand, which immediately reminded me, the transmigrator, of karate.
The difficulty was that Okinawa is a Japanese island, and this country cannot stand strangers. Moreover, it legally decreed to kill any stranger who stepped on its shore on the spot.
There was, however, one loophole here—Okinawa is an island of exiles. They don't like official authority there.
I won't describe my journey there, my adventures there, but the fact is that I found a Master. And, what was much harder, became his student.
And again, years began to whistle past me in endless training and meditation.
Master Sotama lived longer than Master Hon. He gave me thirty-five years of apprenticeship.
In 1842, I left Okinawa. Which was not easy. For the sake of which I had to swim a couple of dozen kilometers, reaching an anchored British ship.
On it, secretly from the crew, I arrived in China. And there was exactly the First Opium War with Britain and the occupation of Hong Kong Island.
The British... I dislike them since the American Revolution. And it's hard to love those you fought against. And here was such a case: the export of "war trophies" from a conquered country, specifically the indemnity taken under the Treaty of Nanking.
Although it was not easy at all: a military naval convoy is a tough nut to crack. But! The jackpot was very sweet: the total size of the exported indemnity was 15,000,000 silver taels, which corresponds to about 21,000,000 dollars. It was worth fighting for a piece of this pie.
Again, it was a very, very dark night. Again, corpses. Again, a sack. Only this time, I didn't limit myself to one trip. Six chests of coins and about a hundred personnel were lost by the British Crown during my three days of work.
Another episode was added to my habit. And another stash.
After that, there was a long hike to Tibet.
Let me remind you—I am a transmigrator. What transmigrator doesn't dream of getting into, pause, drumroll, SHAOLIN?!!!
So a year and a half of traveling through not the most friendly country can be equated to, or rather called, "the road to a dream."
And I made it. It was hard. But I made it. And I even achieved apprenticeship.
I had to shave my head as a monk, study, and accept Buddhism, though. But it was worth it.
Just think about it: seventy years of training in Shaolin!
Then I had to leave. People don't live that long even in Tibetan monasteries. Unnecessary attention began. Especially since a civil war broke out in China in 1911, smoothly turning into a revolution. The mess in the whole region was such that it was easy to get lost. It's possible that I couldn't have picked a better time to leave at all.
Anyway, by the summer of 1913, I was boarding a ship in Hong Kong again, carrying in my luggage one of the dug-up chests (it sounds grand—a CHEST. In reality, its size was about 60x35x40 centimeters).
With this wealth, I arrived in France.
The very next year, the First World War began.
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