"Combat, in essence, is the exchange of deadly blows between person to person. Sometimes groups, but more often than not one by one."
The enormous giant moved with steady steps in a perfect circle a couple of meters away from Lieren, his voice resounding like a mighty roar from the skies with his baritone voice.
"The essence of battle is to kill your opponent, to murder them with your very hand with the style you have chosen, along with the ideals and cadence you have refined over time, until ultimately there is but one person left: you, the winner."
His blood-red eyes pierced Lieren like a hot knife, making his blood boil.
He continued, his voice lacking any kind of joking or sullen undertones. Instead, it was sharp and cold, just like steel:
"Of course, that is not all there is to it. But for the purposes of your training, I have found it to teach you the main and most surface-level knowledge there is about combat."
His eyes shone with a deadly glint that exuded a burning sense of dread in his heart. Raising his arms instinctively, Lieren crossed them on the place where the giant's eyes fell last.
Just as he anticipated, Vesba's fist stopped mere centimeter's from his own. A rush of furious wind swept across his face and pushed his hair away with a powerful and soothing gust.
The giant grinned with mad glee.
"It all starts with how you strike."
Lowering his arms, Lieren felt the urge to do so as well in respect of this powerful being in front of him.
…Immediate regret overcame his entire body.
The giant moved with speed and precision unbefitting his size, his figure turning into a hazy blur that was anything but an illusion. Rather, it was his agility and astounding physical ability that allowed him to move with the speed of crashing thunder.
Another gust, this time more powerful and apparent that the first, assailed him like a typhoon, almost putting him to the ground with just one punch. Even before it connected to his exposed face.
Though shocked and stupefied, or maybe exactly because of that, Lieren did his best to put on a crafted smile, appearing brave and defiant in front of the fearsome giant.
"You lied… No, your battle style lied to me."
He ingered for a minute, until Vesba lowered his fist slowly, watching the boy intently. Continuing, he asked incredulously:
"What gives?"
Vesba smirked, as though amused. He gazed at the young boy with an inquisitive look.
"My style relies on grounded footwork and deception, striking at most unexpected scenarios with deadly ripostes, aiming at the vitals with deadly precision."
Lieren frowned, confused. Something about what he said, or rather the entirety of it, put him off just a tiny bit.
"Why are you telling me that? I doubt that would be of much use to me right now. I am still too much of a novice to make use of that advice."
The giant man's grin grew even wider, as if amused. He shrugged and tucked his arms together, joining them.
"Why not? You already have it figured out, anyway. I may as well do my best to teach you my style."
A still and deafening silence permeated the atmosphere, as if the whole world had grown silent for a few seconds.
When it returned, a lie escaped Lieren's breath.
"What are you talking about? There's no way I would know something like that," The boy said with a grimace, gazing at the towering giant with a dubious look.
There was a cold glint in Vesba's eye that he did not miss. The tall giant grinned like a madman watching his test subject.
"Really? It seems I have taught you something unnecessary. That's my mistake. Sorry, sorry," His tone was joking but his eyes were not.
The tall giant spared the boy a playful look, as if playing a game. If what he had said was true, then his style reflected his personality. The battle art that he prided himself with must have either been made with the intention of complimenting his skillset and personality or the other way around, aroused from a desperate need of change and clarity to better fit his new viewpoint.
Exhaling heavily, Lieren planted his feet on the ground, pushing onto it with all his pitiful weight.
Vesba grinned.
"My mistake, indeed," As if those words were a starting point, his figure disappeared with a barely-visible blur.
Lieren's eyes shot open as his blue eyes glistened with ethereal intuition.
Despite the tall giant's enormous and muscular build, his speed was nothing to scoff at. The ground broke apart as he took a single step, laying out a web of cracks onto its concrete surface as though it was made out of wood.
Racking his mind, the young boy did his best to pay as much attention to his surroundings with all that he could. He needed everything he could get if it meant not having his body destroyed to pieces.
His sporadically, trying to find the tall giant with all that he could.
The man was nowhere to be found, as though his very existence had been erased.
'Curses!'
Gritting his teeth, Lieren thought back to the description of the man's style and focused his eyes forward.
'His style depended on grounded footwork and… deception, was it? Is that really the case? If that's so, then why did he disappear so suddenly? This doesn't make sense. Based on his previous two strikes, his description was pretty spot-on, too. So this shouldn't be what happened.'
Something was up, something devious and insidious.
If Vesba's grounded style really did depend on his grounded footwork, then something like disappearing in a flash on his first move should not be step in his repertoire. At least not when fighting a much weaker opponent.
'Which meant… what, exactly?
Feeling a creeping sensation at the back of his neck, Lieren ducked and felt the ground almost touch his chin. The memory of the blind woman's tenacious and flowing technique passed by his mind, flowing into his bones and willed by his spirit. Though it was but a short encounter where he had briefly glimpsed into her solid and flowing battle style, thus obtaining lacking information, he felt like he had seen something valuable and beautiful.
A flood of deadly inspiration flowed through his body like a drowning tsunami of enlightenment.
A dark shadow passed by him like a vicious dragon, threatening to eat him whole. At the corner of his periphery, he could just about make out the sweeping claw of the giant's enormous hand where his head had just been.
If he had not reacted, his skull would have been crushed instantly. That shivering realization doused his mind with the cooling reminder that, despite being chosen as the candidate by the Exousia Famiglia's very own scion herself, he was still just an inexperienced child with severely lacking combat skills and experience.
Still, that did not mean he wasn't going to try.
He had already resolved himself, after all.
Standing up with an explosive leap, Lieren pushed himself off the cold ground and brought his tiny fist up, clenching it tight.
The knuckles of both of his hands were covered with bandages.